PeterDavid.net

Oct. 12, 1990

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“60 Minutes II” ran a somewhat unfocused segment last night about our little industry. The good news is, there was nary a “POW or “BAM” in sight. The bad news is, I wasn’t entirely sure what the piece was about.

It seemed to be about comics in general and Marvel in specific. There was a good deal of attention paid to the translation of comics into movies, including footage shot during “Daredevil” in which apparently Elektra was slugging it out with some muggers on what appeared to be Sesame Street. At first I thought the main impetus for the piece was the arrival of Spider-Man on DVD. Then the piece broadened to comics as Hollywood fodder, featuring lots of time spent talking to Avi Arad. Nice puff piece so far.

Then, abruptly, the piece did a 180 and the reporter was grilling an obviously uncomfortable Stan Lee as to the raging discontent he felt over the fact that he doesn’t see dime one from the Spider-Man film. “Do you feel you were screwed?” asked the reporter. Even if Stan did feel that way, he’s far too much of a gentleman–and too canny a businessman–to cop to it. Besides, it’s not exactly news. He’s had decades to come to terms with the fact that he doesn’t get a share in the billions that his characters have generated for Marvel. The most he would admit was feeling a little down about it. But the reporter then talked about how Stan Lee was “unhappy” over not getting his fair share of Spider-Man…except Stan didn’t say that.

Then he started asking Avi Arad about whether Stan had gotten his “fair share” from the film. Arad said Yes, he had. Of course, since Stan (as he himself made quite clear) worked as “work for hire,” his “fair share” is nothing. “Fair” has nothing to do with “just.”

So Arad looked bad and Stan looked not thrilled.

So the reporter had opened a significant can of worms. Was his next stop Paul Levitz to discuss Siegel and Shuster? Chris Claremont to discuss X-Men? Gerry Conway to talk about how much of his material was lifted for the climax of the Spider-Man movie without so much as a by-your-leave? No. Instead he interviewed Art Spiegelman about how comics were reaching more adult audiences.

Weird. If you’re going to do a story that makes people look bad, see it through. If you’re doing basically a puff piece, then go with that. Don’t produce a puff piece with delusions of hard-hitting reporting. It’s just annoying.

PAD

Seems we’ve gotten a lot of traffic from a new weblog, iJournalista! and their coverage of what they call the Marvel Lovefest. Take a look– it surprised me.

Oct. 5, 1990

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Sept. 21, 1990

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I promised I’d give you guys an update as to Gwen’s status with New England Comics. Well, they didn’t call, so I guess she didn’t get the job. It’s entirely possible they simply didn’t need the additional help.

Still, I seem to recall someone here in the Boston area saying their local comic retailer wished that Gwen had applied at his store. Well, now’s your chance.

PAD

Eyewitnesses at various sniper shootings swore that the sniper drove off in a white van. Or a Burgundy Caprice. They were so sure, in fact, that police repeatedly caught the snipers at roadblocks but waved them through because they weren’t driving the cars that the witnesses were positive were connected to the shootings.

So all those witnesses were wrong. More people died because of that, actually. I’m not blaming the witnesses, God knows. It wasn’t their fault. It was a stressful situation.

But it leads me to wonder how many people are on death row…mostly because of eye witness testimony. And of those people, how many of them are physically larger than cars, and thus even easier to ID? I’m guessing none. How many of them are, in fact, smaller than cars and probably tougher to ID? I’m guessing all.

But hey, no one’s ever been wrongly executed because of misidentification. Right? We’re all certain of that. Why, we’re as certain of that as we are of what kind of car the snipers were driving.

The sniper’s been stopped. The death penalty lives on. And state governments remain the biggest serial killers in America.

Food for thought.

PAD

Got distracted by other stuff, so I didn’t comment on Buffy this week. Figured I’d combine it with Angel here (which I watched while taking a one-hour break from watching the Anaheim Angels, which somehow seemed Apropos, which is something else entirely.)

Buffy–Overall a solid episode. Loved the subtitling and the extensive sequence with the actors speaking whatever-the-heck-language that was. Anya’s song was blah, unfortunately, and her hair length didn’t seem to match that from “Once More With Feeling.” And the final sequence with D’Hoffryn finally made him seem like a genuine demon head of a vengeance clan, rather than the avuncular type he always is. However, the episode seemed less than the sum of its parts. How could Buffy have forgotten a sword thrust against Anya would be useless considering *we* all remembered having seen Halfax run through last year? “I’m just getting started,” quoth Buffy. What, she’s dragging it out? And the constant repetition of “it devours from below” came across ominous as first, but now it’s starting to sound like an impending case of virulent demonic jock itch. It’s almost as if they want to keep reassuring us that, yes, there is indeed an overall big bad this year (as opposed to the aimlessness that seemed to characterize last season) but enough already with the warnings.

Also, am I the only one who feels like the energy level of the acting is down? Certain cast members…well, it’s not like they’re phoning it in, but they come across more like actors who feel their series is winding down rather than their characters. Maybe they’re jet-lagged. I dunno. Only Marsters seems really on his game; whenever anyone’s in a scene with Spike, their performance level goes up a few notches. Otherwise they seem kinda blah.

Angel–Good characterization marking an episode that seemed mostly set-up. Wes and Lyla are turning into *the* fun couple of TV. These two play more headgames than the guys from “Highlander.” I thought Cordy was going to figure out Angel’s true nature when he didn’t reflect in that honkin’ big mirror she was looking in, but the “Am I a nun?” thing worked nicely too. Connor was actually tolerable. Now when the heck are they making Andy Hallet a regular? I haven’t seen this much lack of support for a regular recurring character since Tara…which is ominous, all things considered.

PAD

Last night was the first time that we’ve actually bothered to watch the World Series, because thus far it’s between two teams I don’t really give a damn about. But hey, any Series that features near-death rescues of wandering uniformed three year olds certainly gets my attention.

It was a really good game, unless of course you’re a Giants fan. Having no real vested interest in either team, I could admire the play from both sides. However, being a latecomer to all this, and knowing pretty much nothing about the Angels…

Would someone please explain to me what the hell is up with the monkey?

I’m sitting there watching people waving stuffed monkeys and wondering if it was a stuffed monkey giveaway day or something, and suddenly there’s this frickin’ uniformed “Rally Monkey” on the screen, holding up a sign reading “Believe in the power of the monkey.” And the announcers are discussing this in a matter of fact, everyone-knows-about-this manner, in the same way that they could make a reference to Babe Ruth’s calling his shot and everyone gets the reference. Me, I’m totally out of the loop.

How long have these monkey shines been going on? Whose bright idea was it? How the heck did it catch on, anyway?

PAD

Kathleen, Ariel and I hauled our sniffling selves to “Dance of the Vampires” last night, now in previews on Broadway. Based on Roman Polanski’s “The Fearless Vampire Killers,” it stars Michael Crawford as Count Von Krolock and Rene Auberjonois as Professor Abronsius.

If you have any interest in Michael Crawford, Rene Auberjonois, vampires (dancing or otherwise), or a fun evening of theater, you should definitely go. Soon. Because if you have an interest in what the NY Times will say, they’ll probably hate it.

They will probably say that there’s a few songs too many (there are.) That certain aspects of the book never really come together (also true; a story arc involving a flamingly gay vampire, for instance, draws laughs but ultimately goes nowhere). That the show starts out strong in terms of a tongue-in-cheek tone, but gets patchy after the first half hour (‘fraid so.) That composer/lyricist Jim Steinman’s songs are for the most part unmemorable. Well…yeah.

That’s the most depressing aspect, really. Early on in the show, Steinman–who wrote songs for Meat Loaf–slides about sixteen bars of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” into the middle of Krolock’s first song. It draws huge laughs as the audience slowly tweaks to the self-referential digression. But when kicking off Act II, they do a full blown rendition of “Total Eclipse.” It’s great to hear. They do a terrific job with it. The problem is that it really points up the fact that no other number in the show can touch a song he wrote at least two decades ago, because that’s the song you’ll come out humming.

The thing is, all of these thoughts occur *after* you’ve left the show (which is, of course, when reviews are written). *During* the show you’re having a great time. The songs are bouncy (if forgettable), and some of the lyrics are genuinely hysterical (particularly an early song about garlic and Auberjonois’ Gilbert & Sullivan-esque patter song about Logic.) And it may very well be that legions of Crawford fans alone will be sufficient to keep the show going.

Furthermore, this *was* still previews, keep in mind. Trims and fixes may yet be made. Such typical preview glitches as effects misfiring or poor sound mixing or mikes going out will presumably be cured by opening night; perhaps other aspects will be fixed as well.

But just in case they’re not, go anyway. If nothing else, it’s the first genuine Grand Guignol to hit Broadway since Sweeney Todd. And there’s just not enough Grand Guignol out there to excuse supporting it when it meanders along.

PAD

Tom Brevoort passed this along to me. I’ve never run a fan letter here, but this is pretty cool in a geeky sort of way:

To the Crew,

Comedy Centrals’ “Beat the Geeks” Comic Book Geek

Now I feel kinda bad feeling so satisfied when the comic pros wiped the floor with the Geek team in the trivia competition at San Diego.

PAD

I’m not much fun today. I’m fighting off a headcold. I was up until 3 AM last night working on the next NEW FRONTIER novel, then collapsed into bed, crawled out around 7 AM to get Ariel off to school, took some night time Theraflu ’cause that’s all we had in the house, and fell back into bed. Just woke up. Still coughing up interesting things from my lungs.

PAD

Been having some baby excitement the last few days. Kathleen started experiencing serious Braxton-Hicks contractions for the first time over the weekend…which is pretty much normal. And at work yesterday, she almost passed out a couple of times, probably because of abruptly dropping blood pressure. Again, normal, but it’s obviously disconcerting.

A guy at work poked her tummy, obviously thinking it would be marshmallow soft. He was astounded to discover that Kath literally has rock-hard abs. It’s all muscle and baby. Then the baby shoved back, and the guy actually saw the rippling of her stomach surface, and was totally skeeved. See, that’s why men couldn’t carry children. It has nothing to do with pain. It’s that by the third month, the moment it started moving around, guys would be flashing on “Alien” and would be screaming, “Get it out of me! Get it out! Ahhhhh!” for the next six months.

We’re going to the baby doc today. And no, we don’t know the gender. Brian Stelfreeze thinks it’s a boy. Julie Caitlin Brown thinks it’s a girl. And Harlan Ellison thinks it’s a tricycle. Maybe we’ll name the kid “Schwinn.”

PAD

A retailer in North Carolina has contacted me, informing me that due to distributor error, he was shorted his entire order of CAPTAIN MARVEL #2. Reorders are, naturally, not available. Several customers have outright told him if they can’t get #2, they won’t be collecting the series.

He needs a dozen copies minimum to fulfill subscriber requests. Any retailer reading this who is interested in moving some extra copies of CM #2, please contact me immediate at PADGUY@AOL.COM, and I will put you together with the North Carolina retailer. Obviously the sooner the better on this.

PAD

I keep hearing people wondering why the current administration is so hot to go after Saddam Hussein…so hot, in fact, that we’re pretty much the only country in the world interested in doing so (England’s supporting us, sure, but if we dropped the notion, does *anyone* think Tony Blair would continue to bang the drums?)

To me, the answer is pretty simple:

We know where he is.

At the very least, we have a pretty good idea.

We don’t know where bin Laden is. We don’t know where the former heads of the Taliban are. They could be anywhere. But Saddam? He’s in Iraq. Him we can find.

A year from now, Bush will be gearing up for reelection. The odds of the economy still being in the toilet at that point are much higher than the odds of bin Laden et al being in hand. If the Democrats are able to drive home the message of “You’re no safer from bin Laden now than you were two years ago, and the economy sucks besides,” Bush might hemorrhage electoral support. If the Democrats put forward the notion, “Eight years of prosperity and peace before Bush, and now look where you are,” Bush might follow his father as a one-term president. On the other hand, if we’re in the midst of a war, well…Americans might not want to switch horses at that point.

Is the current “Get Saddam” drive politically motivated. I don’t know. What I do know is…we know where Saddam is.

Roughly.

PAD

Finally caught up with the new A&E version of THE LOST WORLD, featuring a perfectly cast Bob Hoskins as Prof. Challenger. The nice thing was that they were running both parts back to back. Commercial interruption frequency is still beyond belief; sometimes as little as seven minutes of the program between commercials. Meanwhile they were already advertising the DVD edition. If A&E keeps this up, then the original airing will serve as simply a preview as to whether to see it on DVD or not. Watch twenty minutes, figure, “Okay, this is worth buying/renting,” and tune in to something else.

With that said, we did watch the whole thing in one shot. Gotta tell ya, it had the fraction of the budget of, say, “Jurassic Park III,” far fewer dinos, and yet (commercials aside) the program itself seemed to fly by as opposed to the endless 90 minutes of JP III. Just reminds you of what a good story and great characters means, as opposed to simply throwing special FX at you.

Definitely check out the vide or DVD. Don’t slog through the commercial-ridden showing, though; I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

PAD

As part of our ongoing endeavor to make this website more interesting for Gwen to read, here’s a Gwen update: She had the job interview at New England Comics, which she thinks went well. They asked if she reads my books, which of course she doesn’t. That shouldn’t be surprising. Putting aside the axiom that no man is a hero in his own home (except, I think, major league baseball players; I mean, how could they NOT be), I think it’s tough for the children of a writer to suspend disbelief long enough and buy into characters when they’re used to seeing their father sitting there creating the characters on his computer. Shana, my eldest, *did* read “Sir Apropos of Nothing,” but was totally skeeved by the sex because her father isn’t supposed to know about such things. I advised her to steer clear of “The Woad to Wuin” on that basis, since it’s raunchier than the first book.

I remember going to a Cherry Poppin’ Daddies concert some time ago. Girls were screaming as the lead singer bounced up and down while singing “Zoot Suit Riot.” But I could see the guy was about my age, and all I could imagine was him having a teenage daughter in the audience being utterly mortified, because that’s what teenage daughters do best: Be embarrassed about their parents. “What does your father do for a living?” Do you really think she’d say, “He’s a Cherry Poppin’ Daddy?” Hell no. She’d probably say, “He sells insurance.” Which is what my kids used to say about me, particularly when meeting boys, so they wouldn’t have to worry that the boys weren’t interested in them just to get some free comic books.

At any rate, if Gwen does get a parttime gig at NEC, I’ll let you know. Because it is, after all, a Gwen world, and we’re all just living in it.

PAD

At the Marvel/Fan press conference the other day, Marvel execs slapped CBG around because a CBG columnist (no, not me) allegedly stated that “most retailers” dislike Marvel’s non-reorder, non-overprint policy. Marvel says t’ain’t so. They said they did a study of 300 retailers, and know that for a fact.

Okay. I’ve done no study. All I know is what I’ve seen and heard anecdotally. I’ve seen some retailers write in to CBG praising the new policies. But I’ve also seen retailers writing in and complaining, in CBG and in Comic Retailer magazine, and a number have griped to me in person. I’ve no clue, though, if “most” of the retailers are unhappy campers.

Any retailers reading this? Tell me what you think. Anyone reading this know any retailers? Ask them what they think. I admit to a certain degree of curiosity. I have an opinion based purely on perception, but perceptions can be deceiving. So you guys tell me: Marvels non-reorder, non-overprint policy. Good thing or bad thing? Helping or hurting?

PAD

Herewith my weekly “Buffy” comment (which will annoy the crap out of my daughter, Gwen, who claims that all I ever discuss on this log is “Buffy.” Perhap I should be talking about something that truly interests her, like…her. Okay. She’s got a job interview at New England Comics this Thursday. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Happy, Gwen?)

Last night’s was the weakest entry this season…although even a weak entry put it head and shoulders above many from last season. It’s what I call a Placemarker episode: It endeavors to entertain and give some vague tie-ins with the overall season arc without advancing either the “big-bad” arc or the character arcs too much. They do a number of those each year, particularly early in the season. “Bad Eggs” is an off-hand example from season 2. The only real standouts of that type are usually the Halloween episodes.

So for a placemarker it wasn’t bad. But it dragged. The pacing was off; it suffered from an occasional lapse one sees in the series, wherein the true subject matter of the episode doesn’t make itself known until the end of the first act. Nothing was accomplished in the teaser, and most of the first act was dedicated to telling us what we’ve already known for several episodes: Buffy is working as a counselor. The array of students would have been better and funnier compressed to a fast montage about thirty seconds long. Having Cassie come in and announce that she was going to die next Friday was a nice punch; *that* should have been the teaser, and you go from there.

Next week’s with Anya looks intriguing, and also seems to be addressing my questions regarding Anya’s soul. I had speculated that Buffy could kill Anya since she’s now a souless demon…but if she was souless, how could her marriage to Xander have ever worked? And if she’s not souless, then why was she never agonized over all she’d done, like Angel and Spike? Perhaps we’ll find out. Also perhaps next week has the rumored “Anya sings” flashback.

PAD

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