PeterDavid.net

Just came from Toys R Us, having purchased the gloriously huge talking Ent, Treebeard. And, just to be complete, I also picked up Merry and Pippin who are sized close to proportionately correct. Sure beats the heck out of my previous Ent action figure, which consisted of a carefully carved broccoli stalk.

By the way, I wonder: Would people start crabbing that “Two Towers” is “inaccessible.” After all, it makes zero effort to summarize the previous film. It just assumes you know what’s going on.

PAD

There’s a Bozo going around on my alt.fan board (and using the popular sock puppet “a friend of mine was wondering this” tactic to bring it up on Newsarama as well) who was pondering why my

titles, such as “Supergirl” and “Young Justice” get cancelled, and “Captain

Marvel” struggles. And when he posted it on my alt.fan board, he made sure to include the usual Usenet “bet you don’t have the balls to respond” nonsense, because, y’know, these guys always have to have a “muy macho” thing going. Because I take on Marvel execs to the point of probably being fired, but I’m going to be afraid of some Usenet numbnut.

Since this website represents my central response point, I’m posting my reply to the Bozo here as well as over on the alt.fan board. Two responses, actually: A short and a long.

Short answer:

Because, y’know, “Supergirl” never had a title canceled before I wrote her. Because, y’know, “Captain Marvel” has a long and proud history of sales success, as do all cosmically-related Marvel titles. Because, y’know, two of the three “Young Justice” mainstays, Impulse and Superboy, never had a title

canceled. When other books are canceled, oh well. When mine are canceled, something’s wrong somewhere. Bozo.

Long answer:

As all Gaul was divided into three, all comics are divided into three: Those that are halted by the creators, those that have already been canceled, and those that haven’t been canceled yet. The middle category is by far the largest. A look at the top 100 shows that, except for evergreens such as UXM,’Tec, and Action, no book is numbered over issue #100…which is 180 degrees from the market less than twenty years ago.

Readers don’t stay. Consequently, neither do creators. There’s no point in sticking with a title five, six, twelve years, because sooner or later, the audience will turn on you. Always. Without exception, and often without relation to the quality of the material being produced. That which they liked several years earlier, they now despise. Familiarity breeds contempt.

Always.

Creators are faced with two choices: Stay until that occurs, or leave.

So fans bitch about creators who are transient in their loyalties, while at the same time take for granted, or even come to despise, those creators who stay.

Why are “my” books canceled? Putting aside that YJ was dumped to make way for a new cartoon series. Putting aside that if retailers had actually ordered sufficient copies of “Supergirl” to keep up with fan interest and demand, the series would have continued. Putting aside that many people *still* refuse to even sample “Captain Marvel” simply because they don’t like the character. Putting all that aside…

Why? Because I cared enough about the characters and readers to stick with series, year in, year out, getting the books out on time rather than months late.

Because I stayed.

Bozo.

PAD

In case you folks gave up on me, wonder no more. I’ve just returned from a five day sojourn down to Atlanta, visiting Kathleen’s family for the holidays. Three week old Caroline had the opportunity to meet her eight week old cousin, Genevieve (hope I spelled her name right). Whereas Caroline was 6 pounds 13 ounces at birth, Genny was over nine pounds. At this point, Caroline is approaching seven while Genny is at twelve. We posed the two of them together and it looked like the opening sequence of “Twins.”

I’m never much for trying to do entries while on the road, because I have a hard time typing with any keyboard that’s non-ergonomic. If you do a lot of typing and you’re still using a standard keyboard, I cannot suggest more strenuously that you switch to an ergonomic. It’ll take about a week for you to adjust, but you’ll get your speed back and you will save your hands. There’s no question in my mind I’d have Carpal tunnel by now if I hadn’t switched five years ago.

Because we were reluctant to expose Caroline to a crowded airplane, we wound up renting a van and driving down.. The van rental place didn’t have the one we contracted for, and wound up upgrading us to this deluxe nine passenger vehicle I promptly dubbed “Cattlecar: Galactica.” There was onboard TV and video player, and a ton of room, and yet Kath and I still managed to repeatedly hit our heads whenever we moved around the interior.

Stopped at several comic book stores while down there: Oxford Comics and Doctor No’s, where I chatted with long-time friend and store owner Cliff Biggers. Cliff’s “Comic Shop News” is going to be doing an exclusive feature on “The Fallen Angel” when we’re ready to promote it in a couple months.

Happy holidays to all.

PAD

I’ve got at least five e-mails from folks telling me that Joe Quesada made no mention of “Captain Marvel” in his Newsarama interview, and didn’t list me in his X-Mas song even though he mentioned just about every other living person currently employed by Marvel. Which is being seen as a snub and not a good sign of things to come. Which it probably was.

So you can stop telling me now. Okay?

PAD

Okay, well THAT series makes somewhat more sense now.

I still think the lack of any kind of score aside from those sleep-inducing guitar licks and the occasionally pokey editing didn’t help, but overall I liked the two hour pilot of Firefly quite a lot. As far as an intro to the characters goes, it certainly was far superior to the episode that Fox insisted on airing that helped cost the series so many viewers from the get-go. And it wasn’t remotely the snore-fest that reports from Fox execs made it out to be.

And of course, barring any unexpected developments, this is the last episode we’re going to see. Bottom line is, Fox blew this one. From running the show out of sequence to a non-existent ad campaign once the series was on (during FX reruns of “Buffy” they aired only promos for “John Doe.” If there’s *anyplace* to push a series to fans of “the creator of Buffy,” that’s the place), it’s obvious that there was no one internally at the network pushing or supporting the show. Unusual series always need someone on the inside to go to the mat for it, and clearly no one existed in that capacity for “Firefly.”

PAD

Get over to http://www.politicalstrikes.com. Go. Right now. I won’t tell you why because that’d ruin it. Just go.

PAD

The writer of the TCJ column “Journalista,” after taking inaccurate swipes at this blog, announced that I could have “the last word” on the subject. This is a popular on-line gambit in which one person actually endeavors to have the last word himself by trying to present himself as above whatever rebuttal could be offered. The usual hope is that the other party will then want to show that he’s as above-it-all as the first guy, so he refuses to avail himself of the opportunity. I don’t know whether that’s the intent here. But I–who Gary Groth has referred to as one of Fantagraphics “favorite whipping boys”–do know I want to say something.

It’s been a good long while since Fantagraphics took something I didn’t write, acted as if I did, and then offered a half-hearted, Well we meant everything we said but we’re sorry we said it apology. The time before was a fabricated letter defending some former Fanta employee that Groth utilized to produced a multi-page slam, without anyone there bothering to verify that I’d actually written it. Which I hadn’t. This time around, Journalista was incapable of reading an entry that referred to Kathleen and me in the third person, featuring such phrases as “Peter and Kathleen” and “their child,” ascribed it to me, and took me to task for it. Endeavoring to subsequently explain the mishap, the author claimed the posting carried no label of authorship…even though it said “posted by Glenn Hauman” right under it.

But hey, in the world of journalistic accuracy that passes for Fantagraphics, it’s all even-steven because I stated a decade after the fact that, as I recall it, Groth was a guest at Carol’s house even though he claims it was the other way around…while, eleven years ago, at the time it occurred, journalistic maven Groth couldn’t get the cause of Carol’s death correct (it wasn’t a heart attack, it was a brain aneurysm.)

One of the two things that Groth and his stooges has never been able to wrap themselves around is that I don’t care what Groth said about Carol. Carol was beyond his ability to hurt. What I care about is that Groth revealed himself as someone with a total lack of human decency. A young woman dropped dead. A woman he knew, that he had presumably broken bread with. She collapsed in the street, was rushed to a hospital, briefly regained consciousness, and then died. And he used that tragedy as a pretext for two things, and two things only: To bash Marvel, and to promote the Comics Journal, holding it up as the gold standard of how to do euologies correctly.

Here’s the other thing Groth et al never got: Carol always saw Marvel as a stepping stone. She was only going to be there another six months to a year. She always planned long-term, you see. She had meticulously been putting everything into place and was preparing to make the jump to her own business. To create her own publishing firm, producing work of artistic merit. She truly loved comic books, but she wanted more out of life than pushing superhero titles. She had great and lofty goals.

And she didn’t get to achieve them.

The people who mourned her didn’t know that, of course. But they were aware that, at the very least, a life with vast potential had been cut short. They got that. Criticize the effusiveness with which they did it if you must (though God knows why one would feel compelled to), but they got that. And Groth didn’t get that, making him less understanding and more devoid of anything approaching human feeling than any of them. Instead he pontificated over how he “abominated” the use to which she put her intellect in building her career.

Carol used Marvel Comics as a foundation toward a publishing career that was cut short. Gary Groth, who has published porn (the Eros line) and a magazine extolling the virtues of the very superheroes he despises (Amazing Heroes), all to generate revenue to keep TCJ going, doesn’t get to excoriate others for the way they build a career.

Here endeth the word.

PAD

It certainly would never have been a crusade that occurred to me to undertake, but for what it’s worth, Glenn has been successful in his endeavors. For the moment, at least, when doing a Google search for Carol Kalish, Groth’s eleven year old screed is no longer the first thing that comes up. So that’s nice.

FYI–Richard Howell sent a baby present to Caroline. It’s a small plush hippo named “Mud” that used to belong to Carol. “Mud” seemed most pleased to be pressed back into service after years of inactivity, and has a place of honor in Caroline’s crib.

PAD

Well, I’m not sure if they’re exactly “spoilers” or not, considering it’s just speculation. Nor am I the only person to think that the following is the case (board monitor Glenn Hauman shares my opinion.)

On last night’s episode, Giles–having survived his close encounter with a representative of the First Evil–showed up in Sunnydale with three would-be slayers in tow.

Except…I’m thinking not.

I’m thinking we’re seeing a “Sixth Sense” riff here (so much so, as Keith DeCandido pointed out, that they even mentioned that film’s writer/director in the episode). I’m thinking that, with the BBC “Ripper” series apparently terminally stalled, that Giles did not, in fact, survive a damned thing, and that the First is impersonating a dead Giles.

Granted, the dialogue was off. Giles sounded defeatist and unheroic. On the other hand, the script *was* co-written by Marti Noxon, so that’s not exactly unusual.

But the utter lack of physical contact–an impossibility for the incorporeal First–was staggering.

1) Giles never knocked on the door.

2) Giles, the British gentleman, never helped with carrying any luggage or held the door open for any of the females throughout the episode. Nor did he seize a weapon when the others did.

3) When he arrived, none of the females hugged him, and Xander didn’t shake his hand. This is such a stunning lapse in the typical physical behavior of the characters that it seemed like one of those nail-on-chalkboard script requirements. You know, where something has to happen a certain way because the script demands it, but it makes so little sense that it just strikes you as wrong.

4) Giles never removes or hangs up his coat, even when we see others do so with theirs. Why? Speculation: It wouldn’t hang on a hangar.

5) When walking through the Christmas tree lot, the heavier Giles walks directly over the boarded hole that the much lighter Buffy promptly crashes through.

6) When Buffy is scrambling to get out of the hole, Giles doesn’t extend a hand.

7) When the vampire is emerging from the hole, we see Giles is standing directly in front of the sun, blocking it. He blocks it so thoroughly that Buffy is looking straight into it and doesn’t squint. Yet the vampire screams and falls back as if hit with the full force of the sun. Why? Because if Giles is really incorporeal, there’s nothing actually there blocking the UV rays.

Not looking real good for our hero, kids.

PAD

The following link (for as long as it’s up) will take you to an article in the Philadelphia Daily News in which the writer lists what he considers to be the top ten “Next Generation” novels. Seven of them are written by me, and one more of them is one of the group books I wrote with Mike Friedman and Bob Greenberger. Not bad. http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/2002/12/12/living/4721661.htm

PAD

Some months ago, with SUPERGIRL sales sagging and Leonard Kirk leaving the title, I came up with what was essentially a “Hail Mary” pass. I talked the DC Powers That Be into letting me do a storyline involving the return of Kara.

My reasoning was simple: Who wasn’t reading the book? (1) People who had become bored with the current storyline. (2) People who had dismissed the series from the get-go because any Supergirl who wasn’t Kara Zor-El was of no interest to them. By doing “Many Happy Returns,” I figured I could snag both groups. A fresh storyline to pull back lost readers, and the Kara angle to haul in first-timers. It was a “Hail Kara” pass to attend to what I felt were alarmingly sagging numbers.

As near as I could tell subsequently, it was a success in both regards. There was a lot of preliminary buzz, and many people were saying that they’d never read the title but were going to give it a look.

And then the solicits came in for #75, and I knew without question we were pretty much dead. Sales were up an anemic 2000 copies. Fan interest had not translated to retailer interest. Why should they? Knock the Marvel no-reorder policy as much as you want, but by this point, the retailers are trained. A Marvel title sells out, they’re screwed. A DC title sells out, they figure more copies are in the offing. The only deficiency in the reasoning comes when the initial low orders becomes a book’s death warrant.

Which is what happened here.

I’ve known for some months that “Supergirl” is going away. Frankly, I kept hoping for a last minute reprieve. Then the numbers came in on #76, showing an impressive lack of any confidence whatsoever as numbers went almost right back to pre-#75 levels, and that was that. Supposedly numbers are now climbing back up. Too little, too late.

Well, at least this incarnation of “Supergirl” was around longer than every other comic bearing that title combined. We did a lot of good work and I worked with some great people: Gary Frank, Leonard Kirk, Robin Riggs, Ed Benes, and long-suffering editor Mike McAvennie. And, of course, current editor Lysa Hawkins, who will be my editor on the new original series, “The Fallen Angel” (more about which later.)

And issue #80 goes out with a bang. Seems I’ve had a lot of experience writing last issues lately.

PAD

A few folks are taking me to task about the intro I wrote to Peter’s remembrance of Carol Kalish. Since some folks had trouble noticing it the first time (my name at the bottom, Peter being referred to in the third person) I want to make clear that I wrote it, not Peter– he was busy doing something important, taking care of his new daughter.

In an effort to keep Peter out of it, I reply to it on my own weblog. Alas, I’m sure we’ll get around to it again when I start reprinting the BID columns dealing with Enemies of Ellison…

Okay, there wasn’t much sex, but did anyone see Al Gore on “Saturday Night Live?” My God, did the writers and Gore rise to the occasion. His hilarious Trent Lott impersonation was beautifully balanced by the Democratic rep who cheerfully agreed with everything the GOP did while trying to act as if the Democrats were coming up with new ideas. The stuff with Tipper, Weekend Update, everything worked beautifully. And the “West Wing” sequence was an odd combination of funny and wistfully depressing.

I’m not surprised he’s passing on the 2004 nomination. If he couldn’t beat Bush even when he *did* beat Bush, what’s the point of trying it again. Hey! Maybe Lieberman will run for President and Gore will be *his* VP.

PAD

Once I would have been both amused and saddened by the woman who repeatedly told Stan Lee on CNN that the Rawhide can’t, simply can’t be gay because kids might get their hands on the comic and comics, as we all know, are for kids. Except a DA actually got a store owner convicted for that very notion.

Which leads one to wonder whether in some homophobic communities whether stores will be targeted for having those evil queer comic books available to warp young minds.

And besides…c’mon…the Rawhide Kid? What about the Lone Ranger? The kinky mask. “Hi ho, Silver,” indeed (although I’ve also heard “Hi yo, Silver,” but that’s not much better.) That snappy powder blue ensemble. “On, Big Fella?” “Mount up?” And what’s *really* going on with Tonto?

Actually, if you want to see gay deconstruction of the wild west, check out the comedy “Rustler’s Rhapsody.”

PAD

Feb. 1, 1991

(more…)

Jan. 25, 1991

(more…)

Jan. 18, 1991

(more…)

We’ve got an agreement for a deal to have a Russian edition of “Sir Apropos of Nothing” produced. It will be available in Germany as well, and a Spanish publisher is making inquiries.

Meantime, there remains absolutely zero interest in the title from publishers in England. Go figure.

PAD

As Peter’s mentioned, Caroline is named after the late, great Carol Kalish. Sadly, it occurs to me that many of you have no idea who she is. (Heck, it stunned me when I thought about how long it’s been– I missed the memorial service because I was leaving on my honeymoon.) Trust me, if you didn’t know her, you’re a poorer person for it.

So I’m going to run this BID out of sequence so you can get some sense of the wonderful woman Peter and Kathleen have named their daughter after.

And I’d like you all to do us a favor– link heavily to this column. Right now on Google, the first thing that pops up when you search on “Carol Kalish” is a screed by Gary Groth that is not the way she should be remembered, and I want that damn thing out of first place.

Oct. 11, 1991

(more…)

Kathleen’s dad has put up, on his website, an array of pictures of the baby and various family members. You can find them at www.homepage.mac.com/donoshea. A couple of the pictures don’t have the right resolution if you click on them to enlarge them, but that’s being worked on and will be straightened out before long.

PAD