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I was honored to participate in this NPR piece on the late Kim Yale produced by Neda Ulaby.

Yale co-wrote many DC stories with her husband JOhn Ostrander, is credited with developng the Oracle story (seen in a page from Batman Chronicles Vol 1 #5 from June, 1996) and was een an editor on staff at DC in the 90s.

She died of breast cancer at age 43 in 1997. I can’t believe it’s been that long. Yale is a classic “forgotten woman” who raged and struggled and achieved what she could, but her pioneering work is fairly obscure. I’m really glad an outlet as august as All Things Considered had the time to remember her, with Maggie Thompson reading some of her CBG columns about her illness.

For those of you reading this who knew Kim, and knew her involvement with the most active days of Friends of Lulu (a 90s organization for women in comics), you know she was pissed off by a lot of bullshit that she had to put up with. I know she’d be thrilled, however, to see Suicide Squad on the big screen (however flawed) and to see more than one woman at a time writing and drawing comics for Marvel, DC and everywhere.

PS: that 1996 page by Tommy Lee EdwardsBrian Stelfreeze looks pretty damn modern, if you ask me. Nice work. (And apologies for the misidentification. Databases weren’t very clear on who drew this issue.)

4 COMMENTS

  1. I had the honor of meeting and speaking with Kim Yale for a bit. Wonderful person. I felt so sorry for the entire Ostrander family when the bad thing happened.

  2. Yup, it’s Brian Stelfreeze. I remember him working on that story in the studio, and I remember how much he loved working with Kim Yale…!

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