Back in 2017, comic fans watched a familiar pattern unfold: a veteran creator put out a shocking cover, Twitter exploded, and a progressive superstar jumped in to fan the flames and signal their virtue. This time it was Gail Simone taking aim at Howard Chaykin for his raw cover art for Divided States of Hysteria #4. It depicted a lynched Pakistani man with mutilated genitals and a racial slur on his name tag. Twitter lit up with outrage. Image Comics quickly pulled the cover the week it was solicited, but Simone has continued to stir the pot for nearly a decade, years after the long-forgotten book ended up in the back issue bins.
Now you might ask, why did Simone feel the need back in 2017 to weigh-in publicly? Was she the editor? Is she Pakistani? Not that I’m aware, but about three hours before her now infamous “revolting” tweet slamming the cover was posted to Twitter, she had quoted Image Comics’ own promo tweet about shocking moments in comics. She later tagged Chaykin’s book and shared a screenshot of the Divided States of Hysteria cover, highlighting what she considered its “trans-panic violence” scene.
We need to stop blaming Chaykin and start blaming @ImageComics for giving the platform. They publish what they want, fans can boycott Image.
— MRJafri 🇵🇸 (@mrjafri) July 1, 2017
Her earlier tweet even seemed to frame Chaykin as someone who regularly pushed offensive material by her standards.
Oh, god, is there NEW Chaykin crap? https://t.co/xaeqPiagVy
— Gail Simone 💙💛 (@GailSimone) June 30, 2017
Weeks later, Simone (still bravely tweeting on X to this day) defended herself as a true LGBTQ ally and positioned her criticism of Chaykin as protecting marginalized folks from harmful imagery. Sounds comendable on the surface, but the controversy didn’t end there. Comic outlets had already piled on in the brouhaha, embedding Simone’s “revolting” tweet amid the flood of criticism. In fact, one writer at The Mary Sue was so triggered by the cover they labeled it a “hate crime.”
For his part, Chaykin eventually pushed back in an interview with Freaksugar, defending his satirical intent without apology.
“…[A] number of enthusiasts and several of my fellow professionals–seem incapable of separating the depiction from the act.
This sort of sophistry has plagued me for years, so I suppose I should be used to it. But clearly, some shit never gets old. I have to assume a percentage of these earnest, yet apparently willfully ignorant critics haven’t read the book–certainly not issue four, which cover seems to be setting their lives on fire today.
If they were actually to read the book, perhaps other conclusions might be drawn–but I’m not optimistic. Despite the fact that I am and have always been a proud member of the American left, I’m being impugned from my side of the aisle–by the sort of people who say such things as “I’m all for artistic expression, but…”
It’s that “but” that undercuts all that “…all for…” No, you’re not really. If that were the case, there’d be no buts. The only artistic expression deemed acceptable by that “but” is an anodyne pandering to an apparently easily patronized audience.
For the record, the cover depicts the horrific wish dream of some 45% of their fellow Americans. Perhaps if they spent a bit more time paying attention to the fact that the world they were born into is on the brink of serious disaster, they might have less time to get worked up about an image of genuine horror that depicts an aspect of that impeding disaster.
Sorry–I do go on now and then.”
When asked if he was being provocative just for the sake of being provocative or trying to make a meaningful statement about diversity and fear-mongering, Chaykin added “For my money, for my tastes and my experience, the real world in which we find ourselves now is horrific enough… you can still continue to believe that not having your feelings hurt is in the bill of rights somewhere–despite the fact that I’m still not quite sure what all the fuss is about. For the record, apologies are for the guilty.”
Simone never apologized either, certainly not for whipping up her followers into a cancel-culture frenzy. Nor has she ever walked back her public insults. Instead, she has kept nursing the grudge through all those periodic posts and well beyond. Two years later, in 2019, a fan resurfaced one of Chaykin’s snarky comments about the drama, but instead of letting it slide or recalling their friendly convention history, Simone fired back, not with an olive branch, but with fresh insults. Then in 2020, Simone casually confirmed on X that Chaykin was “still mad” about her role in the controversy. Was that a subtle gloat? Why now, almost nine years later? Even today Simone still boasts about Chaykin’s anger as if it proves her moral righteousness. That seems to imply this feud is less about comics, more about performative moral victories online.
Fast forward to current year – January 19, 2026. Howard Chaykin dropped his Substack post “TOMORROW BELONGS TO ME” first thing that day, unleashing a raw takedown of his 2017 “digital show trial” over Divided States of Hysteria. He described getting “mugged by a mob of fans and colleagues,” branded “problematic” without anyone reading the book, and slammed one specific colleague who he said recently tried to “let bygones be bygones” without any regret for her “gleeful Madame DeFarge cosplay.” Chaykin holds grudges “like a bloodstain on silk,” and rejects unearned forgiveness from “shitweasel cockbags.” He also admitted to “quiet gloating” at their stalled careers. All of this was seen as a bullseye aimed directly at Gail Simone.
Hours later, a triggered Gail Simone fired back with a two-part Facebook series “WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE” (matching Chaykin’s ALL CAPS ferv0r) wherein she described their dust-up as “brief” and “odd” as if she had no idea why he was still upset. Both posts are visible to the public here and here. In the pair of lengthy posts, she insists that her 2017 tweets were “measured,” goes on to recall their convention friendship, and yet still offers no apology, just more defense of her allyship. At first she claims some reluctance to “calling out a well-regarded legendary comics pro” insisting that it “is just right close to the edge of the last thing I want to do,” yet she proceeds to do it anyway, accusing Chaykin of “bashing” her with “name-calling and fat jokes” for eight years. But a perusal of Chaykin’s Substack post she’s responding to includes nothing about body-shaming or personal roasts, except that name “Madame DeFarge” ostensibly over her mob-leading glee.
This all seems like a classic reaction to getting called out: rewrite history after that first shot lands, and try to deflect Chaykin’s wry reference to the bloodthirsty knitter from Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, a character who tallies guillotine victims with great relish. While Chaykin’s posts prove he’s thriving in the indie world of Substack, still offering no apology for his art, Simone scrambled to Facebook for damage control even when she isn’t explicitly named in a Substack aimed at Chaykin’s subscribers. Why post same-day unless provoked? And calling her tweets “measured” just reeks of dodging that “no regrets” label he pinned on her. She should have just kept her mouth shut.
Is this the jolly, kind-hearted Gail Simone that fans have come to know from her convention appearances and hits like Birds of Prey? Or is she really just another progressive feminist gatekeeper who can’t resist publicly judging anyone, including her fellow, veteran creators like Chaykin when their work doesn’t align with her ideology? After all, she rose to fame with Women in Refrigerators, a list that shamed male comicbook writers for killing off female characters. These days, she still seems to vigilantly patrol comics for similar ideological offenses.
See Also: Whisper Network: Media Cover-Ups & Coordinated Attacks in the Comics Industry
ComicsGate activists regularly called her out on it, but they were demonized quickly by the likes of Mark Waid due in no small part to some poor decisions by Richard C. Meyer, and were therefore dismissed. Simone also publicly severed ties with Dynamite Entertainment over their associations with ComicsGate. And while ComicsGate figurehead Ethan Van Sciver, who like Chaykin, once had a professional relationship with Simone, she and her allies all hit back hard after he called her out on his own Youtube channel for her abhorrent behavior, and told his followers about having to ‘block’ her after she had turned her Twitter mob against him all because he voted republican. In that situation, it appeared that Simone demonstrated this very same pattern of deflection when she publicly responded on her Facebook to the video from Van Sciver where he revealed a lot of his own issues with Simone, which Van Sciver labelled “concern trolling.”
For her part, Simone also has never demonstated any scruples for publicly insulting people she doesn’t agree with.
Consider the bigger picture, especially the economics. Progressive voices like Simone’s regularly weaponize Twitter mobs to enforce these kinds of purity tests, and Chaykin’s book faced censorship in this case, because Image Comics caved under pressure and sales took a hit. Dynamite Entertainment likewise bent the knee and dropped a ComicsGate related book after Simone pressured them. And after all these incidents, who pays the price? Independent creators like Chaykin and Van Sciver certainly, having lost work in the industry, but it’s also everyday readers who have grown weary of being lectured to or treated like children who can’t decide for themselves whether or not they should buy a comic from a controversial creator or emblazoned with a potentially offensive cover.
Why can’t Simone just let it go? Nearly nine years on, she’s still confirming Chaykin’s resentment, dropping Facebook essays, and nodding to his lingering anger almost like it’s a badge of honor. Where’s the de-escalation? Any remaining nostalgia for their old con friendship has certainly taken a backseat to keeping the feud bubbling for more likes and validation. This is clearly not about healing old wounds. It’s about staying relevant in the culture wars. Chaykin’s Substack proves he fired first this time, and once again Simone couldn’t resist responding.
See Also: Whisper Network Member Defends Online Attacks on ‘Problematic’ Creators
Their spat is just another example of how “woke” enforcers have been demanding “sanitized art” and ideaological alignment. Even legends like Chaykin, despite a long history of regularly including gay and trans characters in his works, can get brigaded into seething silence, ll the while as comic sales continue to plummet. Fans just wanted great stories, not ideological lectures, and even though Chaykin’s Divided States of Hysteria was being told from a progressive leftist perspective, the like-minded gatekeepers never realized that their outrage mobs would eventually bleed the industry dry.
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