Stella Gibbons detestation of pomposity and pretence. Truss has described Gibbons as "the Jane Austen of the 20th century", a parallel which the novelist Malcolm Bradbury thought apt; Flora Poste in "Cold Comfort Farm", with her "higher common sense", is "a Jane-ite heroine transformed into a clear-eyed modern woman". Bradbury also observed that many of Gibbons's novels end in Austen-like nuptials. Truss highlights the importance that Gibbons places on detachment as a necessary adjunct to effective writing: "Like many a good doctor, she seems to have considered sympathy a peculiar and redundant emotion, and a terrible waste of time." This matter-of-fact quality
Dave Gibbons for "JSA", as well as producing the complete original graphic novel "The Originals", a black and white graphic novel which he scripted and drew. Published by Vertigo, the work is set in the near future, but draws heavily on the imagery of the Mods and Rockers of the 1960s. He wrote "The Rann–Thanagar War" six-issue limited series for DC Comics, one of four lead-ins to the company-wide "Infinite Crisis" storyline, and returned to the Green Lantern Corps with the five-issue "Green Lantern Corps: Recharge" (Nov. 2005–March 2006), co-written with Geoff Johns, which spun off into an ongoing, Gibbons-written series in