Peter David's Blog, page 86

Things that drive Peter nuts, 1997 edition

Originally published April 25, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1223

And now, for no discernable reason whatsoever, a list of things that drive me nuts. In no particular order, they are:

New technology.  I love my laserdisc player.

Then again, I also loved my record player.

But then compact discs came along, and my record player became obsolete because I couldn’t get records anymore.

Now, all of a sudden, manufacturers are trying to foist a new format called DVD, which is designed to appeal to laserdisc owners—and, obviously to try to replace laserdiscs.

No. Uh uh. Forget it.

I’ve got a library of laserdiscs and my Pioneer laserdisc player.

I don’t want to change.

I will not change.

I will not support this DVD thing. And they’d better not stop manufacturing laserdiscs or I’m coming after somebody.

I don’t know who yet.

I’m not sure where.

Could be an exec.

Could be you.

Yes, that’s right, I might go so berserk that I attack innocent CBG readers on the off chance that they supported DVD and made my life that much more miserable. So, save money—and save yourself.

* * *

Out of Order Artists. Most of the comics I write, I write them using what’s called the “Marvel style.”

As opposed to writing a story full script (which details a panel by panel breakdown, and all the dialogue within each panel), when I write a story Marvel style, it basically reads like a short story written in present tense. This story is given to the artist, who then breaks the story down visually. The pages are then sent back to me in photocopy form.

I script them. That is to say, I write the dialogue, indicate balloon placement on the art pages, and send it back to Marvel so that the letterer uses it as a guide for actually lettering the comic. Usually when the art pages come in, the editors want me to script the pages and turn them around as quickly as possible.

And every so often, I will get an artist who makes this impossible. How? Because he won’t pencil the pages in order. If the editor calls me and says, “I got in five pages,” silly me. I think this means that I’m going to get pages one through five. No. I get pages 1, 5, 9, 15, and 21.

It’s impossible to get any sort of dialogue flow that way. You can’t segue from one page to the next because you don’t know what the next page is going to be. Particularly if the artist has, in addition to handing in odd chunks, decided to make changes to the story as he goes. In that event, you simply don’t have a prayer of scripting anything coherent.

So you sit there and wait for more pages to come in, and meanwhile the book falls further behind on deadlines, putting that much more strain on the inker, letterer and colorist.

* * *

Mystery Science Theater 3000. Make no mistake, I’m a fan of the show. In fact, Bob Greenberger, Mike Friedman and I perform Mystery Trekkie Theater 3000 every year at a convention called “Shore Leave” in Maryland, during which we rip an old episode of Star Trek to shreds.

The problem is, thanks to MST3K, I now find myself making fun of all kinds of movies, whether they’re good or not. For instance: I love The Empire Strikes Back. Always have. But when I saw it the other day, I kept making wisecracks for the amusement of friends sitting nearby (who either genuinely thought I was funny, or else were just too polite to say that I was ruining the movie for them).

For instance, when the Admiral walks into Vader’s quarters and Vader is seated in that big egg-like platform of his—the one where he’s only visible from the waist up—the Admiral tells Vader that the asteroid field is making it impossible to find the Millennium Falcon. Vader responds with something like, “Asteroids are not my concern, Admiral. I want that ship!” And in a deep Vader-like voice, I piped up, “And never interrupt me while I’m on the toilet again!”

Or the part where the imprisoned Chewbacca is howling as loud, piercing, disruptive sounds fill the room. And, adopting a Londo Mollari voice, I said, “Narn Opera,” a joke only Babylon 5 fans will get.

Or the part where Luke has shown up to rescue his friends and Leia, as she is being dragged off camera, shouts, “Luke, it’s a trap!” To which I shouted back, “What’d you say? It’s a what?” And Leia obligingly repeats, “It’s a trap!”

Odd. I’ve been seeing a lot of films alone lately. I wonder if there’s a connection.

* * *

Canon Computer Systems. I have a Canon Notejet 486. It’s a laptop computer with a built in printer. I’ve had it for several years. It broke.

To say I got zero support from Canon is to understate the problem.

There is absolutely no local place where I can get it fixed.

The Canon office from which I purchased it is gone, with no forwarding phone number. And no one will handle a Canon. Even Canon won’t handle Canon.

Since the machine is no longer under warranty, and since I didn’t have any sort of extended plan (possibly because it wasn’t offered), Canon refuses to handle the repairs.

The only place I can get it fixed is in California. I have to ship it to them and, since they handle repairs for the entire country, it’ll take at least a month before I have it back.

* * *

Truncated Oscar Speeches. It takes years to get a movie made. Years. And it bugs the hell out of me when the orchestra cuts in after thirty seconds, interrupting the speeches.

The obvious reason is to stop the show from running long. Well, they have that stupid rule in place and the latest broadcast ran three and a half hours. I suggest that the producers either bite the bullet and cut the show down to announcing the best actor, best actress and best picture, and that’s all. Or else they give up and let the show go four hours or more.

This is the age of VCRs; if people on the East Coast don’t want to stay up past midnight, let ‘em tape it.

I loved it when Cuba Gooding, Jr., endeavored to shout above the orchestra in accepting the Best Supporting Actor award.

The audience only encouraged it, jumping to their feet and applauding as Gooding dueled the musicians and pretty much won. I swear, if by some miracle one of my screenplays (I have six unproduced on hand, in case anyone’s interested) was ever Oscar nominated, I’d come armed with a small bullhorn.

As a side note, boy, am I kicking myself that I didn’t tape that opening montage with Billy Crystal in all those films. How the hell long did it take to put all that together? Best opening ever.

* * *

PBS Drives. Hardly an original observation, but this is really getting out of control.

In my neck of the woods, I can cruise past three different PBS stations throughout the day and never once see any programming. Just pledge drives. And whenever there’s anything I want to see, it’s unwatchable.

I wanted to see the Riverdance concert. Couldn’t watch it. Fifteen minutes of program, ten minutes of pledge drive. If PBS is trying to raise money, they’re succeeding. I wound up buying the videotape. My local tape store made money.

* * *

Bad movies become tolerable on TV. The reason this drives me nuts is because I’m not entirely sure why this is the case.

Films which I thought were incredibly disappointing in the theater, ranging from Judge Dredd to the lame submarine comedy Down Periscope—films I could barely sit through the first time—I now find eminently tolerable on cable.

Has TV so scaled down our expectations that we simply don’t care whether the programs are any good?

* * *

Batman and Robin. Is it just me, or is this the worst trailer I’ve ever seen for a Batman movie? Think about the adrenalin rush, the simple power of the trailer for the original Batman movie. The visuals, the dialogue, the mood all crackled—and it didn’t even have music to drive it.

And now look what we’ve got. Batman always looks constricted in his costume. But he’s Baryshnikov compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, clomping along in a costume that makes him look like Robofridge. Furthermore, they managed the impressive feat of presenting Uma Thurman in a manner in which she doesn’t look gorgeous. The dialogue uttered during the trailer was achingly awful (okay, okay, the line about Superman was cute—but that’s it). The march towards doping up the Batman movie series continues unabated. If Batman and Robin features “Bam” and “Zowie” superimposed over the fight scenes, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

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

 

Online Identities, Part 2

Originally published April 18, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1222

(Editor’s note: Last week, Peter shared his online run-in with Flash Gordon and Wonder Girl, their online names changed to protect them from further embarrassment. This week: More online anecdotes.)

I was on America Online late one night. It has been a bit easier to get on recently, perhaps because so many people have given up on the service that it’s made some more room.

I ran into one of the actors from Babylon 5, hiding under a fake name. He ID’d himself to me since he knows my online name, and suggested we head over to the Babylon 5 chat room to see if there were any fans of the show there. (I say “he” for convenience’s sake; it wasn’t necessarily a he.)

So we went over to the chat room and, sure enough, there were about a dozen B5 fans there.

They wouldn’t respond to us.

They were completely involved in some sort of online role playing game in which they were pretending to be B5 characters. Try as we might, we could not get their attention at all. After about five minutes of talking to them and getting no response, we gave up and left.

Of course, they didn’t know it was us. They didn’t necessarily have any reason to, although my screen name is generally known (God knows I get enough “Instant Message” hails whenever I log on) and his was easy enough to figure out if one gave it any thought. But the fans were too busy with pretending they were B5 characters to care about two intruders.

So I consider that amusingly ironic. A roomful of fans who were so caught up in their own version of Babylon 5 that they never knew two people connected with the real item were there.

* * *

Presented for your consideration: The bizarre and strange case of “Jews Harp” (not his real name, but actually amusingly close.)

Jews Harp, a college student, has garnered a reputation for himself on the net—particularly rec.arts.comics.marvel—of being a die-hard Rob Liefeld fan.

If I were Liefeld, Harp would be exactly the sort of fan I wouldn’t want, because as he elevates Liefeld with one hand, Harp also attempts to tear down, destroy and insult everything and anything that does not fawn over Liefeld or over Harp himself.

He’s: burned more bridges than Irwin Allen; insulted a score of writers and artists (including myself) in all manner of ways; considered all opinions to be merely opinions and subject to argument—except his own, which were indisputable fact by dint of being his opinions; and heaped vitriol on fans with such abandon that he even accused one female fan of routinely performing sex acts upon pros while, at the same time, holding himself up as a bastion of considerate behavior towards women.

Harp was so over-the-top, so disagreeable, so “out there,” as it were, that it was difficult to believe he could even be real.

And then it began to get interesting.

Because someone on the Internet (also going under a fake name, which we’ll call Tiberius) announced that, in fact, Jews Harp was a complete hoax.

According to Tiberius, there was a genuine Harp, all right. He was a college student, as was generally known. But ostensibly he had little-to-no interest in comics whatsoever. Tiberius stated that he and three other people fabricated a persona for Harp, with his cooperation. The persona was to consist of the ultimate “fan geek,” an obnoxious troll who considered Rob Liefeld God and everyone else cannon fodder. He’d be belligerent, insulting, and nigh-impossible to deal with. The group of four took turns writing responses, and the real Harp would post them through his account so there would be consistency.

But Tiberius claimed that he’d had enough. The hoax had gone too far, and he had watched, appalled, as others in his group had become far more vitriolic and nauseating in their conduct than the initial gag had ever intended to be. And he was taking it upon himself to shut it down, blow the whistle on it so that no more people would be hurt. The Jews Harp personality which had been assailing everyone for a year was not real, said Tiberius. It was just an amalgam, an incarnation of every nightmare fanboy anyone had ever encountered, all rolled into one: Sidney Mellon’s idiot cousin.

Tiberius’ confession seemed to explain so much. Harp had been such a yutz, it was easy to believe that he had been a pastiche. Furthermore, Harp’s own biography as related in various posts seemed to contradict itself from time to time; the notion that four people were contributing to it would explain those conflicting statements. Some fans were outraged, some amused, still others suspicious. Nonetheless, it seemed to be over.

It wasn’t.

Because Jews Harp came roaring back, stating that Tiberius was, in fact, the one perpetrating the hoax. That Harp himself was perfectly legit and not a quartet at all. That his opinions were entirely his own, that no one was feeding him information, and that Tiberius was trying to undercut him out of spite and nastiness.

This prompted counter postings from Tiberius, who addressed Harp by another name entirely and told him to knock it off, that it was over.

At that point no one knew what to think. Was Jews Harp real, a genuine insult-artist and Liefeld fan-geek extraordinaire? Or was he a fake, a figment of a quartet of pranksters? Was Tiberius a genuinely apologetic participant in a prank that had gotten out of hand? Or was he a master hoaxer himself, so fed up with Harp’s tirades that he decided to try to undercut Harp’s very existence?

The answer is: Beats the hell out of me. If Tiberius is on the level, then it must be very frustrating for him to try and cleanse his conscience only to have fans so enamored of the fraud that they refused to believe the truth. And if Tiberius did fabricate his “confession,” then it’s an absolutely masterful gag—because he convinced some people, at least, that one of the most irritating personalities on the net does not, in fact, exist.

As they say in bad SF movies: There may be some things that man is simply not meant to know.

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

 

R.I.P. Peter David

No, not me. A different one. And if you think some of my friends were startled to see my name at the top of an announcement that “Peter David” had died in a car crash, I gotta tell you it’s inCREDibly creepy to see your own name in that headline.

The Peter David who has left us was an editor and writer at “The Economist,” and I actually spoken to him one time. You see, Mr. David had written a book called “Triumph in the Desert” about Operation Desert Storm. And a number of people had come up to me at conventions asking me to sign it. Even though the bio wasn’t mine. Even though the photograph obviously wasn’t me. But people kept presenting it to me.

So I decided to try and get in touch with the guy to tell him about it. It wasn’t hard; I found the main number for “The Economist,” called, and asked for his office.

I was put through and a woman with a crisp British accent said, “Peter David’s office.”

I said, “May I speak to Peter David?”

“Who may I say is calling?”

“Peter David.”

Without the slightest hesitation, she said, “Hold on, please.”

Moments later a deep British voice said, “This is Peter David.”

I said, “Mr. David, you don’t know me, but my name is also Peter David, and I’m also a writer. And I thought it would amuse you to know that people keep asking me to autograph your book, ‘Triumph in the Desert.’”

And he replied, “Would you be the reason that people keep asking me to sign ‘Star Trek’ novels?”

We chatted for a few minutes and this guy was so nice to a total stranger. I wish I could actually have met the guy.

This sucks.

PAD

Let’s Get “Smash”-ed

Since it’s not exactly genre, we haven’t discussed the new series “SMASH” which will be wrapping up this coming Monday. So I figure, What the hell. Let’s do that.

First of all, I’m kind of astounded that the series got on the air in the first place. It’s a show for which Kathleen and I are the target audience, and that’s NEVER a promising endeavor. The ratings for the Tonys indicate that the vast majority of America doesn’t give a damn about real Broadway, so why in the world would they be captivated by a TV series about made-up Broadway? If they want to see something on TV about performers struggling for their shot, they’ll put on “The Voice” (the show’s lead-in) or “American Idol” where it’s involving real people, or at least nominally real. Judging by the ratings, viewers more or less haven’t embraced the show, for those reasons and others, and yet NBC has given it a second season pick-up. Which is good, because we’ve been enjoying the hell out of what has been remarkably schizoid ride. And I mean that in a good way.



In case you haven’t been watching it–and the odds are sensational that you haven’t–the series focuses on some hardy souls mounting a musical about the life of Marilyn Monroe. Produced by Morticia Addams and directed by Commodore Norrington, the show is unfortunately titled “Bombshell,” a hideous name because you just know that sticking the word “Bomb” into a title is catnip for reviewers. If the show’s in trouble, the headlines write themselves.

The cast is populated by a insanely marvelous combination of TV, movie and Broadway vets, all of whom have wildly different acting styles because of their varied backgrounds. Not to mention Katharine McPhee who, as an actress, is a wonderful singer. The notion that there is ANY competition between her “Karen” and the character of “Ivy” (performed with Emmy-worthy zest by Megan Hilty) is ludicrous since Ivy is so clearly better suited for the role that they had to develop artificial story reasons why she isn’t first choice. Consequently the show’s tone lurches wildly from episode to episode and sometimes scene to scene.

If this sounds like I’m down on the show, I’m not. There is literally nothing else like it on television right now. First of all, the original songs written for “Bombshell” are insanely catchy and hummable, far more so than I’ve seen in quite a few musicals these days. They also find ways to shoe-horn in various covers of pop songs; if Karaoke didn’t exist, they’d have had to invent it for this series. And then there’s the occasional flight of total demented fancy including a recent Bollywood number called “1001 Nights” which was undoubtedly McPhee’s best performance to date (my God, is she limber. Go check it out on Hulu if you don’t believe me.)

And then there are the guest stars, some of whom are positively meta. When the producers decide “Bombshell” requires a movie actress to give it some star power, they bring in Uma Thurman playing more or less a fictionalized version of herself, which is what “Smash” needed in order to try and bump the ratings up. In a recent episode, Ivy looks longingly at a photograph and I found myself wondering why she had a picture of Bernadette Peters in her dressing room, before I remembered that show business legend Peters did a guest shot as Ivy’s show business legend mother.

The production of the show within a show is rife with sexual hook-ups and romantic turnabouts for pretty much every single person in the cast who isn’t relegated to the chorus. Which all seemed a bit much to me, but Kathleen–a Yale educated stage manager–assures me that it’s remarkably true to life in that regard. If I had any single problem with the show, it’s that oftentimes the developments are so meticulously set up that you’ve got more telegraphing than Samuel Morse. Uma Thurman’s “Rebecca” makes a point of repeatedly mentioning having a peanut allergy and that she only drinks smoothies. You don’t introduce that piece of info for no reason, and the only reason is the obvious reason: she ingests peanuts via a smoothy and she’s out of the show.

So now, with the season finale coming up, we are left with two huge questions: who poisoned Rebecca, and who is going to wind up playing Marilyn? Well, it’s easy to say something’s predictable after the fact, so I’ll go out on a limb three days early and say that it was “Ellis,” the smarmy, unctuous assistant to Morticia (or, if you insist, Hollywood royalty Anjelica Huston.) Why? Because there was a scene where he was in a bar with Morticia and Morticia’s boyfriend (and investor) with a shady past, complaining that Rebecca was wrong for the role and was dragging down the show. Shady boyfriend then announces he’s going to make sure that the tipsy Ellis is gotten safely to a car. He leaves. Why? I figure it’s because he slipped a bag of peanuts that he got from the bar to Ellis and told him to do what was necessary.

So then who winds up playing Marilyn? Katharine McPhee, and here’s why: because the standard show business drama trope is that the young, innocent naif (which is what “Karen” is) gets into show business, gets treated like a kicked puppy, but then inevitably develops the stamina, the determination, and–frankly–the sense of dirty pool required to make it to the top. If Hilty’s character, who is in every way more fit for the role, winds up getting it, McPhee’s character has no arc and no pay-off. My guess is that Karen finds out that Ivy had a one night stand with Karen’s boyfriend and this is the final straw that causes the talons to come out that she will use to then claw her way to the leading role. And she will do something appalling to attain her goal because hell hath no fury. Again, it’s the standard trope. Anne Baxter blackmailing her way into stardom in “All About Eve” or Elizabeth Berkley simply shoving the lead down a flight of stairs in “Showgirls.” That’s what I think is going to happen here. All you’ll need to complete it is Norrington saying to her, “You’re going out there a nobody, but you’ve GOT to come back a star!” Which could make for an interesting second season since McPhee’s on top and she has to guard her back from Hilty.

And if this all sounds incredibly melodramatic and soap opera-ish, well…it is. And I’m still there for it every week. What can I say? I’m a sucker for musicals.

It is, however, worth noting that there already really was a musical about Marilyn Monroe. It bombed. So staking one’s fortunes to a musical about Monroe–which is what both the fictional producers of “Bombshell” and the real producers of “Smash” have been doing–is a risky endeavor. Especially since everyone knows how her life ended, and it wasn’t happy. Although if you want to read a compelling dramatization of that, I’d point you to “Bye Bye Baby” by Max Allan Collins, an entry in his superb “Nate Heller” detective series. Now THAT would make a great movie. Or maybe a Broadway show.

PAD

Online Identities, Part 1

Originally published April 11, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1221

Once upon a time, one had to be face to face in order to have social intercourse. (Remember, kids, be careful when having social intercourse: When you talk to a person, it’s as if you’re talking to everyone that person ever spoke to.) Now, however, you have the solitude of computer terminals, and are able to hide behind fake names and even fake locations.

And yet the anonymity can have curious and fascinating spin-offs. Herewith an intriguing anecdote of the new age of Isolinear Isolation. However I have changed the names of those involved, either to protect them from further public embarrassment, or else because they’re so obnoxious that I don’t want to give them more of the notoriety that their conduct clearly indicates they crave.

It was about 6 in the morning on Sunday and I had worked all night. But I was too awake to sleep, and so I decided to jump onto AOL and see if anyone was around.

I found a chat room where a group of comics fans had gathered. As is customary, everyone was using fake names. I started talking with one of them, while at the same time watching some of the cross-talking going on.

(Keep in mind once more: I am using different names than the real participants were using, while trying to keep the flavor of those actually involved. In doing so I’m probably going to wind up using names of other AOL participants who genuinely go by those handles. To paraphrase the old warning: Any resemblance to the names of actual fake people is purely coincidental.)

One of the participants was Wonder Girl. Wonder Girl, as I noticed in various cross-talk comments, was about fourteen and she lived in the Bronx. Also present was Robin, who was doing some heavy-duty flirting with Wonder Girl. Wonder Girl was being coy in response. Robin wanted to go out with Wonder Girl, and Wonder Girl replied that she had a boyfriend: Flash Gordon.

“I’d fight him for you!” declared Robin zealously. This went on for a bit, and then Wonder Girl announced that she’d be right back, because she was getting a phone call. Moments later she said, “Guess what. That was Flash Gordon. Robin, you said you’d fight him for me. So he’s coming online, so you two can fight it out. Well, I have to go to the supermarket now. Bye.”

And Wonder Girl vanished.

And, about ninety seconds later, Flash Gordon materialized, spoiling for a fight. “Who wants to fight me!” he thundered. “I’m looking for the guy who was interested in Wonder Girl. Come on. Who was it? Who wants to fight me for her?” Robin the Gutless Wonder had lapsed into sudden silence, which was remarkable enough in itself. Who in the world is concerned about getting into a fight—in cyberspace? What was Flash Gordon going to do? Punch out Robin? I mean, forget about walking-the-walk; if you can’t talk-the-talk in cyberspace, where can you?

But Robin’s sudden reticence was secondary to the obvious sham of what I was seeing. And as Flash Gordon continued to look for a fight, I said to the guy I was speaking to, “Do you believe this silliness with Flash Gordon? Who does he think he’s fooling?”

My comments caught Flash’s eye. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

I said, “Oh, come on. It’s perfectly obvious that you and Wonder Girl are the same person. That there is no Wonder Girl.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he declared.

“Then where is she?” I asked.

“She had to go out food shopping,” Flash informed me.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been so blunt. I was dealing with a teenager here. But I hadn’t slept all night and my patience and judgment weren’t what they should have been. Nor did I really, fully understand what I was getting into. I was simply carried along with the flow of the conversation, rather than really dwelling on the impact I was about to have on the person on the other end.

I said, “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that a teenage girl had to go out food shopping. At 6 in the morning. On a Sunday. In the Bronx.”

“There was probably something she needed,” said Flash Gordon.

“At six in the morning? On a Sunday? In the Bronx?”

“That’s how girls are,” Flash claimed defensively.

I said, “Aw, come on, Flash. You’re asking me to believe that this girl just happens to be talking about you, and then you just happen to call, and then she just happens to leave as you just happen to get online? Don’t you see what a stretch that is?”

“She knew she could leave because I was going to fight on her behalf and take on the guys who were coming on to her,” explained Flash.

“Y’know, that’s pretty odd, Flash,” I replied. “Most teenage girls I know, they would have stayed to watch their boyfriends mix it up with a guy to fight for their honor. But not Wonder Girl, no. She goes food shopping. At 6 in the morning. On a Sunday. In the Bronx.” And other people, noticing the cross-chat, started to comment on the unlikelihood of this as well.

“We’re two different people,” Flash maintained forcefully. “Check our profiles. You’ll see. There’s different profiles.”

Profiles, you have to understand, are descriptions that people create for themselves when they come online. They have no necessary adherence to reality at all. Nonetheless I checked out both Flash Gordon’s and Wonder Girl’s profiles. Each of them provided detailed information, and each of them also talked about each other in glowing, romantic terms. They also both mentioned a third person, Erik the Red, as a mutual best friend. I came back and said, “Yup. Two different profiles. You’re right.”

“You see?” said Flash, triumphant.

“Strange, though,” I observed, “that there are identical grammatical mistakes and misspellings in both, which would indicate they were created by the same person.”

And Flash Gordon freaked out.

He began doing the computer equivalent of screaming, typing entirely in caps, “WE’RE NOT THE SAME PERSON! WE’RE TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE!” Profanity-ridden postings screeched across the computer screen.

Now as I noted, I was sleep deprived. I was even starting to drift off a bit, the main thing keeping me awake being the clattering of the keyboard. But this snapped me back to full wakefulness. This was no longer a mental exercise. This was a complete meltdown. A line had been crossed from chat into psychodrama. Realizing that Flash Gordon had lost it, other people in the chat room started to move in for the kill, and I immediately started reining them back, sending them private messages saying, “We better give him some space, fast.” Publicly I typed as quickly as I could, “Okay, Flash, you’re two different people. Fine. You win. I’m sorry I thought otherwise. My mistake.” And Flash seemed to calm back down.

I had never seen anything like it. It had caught me completely off-guard. And later one of the AOL regulars explained it to me as not being uncommon at all. The term for it is “Loner’s Syndrome.”

Imagine yourself as a classic misfit. You have almost no friends, no social life. You’re an outcast, you can’t get a date, you’re socially inept, girls won’t give you the time of day. In short, you’re what I was like all during junior high and the first two years of high school.

And so you flee to the last bastion of societal anonymity. You go to AOL.

And there you create an identity for yourself. Brave. Heroic. Dashing.

But that’s not enough. You want the folks on AOL to think you’re a cool guy. That you’re da bomb (and boy, isn’t it funny how that phrase didn’t exist in a positive connotation when I was a kid, when we were concerned about someone dropping Da Bomb). How do you come across as cool to the other guys? Easy. By having a babe for a girlfriend.

So you create a girlfriend. An aggressive flirt, coy and teasing, who only has eyes for you. Makes the other guys jealous, and elevates you because, hey, there must be something great about you if this hot chick considers you her one-and-only. And you also fabricate a best friend, just to show you can hang with the guys as well. In short, you create an entire social life for yourself—and it’s just you.

On the one hand I can sit here in judgment, separated by several decades from the state of mind that would lead to such actions. On the other hand, I can’t help but note that I create characters for a living, and if there had been computers when I was a teenager, I might have done the same thing.

And so, the moral of the story is: If you’re going to make up other identities, be a little more slick about it.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Letters can also be addressed there to his eldest son, Rex, his hot mistress, Gabrielle, his talking dog Cuddles, and, of course, Skippy the Jedi Droid. Next week: more online adventures.)

 

It’s About Bloody Time

I’ve been saying for ages that I didn’t buy for a minute the notion that President Obama had any problems with gay marriage. Not for a moment did I think that a guy whose parents, less than half a century ago, would not have been allowed to marry in some states, would believe that legally keeping people apart who love each other was an acceptable way of doing things. But I think that he was concerned about the political backlash. Me, I think he should have said screw the backlash and just been honest. Then again, that’s easy for me to say, because I wouldn’t have had to worry about going all-in on my political ambitions with this issue. He probably felt he needed to save his political capital for health care, which we all know is rock solid steady and couldn’t possibly be overturned or set aside.

In any event, whether Joe Biden’s honest answer to the question was a trial balloon or simply forced Obama’s hand, it was obvious that his foot-dragging toward an inevitable “reversal” of his “evolving” opinion was going to have to happen sooner rather than later. Based on surveys, the GOP is (once again) on the wrong side of this issue, and the people who pointlessly hate the idea of gay marriage were likely not voting for Obama anyway. So in theory nothing is lost and some good will is gained. The other bit of timing that I liked was that it came in conjunction with North Carolina’s obscenity of an anti-marriage, anti-civil union amendment (which also impacts heterosexuals, so brilliant move there.) North Carolina comes across as so stupid, you’d almost want to joke that it should marry Arizona, except of course that would be illegal. One North Carolina politico claimed that they hoped this would send a message to the rest of the country. Well, I think the President of these United States sent a message right back: everyone who voted for it was wrong.

My one regret is that Obama basically said that it’s still a state issue. I mean, yeah…he’s right. But so was slavery, once upon a time. I wouldn’t have minded him putting forward a case for possibly taking it to the national level. I don’t pretend to understand these things, but I wonder if a class action suit in North Carolina by disenfranchised gays AND straights would be the ticket to a Supreme Court ruling.

PAD

Skippy the Jedi Droid

Originally published March 28, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1219

And now, in celebration of the 20-year anniversary of Star Wars, we present the untold story (well, untold until now) of the single most important individual in the entire trilogy. The individual upon whom the whole story has hinged. And yet, his praises have gone unsung. There are no books about him, no background on him, no notice of him whatsoever in any description of the main points of Star Wars. Hearken to the following tale (a commentary on the series—which is ®, TM, and © Lucasfilm Ltd. and not confirmed by anyone in that organization):

A Long Time Ago… in a Galaxy Far, Far Away…

Star Wars

Chapter 3.9

Skippy the Jedi Droid

The Emperor thought he had managed to eliminate the last of the Jedi Knights. However, he was wrong.

There was one left, and his name was Obi-Wan Kenobi. Now, Obi-Wan lived on a desolate world called Tatooine and he had gone there for two reasons—for he knew that, on this apparently barren world, there were two potential Jedi Knights left. One was Luke Skywalker, son of the famed Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan’s former pupil.

The other, however, Obi-Wan did not know. He only knew that there was another Jedi on the surface of Tatooine but he could not pinpoint the mysterious knight. It was tremendously frustrating for Kenobi, for, being a master of The Force, he had thought it would be easy. But it was not. Long did he search Tatooine, through an assortment of wretched hives of scum and villainy, through nauseating conclaves of loathing and depravity, and through many other places of equally tortured syntax.

But nowhere could he find the mysterious other Jedi Knight. There were times when he felt that he was almost on top of him, but he would look around, check the crowds of alien beings all around him, and be unable—for all his powers of The Force—to locate him.

Little did he suspect that the mysterious Jedi was literally under his nose. For the one he was searching for was, as we’ve already mentioned:

Skippy the Jedi Droid

Now, Skippy was a humble R2 unit, one of the older models. And he was not entirely certain when he had become self-aware. Artificial intelligence was nothing new for droids, of course. Droids could think, feel, respond. They could quake in fear or charge forward in bravery. They could do anything that living, breathing beings could do, except, of course, send freakin’ e-mail or copy a freakin’ file. But we covered that last week, so let’s press on.

For all the talents and abilities that droids possessed, Skippy was—something more. Something different. When he tried to convey this to his peers, his fellow machines, all of the other droids used to laugh and call him names. They never let poor Skippy join in any droid-type games.

But he knew. He knew that he had something within him—some ability that was beyond anything to which most droids aspire. He did not always feel it; it came to him one day while he was simply cruising around, serving drinks for the notorious gangster Jabba the Hutt. Jabba was an angry and vicious master, and many droids who worked for him knew great punishment. Skippy, like any other droid, wanted to avoid that.

Yet it seemed as if punishment would be his the day that a passing bounty hunter banged into Skippy while Skippy was carrying a drink order to Jabba. Skippy knew that the moment that that drink hit the ground, he was likely a goner. The moment of the falling drink seemed to extend into infinity, and, in that endless moment, Skippy—reached out. Reached out with his mind, with his feelings.

And the drink, which had tipped off the little shelf in Skippy’s head—righted itself.

Instinctively, Skippy knew that this was impossible. The drink had been overturned, the center of gravity off. There was no way that the drink could conceivably have been prevented from falling.

Yet it had been.

It happened so quickly that no one else noticed. Skippy quietly served the drink to Jabba and went on about his duties.

But that night, while everyone was sleeping, he tried to move something—nothing major, just a rock. Nothing happened at first, but then slowly the rock trembled, moved, shifted, and then rose into the air ever so slightly, then higher and higher.

Skippy practiced night after night. He had no idea what was happening; he only knew that he possessed some sort of bizarre skill. He asked other droids, and they told him that the only ones capable of such tricks were Jedi Knights, who were all extinct. Skippy sought to learn all he could about the Jedi and what they were capable of doing.

He told the other droids of his self-discovery, but they sneered at him. And when they did, he would try to prove his abilities, but he was so angry over their taunting that he was unable to focus the powers of The Force. Instead, he decided to ignore their scorn, to search his feelings and learn the powers of The Force and how to manipulate it. As he did so, he came to realize that proving himself to a bunch of dumb machines was not relevant. He was meant for greater things, and their ridicule was not important.

And one night—one amazing night—Skippy escaped. With his miraculous power, he removed his restraining bolt by application of The Force. The bolt simply hurled away from him, clattering uselessly to the floor.

He rolled towards Jabba’s exit, and two massive, pig-like guards barred his way. But Skippy reached out with the power of The Force and said to them, “Beep a beep doo bop bop,” which means, “I’m not the droid you’re looking for.” The guards hesitated only a moment and then stepped aside, and Skippy rolled to freedom—freedom to seek his destiny as a Jedi droid.

There was, however, a problem which Skippy now had to face.

He was in the middle of a desert—not surprising, since all of Tatooine is a desert.

Jedi or not, droid or not, being in a desert can be intimidating and daunting. Skippy did his best. He traveled at night, looking for his destiny. By day he hid in shadows to protect himself from the twin suns of Tatooine (although, no matter how hard he tried, he could not protect himself from the fact that binary stars have such massive gravity wells between them that they simply don’t have planets, but we won’t get into that, either). He hid from the sand people from Tusken. He hid from the sand worms from Dune.

But his destiny did not seem particularly anxious to seek out poor Skippy, and in the meantime he began to wear down. He became filthy, encrusted with dirt, sand working into his innards. His power cells were draining with little hope of recharging, no matter how carefully he conserved his power. And slowly he came to realize that, even though he was a droid of destiny, it might be that he wouldn’t have the opportunity to find it.

And then, as it turned out, his destiny found him.

One day the ground rumbled beneath his treads, and he saw coming toward him the giant rolling truck of the Jawas. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have endeavored to hide, but he knew that—despite the unpleasantness of being picked up by scrap and robot dealers—he had little choice. He wasn’t going to be able to last much longer on his own.

So Skippy let the Jawas spot him, and eagerly they scrambled out and brought him onto the transport. They cleaned him up as best as they could, although what he really needed was an oil bath and a new set of bearings. And Skippy decided that he would stay aboard the transport, at least for a while. He knew that, with his mastery of The Force, he could escape any time. He did not bother to tell the other droids about his abilities, for he knew that it was a waste of time.

And then one day he met two droids.

One was another R2 unit. But this R2 unit seemed thoroughly obsessed with some sort of mission. He told Skippy that he had to deliver a message to an Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The name struck a chord within Skippy. Somehow, he knew that name was important, but he did not know why. He sensed that The Force was trying to tell him, but Skippy was sorely frustrated and was unable to comprehend. Shortly after he’d met R2, another droid showed up as well. This one was called C-3PO, and he wouldn’t shut up. He just kept yammering and yammering and it made it impossible for Skippy to meditate and learn that which The Force was still trying to communicate to him.

There was something new happening to Skippy, something different. He was having a sense of the future, images swirling in his head that he could not yet understand: a vision of a man dressed in black and of a young woman who, for some reason, had cinnamon rolls on her head. And soldiers, many of them, dressed in white armor, and sometimes they were riding on large lizard-like creatures, but other times they were just sitting on a large replica of one. It was all very hazy and confusing.

Then one day the Jawa transport ground to a halt. Skippy could tell from the hustle and bustle that the Jawas had potential customers. They rousted all the droids out onto the hot Tatooine surface.

Two people approached. They were moisture farmers; Skippy knew the type. They seemed unassuming, run of the mill, an older man and a young one.

The young man—there was something about him. Something that seemed to call out—greatness

Skippy knew instantly. This one, this blond one—The Force was strong within him. Skippy began to quiver with delight and amazement. Destiny had seen him through, after all. He was going to be the droid of a future Jedi. And he being a Jedi himself, why—they would be an unstoppable team. They could defeat the Empire, return the galaxy to peace. Between the two of them, they could cause the Jedis to rise once more to their glory.

It was the merest trick of effort to reach out and manipulate the mind of the older man, the one called Owen. Owen was busy having his ear bent by that talky 3PO unit and had just agreed to take on old blabbermouth. Skippy nudged a thought into Owen. A thought that said, “I am the droid you’re looking for.”

“And that red one,” said Owen, pointing at Skippy.

The callow youth, the Jedi-to-be, approached him and said, “C’mon, Red, let’s go.”

Skippy rolled forward, images of the future swirling about him, all apparently about to click into a clear vision.

And the blue R2 unit started rocking back and forth, calling to C-3PO. C-3PO glanced back for the briefest of moments and then kept walking. The R2 unit started to follow in frustration, and one of the Jawas ran up and shut him down using the restraining bolt.

And it was at that moment that all the images coalesced for Skippy: the future—or potential future that lay ahead—as destiny held its breath.

Skippy would go with the 3PO unit and the future Jedi. He would try to communicate with the young Jedi, but 3PO would refuse to translate “such rubbish.” He would start moving things around using the power of The Force, and his abilities would terrify his new masters—particularly Uncle Owen, who would know just what those powers intimated. He would immediately have Skippy’s memories erased, and the Jedi droid would be no more.

Meantime, the blue R2 unit would remain with the Jawas—and the armored men would come, the armored men who would ransack the Jawas, kill them all, and take the R2 unit back with them. Back to the dark man in the helmet and cape.

The dark man would then destroy the R2 unit. Then he would kill the young woman, the woman in white with the cinnamon rolls on her head. The search for the rebels would continue and, eventually, the rebels would be found. A frightening space station would fill the sky above them and blow them out of existence and, just like that, the rebellion would end. Obi-Wan Kenobi would sense their minds crying out in fear and terror, would know that the last of the rebellion had been wiped out, and—filled with despair—his mighty heart would give out and he would collapse and die, alone and forgotten in his hut.

The young, blond Jedi would never know his destiny. He would stay and rot on Tatooine, one excuse after another offered until he was staring into the sky, looking to a destiny, but as an old man who had never followed it, never became anything more than a moisture farmer.

All this, all this because Skippy the Jedi Droid had been chosen instead of the blue R2 unit. If the blue R2 unit went with the young Jedi, a very different path lay ahead for the future. A great one—which did not include Skippy.

The fate of the entire galaxy hinged on the snap decision of one brave droid.

He knew what he had to do.

Using The Force, Skippy drove it inward, like a spike, blowing out his own internal workings. He rolled to a halt and the blond Jedi-to-be, the one named Luke, stopped and looked at him in annoyance.

“Uncle Owen,” he called, “this R2 unit has a bad motivator! Look!”

Oh, the irony of that statement! Oh, the unknowable irony! For Skippy had had the most magnificent motivation of all. He was trying to save a galaxy.

With his dying strength, Skippy reached out into the circuitry of the 3PO unit. As Owen argued with the Jawas, the 3PO unit—who had been more than happy to abandon the blue R2 unit only moments before, suddenly said, “Excuse me, sir, but that R2 unit is in prime condition. A real bargain.”

Not caring overmuch, Luke called, “Uncle Owen! How about that one?”

And he pointed to the blue R2 unit.

And with that moment, with those words, that gesture—the other future fell away, dissolved like paper in water. Skippy, his circuits failing, his consciousness evaporating, saw what was to come. The excitement, the greatness, the triumph—all due to him. To his sacrifice. To the heroics of the greatest, most unsung Jedi in the history of the galaxy.

“Take this one away,” said Luke dismissively, and the Jawas came and rolled Skippy away. His last sight, before the blackness of total breakdown encompassed him, was the blue R2 unit rolling away at the side of the golden 3PO, as if he had always been there and always would be.

The Jawas didn’t have time to repair Skippy before the Stormtroopers came and incinerated them. The first, and last, of the Jedi droids died quietly in a coma, his casing blasted to pieces by a stray Stormtrooper bolt. Died alone, unknown, unmourned.

Until now.

Be kind to your droids and all your various appliances. For sentience and an understanding of the universe is a rare and precious gift. One never knows where one will find it.

But next time you’re alone and you feel something—a faint beeping in your skull or the sound or motors whirring—you may be sensing—him. One with The Force now, ever present, ever seeking out others of his kind. Others who may be in your kitchen or on your desk, or in your briefcase. Wherever machines are taken for granted, wherever sentience may exist, there will be—Skippy, the Jedi Droid.

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

 

 

 

I Hear This All the Time

That creators shouldn’t get worked up over Internet piracy because, hey, it enables people to sample the work and, by gosh, they will start buying it. And you’ll find plenty of people who will attest to doing just that.

But then there’s the guy who J.K. Woodward–sitting at the adjacent table right now at the Wildpig convention in New Jersey–told me about, who came up to him at the New York Comic Con. The fan was waxing effusively about J.K.’s work on FALLEN ANGEL, and how much he enjoyed his work…and then felt constrained to add, “I don’t actually buy it. I download it. But it’s great!”

You wonder how someone can be that clueless. Well, it’s easy: the massive sense of entitlement amongst some Internet denizens. People who would never think of shoplifting a comic book from a store do not hesitate to take advantage of stolen goods. Why should they feel any kind of shame when it does not occur to them that they are screwing the publisher and creators out of money? They cannot distinguish between, say, free online content provided by newspapers and pirate sites where they can browse through illegal downloads.

And it’s only going to get worse. Because the current generation of users has witnessed the rise of pirate sites and makes use of them without the slightest intention of providing remuneration for the creators, rationalizing it all the way. The next generation is going to grow up with theft as the norm. No excuses necessary. And if you don’t think that’s going to have a long-term negative impact on publishing, you are quite simply kidding yourself.

Because for every nimrod who’s shameless enough to tell creators point blank, “I love getting your work for free,” I’ll wager there’s plenty who are doing the same thing and just keeping their mouths shut. Because they know what they’re doing is wrong. And they do it anyway.

PAD

The Best Comics Fangasm Movie Ever (Pretty much spoiler free)

“What’s the best superhero” film ever made is a question endlessly debated with no concrete answer. There’s too many subcategories. You want fealty to the spirit of the source material? “Spider-Man.” You want the best performance of an iconic hero? Chris Reeves’ “Superman.” Comic strips? “The Phantom.” Most street cred with the Academy? “Dark Knight.” And so on.

But for pure fangasm…for a comic book superhero film that will not leave a dry seat in the house (metaphorically, one hopes)…you simply cannot beat “The Avengers.”

This is the type of film that Warner Bros. had a decades-long head start on and couldn’t get its act together. It should have been easy. Do Superman, do Batman, do Wonder Woman (must…avoid…obvious…joke…) and then put them together on the big screen with a couple more guys as the JLA. Instead the JLA remains fettered to the small screen and they fired Joss Whedon off Wonder Woman, thank God, so that comicdom’s Designated Fan could unleash the combined efforts of what is now effectively four years worth of prequels on screens across America.

And oh lord, was it worth the wait.

When Marvel first launched the Ultimate line, I opined that it was effectively a blueprint as to how to do the Marvel Comics movies, right down to the fact that Nick Fury had suddenly turned into a dead ringer for Samuel L. Jackson. And now here we are, and there he is, sporting the eyepatch that will forever deny poor Nick the opportunity to see this film in 3D. (That’s actually a cartoon I’d like to see: Nick Fury and Odin at the movies with the 3D glasses on and Fury muttering, “I *knew* this was going to be a waste of money.”)

I’m not going to give you vague plot beats because you’ve probably heard them all. I’m not going to ruin anything in the film because that just wouldn’t be right.

I will say that there’s a good deal of methodical block building in the first 45 minutes, but director/writer Whedon doesn’t automatically assume that everyone has seen all the preceding movies. And that’s fair. You can’t assume, and even if you’re completely up to speed, there’s enough there to keep you engaged.

The plot holds together for the most part. And the film is replete with all of the classic Whedon-esque touches, including my personal favorite: Anytime a Whedon villain starts delivering a self-aggrandizing monologue, it always ends prematurely and badly for the villain. Happened in all his television series, particularly “Buffy,” and usually to Spike. Most memorably up until now was the guy that was mouthing off to Mal in an early episode of”Firefly” who had his speech truncated, along with the rest of him, when Mal kicked him into one of the ship’s turbines. But all of those were warm-ups for the example that occurs this time with one of THE most humiliating defeats in the history of comics films.

Everyone in the film is great, although every time Cobie Smulders was on screen I kept waiting for Nick Fury to say in narration, “And kids, THAT’S how I met your mother.” But that’s probably just me. Also for a while there I kept having a sense of universe shift. When Tony and Pepper were on screen, I felt I was watching “Iron Man 3.” When Cap was there, it was “Captain America II,” and when Thor showed up, “Thor II.” Eventually, though, they had enough screen time together that I finally felt I was watching an Avengers movie, particularly when we got to another Whedon trademark: a vertigo-inducing spin around shot of everyone in a circle.

Plus there were all the aforementioned “fangasmic” moments. Iron Man vs. Thor. Thor vs. Captain America. Thor vs. Hulk. Black Widow vs. Hawkeye. Black Widow vs. Hulk which is, granted, more like Black Widow runs like hell from Hulk. (It should be noted that the Hulk has FINALLY been rendered well on screen (thank you, motion capture) and Mark Ruffalo appears to be channeling the more urbane attitudes of Bill Bixby than he is the more morose and self-obsessed Banners of his immediate filmic predecessors.) With all this internecine squabbling and battling, it’s thus all the more gratifying when the crew–face to the foe–is able to put aside its differences and finally work as a team. Which is what it’s all about.

Oh, and stay ALL the way through the end.

PAD

Star Wars plot holes

Originally published March 21, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1218

[Editor's note: Last week, Peter David, writer of stuff, pointed out that there's a plot concept missing in Star Wars that, as he wrote, "didn't even exist when the film came out two decades ago."]

Consider, if you will, the universe of Star Wars.

They have spaceships.

They have faster-than-light drive.

They have blasters.

They have lightsabers.

They have satellites capable of reducing an entire planet to rubble instantly.

They have land speeders. They have All-Terrain Armored Transports (AT-ATs). They have robots in a variety of shapes and sizes, capable of independent thought and action—basically, artificial intelligence. They have laser crossbows. They have cities in the clouds. They have suspended animation capability wherein they can put you to sleep inside carbonite, thaw you out, and you’re none the worse for wear except for the shakes and blurred vision. They have force fields, holographic chess, and high-speed air bikes.

What haven’t they got?

E-mail.

E-mail and the capability of copying a floppy disk.

Think about what the first film hinges upon. Princess Leia has plans to the Death Star that must be conveyed to the rebels. And the only way that she can think of to get it to them is to carry the one existing copy of those plans, by hand, herself, to the rebels.

I mean, c’mon. What the hell is that all about?

If there’s one thing that we’ve learned, it’s that one of the first things that happens as a result of computerization is that the world gets a whole lot smaller. Communication and dissemination of information becomes the easiest thing in the world.

Which means that the instant that anyone outside of the Empire’s chain of command got his hands on the plans for the Death Star, that information would be posted all over the place. Within two hours there would have been a Death Star website with a hundred million hits on it.

Now, just for argument’s sake, let’s say that the rebels only had accounts through GOL (Galaxy Online) and, naturally, were not able to access their web servers because the lines were always busy.

That still leaves the question of just what the hell Leia was doing as the sole possessor of the information. Someone somewhere along the line should have duplicated a hundred—a thousand—copies of it. It’s just a computer file, for crying out loud. Rather than all the eggs being in Leia’s basket, there should have been rebel agents coming from hundreds of different points, each with their very own copy of the Death Star plans. You want inconspicuous people carrying that information—not someone as high-profile as Princess Leia. She’s not Mata Hari or the Shadow, for God’s sake. She’s got challah on the sides of her head and she says stuff like, “I thought I smelled your foul stench the moment I came on board,” with a really bad accent. That tends to get you noticed.

Now, of course, this wasn’t a consideration back in 1977. While George Lucas was busy constructing a universe with the trappings of science fiction and the mythologies of Joseph Campbell, the realities of what technology might actually provide didn’t factor in.

So when you look at the big picture, what it boils down to is: In the real world we’ve progressed, and in the cinema world we’ve regressed. Perhaps, in the final analysis, art does imitate life. It just imitates it in the wrong direction.

As a side note, there’s another “hole” now visible in the Special Edition, but this one doesn’t exist as a result of the passage of time. Although, actually, perhaps it does, because time’s passage has rendered the character of Han Solo significantly un-PC when it comes to the extremely touchy subject of violence.

One of the defining moments of Solo’s character is his violent departure from the Cantina. A rubber-headed alien named Greedo intercepts Solo just as he is preparing to leave. A gun leveled at Solo, Greedo makes it eminently clear that he’s planning to blow a hole in Han for the purpose of pleasing Jabba the Hutt (which, of course, flies in the face of Boba Fett’s contention in The Empire Strikes Back that Han would be no good to him dead, but that’s neither here nor there).

For the past 20 years of video releases and umpteen plays on the USA network and the Sci-Fi Channel, Han Solo shot Greedo before ol’ bug-eyes could plug our favorite Corellian. Greedo slumps forward onto the table, Han apologizes for the mess, end of scene.

Not any more.

It could be argued that Greedo doesn’t intend to pop Solo right there but, instead, bring him to someone else who is going to do it. But that’s a subtle distinction and, besides, the dialogue sure makes it sound as if Greedo’s intention is to do our hero grievous bodily harm. (“Over my dead body,” Solo says, regarding giving up his ship, to which Greedo replies, “That’s the general idea. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”)

A threat of imminent danger, however, is insufficient motive for Han Solo to save his neck. Through the magic of computers, we now see Greedo firing a blaster bolt at Han’s skull. Han, through a slight movement of his head, dodges the bolt and then fires back and kills Greedo.

It used to be that Han Solo was someone you didn’t mess around with. Wave a gun in his face, threaten to do him bodily harm, and he’d pop you. He simply assumed that, if you made it clear you were out to get him, he’d get you first. Period.

Not any more. Now we’re asked to believe that Han Solo adheres to such a demanding standard of fair play that—even though Greedo is threatening him with a blaster from across the table—Solo will sportingly give an enemy a free shot at him before acting to save his skin. And what an opponent Greedo is: He fires at Solo, a relatively stationary target, from a point-blank distance of no more than a meter—and misses. With aim that abysmal, he could probably have gone to work as a Stormtrooper.

Cold-bloodedly killing someone who intended to kill him helped make Han Solo believable as a hard-bitten, tough-as-nails smuggler and “space pirate.” What we have instead is a highly dubious scene featuring a needlessly stupid risk by Solo and stupendously bad shooting by Greedo. I thought the purpose of this computer gimmickry was to make the Star Wars universe more believable, not less.

Perhaps this newly conceived “sporting chance” should be applied to other films. I can’t wait for the re-release of Raiders of the Lost Ark wherein Indiana Jones confronts a swordsman who, thanks to computer enhancement, is waving a scimitar in one hand while cradling a machine gun in the other. He’ll be blasting a path of bullets all around Indy until the intrepid archeologist’s patience wears thin and he shoots the swordsman. It’s a far superior alternative to the current depiction, wherein Jones simply shoots down the inconvenient sword wielder from a comfortable distance of 30 feet.

Special editions. Why did it have to be special editions?

 (Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to a Second Age Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Next week, and this time we promise: The untold story of the single most important individual in the entire Star Wars legend.)