Peter David's Blog, page 54

Neil Gaiman’s “Last Angel” tour

Originally published November 10, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1408

The worshipers sat in respectful, anticipatory silence in New York’s St. Marks church, waiting for His arrival.

Usually when the faithful attend the church, they have to settle for communication with He Whom They Worship to be within the confines of the heart, or the mind, or the soul. People don’t go to church expecting that there’s actually going to be a visitation from the Divine One. That he’s simply going to materialize before them, smile boyishly, say, “Hi, how you doing?” and proceed to chat them up for the next few hours. At least, I don’t think a lot of people expect that. Maybe a few. Hell, maybe all of them. I’m Jewish. I know from latkes and the lyrics to all the songs from “Fiddler.” From Christian church services, I know zip.

With that said, there was nevertheless a thrill of anticipation in the air that was (by my guess) atypical for church gatherings. The lights went down, all eyes on the stage. Light shone on the pulpit. The wait stretched over minutes. Nothing happened. The folks in the crowd began to laugh or talk to each other. One idiot started chanting under his breath “Let’s go, Mets” (hey, I had to keep myself amused somehow.)

People started guessing that a sensational entrance was being planned and had momentarily misfired. “Maybe he’s going to be raised up on a platform behind the podium…” one person speculated. “No, he’ll be lowered down by ropes from the balcony,” guessed another.

Nothing quite so dramatic. Nevertheless, there was a healthy cheer splitting the air as the evening’s featured (and only) attraction, Neil Gaiman, walked up the central aisle and up to the podium. “Sorry, I was going to come in this way,” he said, pointing to a side entrance, “but someone locked all the doors between the back and here so we couldn’t get to it.”

Anyone reading this who doesn’t know who Neil Gaiman is… well, hell, why are you even reading CBG if you don’t know who Neil Gaiman is?

The St. Marks Church was the New York stop in Neil’s “Last Angel” reading tour. For some years now, Neil has gone around the country doing readings from his work (usually called the “Guardian Angel” tours), the benefits from which go to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit organization defending the First Amendment rights of the comic book community. Neil has either done seven such tours or eight such tours, depending upon whether you believe the signed promotional poster or the program handed out to everyone coming to the reading. Personally I’d believe the poster, because I paid twenty-five bucks for the poster at the CBLDF souvenir table, while the program was free, and this being America, money automatically makes it right.

This was the midpoint of the reading tour, with the last appearance slated for Los Angeles on October 26. After that, Neil is slated to retire such reading gigs, which he likens to running a marathon (although he has not, to my knowledge, done any readings dressed in t-shirt, shorts, and with a large number stuck on his back.) Then again, Streisand and Sinatra both had farewell tours and then came back, right? So maybe Neil will change his mind. In the event that he doesn’t, though, and you’re not able to catch his act live, the New York appearance was taped for audio release, so at least you’ll be able to get some of the flavor of a Neil Gaiman reading at a future date.

Whether it was because the reading was being taped, or because the New York crowd was so pumped to see his performance, or whether he’s just being professional, or whether everyone there was just jazzed to be in a place where—for a few hours at least—none of us would have to hear that damned “Who Let the Dogs Out?” song (which we should all be well and truly sick of by the end of the World Series)… for whatever reason, Neil was in fine form.

His first selection was a short story written some years ago (the title of which I regret I didn’t catch) that’s something of an oddity. It details the adventures of a beleaguered American tourist who stupidly relies on a guide book to take him on a walking tour of the English coast. It’s certainly something I can relate to, because I tried to do the same thing in Scotland when I was bopping around Loch Lomond. After becoming increasingly frustrated in being unable to find roads to get where I wanted to go, I showed the book to a woman running a local tourist shop. She flipped through it, laughed derisively, and said, “In order to follow this, ye’d have t’be the Savior. This book’s got ye visiting towns one after the other that are located on opposite sides of the Loch, so unless ye can walk on water, it’s useless.” So take all such guide books with a sizable grain of salt.

In Neil’s tale, however, the misplaced American stumbles into a small town called Innsmouth which just happens to be (according to the locals) the place upon which writer H.P. Lovecraft (or, as he’s referred to with indignation, “H-Bloody-P-Bloody-Love-Bloody-Craft”) based his tales of C’thulu, all without so much as a by-our-leave to the inhabitants. And the tourist discovers that Lovecraft wasn’t exaggerating. It’s a curious little tale which Neil stated he wrote because “it seemed like a good idea at the time” (an assertion Harlan Ellison claims is at the root of every excuse and rationalization in the whole of human history. “Why were you speeding?” “Why did you launch the Inquisition?” It seemed like a good idea at the time.) I doubt the story would be nearly as effective without Neil doing the reading, because you really have to be able to hear the Brit accents to make it work properly.

Next up was Neil’s Christmas card. Envious of the artistic talent displayed in the cards he’d receive from comic artists every year, Neil opted one year to send out a Christmas card with a one hundred word original story on it. When word of it spread, he was getting calls as late as the following April from folks asking to hear the very short, but depressingly hilarious, tale of the poor, tormented soul known as Saint Nick. Following that, in deference to the fact that a young person in the audience was celebrating their eighth birthday, Neil read the text of his next children’s book. And for my money, this one—entitled Wolves in the Walls, and currently being illustrated by Dave McKean for release next year—is even better than his previous juvenile endeavor, The Day I Swapped My Dad for 2 Goldfish. But just remember, when the Wolves come out of the walls… it’s all over.

After finishing with a story entitled “Instructions” which was taken from a short story collection of fairy tales aimed at kids which were retold for adults (a number of which were then put into another collection which was aimed at kids; I don’t know what’s up with that) there was a twenty minute intermission, during which questions from the audience which had been written on cards were collected. Upon Neil’s return, he endeavored to answer as many as he could. The stack of cards was two inches thick, and if that doesn’t sound like a lot, go stack up two inches of index cards. A couple of the questions were along the lines of “Would you have sex with me just for fun?” and “Do you need a love slave?” Neil simply smiled, not answering those queries (or perhaps the smile was the answer.) Several of them resulted in interesting updates to Neil’s career, including that Terry Gilliam is signed on to direct a movie version of Good Omens and that, after lengthy delays, Neil is now 39 pages into the script for the “Death” movie. The question that most amused me was, “Are you ever afraid of your fans?” To which Neil replied, “My fans are very sweet people. Clive Barker has fans who will come up to him and say things like, ‘Here. I’ve slashed open my arm. Would you autograph it in the blood?’ Mine come up to me and say things like, ‘Here, I made this card for you.’ And I’ll say ‘Thank you.’ And they’ll say, ‘Can I have a hug?’ That sort of thing.”

He then read a poem called “Blueberry Girl” which was written at the request of singer Tori Amos to celebrate the birth of her daughter. I would not be the least bit surprised if it shows up set to music on her next album. And then he finished out the evening with a short story from his upcoming, recently completed novel, American Gods—a book that endeavors to have the best of both worlds by employing a running narrative that takes breaks for short story inserts. The one he selected for this reading was, appropriately, set in New York, involving a taxi-driving Djinn, and it is by turns funny, heart-wrenching, and startling (“a knee-to-the-crotch story,” as Neil later described it.)

The evening ran until eleven o’clock, and although the audience left happy and satisfied, I suspect they could just as easily have been there until dawn. So if you do have a chance to catch Neil doing one of his performances, either at one of the upcoming venues or at a convention or even at an eighth or ninth (depending) “Resurrection Angel” tour, by all means, do so. Potential love slaves need not apply.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, wants to remind readers that in regards to the World Series (which is probably over by the time you read this) that it’s not whether you win or lose… it’s whether the Mets win or lose.)

 

A Decent Proposal, Part 2

Originally published November 3, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1407

When last we left what we laughingly refer to as “Our Hero,” the situation was as follows:

I had hit upon the brilliant scheme of proposing to long-time girlfriend Kathleen at The Adventurers Club at Disney World’s Pleasure Island. Everything was in place, with the members (i.e., cast) of The AC ready to make it a reality, the wall-mounted puppet known as “The Colonel” ready to work from the scripted proposal I’d drawn up, and everything set to go precisely at 10 p.m. that evening. The spanner tossed into the cunning plan was that my sister Beth and her husband Rande—down in Florida for a second honeymoon—were working in tandem with Kathleen to surprise me at The Adventurers Club, and the decision had been made to switch the rendezvous time to 9 p.m., threatening to foul up my carefully scheduled scheme and leaving me no way of informing the folks at The AC that we were going to be there an hour earlier.

By 6 p.m. I was sweating bullets. Kathleen, Gwen, Shana, Ariel and I had returned to the cabin at Fort Wilderness, preparing to go out to dinner at a restaurant at the Grand Floridian, and I still had been unable to break away and inform the AC of the change in plans. Still, I couldn’t resist one moment of personal whimsy: Kathleen, in prepping to go out, said, “Should I wear my hair up or down?”

“Down,” I said. “I mean, I think it looks better that way, and I’d want you to look your best tonight.”

“Why?” she asked, curious at my phrasing.

“Because,” I said suavely, “I’m positive that when we’re in the Adventurer’s Club, every eye will be on you.”

“Flatterer,” she said.

Meantime, we’d been informed that a package was waiting for us at the Fort Wilderness Trading Post. We knew what it was: It was stuff we’d bought in the park the day before that we’d had shipped to FW so we wouldn’t have to schlep it around. The thought was that we’d hop in the car, swing by the Trading Post, pick up the package and head out.

That’s when I came up with my new cunning plan. Complaining of stomach pains, I went into the bathroom, shut the door… and proceeded to make loud retching noises. It wasn’t that difficult: My stomach was in knots anyway. I came out and said that something we’d had at lunch disagreed with me. “Tell you what,” I said, looking wan, “why don’t you guys go on ahead to the Trading Post… give me a few minutes to pull myself together… come back and pick me up.”

Immediately solicitous, Shana said, “Why don’t they go and I’ll stay here and keep you company.”

“Me too!” Ariel piped up.

Desperate beyond measure, I shouted, “Will you just friggin’ go and leave me alone for a few minutes?!?”

“What a grouch,” sniffed Shana, and off they went. The instant I heard the car pull out I was on the phone. First I couldn’t get an operator. Then when I finally did, the operator rang the AC. No answer. She tried another number there. Still no answer. Third number. No answer. I kept an eye on the window, getting more frantic. One last number—and a bartender at the AC picked up just as I saw the car coming back. The message I gave him must have sounded incoherent: “Tell Fletcher that the guy Bill Shepherd told him will be showing up with the proposal thing with the Colonel will be there at 9 instead of 10!”

“Which Fletcher?” said the bartender. “Different people play Fletcher on different nights; what if the Fletcher that Bill Shepherd spoke to called in sick and the guy playing him tonight doesn’t know what you’re talking about?”

“Great. Thanks. Something else for me to worry about,” I said crankily. “Just do the best you can, OK?” And I hung up an instant before the car honked for me, grabbed the engagement ring out of the shoe that I’d smuggled it down in, shoved it in my pocket and ran out the door.

At the restaurant were all sorts of really nice looking dishes… none of which I could reasonably have since I’d just “thrown up” minutes before, so naturally I had to stick with something mild. I wound up ordering mac and cheese off the kid’s menu. Everyone at dinner was very solicitous of me, probably because I looked like a nervous wreck, which I was. What if the whole thing fell apart? What if she said no? Geez, what if she said yes? Was I ready for this, really? Three years, which had seemed so long to be together, suddenly seemed like “only” three years. My guess is that if Kath hadn’t known Beth and Rande were expecting to meet us there, she would have suggested we cancel the evening excursion entirely, because I was a mess.

We got to the Adventurer’s Club at five minutes to the appointed hour. “Fletcher Hodges,” the club’s curator and my contact, was standing by the door acting as greeter. We entered, me bringing up the rear, and I said in a low voice, “My name’s Peter… Bill Shepherd said I should touch base with you.”

Immediately he replied, “Yes, I know, everything’s ready.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and then I said, in a slightly louder voice, “Could you tell me where the men’s room is?”

Fletcher immediately said jauntily and loudly, “The men’s room? Certainly! Why, I’ll show you there myself!”

And off we marched, getting a very strange look from Gwen. Once we rounded a corner, Fletcher pulled me through a “cast only” door and, in private, we locked down the final details. At 9:05 the Adventurers members were going to embark on their radio broadcast (don’t ask) in the library. That let out at 9:25 into the Main Salon, where the Colonel was, and that’s when the Colonel would involve Kathleen in the discussion leading to the proposal. Kath wouldn’t suspect anything at first, because the Colonel habitually busted on people in the crowd, so she wouldn’t wonder why he was singling her out; she’d just chalk it to luck of the draw.

The radio show was in particularly fine form. Even my tough-to-impress teenagers were roaring with laughter. I was feeling more relaxed with each passing moment. We emerged into the Main Salon and the Colonel, on cue, came to life. He verbally fenced with the crowd for a moment or two, looked over in our direction and said, “Hello, young lady, what’s your name?”

Immediately Gwen piped up, “Gwen!” I felt a momentary return of panic: If the Colonel wasn’t paying attention to the names, or had limited vision, I was going to wind up proposing to my fifteen-year-old daughter.

Without missing a beat, the Colonel said, “Hello, Gwen, and who’s the young woman next to you?”

“Kathleen,” she replied.

“Kathleen! My, you’re a tall drink of water, aren’t you!” said the Colonel. He started to banter with her and then went into the scripted material. My heart was racing. I reached into my pocket, ready to pull out the engagement ring on cue.

And then a low voice said, almost in my ear, “Hey, aren’t you Peter David? I’m a big fan!” I thought, Oh, geez, not now, and I turned and Beth was standing there, grinning. Rande was just behind her. I blinked like an owl in a spotlight, and suddenly my attention was divided. On the one hand my mind was racing with questions as to what my sister and her husband were doing hundreds of miles from home, and on the other hand the Colonel was fast approaching the point at which he would say, You see, the rather round fellow you’ve been dating for the past three years—Peter—is standing next to you with an engagement ring. If I was talking to Beth instead of holding the open box in my hand, everything would come unraveled. So I grabbed her by the side of the head, pulled her ear toward me and whispered, “Just listen!”

I switched my attention back to the moment just as the Colonel was saying “rather round fellow” and pulled the box from my pocket, flipping it open like Captain Kirk would a communicator. By this point the throng of about a hundred people suddenly realized something genuine, as opposed to staged, was going on and became totally caught up in it.

When the light hit the ring, people started “awwwiiing” or reacting with similar comments of surprise. Tears worked their way down Kathleen’s cheek as the dime dropped. Shana immediately started yelling, “Out of the way!” as she swung her camera up and began snapping pictures. Gwen was grinning. Ariel was incandescent. Fletcher, on a balcony overhead, was videotaping it. There were more photograph records of this than the JFK assassination. The Colonel continued, “And Peter’s hoping that you will accept this proposal of joining in the adventure of marriage, and become a wife to him and a stepmother to his three daughters—preferably not an evil stepmother, because we all know where that leads,” and then arrived at the one moment that was completely out of my hands: “What say you, Kathleen—?”

Well, she said yes, and everyone cheered, and the manager of the Adventurer’s Club brought out a bottle of champagne (the good stuff) compliments of the AC, which we promptly cracked open. It was a good thing Beth and Rande were there because they helped us drink the champagne. And then Kath ran off to call her folks while I managed to get my pulse down to something normal. And when she came back, I put my arms around her and said, “Told you every eye in the Adventurer’s Club would be on you.”

So that’s how Kathleen and I got engaged. And if you’re ever at Pleasure Island, swing by the AC and give Fletcher and the others a hearty “Kungaloosh!” from the future Peter and Kathleen David.

Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. China pattern will be registered at the Magic Kingdom.

 

Thirteen years ago today

I married Kathleen. My three daughters were there, and many dear friends came thousands of miles to join us in celebrating our happiness.

Not a day has gone by since then when I didn’t thank like lucky stars that Kathleen consented to spend the rest of her life with me.

PAD

X-Men: Days of Future Past

XM: DOFP is quite possibly the oddest X-Men film so far. It is without question the best X-Men film yet, but it absolutely could not exist without those preceding it…which is really ironic in retrospect.

Significant Spoilers follow:

Anyone familiar with the original two-part comic story (X-Men #141-#142) upon which this was based will be right on top of it. In the original, Kitty Pryde winds up going back to her teen self in order to prevent the assassination of Robert Kelly which will in turn bring about an anti-mutant dystopia in the then far-off year of 2013. The film proposes the same concept as a way of joining up the X-Men prequel of “First Class” with the previous films. This obviously precludes using Kitty since she wasn’t born yet, and so Logan naturally becomes the go-to guy to make the voyage. Which makes sense since Wolverine is more or less the franchise character.

Some have complained that the script is difficult to follow, which is absurd. Hell, next to “Back to the Future II,” it’s a cakewalk. The future sequences all occur during a sort of permanent nighttime while the past sequences, set in 1973, are bright and daylight, so you never get confused as to where you are.

Bryan Singer has apparently a good deal to make amends for, including abandoning the franchise in order to do “Superman Returns.” The result was two films that fans deplored: not only “Superman Returns” but also “X-Men 3.” He makes up for it in spades. I’ve been to multiple showings and at every one I’ve heard fans saying, “So X3 never happened! Fantastic!”

Granted, most of the cast members of “First Class” got shafted: I haven’t seen this many characters die between films since “Alien 3″ knocked off Newt and Hicks. But the ones that are left make the most of it. Favorite scenes: Double Chuck as James McAvoy winds up face to face with Patrick Stewart, giving himself a pep talk across half a century, and an action sequence shot from Quicksilver’s POV in which the speedster (Evan Peters from “Kick-Ass,” not to be confused with Kick-Ass himself who is also playing Quicksilver next year) takes out an entire room of cops to the tune of “Time in a Bottle.”

And those are just the stand out moments in a film that is filled with them. Reviewers have been bitching about Jennifer Lawrence’s acting for some reason. It’s nonsense. She is the lynchpin of the entire film and her waffling between being Raven and the evil Mystique is beautifully played right through to the end.

Special mention should also be made of Mark Camacho, who between superb make-up and a fantastic vocal performance has put forward THE best Richard Nixon in film history.

Don’t expect all your questions to be answered. Remember how stunned Logan was to see Charles at the end of “The Wolverine?” How did Charles survive, you may ask. Good question: No clue. No explanation is offered. Where did Kitty acquire the power to project people back in time? That has nothing to do with her power set. Good question: No clue. So if that’s going to be a problem for you, consider yourself warned.

Is it as good as “Avengers,” the gold standard of superhero films? I would have to say so. The emotional power and the story it’s telling are deep and layered. Plus, hey: No Stan Lee appearance, but extended cameos by Chris Claremont and Len Wein! What’s not to love?

PAD

A Decent Proposal, Part 1

Originally published October 27, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1406

“I have a plan… and it’s so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel.”—Edmund Blackadder

I wasn’t going to write about this, but several friends of mine in the fan community have told me I should because they thought you guys might be interested. And I suppose it’s somehow appropriate: Although it was never anything I’ve intended, I’ve lived my life in this column. Ups, downs, good times and bad; it’s been like weekly therapy sometimes, the differences being that I don’t have to pay for it and I’ve got about twenty thousand therapists… most of whom don’t say all that much to me in terms of guidance, but then again, many therapists just sit and listen, and the only time they speak is when they say, “Time’s up.”

So…

I decided to ask Kathleen, my girlfriend of three years, to marry me.

It was not something I did lightly, and certainly not without some degree of trepidation. Nevertheless, it felt good, it felt right, and it felt like it was time. But how to do it? I only knew that I wanted to do something stylish, because I felt she deserved it. And I also knew that I wanted as many of my children as possible to be present when I did it, because it was going to affect them as well. If they were going to share in her being their stepmother (something I knew they supported since I’d spoken to each of them about it individually), they should also get to share in the emotionality of the moment rather than Kathleen and I just coming back from a dinner and our saying, “Guess what?” Only one place seemed suitable:

Walt Disney World.

We were going to Disneyworld anyway on a family vacation at the beginning of September. Shana was flying down from college to join us, so we’d all be together, staying in one of those cool family-sized cabins at Ft. Wilderness. The question then became, Where at the Park? One popular place was the restaurant inside the Castle; it’s such a popular venue for popping the question that there’s a whole department in Disney that helps stage proposals there. But if there was one thing I’d learned, it was that relationships weren’t storybook, weren’t flights of fancy. They were more of… an adventure. And that’s when it hit me:

The Adventurer’s Club

To use the official Disney description, the Adventurer’s Club—situated on popular night spot Pleasure Island—is “an interactive entertainment experience in a setting reminiscent of the fictional 1930’s gentleman adventurer clubs, as depicted in Hollywood films of that era…

Think of the AC as a theater that is presenting a play. In ordinary theaters, the audience is seated while the action continuously unfolds on the stage in front of them over a fixed, limited period of time. The AC, however, has the action sporadically occur all around you, even to the extent of your functioning as an extra in the play. At the AC you are a visitor to the Adventurer’s Club, circa 1935, and are treated as such by the resident cast of characters.”

The cast includes “Fletcher Hodges, the slightly off-center Club curator,” “Graves the Loyal Club Butler,” and others. But two other characters, found in the Club’s Man Salon, are Babylonia and the Colonel. Babylonia is a gigantic talking goddess mask, and the Colonel is a 1930s-style British Raj-style officer. Both of them are puppets.

It was perfect. Kathleen is, by trade, an editor, but by training, a puppeteer. The plan leaped from my brow fully formed (scaring the cats and knocking over the furniture): I, the writer, would write a script for one of the puppets, who would then propose to the puppeteer in the Main Salon at the AC… provided I could get the folks at the AC to go along with it.

A few calls to Disney put me together with a fellow named Bill Shepherd. I’m still a little murky on his exact position there, but he was definitely the go-to guy for setting something like this up. I explained exactly what I wanted to do, and sent him the copy for what I’d want the Colonel (it was quickly decided that he would be the more appropriate conveyor of the proposal) to say:

“You’re here in the Adventurer’s Club, Kathleen, so you must be an adventurous girl. Tell you what, Kathleen: I’m going to invite you to take part in an adventure right now. You see, the rather round fellow you’ve been dating for the past three years—Peter—is standing next to you with an engagement ring. And Peter’s hoping that you will accept this proposal of joining in the adventure of marriage, and become a wife to him and a stepmother to his three daughters—preferably not an evil stepmother, because we all know where that leads. What say you, Kathleen—?”

Of course, if she said no, I’d look like the king schmuck of the Universe. But then again, writing this column for ten years has certainly prepared me for that feeling.

Shepherd set the whole thing up. The question of course was when. I worked out an itinerary of our stay at the Park one evening and casually said to Kathleen, “How about we hit Pleasure Island on the 3rd (of September), say, around… oh… ”

“Ten p.m.,” suggested Kathleen.

“That sounds fine,” I said, and gleefully informed Shepherd of exactly when we’d be there. He had to know the time so that the Club “members” could work the proposal deftly into the evening’s activities without throwing the normal schedule off. I was told to touch base with “Fletcher Hodges” as soon as I arrived in order to put the thing into motion. “He’ll be wearing a pith helmet and a skirt; he should be easy to spot,” Shepherd assured me. Everything was in place.

Now—here was the slight wrinkle in the cunning plan.

My sister Beth and her husband Rande had decided to go down to Disneyworld for a second honeymoon. They were arriving early on the 3rd. Beth had not told me of this impromptu plan, because what she had concocted with Kathleen was that they would meet up with us at the Adventurer’s Club to surprise me. So now we had two siblings both trying to arrange surprises, with Kath the co-conspirator of one and the target of another. Naturally, we wound up working at cross purposes to one another.

The morning of the 3rd, while we were all walking around at Universal (you MUST do the Spider-Man ride) Kathleen got a call on her cell phone. She said “Uh huh,” and “okay, sure,” a couple of times, hung up, turned to us and said, “That was Sheila (Kathleen’s sister). Had to ask me something.” We shrugged and thought no more of it. But in point of fact, it had been Beth calling to say, “Y’know… why don’t we make it nine o’clock instead? Ten might be a little late for us.” Kathleen said no problem, waited an hour or so (so we wouldn’t associate what she was saying with the phone call) and then said, “How about we go to the Adventurer’s Club at nine tonight instead of ten? Because I don’t know how much energy I’ll have left by the end of the day.”

Well, now I was screwed. If I said, “No, no, we have to stick to 10 o’clock,” it’d sound suspicious. So I did the only thing I could: I said, “Sure. That sounds fine. Nine it is.” Fortunately since it was hot out, the sweat on my brow seemed perfectly understandable. But inwardly I was panicking, because we were going to arrive an hour early and the whole thing was in danger of being thrown out of whack. 10 o’clock was the time, all was in place, the puppeteer who operated the Colonel was ready to go. For all I knew he wouldn’t even be around an hour earlier. I had to find a way to alert the folks at the AC that there was a change in plans… except I had no direct line for the Adventurer’s Club (and there wouldn’t be anyone there during the daytime anyway), Bill Shepherd had the day off so he wasn’t around, and besides, I was never alone. The girls or Kathleen were with me at all times. This was, after all, about family togetherness. So I had to find a way to ditch my loved ones long enough to wend my way through the Disney phone chain and connect directly with the AC to alert them. And somewhere, at that moment, Beth and Rande were gleefully rubbing their hands together, anticipating the look on my face when I saw them that evening, not realizing that their good-heartedness had just thrown my cunning plan out of whack.

The adventure concludes next week…

Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. He thought it was a hoot when Gore and Bush came out dressed identically. I think next time Gore should wear an evening gown.

 

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from the Internet, and more

Originally published October 20, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1405

Assorted stuff…

* * *

Rumor mill: What big-mouthed columnist was recently driven to distraction by a rumor started on a comic news service?

I hate blind items, hate them with a passion. And before I get letters from people who claim I’ve got an ax to grind with people who can’t see, I’m referring to items that run as “news” which do not feature the name of the person in question. The writer of the item tries to get all cutesy by dropping little hints, and it’s simply annoying. If you’re going to write something as an unconfirmed rumor, just come out and say it and live with the consequences if you’re wrong. Because otherwise perfectly innocent folks—such as, say, me—wind up being inconvenienced.

There I was, doing my usual letter-reading thing on AOL, and suddenly I’m being flooded with e-mails from fans and fan reporters, all saying basically the same thing: “Are you going to be writing Amazing Spider-Man?” The answer is no. I haven’t been approached by anyone about writing Spidey, be he Ultimate, Amazing, Spectacular or whatever adjective you care to stick in front of him. But people kept asking. Not only that, but threads started cropping up on Usenet posing the same question.

Finally I found out where the rumor started: With an online news service which ran a blind item that went something like this—

A writer whose star has been rising for the past few months is all but signed to write Amazing Spider-Man. He’s currently writing a couple of books for another publisher, and he is well known by his initials.

Operating with the foreknowledge that it wasn’t me, I took one look at it, saw the “star has been rising” reference, and immediately figured that it was probably referring to the writer of Rising Stars, namely J. Michael Straczynski… more popularly known as JMS. It was a conclusion that a number of fans came to as well, although there were still die-hards who were convinced it was me. When someone posted that I had stated I hadn’t been approached, another poster suggested that perhaps Marvel had contacted me minutes after I had denied it.

The queries have finally tapered off, but it sure as hell was annoying for a while. A personal request to all comic book journalists: Since my e-mail address is fairly well publicized, don’t run any blind items anymore that can remotely be construed as me, unless you say, “And it’s not Peter David!” Okay?

* * *

Updating the wacky world of Political Correctness: At the Disneyworld ride, “Pirates of the Caribbean,” we’ve seen pirates acting badly for years. That’s what they do. They’re pirates, for crying out loud. But a few years back, Disney decided it wasn’t PC to depict such unbridled villainy, so they made some “adjustments.” One of them features a sequence where a pirate is shown chasing a village woman in a circle. They changed it so that the woman was carrying a tray with a bottle of alcohol on it, and consequently the pirate looked like he was trying to snag a waitress in order to get a drink.

But a recent visit to that once-entertaining ride showed that apparently that wasn’t PC enough. Maybe someone decided it promoted alcoholism. So another change was made, and now—in defiance of all sense and logic—the woman is chasing the pirate.

Look, I don’t think violence against women is a good thing, obviously. But c’mon, this is getting silly. NBC yanking that hysterical sneaker ad that shows a woman outrunning a Jason-like madman because she’s wearing the right sort of footwear, leaving her assailant huffing and puffing in the dust? What was up with that? If it had been a female madwoman trying to chainsaw a fleeing guy, would that have been okay? At least you can still catch that commercial on such shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, programs where a woman’s ability to take care of herself is taken for granted.

* * *

You know, since I was speaking of the Internet earlier, I cannot help but observe that it’s probably had an even greater impact on our lives than kindergarten. I threw open to the regulars on my AOL board the following proposition: Everything I Need to Know I Learned From the Internet, and started off with the following:

1)               Never apologize.

2)               If you must apologize, never do so without flaming the person you’re apologizing to.

Suggestions were promptly added by the following denizens of the “Peter David Speaks” folder on AOL: Wolf031877 (a.k.a. James), Aldrich13 (a.k.a. Kerry), Kalel224, BoyVey, JasonTodd4, and Ben Varkentine. These include:

3)               Saying you’re sorry or that you made a mistake is a form of weakness. See Rule #1.

4)               No matter how wrong you are shown to be on a given subject, ignore it and lay low on the subject for a few months before bringing it up again. There will always be someone new to convince. However, be careful—some people will have been there for the first time and remind you that you were wrong once and you’re wrong again. Ignore those people, for they are anal and just trying to make you look bad.

5)               When debating online with another person, always misinterpret what they have posted.

6)               Always assume that others mean something much worse than what was actually posted.

7)               Flame others based upon what you’ve assumed they meant, not on what they’ve actually posted.

8)               Never allow others to clarify what they’ve posted. Always insist they meant it the way you assumed they meant it.

9)               When making your point, end the statement with “Period.” That lets people know that you’re right, no matter what they think.

10)           When people agree with a poster’s point in opposition to your position, be sure to accuse them of ganging up on you or being a clique—just to give it that high school feel.

11)           Belabor minor points and retort at length to minor criticisms—sluff off serious, well-thought-out arguments with short, one- or two-word answers that do not address the point.

12)           Condescend, condescend, condescend.

13)           If you are pressed in an argument and backed into a corner by several opponents, accuse all of them of being the same person under different screen names.

14)           If you are losing an argument, ignore the content of the message and pick it apart based on grammar, spelling, or sentence structure. If the message contains no such errors, find a throw-away clause or parenthetical remark that has almost nothing to do with the topic and attack it instead.

15)           Hypocrisy can be your friend. Most casual readers or lurkers, as well as message-board regulars, only remember the latest messages. So feel free to change your philosophy or point of view or ideas about any given topic, depending on the circumstances.

Any others? Aside from the long-standing observation that any argument, if it goes on long enough, will sooner or later result in Hitler or Nazis being mentioned, thereby indicating that the discussion has outlived its usefulness.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)

 

2000 Canadian National Comic Book Expo

Originally published October 13, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1404

Some assorted rambling from the Canadian National Comic Book Expo up in Toronto at the end of August…

I’m Super, thanks for asking. This convention was the first one where the writer (moi), penciller (Leonard Kirk) and inker (Robin Riggs) of Supergirl have all attended. We had a good time hanging out together, goofing around at the autographing tables, and at one point posing for photographs looking like gangsta rappers. Well… looking as much as gangsta rappers as three white guys with varying degrees of paunch and thinning hair are gonna look. (Although Robin does have a sort of George Constanza thing going for him.)

During one of my Q&As, I did a dramatic reading of the full script for Supergirl #49. With the British Robin sitting in the audience, I was suddenly self-conscious over essaying the voice of the distinctly Brit character of “Buzz” because I could envision him visibly wincing every time I tried it. So I sandbagged Robin into joining me in the front of the room to read Buzz’s lines. Robin tried to beg off, saying his voice was too soft; an argument that went nowhere since I was able to thrust a microphone in front of his face. And to make it a family thing, I also brought up his wife, Elayne, to read the part of “Andy”… which, of course, makes sense, because if you want to cast a character who is a lesbian merged with a super-powered half-man, half-horse with wings of ice, naturally you’re going to want Elayne for the part. I mean, who wouldn’t?

* * *

Chris Claremont was there, notable for his jocularity, his astoundingly long lines, and his utter unawareness that Marvel was going to show him the door a few weeks later (because, y’know, it makes perfect sense: The X-Men movie didn’t have a significant impact on the sales of the comic, just as movies and TV shows have historically had little-to-no impact on comic sales, but just for fun, let’s actually try to blame it on someone this time. And let’s have that person be the guy whose work on the series over the years included everything from creating characters such as Rogue and Mystique, to transforming Wolverine from a character fans hated (remember the “Dump Wolverine” campaigns?) to one of Marvel’s bread-and-butter characters, to writing God Loves, Man Kills, which served as the basis for much of the film’s underpinnings… that guy, that Claremont guy, whose labors on the series are as significant as that Stan Lee guy who co-created the series in the first place (and who we also dumped)… let’s make that Claremont guy the scapegoat. Let’s say he’s to blame. Instead of saying, “Thanks for taking a little bi-monthly title and building it up into a franchise that resulted in the first good Marvel Comics-based movie ever” and buying him a car or something in appreciation… let’s boot him out because he didn’t make even more money right this very minute. Was this truly, as Baldrick would have said, a cunning plan? Or was it in fact, as Blackadder was once heard to retort, “the stupidest thing we’ve heard since Lord Nelson’s famous signal at the Battle of the Nile: ‘England knows Lady Hamilton’s a virgin, poke my eye out and cut off my arm if I’m wrong.’” You decide.)

Annnnyway…

Chris at one point came running up to my autographing table and said, “Close your eyes. Got something to show him.” I went along with it and when I opened them, there was Supergirl standing there. A very blonde young woman in a very accurate costume was in attendance. We goofed around for a couple of photos, including the one printed here.

It seemed that every person at the show had horror stories about their Air Canada flights. This prompted Claremont to start riffing on the Oscar-nominated song “Blame Canda” by singing, “Air Canada, Air Canada,” and Leonard Kirk piped in with, “They’re not even a real airline anyway.” Unable to get the notion out of my head, that evening in the hotel room I started producing a whole song, and by the next day I had the following:

Gates have changed, the time is slipping past,

We’re sitting in the airport and we’re going nowhere fast.

Are we flying Delta? Or on TWA?

Or on an airline to take us up and away?

No!

Air Canada! Air Canada!

Where on the tarmac you will wait, while running twenty hours late

Air Canada! Air Canada!

Yes here’s what everybody thinks—

Air Canada stinks!

 

Don’t blame me, it’s not my fault

That all our travel plans have grounded to a total halt.

They overbooked the aircraft, and now our tire’s blown,

If only we’d been warned, we’d never have flown—

Air Canada! Air Canada!

Where they will serve you airline food, but only when they’re in the mood

Air Canada! Air Canada!

They’re not even a real airline anyway.

 

If you wanna fly in Canada they’re the only ones around

Which wouldn’t be so bad if they would just get off the ground

Their ticket price is up while their computers have gone down

Just wait’ll I get my hands upon the clown (who runs)

Air Canada! Air Canada!

My plane took off! That’s really neat!

Too bad they gave away my seat!

Air Canada! Nowhere Canada… where…

The lines to check in are 95 plus, in English and French, they’re cursing at us

The hell with all of this I’m gonna go and buy a ticket on a buuussssss!

Which just goes to show what you can do when you have entirely too much time on your hands.

* * *

One of the big attractions near the convention is this gargantuan tower which has—on one of its uppermost stories—a glass floor. You stand on it and there’s nothing between you and a mile-long drop except thick panes of glass.

Kathleen, of course, strode around on it like Xena, Warrior Princess surveying Olympus. Me, I was terrified. I took one tentative step out onto it and then, heart-thudding, clutched the wall. I have no idea what holding on to the wall was supposed to accomplish. In the event that the glass had suddenly given out beneath my feet, the only way having my hands against the wall was going to do me any good is if I’d been bitten by a radioactive spider shortly before. In the meantime five and six year old children were blithely running around on the thing, uncaring about the certain death that was directly under their feet. Had my vocal cords not totally seized up, I might have yelled at them. Instead all I managed to get out was a whispered, “Get me off here.”

* * *

And now, a quick view into how rumors get started.

Attending the convention was Anthony Stewart Head—“Giles” of Buffy fame. Now… on Saturday evening at 6 PM, Tony—as he’s called—was scheduled for a meet-and-greet at Planet Hollywood. Kathleen and I saw him shortly before he headed out. He was drinking bottled water. The thing ran about an hour. In the meantime, there was a convention dinner scheduled at 7 at a nearby restaurant. We ran into Tony again at about 7:45 at the restaurant, in the restaurant’s bar. He had arrived not too long before, and he was having a drink and chatting with fans. He was perfectly sober. A bunch of us then went to a party at a harbor-side club. I noticed that he tended to nurse drinks for quite some time, and wasn’t consuming much more than one an hour, which is what the human body can safely metabolize without ill effects. In short, he was obviously aware that he was in a very public venue and was taking all pains to do nothing to embarrass himself.

The next day we heard fans talking about having seen him at Planet Hollywood. “And boy, was he drunk,” one of them snickered. Which, of course, made a much better story than, “Tony Head was here, and boy, was he perfectly lucid and stone-cold sober.”

So either Tony Head went to the meet-and-greet sober… got totally hammered in the course of an hour or so, then frantically drank coffee in the intervening thirty minutes so that he could conduct himself in a perfectly temperate fashion for the rest of the evening… or else the fan was fulla crap. Occam’s razor. You decide.

But next time you hear about outrageous, inebriated behavior on the part of a convention guest, be aware that there are people out there who are much more interested in telling a vivid and entertaining account than in sticking to the facts.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)

 

Redefining comics for adults, Part 2

Originally published October 6, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1403

It was the moment I nearly resigned from The Incredible Hulk.

I had embarked upon a storyline in which Betty Banner was pregnant. Several issues had already come out, and suddenly I was informed by the powers that be that the storyline was to be—you should pardon the expression—aborted.

“If Bruce and Betty become parents,” I was told, “young readers are not going to care about them anymore. Many young readers see parents as the enemy, and they’re not going to want to read about Bruce and Betty if they seem like the enemy. Giving Betty a baby makes her a mom, and kids don’t want to read about a mom and dad. They want to read about what they see as extensions of themselves. Big kids. People who have babies are grown-ups.”

“But they’re already married!” I protested. “That barn door’s open, and the horse is long gone. By having them get married, we’ve already made them grown-ups! So why not simply follow the progress that’s already been made?”

“Because young readers are our core audience, and we count on them to be able to relate to the characters. Making the characters parents ages them in the eyes of the readers. It’s not fair to new readers to disenfranchise them by making the characters ‘old.’ It’d be like having Peter Parker get married.”

I came very close to walking at that point. The only thing that kept me around was the fact that I had other stories I wanted to do, which could be done without the Banners having a child. So Bob Harras was brought in to write a one-issue story in which Betty loses the baby. In the end, it turned out all right, because I did the Betty-pregnancy story some years later in the Hulk novel What Savage Beast. And I probably did a better job with it then than I could have if I’d done it when I’d originally intended to.

But the attitude that Marvel displayed at the time was an interesting one. The devoted belief that young readers not only had to be catered to, but had to be given paramount consideration. It was an attitude that not only Marvel, but also DC, seemed to move away from over the subsequent years.

When the decision was made to have Spider-Man get married, you could not believe the wringing of hands at mighty Marvel. As it happens, none of the people who were part of that storyline (up to and including Stan Lee) are connected any longer with the title—and most of them, not even with the company—so I see no reason not to say that there was extreme consternation at the thought of marrying off Peter Parker. “He will always be a married man,” said one creator. “It’s a permanent change. Even if Mary Jane is apparently killed in an airline crash, he will never be a single guy. He’ll be a widower.”

(Okay, okay, there wasn’t really mention of an airline crash, but you get the idea.)

The aging of characters and storylines has been a herky-jerky affair at best. I’m sure many of us remember with nostalgia the days when Spider-Man stories involving drug abuse (and not in any positive way) were considered such inappropriate fare for youngsters that the Comics Code Authority wouldn’t endorse them (a stance that promptly changed when DC did far more explicit stories shortly thereafter in the older-skewing Green Lantern/Green Arrow.) And heavens to Betsy, where have we gone since then? Catwoman went from being a thief in her early days to being a prostitute. Characters deal openly with such personal, unkid-like concerns as their sexuality… revelations that don’t exactly blow sunshine up the skirts of the adult “outside” world. When John Byrne was doing Alpha Flight, Northstar’s sexual persuasion was understated. It was there if you were old enough to comprehend it, but under Byrne’s tenure, no one had to be concerned that eight year old Robbie was going to go to his Baptist Minister father, hold up the latest Alpha Flight and say, “Daddy? What’s this word ‘homosexual’ mean?”

But some time after Byrne’s departure, Northstar said “Yup, I’m gay” years before Ellen did. The upshot? Well, comic books and a slow news day can be a lethal combination. TV news treated the story with the same gravity that they would the revelation of a child abuser being put on bathroom duty at Kindercare. Not only that, but a national retail chain informed Marvel that they were going to discontinue carrying every single mutant related toy because, of course, Northstar was a mutant. It was the ultimate irony for anyone who ever considered the world of mutant hatred in Marvel Comics to be a metaphor for gay-bashing.

What is it about comic books that prompt writers to redefine the characters and stories to skew to older perceptions? And is it, as Marvel once feared, a disenfranchisement? When I was a kid, we could read about young Peter Parker, nerdy isolated friendless teenager who had acquired Spider-powers. Until the introduction of Ultimate books, however, that character was long gone (although, as at least one fan has pointed out, the computer-literate teen Parker would hardly be friendless. Nowadays he’d be much more likely to be haunting chatrooms than vaulting rooftops.) Have comic books screwed the pooch, basically? Left younger readers behind in chasing the older readers?

Well… yeah. I mean, for one thing, younger readers simply can’t afford comic books anymore, and really young readers who depend upon parents to purchase them are going to meet stiff resistance the first time mom or dad lays adds on a $2.50 price tag for something they remember as a twelve or twenty-five cent impulse purchase. Plus there are far too many cheaper or even free venues vying for kids’ attention, ranging from on-line activities to kid-oriented TV channels such as Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. Comics are not the only game in town, or the cheapest game in town, and on that basis alone they’re in trouble. Older readers, who have the money and the buying habit developed back when they were young and foolish, would seem to be the only hope that comics have of surviving.

But putting all that aside—do writers have the right to redefine and reinterpret stories through their own sensibilities? Aren’t they simply caretakers of long-standing characters, bound and obligated to keep them frozen in amber for the next generation of readers?

Well… no. No, I don’t think so. Comic book writers are, ultimately, storytellers, and storytellers have been redefining stories and characters for different audiences and sensibilities for centuries now. Look at Camelot. Arthurian legends started showing up around the 600s or so But the Launcelot-Arthur-Guinevere triangle didn’t show up until 12th century poet Chrestien de Troyes got hold of them and decided that, naturally, a Frenchman should be introduced who would be so fabulous that he would seduce the queen right out from under that silly English Kaaaa-nigget.

I mentioned the adult-oriented Wicked last column, the recasting of the Wicked Witch of the West as beleaguered political activist and Glinda as simple minded ditz (which she pretty much came across as in the MGM movie anyway.) And why not? I mean, let’s face it, the Wicked Witch was the most interesting character in the film anyway, and Dorothy really was an interloper who killed her sister and swiped shoes that didn’t belong to her. If someone dropped a house on your sibling and made off with her property, you’d be pretty cheesed, too. A child won’t see that perspective, but a grown-up can. So an adult-oriented story casting the intriguing and misunderstood “Wicked” one as protagonist seems a natural fit.

The thing is, it’s historically run both ways. There were fairy tales which were originally conceived as cautionary stories to teach children harsh moral lessons and even scare the crap out of them. Children got eaten or died, parents abused their children or tried to lose them in the woods. The Little Mermaid endured horrific, razor-blade like pain every time she took a step with her new legs, her tongue was cut out, and at the end she croaked. Oy. Cinderella’s stepsisters, endeavoring to fit their feet into the slipper, hacked off parts of their feet in order to shove the glass pumps on. The prince, however, was tipped off by the copious amounts of blood leaking from the shoe. Double oy. Why not just read them “The Telltale Heart” at bedtime and get it over with (which I once did in a fit of pique with Shana when she was nine years old and had spent the day being even more of an unholy terror than usual. “’There! There is the beating of his hideous heart!’ Good night, honey,” I finished the half hour dramatic reading, leaving the petrified child to the tender mercies of the dark. Gave her a life-long interest in Poe, though, although I probably missed out on Father of the Year.)

But over time, as concerns about delicate childrens’ sensibilities grew, the stories became less threatening, even enchanting. Children’s stories. Fables. As threatening as applesauce. And let’s not even get into the Bible, which has some of the most horrific and brutal stories in all of literature… and yet, somehow, they never get mentioned in any of the “Children’s Bible Stories” collections.

What we’re seeing in comics is a natural progression. Storytellers have always tried to redefine stories, for themselves and for new audiences.

Let’s just hope that, this time around, it hasn’t cost us those very audiences we hope to entertain.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)

 

 

Ultimate Marvel and redefining comics for adults

Originally published September 29, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1402

The release of the “Ultimate Marvel” line, the first of which launches this week (as of this writing) with Spider-Man, serves several purposes. The first, of course, is that it downgrades the previous forty years of Marvel tales by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, et al, into merely a Penultimate Marvel line, leading up to the overwhelming greatness represented in the new series. A sizable legacy to live up to, indeed. However, it also seeks to address a genuine problem facing many potential new readers: Where to start?

When I was a kid, it was simple. Seeking an entrance into the Marvel Universe, I merely had to pick up such ongoing reprint titles as Marvel Tales or Marvel Collector’s Items Classics. For all of twenty-five cents, we got early tales of our heroes introducing many of the villains who were old standbys in the ongoing series. Times, however, have changed. Young readers subscribe to the same old-equals-bad mindset of most of the rest of society (Rudy on Survivor notwithstanding). They will not support stories that they consider antiquated and simplistic, and reprints are now the province of high-priced collections aimed—not at the new readers—but at the people who read them when they were first published and can afford the more “permanent” binding.

Now it’s not simple. Not simple at all.

This was driven home to me after I took eight-year-old Ariel to see X-Men. Intrigued and excited by the characters and situations she had just seen, she asked if she could read the comic. I realized we had a slight problem. X-Men, as currently presented, would simply be beyond her ability to handle. The storylines are spread out and complicated, the characters innumerable. I wouldn’t even know where to begin explaining everything to her. I realized at that point that the only place I could reasonably start her would be to go all the way back to the beginning. To give her the original Lee/Kirby Uncanny X-Men #1. Granted, Wolverine wasn’t in it, nor was Rogue. But Scott and Jean were present, as was Professor X, and Bobby—who had little more than a cameo in the film, but for some reason was a big hit with Ariel. Plus Toad (sans tongue) and Magneto were there as well.

(Purely as an aside, was I the only one who derived amusement from reading the coverage of the major gathering of world leaders at the United Nations recently? I found myself adding to the articles, “The only disruption in the proceedings occurred when massive energy waves radiated from the Statue of Liberty, causing pandemonium among the world leaders. Sources claim the energy waves were part of a master plan by Magneto; however the mysterious mutant group known as the X-Men managed to thwart the malicious scheme, allowing the gathering to proceed with no further problems.”)

The early X-Men tales are “safe,” you see. Not only is the continuity manageable, just beginning to build, but the conflict is clear and unvarnished, and I don’t have to worry about the “maturity” level of the tales. I don’t know that I’d be comfortable with Ariel reading even the early adventures of the “new” X-Men, because some of them get—well—a little intense. The old X-Men, though, have a comfort level on par with what I want to have my youngest reading.

Now perhaps I’m being overcautious. After all, even though she was capable of reading it herself, I insisted on reading the latest Harry Potter novel to her because the increased darkening of tone—and the death of one of the characters—had been well advertised. Ultimately, I was glad I did. Without giving anything away to anyone who hasn’t read it, I got to the point in the book where one of the characters was killed. I paused, waiting to see if Ariel would react. Nothing. So I kept reading. Three pages later, mention was made of the character’s corpse lying on the ground. Abruptly Ariel turned to me and said, “Is (the character) going to come back? Is (the character) going to be brought back to life somehow?”

And I explained to her patiently that, like in real life, no, that wasn’t going to happen. The character had been killed, and that was that. At which point Ariel burst into tears and reading came to a halt until she was finally able to compose herself.

In any event, Ariel is a potential X-Men fan, just as other kids—when the Spider-Man movie is released—will be potential Spider-Man fans. It’s hard to tell them where to jump on, both in terms of continuity and in terms of story content. The thing is, time has always moved forward for Peter Parker, as it did for the X-Men. Peter Parker graduated high school, college, got married, got widowed. The X-Men graduated, grew older, broke up, got new members, went their separate ways. Time marched on.

Except it’s been more than just time. Because new creators have come in as well, and consistently the new creators have reimagined the characters in terms that they themselves can handle. The increasing sophistication, the “adulting” if you will, of various characters, has become more and more prevalent, moving the superhero form further and further away from its original audience. Once upon a time, it was accepted that people didn’t stick with comic books; generally they gave up comics around the time they discovered the opposite sex. Now, however, the questionable health of the industry depends upon an audience who sticks with comics through thick and thin. The problem is that, as that audience stops collecting due to reasons ranging from boredom to lack of funds to outright hostility, there’s a lack of fresh bodies to replace them.

A big problem remains the cover price. Parents remembering comics as twelve or twenty five cents simply ain’t going to give their kids $2.50 or $2.99 for a comic book. Comics were fine when they were an impulse buy. When you have to think about it, you realize that there’s lots of stuff that’ll give you more bang for your buck.

But the other problem remains story content. Have we, we must wonder, made comics so sophisticated that they’re an outright turnoff to younger readers? What is this compulsion we have to tell adult stories with what most people perceive as kiddie characters? And are we wrong to do so?

It’s not as if I’m pointing fingers at others while exempting myself. Any kids who catch the old Supergirl movie (now in rerelease on DVD) or see the cartoon version and run out to buy Supergirl #49, now on the stands, won’t have a clue as to what the hell they’re reading. There are some readers who insist that the stories I’m telling have no place in a book entitled Supergirl. That if I want to spin elaborate mythos of angels and such, I should be doing it elsewhere instead of “ruining” the character as she stood before.

Nor is the redefining of kiddie icons into adult status limited to comic books. Observe, if you will, Wicked, Gregory Maguire’s novel that gives us the previously unknown true story of the Wicked Witch of the West. On the very first page we see the following exchange as Dorothy and her companions journey toward the Witch’s castle:

“Of course, to hear them tell it, it is the surviving sister who is the crazy one,” said the Lion. “What a Witch. Psychologically warped; possessed by demons. Insane. Not a pretty picture.”

“She was castrated at birth,” replied the Tin Woodman calmly. “She was born hermaphroditic, or maybe entirely male.”

“Oh you, you see castration everywhere you look,” said the Lion.

“I’m only repeating what folks say,” said the Tin woodman.

Not only are we not in Kansas anymore, we’re not even in Oz anymore. At least not the Oz with which we’re all familiar.

What is it about childrens’ fables and other icons that prompt us to re-examine them and redefine them with adult sensibilities? Are we doing anyone any favors in doing so? Or are we just displaying a singular lack of imagination?

More thoughts on it next week, although I’d certainly be interested to hear yours.

(Peter David, Writer of Stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)

 

Remembering Carl Barks’ work & Marvel editorial changes

Originally published September 22, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1401

Two without-warnings in the past few days…

* * *

The story has it that, at an auction house where a Carl Barks “Scrooge” painting was going up, Steve Geppi of Diamond stood the moment the bidding commenced and raised his bidding paddle. He held it out and up in a manner no less determined than Van Helsing defiantly holding a crucifix in the face of an advancing Count Dracula, and not once did Geppi lower it. So determined was he to get it that he kept the paddle up there, automatically jumping over every would-be competitor until the bidding was all done and he was the owner of it. Such is the determination and passion that the work of the masterful Barks inspired in some folks.

I don’t exactly have the money to go slug it out with Steve Geppi over Barks paintings, but at least I have the stories. Some of the earliest comic books I ever read were the work of Carl Barks. My parents felt safe buying them for me, since they were still rather leery of the entire superhero genre and felt that my sensibilities would be better served sticking with something tried and true and kid friendly. Apparently they were worried that exposure to such characters as Superman and Batman might permanently warp my perspective and shape me into someone overly obsessed with the adventures of bizarrely dressed, bigger-than-life super doers. Fortunately I eventually managed to convince them to let me pick up Action, Superman, and others, thereby proving their concerns to be totally groundless.

But in the meantime, it was the Disney Comics that ruled the house of David (well, those and the Harvey titles, read during a period of time where I was so dense, that I thought that those times when Casper would turn invisible were supposed to be some sort of audience participation part of the story. All my old Casper comics are filled with panels in which the broken lines of the invisible friendly ghost are joined in pencil like a connect-the-dots, and Casper himself has been colored in with white crayolas. Kind of like Winky Dink, only for comics.

And of all the Disney comics, there was nothing like the stories told by Carl Barks. I can’t think of anyone else, off the top of my head, to be so closely associated with the development of key Disney characters aside from Disney himself. Yes, of course, there were the noted Disney “Old Men” without whom Disney animation wouldn’t have been the powerhouse it was. But Bark’s vision was unique and powerful, forging a throwaway character like Uncle Scrooge into the most dynamic, complex, layered and audacious member of the Duck “family.” Donald and his tantrums might have dominated in the world of animated shorts, but Donald was noticeably less effective on a comic book page where you could actually understand what he was saying. If he was comprehensible, he just didn’t sound like Donald. Scrooge, however, was the pre-eminent adventurer of not only Disney comics, but eventually the entire Disney canon. Yes, Mickey had his share of derring-do, but Scrooge had that quality shared by all the truly great adventure heroes: He really wasn’t a nice guy. He had the occasional soft spot for Donald and the nephews, but money remained his pre-eminent love, swimming in it his favorite occupation. He reveled in his miserliness, living up to the example of his parsimonious namesake.

Barks shaped some basically limited funny animals into the kid equivalent of Indiana Jones, back before there was Indiana Jones. And Disney finally acknowledged Barks’ genius in the only way that a corporation truly can: They found ways to repackage and recycle it into new formats so they could make money off it (i.e., Duck Tales.).

In the meantime, between the Gladstone reprints, the paintings, bisques and other high-ticket items, Barks’ work is preserved and enjoyed by those of us who owed him a debt from our youth for giving us, quite simply, the best Ducks stories ever. He will be sorely missed.

* * *

Word broke on Warren Ellis’ message board, rumors flying everywhere: The council had spoken. Bob Harras, long-time Marvel editor in chief, had been voted off the island. His replacement was not Richard Hatch (who was always so fun to watch in Battlestar: Galactica) but instead Joe Quesada, who holds three distinctions: the first artist to be Marvel’s EIC; the first EIC to have a last name that the average fan can’t say correctly (keh-SAH-duh, not QWEH-se-duh, not Quesadilla or any other Mexican food); and, finally, the only person at Marvel in an editorial capacity who I haven’t pissed off at some point or other. So that’s lucky for me, I suppose. (Unless he’s real sensitive about his name, in which case I’m dead.) An artist-as-EIC is such a rarity, that the only other one who springs immediately to mind is Carmine Infantino (which makes one wonder if Marvel is going to start instituting captions with little fingers pointing to the next panel and saying stuff like, “But wait! What’s this? Can we believe our eyes?!”)

I admit to having sorely mixed feelings on the subject. On the one hand, lord knows that Bob and I had our share of editorial disagreements over the years. Under his stewardship of the “X” books, I found the environment so suffocating that I bailed on X-Factor after barely a year, my shortest run ever unless you count Marc Hazzard, Merc (a series I never should have been writing in the first place. God, was I miscast. It was like bringing in Woody Allen to script a Lethal Weapon movie.) And it was Bob who oversaw my being forced off Incredible Hulk, although to be fair I never knew whether the disastrous “Bring Back the Savage Hulk” directive originated from him or elsewhere.

On the other hand, Bob also tapped me to write the Heroes Return limited series after being impressed with my take on how to handle it during the big HR writer’s conference, which was—aside from Marvel vs. DC—the single most high-profile limited series I was ever involved with. And furthermore, sources tell me that the reason Bob was ousted was because he was fighting the good fight with highers up who remain obsessed with cutting closer to the bone than Jeff Smith trimming art boards.

Which means that, basically, Bob went down fighting out of a sense of trying to preserve quality Marvel Comics. And which also means that Marvel highers-up—those same fine folks who figured they’d save a few bucks by dumping that, what’s-his-name, Stan Lee guy ’cause, y’know, who cares about him—continue to take less-than-kindly toward those who buck them, or are considered unessential, or are willing to take the long view and fight for an editorial vision over nickel-and-diming a company to death. Thing is, Joe Quesada isn’t exactly a lightweight when it comes to such matters, and is not easily pushed around. Which means that things could continue to get veerrrrry interesting at Marvel.

In the meantime, Bob—who looked progressively more frazzled every time I saw him—can at least get some rest. He may not wind up being the sole Survivor of Marvel Comics (there’s one long-time editor at Marvel, who shall go nameless, who will probably have that distinction; let’s just say he’s made it through more purges than a horde of supermodels at a Country Kitchen All You Can Eat Buffet) but at least he had a solid run. Maybe he should consider a vacation… although I’d stay away from tropical islands.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. And yes, in case you’re wondering, he broke down and watched the final episode of Survivor. He’s not entirely sure why everyone was surprised over the winner: From a Dickensian point of view, it could have only one outcome. “And the sole survivor is… Rich.” Well, of course he’s rich; he just won a million dollars. D-uh.)