Peter David's Blog, page 65

Thoughts on Star Wars

Originally published May 21, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1331

Assorted Star Wars thoughts and recollections, in no particular order:

* * *

Am I the only person who hears the name “Darth Maul” and thinks it sounds like a Star Wars-related shopping center?

* * *

This just in: As the days tick down until the May 19 release, truly rabid fans are displaying all manner of disturbing behavior. Not only have they already been lining up for several weeks, but many of them have taken to: painting their faces red and black; dressing exclusively in costumes; speaking only in movie quotes; becoming positively belligerent when conversations threaten, even for a moment, to veer away from Star Wars-related discourse. This excessive crankiness and irritability has been dubbed “Phantom Menace Syndrome,” or simply PMS.

* * *

Correction to last week’s column. There are, in fact, four variant covers on the novelizations rather than six. To quote Rick Blaine in Casablanca: “I was misinformed.” So don’t go scouring the stores trying to turn up the two additional covers that you read about here, because they ain’t there. For that matter, the books are being published by Lucas’ own publishing arm, so perhaps the royalty plan (which was non-existent before) has loosened up. Even so—a hundred bucks if collectors want the entire set? Aw c’mon…

* * *

This just in: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace will be opening on a staggering five thousand screens.

* * *

When I was in college, there was a school-sponsored trip to Rome that I participated in. While walking around the city one day, I came upon a theater that was showing Star Wars dubbed into Italian. I couldn’t pass that one up. Most of the redubbed parts were perfectly credible; indeed, I kind of liked the new voice of Obi-Wan better than I did that of Alec Guinness. The one real howler, however, was Luke. My only surmise was that the Italian voice casting agents were told that Luke Skywalker was the hero. So they brought in their standard-issue hero-voice actor. Unfortunately, the voice didn’t quite mesh with the youthful countenance and panache of Mark Hamill. Out trotted Luke Skywalker in the Italian version, and when he opened his mouth there emerged a heroic basso profundo voice that appeared to originate somewhere around his shoes. It was hysterical.

The other major oddity of the theater-going experience in Rome was when our heroes were trapped in the trash compactor. There were the walls, converging upon one another, about to pancake Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie. And then, abruptly, the film came to a halt. For a moment I thought the projector had gone on the fritz. The lights came up—and then food vendors started walking the aisles, like guys at a baseball game. Yes, that’s right: Intermission. They unilaterally inserted an intermission into their showing of Star Wars.

Of course, now I have this vision of someone from Lucasfilm reading this and saying, “Hmmm… intermission! Of course!” And when The Phantom Menace reaches a convenient midway point in theaters throughout the land, Lucasfilm-hired ushers will be moving up and down the aisles selling merchandise directly related to the scenes that audiences just saw.

* * *

I look at the boxed video release set of the first three films. (Will we have to start calling them the second three films now? Or the first second three films?) I’m reminded of one of my prize possessions back when Star Wars first came out. It was a silent, several-minute-long film 8mm excerpt from the movie, commercially released (and which would nowadays probably fetch a decent amount of money on the collector’s market, now that I think about it). It featured the escape from the Death Star and the subsequent firefight as the Imperial TIE fighters parsed the Millennium Falcon. I can’t begin to count the number of times I watched it, sitting there as it unspooled in the darkness of my living room, the only sound accompanying it being the crank of the projector’s motor. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

As opposed to now, when, if you go see a new release in Times Square, you can walk out of the theater and find people selling pirated videos one block over.

* * *

This just in: Giving up any pretense of any other film mattering after May 19, theater owners have decided to run The Phantom Menace on every screen in America. The owner of the UA theaters, Sony theaters and every other major chain stated in a joint release, “Really, why not just bow to the inevitable? I mean, who are we kidding?”

All other movies will be pulled from release for the duration of The Phantom Menace. Relieved producers have been quoted as saying, “Well, thank God, it’s about time. I mean, y’know, what was the friggin’ point? It wouldn’t have been like other times where we might pick up spillover business from people who couldn’t get in to see Star Wars. If tickets weren’t available when theater goers showed up, they would have just bought tickets for the next showing and waited in line for it. It would have been really embarrassing.”

* * *

Back in my fan days, I used to write skits that were performed at a convention called August Party, a Relaxicon held in Maryland. And I wrote several that were Star Wars-related.

The first, after Empire came out, was entitled “Star Feuds.” We folded the Star Wars universe into the then-popular game show Family Feud.

“It’s the Rebel Family: Luke, Leia, Han, Lando and Yoda, ready for action! And the Imperial Family: Darth, Boba, Ozzel, Veers, and Needa. On your mark… let’s start… the Star Feuds! And here’s the Star of Star Feuds, Obi-Wan Kenobi!”

It was loads of fun. Darth Vader kept using the Force to kill his teammates when they gave stupid answers. With fewer pounds and more hair, I played Han Solo, except I had no lines because I was still frozen in carbonite. I just stood there, my arms raised, open-mouthed in a silent scream of agony, completely immobilized for the entire sketch. This was, of course, problematic considering that—in order to maintain the staging of the TV show—our team had to first be revealed at upstage right and then move downstage to our positions. Naturally I couldn’t budge or the bit was blown. So we had two burly stagehands come out and physically cart me—as I kept my body paralyzed and rigid—over to the rest of the team.

At the same convention where we performed that sketch, we did a little oddity I wrote in which Luke Skywalker wakes up, a la Dorothy Gale, to discover himself back on his farm at home with his aunt and uncle. Obi-Wan, Vader, Han and Leia show up and chuckle as Luke tells them about the incredible dream he’d had. What drew the most startled audience reaction was when, for no reason I can recall, I had Luke saying, “And you were there, Dad… and you, Han… and you, Ben… and you too, sis!” upon addressing Leia. Audience members turned to each other and said out loud, “Sis? Where did that come from?” Keep in mind that Return of the Jedi was several years away from release.

I suppose part of it was that by the end of Empire, fans were buzzing about two major questions: Was Darth Vader really Luke’s father? And who was “the other” to which Yoda alluded. I didn’t understand the debate. It never occurred to me that Vader was anything but what he’d said. The dramatic beat was too strong; I couldn’t believe the film makers would undercut that incredible moment of Luke screaming “Nooooo!!” by revealing in the next film, whoops, no, Vader was just messin’ with him. From a storytelling point of view, it would have been a ghastly blunder to undo it.

As for “the other,” fifteen minutes after Yoda mentions “There is another (hope),” I stopped looking for a candidate the moment a dangling and crippled Luke whispered, “Leia,” and Leia picked up the mental phone. Yoda says there’s another, Leia suddenly displays a mental connection to Luke. I mean, people, c’mon. I’m not exactly Sherlock Holmes, but this was two-and-two stuff.

The last sketch we did, several years later, was called “Return to Jedi: Address Unknown.” My favorite moment remains the following exchange between Luke and the shade of Obi-Wan:

LUKE: Ben… Ben, why didn’t you tell me?

BEN: Tell you what?

LUKE: About Vader.

BEN: What about Vader?

LUKE: Oh, come on, Ben. Are you going to tell me you didn’t know Darth Vader was my father?

BEN: What? What?!? Oh my God… I’ve got to sit down…

LUKE: You’re saying you didn’t know?

BEN: Of course not! How could I? He had the cape and the mask and everything.

Although a close runner-up for favorite exchange in that sketch was when Luke goes to face down Vader:

LUKE: So… how’s mom?

DARTH: Dead.

LUKE: Oh.

DARTH: Uhm… how’s Uncle Owen? Aunt Beru?

LUKE: Dead.

DARTH: Oh.

LUKE: This is really great, Dad. We should do these family reunions more often.

DARTH: How can you say that? We had such fun the last time we got together.

LUKE: You cut my hand off!

DARTH: So I’m strict. Now… come along. The boss wants to meet you. Stand up straight. Don’t slouch. Make me proud.

Actually, the things that got the biggest laughs were when we made mention of all the insane rumors that had swirled around the big secrets of Jedi. These included such speculations as that both Luke and Obi-Wan were clones of Boba Fett (in an endeavor to explain the reference to the Clone Wars). That, in fact, Obi-Wan’s name was actually a designation: O. B. One, although what O. B. allegedly stood for, I had no idea.

* * *

Return of the Jedi was one of the first films I took Shana to. She was two, maybe three. The movie was ending its run, and I brought her to see it at the Loews Astor Plaza, one of the biggest screens in New York. I figured I was probably wasting my time, but I wanted her to have a chance to see it on a big screen. (Who knew from twenty years later, right?)

Since I’d seen the film, of course, and since I figured it wouldn’t matter to her, I brought her in for the last half hour. As we entered the darkened theatre, the explosive climactic face off between the rebels and the empire had just begun. The screen was absolutely alive with ships hurtling every which way. Little Shana stared at the screen, stunned, captivated, unable to say anything other than, “Ooooooo…. hoooooohoooo!!!” I carried her to a seat because she’d lost the ability to walk. She sat bolt-still, popcorn forgotten, completely entranced.

It was great.

* * *

This just in: In a stunning turnaround, unanimous pans by preview audiences have prompted Lucasfilm to bypass theatrical release and send The Phantom Menace straight to video. Hanging his head in shame, George Lucas was quoted as saying, “What can I say? I screwed up. The film really blows chunks. My bad. Sorry.”

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

 

Store appearance tomorrow, Friday

I will be appearing at the Manhattan JHU (Jim Hanley’s Universe) store from 6 to 8 PM to do a farewell to X-Factor.

PAD

Aw, C’mon!

Originally published May 14, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1330

Some assorted notions, thoughts and such:

* * *

I’m instituting a new, very occasional feature in the column: The “Aw, C’mon!” Award. This is an award presented on no kind of set schedule, but just every time that something strikes me as deserving it.

This time around, the “Aw, C’mon!” Award goes to the Terry Brooks novelization of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. It’s not for the book itself: I haven’t read it yet—and won’t until after I’ve seen the movie. (I’ve learned my lesson in that regard. I still remember, “No, Luke… I am your father,” in the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back, and being (a) stunned over the revelation, and (b) annoyed with myself upon realizing that the movie would now have less impact for me. So I swore not to do that again.) It’s for the packaging.

First off, it’s only available in hardcover. Almost 25 bucks. Remember the novelizations of the first three films? Paperback, kiddies. Standard issue, easily affordable paperbacks.

But the thing that really pushes it over into the “Aw, C’mon!” category is:

Six variant covers!! Six variant covers?!? Of a hardcover?!?

Aw, c’mon!!!

It’s bad enough that the characters are all going to be action figures on the shelves before the film even comes out. After all, the argument can be made that George Lucas was busy creating characters and concepts twenty years ago, and so little emphasis was given to toy spin-offs that 20th Century Fox, in one of the great bonehead moves of all times, gave the merchandising rights to Lucas. So it’s a bit unfair to accuse him of creating characters now for the pure purpose of stocking Toys-R-Us with more tsatskes. One has to give him enough leeway to assume that, like Mozart using as many notes as required to produce his music—no more and no less—Lucas is populating the films with the characters necessary to conveying his vision. Okay, fine. I can handle that.

But how much naked profiteering is evident in the publishing of six different covers of the hardcover novelization?

I know, I know: No one is putting a gun to the heads of the collectors. No one is forcing any of the Star Wars enthusiasts to pick up one of each. If someone feels pressured to be a completist and blow $150 to pick up the entire set because they just have to have it, that’s their individual choice and their own lookout. And we can look smugly down from on high and say, “Suckers!”

But, y’know, you just hate to see such pure greed. I mean, really now. No matter what excuses may be offered for the marketing decision, it comes across like a brazen attempt to take advantage of the collector mentality. And yes, yes, yes, I say again, if that’s what the collector wants to do, then it’s the collector’s problem. It’s not as if they’re drug addicts and the publisher is a pusher, taking advantage of people who are not in their right mind and they need their fix. Free will is clearly in force, and if the collector market wants to send a message that they’ve had enough, they can keep their money serenely in their pockets.

But it’s the attempt itself that seems so… so cheesy. So tacky. Once upon a time, a standard mass market paperback was all that was required. And now it’s six hardcovers with variant covers. Furthermore, if the same publishing deal is still in force that was around a year or so ago, Terry Brooks doesn’t even see royalties off it. All money generated by sales goes right into the pockets of the publishers and Lucasfilm.

Lucasfilm is playing a dangerous game here. If there’s one thing that Americans hate, it’s the feeling that someone is playing them for suckers or trying to take advantage of them, and this stunt definitely falls into that category.

When Obi-Wan recommending using the Force, he wasn’t referring to the marketing force. The tastes of the public are notoriously fickle, and people have a way of turning when they’re being yanked. Sometimes it takes a while for the dime to drop. Independence Day was an awful film, but it raked in $300 million. But the public took its ire out on Godzilla, the filmmaker’s next entry, complaining bitterly about the lousy story of Godzilla as if Independence Day’s plot was a newly found masterpiece from Dostoyefsky.

By all accounts, The Phantom Menace is quite good, but karma has a way of catching up, and the item that is must-have today becomes a dust collector on the shelves tomorrow. I mean, the question many people have is whether the film can overtake Titanic as a money maker. At this point, the new question seems to be whether the ancillary rights can generate so much money that it would have been a sufficiently heavy load to sink the original Titanic

* * *

I looked over my column on the passing of Bob Kane and tried to determine where I said that Jerry Robinson had died. And I couldn’t find any such reference. All I did was mention his name in the same breath with others who had passed away. I sure didn’t mean to imply that he had, though, so I apologize for any confusion the reference may have caused.

I met Jerry Robinson at a Chicago Comicon some years back. Nice guy. Got a Joker drawing from him. Cool.

* * *

I’d very much like to thank whoever it was that got Young Justice up for two Eisners. I always considered it to be the series I was writing for my son. I don’t have a son, but that’s who my audience is. Of course, with my luck, if I do ever have a son, he’ll probably take after Impulse.

The book I write for my daughters is Supergirl. Interestingly, that’s also been recognized and is up for an award, from a rather unexpected source: GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, has annual awards for various achievements in positive portrayals of gays and lesbians. One of the categories is “Best Comic,” and Supergirl was nominated. According to Nick Adams, GLAAD’s national nominations co-chair, who was quoted in The Washington Blade, a prominent gay newspaper:

“Supergirl has its share of cheesy superhero posturing, but it shines when it dealing [sic] with relationships. The book contains the funniest, best-written Lesbian character in comics: supporting character and stand-up comedian Andy Jones. Andy can transform into the male superhero Comet, and in the issues nominated for the GLAAD Award, Supergirl develops a crush on Comet, while Andy pursues Supergirl’s alter ego, Linda Danvers.”

Adams calls the inclusion of a gender-swapping character “too trippy for words.”

Obviously, I’d dispute the “cheesy” part, but I’m still flattered. It also amuses the hell out of me, because I constantly get letters from straight readers who, on behalf of gays everywhere, complain about Andy and how she’s allegedly a clichéd, flat and unrealistic portrayal of a lesbian. Go figure.

* * *

A few columns back, I opined that “Green Arrow” was really a kind of out-of-nowhere name for a superhero. At the recent I-Con, Julie Schwartz sat me down and explained to me exactly from whence the name derived.

It turns out that when Mort Weisinger was developing the character, he apparently turned for inspiration to a movie serial entitled The Green Archer, about an emerald-clad hero (we’ll have to take their word for it; the serial was in black-and-white) who fought for justice.

From that starting point, Weisinger retooled the concept into the notion of a superhero bowman (with obvious Batman influences including arrows that functioned more or less as his utility belt). And he was named “Green Arrow” as a nod to his roots. In my best Johnny Carson voice, I must say I did not know that.

Thanks, Julie.

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

 

Villains Scheme the Darndest Things

Originally published May 7, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1329

“Villains Scheme the Darndest Things” was the panel topic presented to a panel at Long Island’s I-Con, the panel scheduled to consist of Joe Kelly, Dwayne McDuffie, Dave Roman, Bob Rozakis, and your humble servant. I say “scheduled to” because I only remember four people being there, including myself, but I can’t for the life of me recall who was missing, so I’m playing it safe and listing everyone. Some of the observations and discussion points to come out of it, in no particular order:

1) A hero is only as good as his villain. The measure of the hero is the obstacles he has to overcome. That’s true in life as well as fiction. A New York fireman who made a breathtaking, daring rescue of a man on a girder was hailed as a hero recently. He dismissed the label and said he was simply doing the job.

Perhaps. But it’s a heroic job. I’m no hero in my profession; my greatest obstacles are deadlines and occasional lower back pain. But when one conquers daunting odds in order to save lives and serve the commonweal while putting one’s own life on the line… that’s heroic whether you get a paycheck for it or not.

Same thing with fictional heroes. If there’s nothing at risk, if the villains don’t make them rise to the occasion, then the triumph seems trivial. The hero has to be the underdog in some way, or his achievements don’t reach the levels one expects of the hero.

2) The best villains are those who, in some way, reflect the hero. Think of Holmes and Moriarty. Holmes was rarely nonplussed by any of his opponents; indeed, you would be hard pressed to name even one memorable one, since none of them really presented much of a challenge beyond solving the puzzle.

But Moriarty genuinely frightened Holmes, keeping the master detective in terror of airguns or Moriarty’s men stalking him everywhere. As cunning as Holmes was, Moriarty was just like him… but his exact opposite. And in overcoming both his greatest opponent and his apparent death, Holmes was raised from popular fictional detective to icon.

In comics, it’s one of the reasons why really good villains don’t travel particularly well. Batman, for example, is a hero who may be somewhat nuts. That is, of course, a discussion in and of itself. Did the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne, right in front of Bruce’s eyes, simply focus him on his chosen life’s work… or did it drive him completely around the bend? Is he a dedicated enforcer of the law, or at least vigilante law?

Or is he forever trying to make up in some way for his perceived failure to save his parents, endlessly “reliving” that traumatic moment in an insanely hopeless attempt to please two people whom he can never truly connect with? Let us say, for the sake of argument, that Batman’s pinochle deck is a few cards shy. The Joker is therefore his perfect opposite: Someone who has his own madness, but uses that madness for self-gratification instead of altruism. That’s why the Joker doesn’t work as well when he’s opposite, say, Superman.

Same with Doc Doom. Doom is really a Reed Richards villain, possessed of great scientific genius but using it—as Maxwell Smart would say—for badness instead of niceness. The fact that the rest of the Fantastic Four gets sucked into the battle is almost incidental: The fight’s really between Doom and Reed.

Oh, there’s the occasional exception: The climax of the Battle of the Baxter Building comes to mind, when an infuriated Thing “finally gets his mitts” on Doom. But even that was a battle of polar opposites, with Doom convinced that his technology, intellect, and superiority would easily triumph over the pure brute strength of the Thing. Muscle vs. Machine: It doesn’t get more opposite than that.

3) Why do villains keep becoming good guys? This query was presented by an audience member who seemed to feel that this was a recent development. It was pointed out that sometimes this comes as a result of corporate demand. Here’s Venom, and he’s really a nasty, vicious, irredeemable brute. Pure villainy. But y’know, the kids seem to love him. Every time he shows up in Spider-Man, sales shoot. So the more he gets out there, the more sales Marvel will see.

The problem with being a villain, as any villain will tell you, is that there’s this annoying requirement that you get beaten. If Venom were to appear constantly, and Spider-Man was whupping his butt eight, nine, ten times a year, Venom’s going to start losing any allure for the fans. It’s one thing to lose; it’s quite another to be seen as a loser. To say nothing of the fact that writers may start to run out of convincing or interesting ways for Venom to go down.

But if Venom became heroic, then the balance changes. He can fight other villains. He can even ally with Spider-Man. That means he can be around more, maybe even get his own series, and sell tons of books all the time.

However, villains have a long history of changing and becoming heroes.

It didn’t used to be that way. Once upon a time, if a villain turned over a new leaf, it was purely as a dodge to fool the hero until the villain’s true evil plan was unveiled. Trust it to Marvel to turn that cliché on its ear.

One need look no further than the first major line-up change in the original Avengers. There was Captain America, the sentinel of liberty, the World War II hero. And who were the new recruits? Hawkeye, who debuted as a villain opposing Iron Man. And Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, former members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. You can’t get much more evil than belonging to a group that’s got the word “Evil” right in the name. (And who can forget the Angel’s reaction upon first laying eyes on her: “Wow! If she’s an evil mutant, I want an application blank!”) The line-up looked more like a rogue’s gallery than the roster of the World’s Greatest Heroes.

This observation leads to…

4) Villains aren’t all that far from the Heroes, and vice versa. This concept was stated, pretty much on point, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Belloq said to Indiana Jones, “It would take only a small nudge to push you out of the light.” Granted, Belloq was working for Nazis, but considering the criminal scumwads with whom Indy was associated in the beginning of Temple of Doom, our hero certainly didn’t hesitate to ally with people of dubious morality if it served his needs… which pretty much made him interchangeable with Belloq.

To say nothing of the fact that Indy apparently took advantage of Marion when she was of a rather tender age, or at the very least exploited her trust. (“It was wrong and you knew it!”) And let’s face it, blowing away the swordsman from twenty feet was a huge laugh getter, and very real-world. Any of us, given the givens, would likely have done the same thing. But it wasn’t especially heroic.

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.” The best, most intriguing villains are those who have some human element to them that enables us to connect to them. That way when they lose, we sense both the triumph of the hero and yet experience the loss of the villain, making the denouement all the more powerful because all of us have experienced both triumph and loss.

That makes the conclusion of the conflict work on multiple levels. How much stronger is it when we perceive that the villain might have been a powerful force for good if things had turned out only slightly differently. Think of that classic moment in original Star Trek from the episode “Balance of Terror,” which featured the first appearance of the Romulans. The Romulan commander, played by Mark Lenard, was by story dictates the villain. He was, after all, in opposition to the heroes.

Yet at the climax, just before he blows his own vessel to kingdom come rather than be captured, the commander faces Kirk on the viewscreen. Battered, bloodied, bruised but unbowed, the Romulan says, “A pity. In another reality… we might have been friends, you and I.” We know it to be true, and that truth makes the finale all the more moving.

Indeed, heroism and villainy is best portrayed when the viewpoint is purely subjective. Take Lex Luthor, a villain who, in the Silver Age, was so resigned to failure that he never even bothered to change out of his prison grays. But when circumstances stranded Luthor on an alien world, he became a hero to the highly humanoid race in residence there. Indeed, he was so adored that when Superman turned up to bring him back to earth, it was Superman who was regarded by everyone there as a consummate villain. That story reoriented my thinking as to what when into making a bad guy.

Then again, sometimes it’s possible to have the hero and villain get too close. I’m thinking in particular of Batman: The Killing Joke. I understand what Alan Moore was going for. I can comprehend all the rationalizations. I can even relate to the contention that to say, “A character wouldn’t do this” is highly debatable because in real life, people act out of character all the time. Quiet people who seemed sweet as pie become killers; Killers find Jesus and reform; Faithful spouses suddenly cheat; Good kids go bad. In short, excrement happens.

Nonetheless, the idea of Batman putting his hand on the Joker’s shoulder and sharing a laugh at the end struck me as repulsive and wrong, particularly after the atrocities that the Joker had committed in the course of the story which was otherwise quite brilliant. Blurring the line is one thing. Erasing it is something else again.

5) What if the plan’s too good? One audience member—a would-be writer, by the cut of his jib—was in a quandary. What if the villain put so much energy, so much thought, so much care into a plan that it was literally unassailable? One doesn’t want the villain to appear stupid… but what if, in going to extremes so that he comes across as a master planner, a writer develops a plan for his villain that is so thorough, the hero can’t possibly win? How do you have your hero triumph?

The answer to that writer’s problem is the same that could be given to the average superhero, and indeed is the admonishment that Superchicken gave to his sidekick, Fred: “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.”

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

 

Dragon*Con 2013

I’ve been remiss in posting original stuff on this site and that’s going to be changing.

First off: I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that Dragon*Con has managed to settle accounts with Ed Kramer. I was so goddamn sick of having people claiming that my determination to attend the convention translated to that I supported pedophilia. Thank God that’s over.

Second, for some reason, I am not listed in the Artist Alley section. I will indeed be there at Table 25. I will have comic scripts and paperbacks of all my Crazy 8 books, so be sure to swing by.

See you there.

PAD

Movie reviews: 10 Things I Hate About You, The King and I

Originally published April 30, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1328

An earlier column discussed the endeavors by comic companies to try and attract new readers to old properties either by rebooting and/or retelling previously told stories with a new gloss added, or else exploring new formats that might be more “kid friendly.”

It’s interesting to note (well, interesting to me, in any event) that the phenomenon is not restricted to comics. In the movie theaters recently, I’ve come across two films that fit that particular bill perfectly. It’s a somewhat different set up, since in the comic book instances, corporations are trying to keep their existing properties afloat. In the film instance, we’re seeing rehashes of previous ideas that are intended to make a few bucks because, well… the movie makers might not have had better notions available to them.

The first film I went to was 10 Things I Hate About You. When the trailers for the film hit its target audience, that audience saw a promo for a movie about two daughters, one hip, vivacious and adored, the other stiff and holding the world in contempt. They probably thought, “Oh. It’s like Daria.” Actually, with a few tweaks, it really could have been Daria: The Live Action Film, now that I think about it. My reaction, naturally, was somewhat different: “Oh. They’re remaking Taming of the Shrew.”

Yes, that’s right, move over, Jane Austen. The Bard rules, with several more “updatings” of his plays on the way. And Jane Austen never even got to fall in love, much less win an Oscar for doing so. Of course, 10 Things does indeed model itself shamelessly upon Shrew. Since we’re dealing with high school age, naturally the dad in question (Larry Miller who, since his gloriously smarmy clothing store owner in Pretty Woman, has only gotten better with the passing years) isn’t concerned about his daughters getting married (as in Shrew). No, as an obstetrician who’s handled too many teen births, he’s worried about them getting pregnant. Me, being a father of the 90s, my fears lean more towards AIDS, but 10 Things is supposed to be a comedy, and I guess the father recounting pregnant teen stories is slightly more humorous than dying teen stories.

Being a paranoid dad for whatever reason, he doesn’t want to allow his vivacious daughter, Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) to date until his shrewish (i.e., bitchy) daughter, Kat (Julia Stiles) dates first. He makes the rule as a smug failsafe, certain that Bianca isn’t leaving the house anytime soon, because there’s no way Kat is going to go out: No one would ask her, and she wouldn’t want to go in any event. As a consequence, Bianca’s “suitors” are desperate, but desperation tends to be the mother of invention. And so, brushing up on their Shakespeare, they obtain the services of Petruchio… I’m sorry, Patrick (Heath Ledger… what a great name. Sounds like a Scots accounting firm) to woo (to wit) Kat so they can have a shot at the fair Bianca.

Updating Shrew into the cauldron of high school social politicking and calling it 10 Things I Hate About You might seem, to some, to be bereft of imagination. I, on the other hand, think it’s certainly as valid an idea as updating it into a musical about a feuding husband and wife acting team and calling it Kiss Me, Kate. Although it certainly would have been nice to see the source material mentioned somewhere in the damned credits. Shakespeare is a presence in the film via an English teacher (“Chill” Mitchell) teaching the kids about Shakespearian sonnets, but nonetheless, when you lift as much of a plot from the Bard as that, a “Based upon” credit certainly seems only appropriate.

What, did Shakespeare’s “people” need to get in touch with the producers and demand an acknowledgement in order to get such a thing done?

The main reason I would have liked to see such a notation there is that, remember, I’m not the target audience. Teens are. I wound up seeing the film in the first place only because my middle daughter, Gwen, was taking my youngest, Ariel, to see Doug’s 1st Movie. The girls, displaying independence, wanted to see it on their own, but I figured I should remain in the vicinity in case problems arose (no wonder I could sympathize with the Larry Miller character), and 10 Things was the only film playing in the multiplex where the times worked out roughly the same. It seemed like a decent date movie, so I brought Kathleen.

In point of fact, I thought the film was tremendously entertaining. The cast seemed to be having a ball, there was tremendous energy, 3rd Rock from the Sun‘s Joseph Gordon-Levitt was great fun as one of the suitors, and let’s face it, when you’re dealing with Shakespeare, it’s hard to go completely wrong (the MTV-styled Romeo and Juliet aside). But it would have been nice for the primarily teen audience to know that there was a play upon which the film was based. My guess is that the average teen filmgoer has no clue that Shrew is the source material, and there’s nothing in the film that indicates it. The film makers, granted, are under no obligation to educate the audience. But there’s no onus against it, either, and it would be damned nice if such films did everything they could to let the audience know just where the story was coming from.

And yes, I know, Shakespeare—presuming he did write the plays—cribbed from other people’s stories, too, and it only said “Shakespeare” on the byline. But I’m not concerned with Elizabethan hoi paloi right now, I’m only thinking about the current audiences who view Shakespeare purely as a dead English white guy who has no relevance whatsoever to their lives. Teaching Shakespeare has got to be an uphill battle for educators. Anything, anything that can be done to provide an incentive to teens to explore his works should be capitalized upon. When the film runs its course in theaters, maybe the filmmakers should make low-cost screener copies available to school systems so it can be used as a teaching aid to get students involved in the story. It’s so easy to get caught up in the complexity of the Shakespearian language that one tends to overlook the intriguing tales therein. And the end of Shrew remains one of the more debatable conclusions when Kate gives her lengthy speech about a woman’s responsibility to her husband. Has she really been totally brainwashed and beaten into submission by Petruchio? Or are Petruchio and Kate a couple whose relationship is entirely based upon weird mindgames, and the subtext of the speech is Kate saying, “You want to play games? I can play games too. We both know I don’t mean a word of this, but I’m making you look good to your pals, and you’re gonna owe me for this.”

Bottom line, 10 Things is a lot of fun. The scene where Patrick serenades Kat with the help of the high school marching band is alone worth the price of admission. I just wish Shakespeare’s name had been in the credits, and I was also waiting for Patrick to say, just once, “Kiss me, Kat.” And if anyone reading this column is still disinclined to sit down and read Shrew, then rent the wonderful BBC adaptation of the play featuring John Cleese as Petruchio. You can’t go wrong.

Where can you go wrong? Well, you can take a classic musical such as The King and I, and turn it into what is possibly the worst animated feature I’ve ever seen. Here is a film which is diligent in acknowledging the source material: The title is the same, the musical (and the book, I think) are both credited, the king is drawn to look like, and even voiced to sound like, Yul Brynner (somewhere the shade of Rex Harrison, who first played the role in the songless Anna and the King is breathing a sigh of relief and saying, “Better Yul than me”) and the estates of Rodgers and Hammerstein are thanked for their cooperation. Cooperation? Good lord, what did they do to cooperate? Not file a lawsuit trying to stop this thing from being made?

Ariel was dying to see this film. I have the original on laserdisk and my attitude was, “Watch the real film instead.” But she kept at me, and I thought, Well, maybe it won’t be as bad as all that. I was right. It wasn’t. It was worse.

How bad was it? The opening sequence features British widow schoolteacher Anna and her son, Louis, on a sea voyage to Siam so that she can take up her new post as teacher to the children of the king.

The ship encounters fearsome weather and a monstrous dragon, conjured up by the Prime Minister—recast in this film as an evil wizard, who stimulates his power by rubbing his forehead as if he’s got a migraine. Oddly, the film had me rubbing my head in the same way in no time, but the fact that the movie projector—despite my best efforts—didn’t explode would seem to indicate that I don’t have much sorcerous potential. In any event, there’s this gargantuan dragon, looming over the ship. Thunder blasting, lightning ripping.

And what does Anna do? She whistles.

That’s right. She whistles a happy tune, so nobody will know she’s afraid. And soon her son, Louis, is also whistling a happy tune. So is Louis’ annoying cute pet monkey. So is the whole crew. With death by dragon and storm moments away, they’re marching around the deck whistling a happy tune. And the dragon, appalled, vanishes, and they’re safe.

In retrospect, it wasn’t an unrealistic tactic. It almost got me to vanish from the theater.

What else. What else. Well, the tragic Tuptim has been changed from an unwilling concubine to an unwilling new slave.

Okay. Okay, I can handle that. You’re dealing with a kid audience, maybe you don’t want to have to explain concubines. (Indeed, the fact that the king has multiple wives at all is glossed over, and his brood has been reduced to a mere six-or-so kids… fewer than the average Broadway production, which just goes to show you how lazy the animators were. Unconstricted by casting difficulties, they could have had Anna trying to teach dozens of kids. If Disney could animate ninety nine Dalmatian puppies thirty years ago, couldn’t modern-day animators have managed more than a paltry half-dozen kids?)

But it’s not enough that Tuptim is a slave. She has to become involved with the crown prince, upgraded from about twelve years of age to an eighteen-ish hunk who also kickboxes. And there’s funny animals galore, and a daring balloon rescue, and a comic relief sidekick to the villain whose main shtick is that he keeps losing teeth, which is supposed to be funny but is just pathetic, and as I’m sure you can guess, the king doesn’t die at the end but instead lives to polka with Anna as “Shall We Dance” is moved to become the closing number. Oh, and the animation is awful. Stiff at best, and even herky jerky in a number of places. Miranda Richardson, whom I’ve loved in everything from Queen Elizabeth in Blackadder II to Queen Mab in Merlin is, to me, forever tarnished because she voiced Anna in this debacle.

But what about the target audience? What about Ariel? As the credits rolled, and I was wishing for a liposuction-esque operation that would allow surgeons to extract the brain cells I was forced to waste on remembering the film, I said to Ariel, “What did you think, honey?”

She loved it. Thought it was great.

I now have no choice but to do penance by watching the original film with her repeatedly until all memories of the animated version are expunged. That’s the problem when seeking new audiences by retooling classics. Sometimes the results are fun and sometimes they’re… well…

There’s only one positive note to come out of all this. Once upon a time, the dumbest idea anyone ever had in regards to The King and I was to turn it into a half hour sitcom. And they did. And Brynner even played the king. And it was awful.

But this idea was far, far worse. Shall we puke, one two three and…

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

 

Paul Armstrong Dudikoff responds to Phyllida Archer-Dowd

Originally published April 23, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1327

Well, somewhat to my surprise—and, at the same time, my lack of surprise—the opinions of one Phyllida Archer-Dowd have prompted an assorted of responses. Ms. Archer-Dowd originally weighed in on Mulan and, a few weeks ago, supported the ostensible “outing” of the Teletubbies’ Tinky Winky. Since then, there has been any number of letters in response (“any number” being my shorthand for being too damned lazy to count.) After sorting through them, I’ve decided that the following—written by a Mr. Paul Armstrong Dudikoff—was likely to receive the most interest from the readers. I’m almost tempted to lock the two of them, Ms. Archer-Dowd and Mr. Dudikoff, in a room together and let them slug it out.

The missive is as follows:

I’m all too familiar with the mentality displayed so overtly by Miss Archer-Dowd and, to a lesser degree, by Mr. David. It’s this remarkable knack for overanalyzing anything that has to do with children. What will children take away from Mulan? How will children be affected by Tinky Winky? There’s nothing new in this mindset. We’ve been seeing it for years. Protect the children. Insulate the children. Guard them from anything and everything that might have any sort of harmful effect. Back in the 1950s, it was exactly this kind of attitude that led to the destruction of EC Comics and the creation of the Comics Code. Pompous senators sat in their pompous chairs and browbeat poor Gaines and others about what their comics were doing to kids. It was disgusting.

It’s softening up America’s youth.

Then you saw it again the late 1960s and early 1970s when it came to Saturday morning cartoons. You had all these parents complaining that the classic cartoons, like Bugs Bunny and his pals, were too violent. That they were destroying kids’ minds. Except that these cartoons were the same ones that the same complaining parents had grown up with. It made no sense! Am I the only one who saw it made no sense? Because if the complaining parents grew up with the cartoons, then either the cartoons hadn’t destroyed their minds—in which case, what were they complaining about? Or else the cartoons had destroyed their minds—in which case, why should we listen to them because, y’know, they’re nuts. But no. They complained and crabbed, and not only did they get rid of all the great superhero Saturday morning cartoons, but they managed to get the great violence and action cut from Bugs Bunny cartoons.

We’ve finally managed to recover from that kind of animated destruction, thanks mostly to the efforts of the Warners cartoon unit with everything from the deliriously violent Tiny Toons to the hard-hitting Batman adventures. But still, the damage was done to an entire generation, and who knows when the pendulum might swing back again. If network executives allowed the butchering of classic Bugs Bunny cartoons, don’t think for a minute they wouldn’t hesitate to slice up more recent masterpieces if the pressure came down.

And why would this pressure come down? Same reason: The deliberate softening up of America’s youth.

There’s this crazy idea that kids need protection from violent images. It’s crazy. It’s nuts. Kids are made of tougher stuff than that, and overprotecting them is exactly the wrong thing we should be doing. It goes against nature itself, because nature is all about survival of the fittest. We want the fittest, toughest kids to reach maturity.

Parents—especially molly-coddling people like Archer-Dowd—complain that violent cartoons and comics have a negative effect on kids. That when they see people slugging each other, kids start to imitate that. Damned right they do, and they should! The bottom line is that it’s a tough, violent world out there, and the sooner kids are prepared to live in it, the better. If you ask me, cartoons need even more violence. And comic books have entirely too much talking. There should be more violence, more hitting, more destruction. Because that will breed three types of kids: The kids who are violent and hit. The kids who get hit and survive. The kids who get hit and don’t survive. It’s a win-win-win situation all around. The kids who become the most violent and destructive… these kids grow up to become your grunts, your ground-pounders. The tough guys, the guys who can handle the really awful jobs that no one else wants to do. The kids who get hit and survive, these become the leaders.

The ones who can take a hit and roll with it, defend themselves, and not let themselves get beaten down. As for the kids who get hit and don’t survive… who needs them? I mean, really? The wimps, the wusses, the lame-o’s, the losers. The future unemployed wasteoids who are going to spend their lives unemployed and on food stamps, draining our resources. If as kids they can’t handle a tussle, if they can’t defend themselves, if they just lie on the sidewalk and bleed, then we’re well quit of them when they’re still just kids.

Maybe this sounds cruel or harsh, but it’s nature’s way. Survival of the fittest, natural selection. And like it or not, we’re part of nature. So why aren’t we doing more to imitate nature’s ways?

It’s not just cartoons and comics, either. When I was a kid, we didn’t just have toys. We had toys that tested our very ability to survive.

Like Mr. Potato Head.

I look at Mr. Potato Head now, and it’s pathetic. You’ve got these little plastic slotted pieces that slide easily into this little plastic potato that comes with the kit. The protectors-of-children have taken a once-proud testing device of a child’s right to survive and reduced it to a baby toy.

When I was a kid, Mr. Potato Head was a lethal weapon. No self-respecting kid would have used some stupid plastic toy potato. We used real potatoes, dammit. You got a big baking potato out of the refrigerator or wherever your mother stashed them, and you stuck the eyes, the nose and the other parts into them. And the parts weren’t these wussy flat-edged things they are now. They were sharp. I mean sharp. The points on these things were lethal. When I was a kid, we had roving gangs of Mr. Potato Head freaks. We called ourselves the Tater Tots, and nobody messed with us, because if they did, we would yank out our Mr. Potato Heads, pull out the eyes or the mouth or the feet, and we’d use the pointed ends to great effect. We’d use the eye points to gouge out eyes, or the mouth points to nail someone’s tongue to the roof of their mouth, and so on. It was instructive and educational, and gave us a great feeling for anatomy. And we carried our Mr. Potato Heads with us until the things sprouted roots that were a foot long. And when I think of the cherished symbol of my childhood, and what they’ve done to that great toy… it makes me sick.

And Etch-a-Sketch. We had men’s Etch-a-Sketches when I was a kid. Nowadays the screens are made of this cheap and super-safe plastic. Not when I was a kid. No, we had screens made of glass.

Not only did the glass screens give us a better image, but if you broke the thing, there were shards all over the place. You could slice up yourself something fierce. You could die from that toy. And you know what? That which does not kill us, makes us strong.

Nowadays, there are special safety regulators who make sure that toys which shoot projectiles can’t put out a kid’s eye. They make sure that toys are made big enough that they can’t block a kid’s windpipe. Dammit, when I was a kid, we bought our toys and we took our chances! We learned to survive! We navigated the risky shoals of childhood and came out of it tougher and stronger for it.

But today’s parents are systematically depriving their children of those opportunities. Too many kids are surviving to adulthood without the toughening up that made us the superb generation we are.

More violence in cartoons and comics, the more brainless, the better.

More lethal toys to act as a means of weeding out those who are simply too stupid to survive.

That, my friends, is the ticket to a better and stronger America, and the Archer-Dowds of this country will never understand that. I can only hope that you do… before it’s too late.

(Paul Armstrong Dudikoff can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)

 

Turtle Power

Originally published April 16, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1326

“Look, mom! There’s a comic book of the Turtles, too!”

That, as it was related to me by the comic retailer who saw it, was how it went down in his store some years ago, when Turtle-mania was at its height. There was a young boy, maybe eight or nine, and he was apprising his mother of the big discovery. In addition to the Turtles movie, animated series, action figures, plush toys, sheets, bedspreads, pillow cases, towels, board games, mugs, and what-have-you… apparently, they’d also managed to put out a comic book that tied in with them as well.

I found this rather amusing, considering that the first real inkling of just how big a hit Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I had was when Carol Kalish almost grabbed my copy out of my hands.

When the ads first appeared for it, it looked to be an entertaining little book. It certainly seemed as if the creators, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, had managed to identify every then-hot commodity in comic books. You had teenagers thanks to such then-hot titles as New Mutants and Teen Titans. You had mutants, thanks to the X-books in general. Ninjas owed much of their popularity to Frank Miller’s Daredevil. And turtles…

Cripes, y’know… I never did figure out where that came from. I mean, I can’t help but think that the choice of animal was truly pivotal. I happen to think that cows are intrinsically funnier, but I guess it was just the cadence of it. Four two-syllable words, accent on the first syllable. It just flowed trippingly off the tongue. Plus they’re among the only animals who carry their own armor with them, so from a story point of view, it made sense.

The ads appeared in CBG, full page shots rendered in a hilarious Miller-esque style. There was just something so incredibly surreal seeing Miller’s style adapted to something so relatively mundane as a turtle, that I made a mental note for myself to pick up a copy when it came out.

Which was exactly what I did. I was out and about on a road trip in my capacity as assistant direct sales manager for Marvel Comics. I was visiting a store (I regretfully don’t remember which one) when I saw a copy of it sitting on the shelf. “Oh, is that out?” I said, which of course is always one of the dumbest questions one can ask about a comic that’s sitting right in front of you on the shelves. Because all the retailer has to do is say, “No.” Then you get to stand there, looking like a doofus, and say, “But… I see it right there.” To which the obvious response is, “Well, then why did you ask?”

Mercifully, the retailer did not respond that way to the idiot from Marvel. Instead he said, “Yeah. Do you want it?”

I offered to buy it, and he said, “No, don’t worry about it,” picked it up and handed it to me. Free copy. “Thanks,” I said. And I stuck it in my briefcase and didn’t think any more about it.

So there I was, back at my office at Marvel, and I was going through my briefcase when I found the comic. I decided to kick back for a few minutes and read it. Not a bad job, huh. You can actually be sitting around in your office, reading a comic book, and nobody’s going to get on you for it.

So Carol was wandering past my office, glanced in, and immediately bolted over to my desk and made a grab for the comic. I reflexively pulled the comic away from her reach and said, a bit defensively, “What?”

“Where did you get that?” she demanded.

“When I was on the road,” I said. “I got it from (whichever the hell store it was.) Just this past week.”

“It’s going for ten dollars,” she said.

I stared at the comic book. I had bent the cover back while reading it; quickly I smoothed it out so it didn’t become spine-rolled. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I was at a convention in Atlanta. They had it there for ten.”

I couldn’t believe it. I mean, it was funny. It was entertaining, certainly. But good heavens, I didn’t think it was going to spike that kind of popularity that quickly. I doubt the retailer did either; I don’t see him giving it away if he had.

It turned out that there were only a few thousand copies in existence, since that was all Eastman and Laird could afford to print. So not only did you have a comic with such a hilariously skewed concept that everyone who liked Frank Miller or X-Books (not to mention the massive turtle fan base) wanted to get their hands on a copy, but you couldn’t find the damn things. The laws of supply and demand don’t operate on a much purer basis than that.

The series’ popularity continued to escalate. And Eastman and Laird went from wide-eyed, excited fanboyishness to savvy businessmen almost overnight. I know, because I saw them at both ends of the spectrum in a relatively short time… and, as a side benefit, I wound up coming out looking like a total schmuck to a couple of Marvel editors because of it.

Now I don’t remember who suggested it first or how precisely it came about, cause it was a reeeeal long time ago. I don’t recall whether it was my bright idea, or whether Archie Goodwin floated it, or whether Kevin and Peter approached us, or what. But fairly early in the series’ history, there was a period of time, however brief, when Epic Comics was seriously thinking about picking up the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and publishing it.

As I said, I wish my recollection of how it came to be was a bit sharper. What I do remember was speaking to Eastman and Laird about the concept… and they couldn’t have been more excited about it. They were gleeful… they were, dare I say it, awestruck by the notion of Epic, a division of mighty Marvel, publishing their satirical title. They’d never dreamed that such a thing would be possible. Would they be interested, I asked, in my setting up a lunch meeting with Archie Goodwin. Yes, yes, absolutely, that would be great! Eastman and Laird told me.

So I did, and I gotta tell you, when Archie Goodwin, Jo Duffy, Eastman and Laird and I got together at a restaurant nearby the Marvel offices, I was so busy patting myself on the back I nearly tore my rotator cuff. Again, I don’t recall how I wound up in the middle of it, but the bottom line was that I was the one who had set up the face to face, and I was certain this was going to rebound to my benefit.

Except the Kevin and Peter who were seated across from Archie and Jo were not the same guys I had spoken with barely a month earlier. They were polite, but reserved. “So… what did you want to meet with us about?” they asked. Gone was the gosh-wow. Gone was the youthful enthusiasm. Archie and Jo cast a glance at me that basically said, Why are they asking why we’re meeting? Don’t they know? Well, if they knew, they kept it quite well to themselves. Rather than having lunch with two enthusiastic creators eager to work with Marvel (which was what they were when I spoke to them), Archie suddenly found himself doing a selling job. He talked about the series, about how much he liked it, about what he felt Marvel and Epic could bring to it. He also suggested that something else be done to distinguish the turtles from each other.

“They’ve got their weapons,” the guys said, “that’s all that’s needed.”

But we could give them different colored masks or belts. Make it that much easier to tell one from another.” said Archie. I believe Archie also suggested belt buckles with the first letters of their names on them.

Eastman and Laird smiled, nodded, but didn’t seem all that interested. It was as if they had bigger fish to fry. When lunch ended, they said they would think about it, which was a polite way of saying “No.” And Archie and Jo, equally politely, reamed me out because I was supposed to have done the leg work on the concept and I had thought, prior to the lunch, that we pretty much had a done deal.

Remember, this was back when Marvel was the king. Marvel didn’t come hat-in-hand to anybody, and yet we’d basically been blown off by two guys whose claim to fame was a black and white parody title that sold a fraction of the titles it was parodying. And it was my fault, and Archie and Jo were cheesed off with me, and I couldn’t blame em. It all became clear later, though, when some time after, it was announced that a high-powered packager had become associated with the Turtles and would be guiding them to fame, fortune, etc. No wonder they had suddenly been acting like they didn’t need Marvel. It was probably because they didn’t need Marvel. Which made me feel a little better, although not much. And of course, by that time they were sporting multicolored apparel and belt buckles with the first letters of their names on them.

So the Turtles when on to become a cottage industry for awhile, ensuring that an entire generation of kids would give art teachers grief by saying, “I thought Donatello was a turtle.” And kids would become familiar with Splinter and the Foot without any knowledge whatsoever that they were send-ups of Stick or the Hand. Maybe one Turtles fan in a thousand, probably, knew that the leaking radiation canister which had created the turtles had ricocheted first off the face of young Matt Murdock. The parody had outdone the original.

The characters moved so far away from their comic roots that, indeed, as I said in the beginning, there was the kid discovering that there was a comic book, too. And you know what else? It was in the fifty cent rack (obviously it was of more recent vintage than the black and white originals). And the mom looked at it and said, “Forget it, you have enough toys; you don’t need a comic book of it.” In other words, she would shell out (excuse the pun) money for the toys, but wouldn’t pay a fraction of that for a comic book which would encourage her kid to read. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: the comic you couldn’t give away. Considering how I got my first issue, I considered that somewhat ironic.

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

 

Lee Falk and The Phantom

Originally published April 9, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1325

Lee Falk never told me to my face how much he disliked my work on The Phantom, and for that I will always be grateful.

My association with the character, and my relatively brief tenure of working with Mr. Falk, began towards the end of my “day job” at Marvel Comics. I’d reached a point where it seemed as if becoming a full-time writer actually seemed an option. But I was aware of the adage about putting all of one’s eggs into one basket. In other words, I wasn’t sanguine about the concept of counting on Marvel as my sole source of comic book income. I figured, what if, y’know, a decade down the road, they get bored with me? Could happen.

However, since I was still Marvel’s direct sales manager, it would have been wholly inappropriate for me to solicit work from DC. It would not have been ethical for me to ask them for an assignment while still connected to Marvel in an office capacity, nor would it have been ethical for me to accept such an assignment for the same reason. But I had too much riding on the decision to become a full time freelancer. I was the primary means of support for a family of four (the Feinblatts, a very nice family of four in upstate Vermont whom I support for no particular reason), to say nothing of my own family of four (at the time.) I didn’t want to make a mistake.

So I decided to feel out DC in an unofficial capacity.

I contacted Bob Greenberger, a long-time friend who was an editor at DC. Because of our history which pre-dated either of us working for comic book companies, I knew I could speak with him in an off-the-record, unofficial capacity. I said, “Understand something: I’m not looking for any offers here, for obvious reasons. However, if I decided to go freelance as a writer, in your opinion, do you think that DC would be interested in tossing any assignments my way.” I figured that was safe enough without violating any ethical considerations. There was, after all, nothing unethical about posing a hypothetical.

“Absolutely, I think there would be a good deal of interest,” Bob replied. “Let me do some checking around.” He then called me back and said that then-editor Mike Gold was interested in getting together to do lunch. Nothing wrong with that, either. As long as Mike didn’t offer me anything and I didn’t accept, my hands were clean. It was walking a fine line, but I looked at it this way: If I were sitting in the fuselage of an airplane with my parachute, and I was checking over every inch of the parachute to make sure that the thing would open once I jumped, that wasn’t the same as actually jumping.

So we got together for lunch (an act which, in and of itself, was hardly untoward). And Mike told me that DC had lined up the rights to do The Phantom as a four-issue limited series. Mike, of course, knew the ethical considerations at stake as well, and he phrased the matter just right. He said, “Now we haven’t got a writer assigned to it yet. I’ve considered a few people. There’s one person in particular who I think would really be right for it… but he’s not available… at the moment. If, of course, that person becomes available, then he’s definitely got the assignment as far as I’m concerned. I’m not going to be making any final decision for a few weeks, however. No rush. I can wait to see what happens.”

That was, of course, all I needed to hear. I figured that once I had an in with DC on a creative basis, that I would be in a fairly tenable position so that, in the event I did wind up unable to write Incredible Hulk anymore, I might be able to land work at DC writing books about a version of Supergirl or a team of teen sidekicks, none of whom yet existed. Yes, that’s right: I was just that foresighted.

So, in a way, it was the Phantom who was partly responsible for my becoming a full-time writer. Because if I hadn’t known that series was going to be available… and if there hadn’t been a tacit understanding that it was going to be offered to me should I come “into play,” as it were… then I don’t know that I would have had the nerve to take the plunge and quit my day job.

On that basis, if nothing else, I was tremendously indebted to Mr. Falk. And I did everything I could to be as respectful and attentive to what he wanted for the series.

I didn’t have the opportunity to get together with him during the actual plotting stage, which might have helped to forestall subsequent problems. I had read the Phantom strip as a kid, but hadn’t seen it for some years. So to fresh myself and prep for the series, I did read some of the Phantom novels, which carried his name alone on the front but which, in fact, were collaborations with ghost writers who were acknowledged within the books themselves. (Ghost writers. How appropriate. Perhaps Ron Goulart is the genuine Ghost-Who-Walks.). I also learned that Mr. Falk had initially intended to maintain that tradition, believing that the comic book would only bear his name. Understandable: that was how it was done back when the Phantom had had his previous incarnation in Charlton Comics. DC, however, made clear to him that that wasn’t how it was done anymore.

Since it was four issues and I therefore had some pages to play with, I decided to develop parallel storylines, one which would feature the current incarnation of the Phantom (the 21st of the line) and a second story that would show one of the earlier generation’s Phantoms in his own swashbuckling adventure. The artist was, after all, going to be Joe Orlando, and having Orlando on the strip without giving him the opportunity to do pirates would have been nothing short of criminal.

There are only two experiences of my early career that I would genuinely describe as “heady.” One of them was writing an issue of Spider-Man which featured a framing sequence that was penciled by John Buscema and inked by John Romita, Sr. Two of my artistic idols collaborating on something I’d written; working in comics just didn’t get better than that. And the other was my involvement with the Phantom. Being involved with such a seminal character, one whose origin was so simple and yet so unique, being drawn by a true great such as Orlando, and being entrusted with this wonderful creation by no less than Lee Falk, whose unbroken run on writing the strip may very well be the single longest daily gig in history. It meant a lot to me.

And what happened? I screwed up.

Because I wrote a sequence wherein the Phantom yanked out his guns and shot-to-wound. He didn’t shoot to kill; that simply wasn’t the Phantom. But I thought absolutely nothing of having him wing some bad guys.

But that annoyed Mr. Falk, because as far as he was concerned, the Phantom only shot guns out of people’s hands. Never mind that, in reality, such an action would likely have far greater negative consequences. The Phantom’s bullet could mangle the guy’s hand, doing permanent damage. Or it might ricochet off the solid metal of the gun, either striking the bad guy in a more lethal area or even injuring innocent bystanders. If the hammer was cocked and the gun struck out of the hand, the gun could still go off. I, being too rooted in the real world, just figured that incapacitating the baddies by shooting-to-wound was what the Phantom would logically do. Hell, I hadn’t given him the guns. They were there. I figured, hell, let’s use ’em.

Nonetheless, if anyone had told me ahead of time that Mr. Falk wanted it otherwise, I would have done it in a heartbeat. Because he was Lee Falk, that’s why. His character. His concept. His rules. Not a problem. But nobody told me, and apparently no one ran it past him in the plot stages, and consequently he hated the final product because the Phantom wasn’t shooting guns out of people’s hands.

But I wouldn’t have known it—in fact, didn’t know it—when I finally got to meet Mr. Falk. He greeted me politely, seemed genuinely happy to meet me, and he autographed the original artwork for the cover of the first issue which I’d gotten from Joe Orlando, inscribing, “To Peter, Mit luv, Lee Falk, 1988.”) Joe Orlando signed it, too. It’s one of my prize possessions. (Dave Gibbons inked the cover. I should really have him sign it as well).

The thing was, at that point Lee Falk was 76 years old, and the creator of one of the best known characters in the world. One of the earliest and longest-lasting of the superheroes. I was a nobody whom he felt had screwed up a critical element of his baby. He would have been entirely within his rights to tell me exactly what he thought. But he saw how gosh-wow excited I was to meet him, and he was nothing but nice to me, because he knew that if he told me that he felt I’d gotten the Phantom wrong, I would have been crushed. They could have scraped my remains up with a spatula. As much as I loved the Phantom as a kid, as much as I am indebted to the character’s existence for helping spur me to going full time as a writer, it may be that moment—when Lee Falk treated me with simple, common courtesy, something that seems less common these days—that I owe him the most for.

So thank you, Mr. Falk. Mit luv.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. He wonders why the Phantom’s lengthy tenure hasn’t resulted in some potentially kick-ass team-up projects. The Phantom and Zorro. The Phantom and Sherlock Holmes. The Phantom and the Scarlet Pimpernel. The Phantom and Alan Quartermain. The Phantom and Captain Blood. Or my personal dream concept: The Phantom and Tarzan. Rumble in the jungle, anyone?)

 

Comics review: Age of Bronze

Originally published April 2, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1324

A couple of things…

I don’t usually do reviews, leaving such efforts to the extremely able talents of such folks as Tony Isabella, the man with two first names, one of which belongs to a famous queen. But there’s a relatively new title out (two issues on the stands as of this writing, possibly more by the time you read this) that I cannot recommend highly enough.

I hate to say that it’s the kind of title that we need, because that makes it sound like required reading or something that is similar anathema to most fans. Nevertheless, I think the title unquestionably falls into that category. And what I am speaking of is Age of Bronze: The Story of the Trojan War.

Although there are tons, I’m sure, of comics out there that their writers and/or artists feel passionately about, there are some that come across as a genuine labor of love. I’m not sure how one tells what those are, or if it’s even possible to define it as anything except the most subjective of perceptions. Astro City, for instance, seems a labor of love to me. Bone, I think, is. So was Sandman. Cerebus, I think, was at one time, but lately seems more labor than love, although lord knows I’ll stick with it until the end.

The first time I saw anything of Age of Bronze was when creator Eric Shanower, so brilliant with his work on the Oz books, was showing black and white photocopies of the first issue around at San Diego. I thought they were terrific, and even though Eric didn’t have a publisher for the series yet, I couldn’t wait to see the title finally being published.

Well… that’s overstatement. I mean, I guess I could wait, because obviously I had to. Fortunately enough, the wait is over, and we can only hope that the vagaries and hardships of publishing just about anything these days doesn’t plunge us all back into the waiting pool.

Not a lot of confusion as to what the series is about when one looks at the title. It’s exactly what it say sit is: The Story of the Trojan War. Unfortunately, there’s far too many folks to whom Trojan War suggested a prophylactic pricing battle, and if you say, “What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name, Homer?’” the most likely answer you’ll get is “D-oh!” Probably the only exposure many young people have had to the struggles of Troy, outside of school, would be a couple of episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess which focused on the conflict.

Nonetheless, The Iliad, The Aeneid, and the Odyssey (or, if you will, Trojan War, Trojan War II: The Final Conflict, and Trojan War III: The Voyage Home) remains one of the great epic tales of all times. The struggle that ensued around the most gorgeous woman of all time, Helen of Troy (the face that launched a thousand ships) features a dazzling cast including such timeless heroes as Paris, Achilles (who was stronger than arrows), Ajax (who was stronger than dirt), Odysseus, and—my personal favorite in the cast—the unheeded Cassandra. It even introduced common sayings such as “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,” although if the Trojans had looked a gift horse in the mouth, they would have seen all the Greeks hiding inside the Trojan horse and perhaps avoided a truly embarrassing defeat.

In addition to Homer and Virgil’s epic poems, the war inspired dramas by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (of the acclaimed joke about the sign in the Greek tailor shop, “Euripides pants, Eumenedes pants.”) as well as other tales. In the meantime, although remains of ancient Troy have been found, scholars disagree as to the nature of the war itself, and whether it was a series of smaller battles circa 1500 to 1200 BC, or one great war around the mid-1200s. Epic works such as Homer’s attempted to fuse myth and legend, and Shanower has undertaken no less a task. In some ways, it’s even more ambitious than all previous efforts since, according to Shanower in the letter column, “My goal is to present a complete version of the story, synthesized from the many versions of the legend, while making it as consistent as possible with the archaeological record.”

The first issue introduces the catalyst for the entire epic, young Paris who will eventually fall in love with Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta. His absconding with Helen back to Troy, and the ten-year siege subsequently laid against the city by Menelaus and his brother, Agamemnon, is the essence of the story which includes acts ranging from jealousy to pettiness (Achilles refused to take the field because he felt Agamemnon had insulted him; as a result, his best friend Patroclus was killed by Hector, whom Achilles later killed in revenge) to heroism.

It is an epic rich in material and potential, and Shanower appears prepared to mine it for all its worth. Shanower’s craft and attention to detail is peerless and, let’s face it: A story that survives for millennia has got to be worth hearing. Image Comics and publisher Erik Larsen are to be commended for giving Shanower the venue in which to tell it (although, for obvious reasons, the inclusion of a pronunciation guide gave me a bit of a personal giggle.)

I have no idea how this black and white, $2.95 package with no superheroes and no women with pneumatic breasts (although there is a hot sex scene in issue #1) is going to do on today’s market. But if you ask me (which no one actually ever does, but that’s the joy of the column: Dispensing unasked-for advice) retailers should be supporting this title and fans should be buying it. Kind of a symbiotic thing, don’t'cha know. If the stores don’t carry it, or carry it in sufficient quantities, the fans won’t buy it. If the fans don’t ask for it or buy it, the stores don’t carry it. So I’m telling everyone: Get this book. This is a series that definitely deserves to be seen through to its conclusion. Besides, I’m being selfish here. I’ve waited this long to see the book finally get into print, so naturally it’s in my interest to see it have a long and successful shelf life.

Eric Shanower. Age of Bronze. Buy it. Read it. Enjoy it. Pass it on to your kids. Use it to get good grades in literature and Greek mythology classes. Whatever.

* * *

DC has hired former Marvel editor Matt Idelson to begin with the company March 22. The hiring prompted Denny O’Neil, who will be overseeing Idelson’s joining the Bat-team, to say, “I could tell after 15 minutes’ conversation that Matt’s goals are the same as ours—to do quality material and have fun along the way.”

This amused me, because it prompted me to start envisioning the interviews with people who didn’t get the slot.

“So tell me, editorial candidate: What kind of comics do you want to produce?”

“Crap. Unadulterated crap. I want to oversee comics that appeal to the lowest common denominator. I want to flood the market with stories that are badly written and badly drawn. Stories that are incomprehensible, that say nothing new or provide anything except another opportunity to separate kids from their money.”

“Uhmm… okay… and how do you see your responsibilities as editor in terms of handling the job itself.”

“To be a miserable, unhappy, control freak who is determined to make working with me such an unappealing experience that everyone who comes into contact with me will say, Good God, that guy’s no fun at all.’”

Yeah, I laughed about that… until I realized there are editors out there who fit that description. Then it didn’t seem so funny anymore…

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