Gail Simone
Legendary comic writer behind Birds of Prey, Batgirl, Wonder Woman, and Deadpool who launched Dark Horse's 2014 Tomb Raider series.
Before she was writing the adventures of Lara Croft, Gail Simone was changing the conversation around comics themselves. In 1999 she founded the Women in Refrigerators website—the community-annotated list of female characters killed, maimed, or depowered to motivate male heroes—a document that reshaped how the industry talked about its treatment of women. From that lightning rod came her celebrated CBR humor column “You’ll All Be Sorry!” and, from there, a writing career spanning well over 500 issues.
Simone’s super-powered résumé includes defining runs on DC’s Birds of Prey, Secret Six, The All-New Atom, and Wonder Woman—where she remains the title’s longest-running female writer—plus the New 52 Batgirl, in which she introduced Alysia Yeoh, a landmark for transgender representation in mainstream comics. For Marvel she wrote Deadpool and Agent X; for Dynamite she shepherded the long-running Red Sonja, later turning the character into her debut novel Red Sonja: Consumed (Orbit, 2024). Along the way: The Simpsons comics, Vertigo’s Clean Room, Image’s Crosswind, and the creator-owned Leaving Megalopolis with Jim Calafiore.
When Dark Horse launched the official continuation of Crystal Dynamics’ 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, Simone was the natural choice—she had already written Lara Croft in the animated short “Pre-Teen Raider,” and the game’s emotional, human take on the heroine (scripted by her eventual collaborator Rhianna Pratchett) won her over. Her opening storylines, collected in Tomb Raider: Season of the Witch and the Tomb Raider Omnibus Volume 1, pick up where the island of Yamatai left off, balancing survival horror with blockbuster set pieces as Lara and the Endurance survivors face visions, conspiracies, and the shadowy Trinity organization.
Perfect for fans of smart, character-driven superheroics and adventure comics with real emotional stakes. Follow Simone on Twitter as @GailSimone and at gailsimone.com, and meet her Tomb Raider teammates: co-writer Rhianna Pratchett, pencillers Nicolás Daniel Selma and Derlis Santacruz, inker Juan Gedeon, and colorist Michael Atiyeh.
