I don’t read a lot of comics. I never really have, but when a friend started me reading comics, she reached into her long box, pulled out a long run of Gail Simone’s Birds of Prey and said, “Here, read this. It’s awesome.”

I now have a long box full of Birds of Prey. But only as written by Gail Simone. When she left Birds of Prey, I read a few issues, then was so disgusted with the way the story was going, I gave up. That was okay, though. Because then she started writing Wonder Woman. And all of a sudden, Wonder Woman was interesting! She was more than the pontificating diplomat. I didn’t buy a lot of Wonder Woman because I’d hit that graduate school stage of broke, but I got copies however I could. And then she was back on Birds of Prey and all was right with my world. Yes, I read other Batfamily comics, but that was only to get the context of the rest of universe in which Birds of Prey existed.

Oh, wait. Then DC rebooted. And we were losing Oracle, who I loved, and who Simone wrote so incredibly well. We had a character who was disabled and who still kicked butt, and we were losing that little bit of diversity. But Simone was going to write Batgirl, so that soothed the soul a bit.

Until today, when we discovered that DC fired her from Batgirl, leaving their most well-known female writer out in the cold.

I don’t know what to make of this. The Wired article I linked above points out that DC’s had plenty of problems with gender issues of late. What I am, however, is incredibly disappointed, because the woman who got me–and a lot of other girls–into DC comics–and who kept me interested in them over the last ten years–is no longer associated with them, and I see no good reason for it.

I don’t have a lot of analysis for this, partly because I don’t have a lot of insight into DC’s internal workings right now. But this decision hit me right in the feels, and I can’t imagine I’m the only one. Gail, have you thought about writing Star Wars comics?