PeterDavid.net

I took my daughter, Ariel, to see “Hairspray the Musical” on Wednesday. It was her second time seeing it, my first. The funny thing was that she was all grouchy upon learning that the lead actress she’d seen in the role was no longer in the show. Lo and behold, she liked the replacement even more. We hung around after the show and many cast members, including the magnificent Harvey himself, signed autographs for eager patrons. If you’re in New York, enjoy musicals, and have not seen this show yet…get tickets and go.

PAD

It occurs to me that you folks may have general questions you never get answered. So feel free to post them here. What I will then do (or at least am planning to do, unless it turns out I can’t for some reason) is use the edit function to respond directly to the questions right where you ask them. That way folks won’t have to scroll like mad to find the answers.

If I think the thread’s getting too long, I’ll cut off responses and we’ll do another round in a week or so.

PAD

ADDENDUM: Okay, it’s 12:30 AM and I’m cutting off the postings now. I’ll answer these as I have time over the next few days.

So I’ve been reading HULK for the past year, determined to wrap myself around why it is that the book is so beloved.

Guys…is it me? Be honest. Seriously. Am I so biased that I’m simply *incapable* of understanding the book’s success? Don’t get me wrong: Bruce Jones, perfectly good writer Loved his stuff on Ka-Zar.

But, my God, people say *I* drag out stories? Snails could do windsprints around this pacing. The latest storyline is pretty much the last straw for me. Five issues to tell a story in which the Hulk makes no significant appearance until the last issue…at which time, unless I’m reading it wrong, he did nothing to aid in the resolution of the story. That’s not even taking into account that the Absorbing Man talks and acts nothing like the Absorbing Man of forty years standing.

Yet fans support the book by the carload.

Really, I desperately want to understand the popularity. Someone explain it to me.

PAD

With Fox News providing it so much publicity that you’d have to think the author should send them a nice fruit basket, Al Franken’s “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right” is out in stores. The case (for a temporary injunction –GH) was tossed out of court by a judge who dismissed it by saying, “This is an easy case” and ruled that in no way, shape or form could the book possibly cause confusion in the marketplace.

The most hilarious line to come out of the proceedings was the Fox attorney who, when faced with the fact that satire and parody have First Amendment protection, opined about the book’s cover, “This is much too subtle to be considered a parody.”

You have to love that. A title as subtle as a brick through a window, but Fox attorney’s consider it “too subtle to be considered a parody.” Yup, this is definitely the irony-blind network that bills itself as “fair and balanced,” all right. Of course, no one expects Franken’s book to be fair and balanced: That’s kind of the point. Franken doesn’t mean it; Fox does.

I’ve bought my copy and expect to be reading it within the next couple of days.

PAD

Tom Galloway pointed out the Diamond Catalogue entry that lists an exciting new action figure: The “Ariel Flipping Spider-Man.“

This, of course, prompts visions of Spider-Man chucking the Little Mermaid–or possibly my third daughter–into the air like a pancake. Or, hey…it could be exactly what it says: Ariel flipping Spider-Man, implying she’s either throwing him, or perhaps extending the middle finger of her hand at him.

Tom’s supposition is that it’s a typo for “Aerial.” But that couldn’t be it. Diamond, and Marvel, never make mistakes.

PAD

Here you go. Doubling as the “Whad’ja think?” and potentially (unless indicated otherwise) for publication in a future issue of “Captain Marvel.”

PAD

Read for yourself. Here are the first five pages of FALLEN ANGEL #3. Yes, it’s “For Mature Readers”, which means that you probably shouldn’t be reading if you are upset by drawings of pretty females in schoolgirl uniforms, women with bindings on their feet, or possibly inappropriate touching of a young schoolgirl’s knee…

(What? Me using lurid and overwrought descriptions to tittilate and get more people to read Peter’s book than otherwise might? Perish the thought!)

(more…)

Catching up on my e-mail, I just got finished reading an e-mail from my editor informing me that, beginning with issue #3, “Fallen Angel” would carry a “Mature Readers” label, and I wrote back to her and asked if I can publicize this on my blog.

Then what do I find out? That it’s already been announced on Newsarama.com.

Personally I’ve never been a big fan of labels because, as the Jesus Castillo cased proved, they provide as much protection against persecution as a sieve against a rainstorm. But I do believe that retailers should be informed at the time of solicitation as to specific adult material so they can order accordingly. However, ultimately DC’s the publisher, and if their comfort level dictates it should carry a label, that’s their call to make.

Interestingly, it frees me up language wise. I can pretty much have the characters say anything I want now, something I was originally told I could do, but then told I couldn’t because the book *didn’t* carry a Mature Readers label. Nevertheless, I can’t help but feel that profanity is becoming overused in comics to the point where it’s lost its shock value. Profanity is like any other tool: It should be used at the right time to accomplish the right effect. If the story is filled with explicit language from the get-go, it loses whatever power it might have to indicate stress or anger. So although certain words may come creeping into the conversation–words like “swell” and “So’s your old man!”–they’ll be used judiciously.

PAD

No, she didn’t knock 70 dingers out of the ballpark. No, she didn’t plow over 70 people while driving a tractor trailer. We were down in Pennsylvania, visiting my mother for her 70th birthday. My brother, Wally, and his family were there as well for the celebration.

PAD

Although I don’t generally reprint e-mails, I hear about this often enough that I thought I’d take the opportunity to answer it generally. I doubt the letter writer will mind:

Yesterday, I went to the Sunrise Mall in Massapequa to look for Tong Lashing. When I asked in Waldenbooks about it, the clerk said, “Oh, we only order it on special order.” When I asked why, he replied “Well, they don’t sell as well as his Star Trek books.” I went upstairs to the B. Dalton and got a similar spiel about only ordering it on special order. So my question is… is it better to encourage one of these places to stock your books in the future by placing a special order with them…. or is it better to “punish” them by giving my business to a store that did bother to stock it?

Yes, welcome to the glamorous life of a successful author, where branch buyers and clerks create self-fulfilling prophecies by not ordering or stocking your books and then saying they don’t sell.

As annoying as it may be, the truth is that yes, the only way to encourage stores to carry my books is to special order them, because they keep track of what people order and adjust accordingly. They can’t keep track of it when you get annoyed and just order it off Amazon.

Understand, it’s not your job to try and reeducate bookstores. You don’t want to wait for the week or two it’ll take for a special order, I understand. But if folks are asking me what’s “better” (meaning, presumably, what benefits my career) then yes, special ordering the book is preferable.

PAD

We went to the Renaissance Fair up in Tuxedo, New York this weekend. We always make it up there, and this one was naturally Caroline’s first Renfair experience ex utero.

The day started off on a shaky note. Ariel had brought her friend Alyssa along (both in costume) and when we got there the human chess game was in progress. So was some suffocating heat, and we all promptly began to wilt. We trekked over from there to the first joust of the day, trying to stay hydrated. The major concern was Caroline; shielded as she was from the sun (carried in a backpack with a sun guard and also wearing sunblock), she was still starting to look a little glassy eyed. The real killer was the humidity which you could have sliced with a broadsword. So we stake out some ground watching the joust. In the shade, we hoped things would be more bearable. I was holding Caroline, and she had just polished off a bottle of formula…and then bam. Caroline’s first experience with vomiting. We’d brought a change of outfit for her. Unfortuately we hadn’t brought one for me: She got my shirt, my pants, and some on the cloak I’d been wearing. In my 22 years of child rearing, I’ve been hit with pretty much everything the human body can excrete or secrete, so there’s more of a “*Sigh* Not again,” reaction rather than an “Eccchhh! Look what she did to me!” Still, I wasn’t thrilled.

But then cloud cover came rolling in, cooling the day. Caroline, having heaved, promptly fell asleep in my arms and I just stayed there with her for 45 minutes or so. When she woke up she was in a much better mood, a light rain had erased the humidity and brought the temperature down by about ten degrees, and the cloud cover kept the day much more temperate and even enjoyable. Much fun was had at the Renfair, as it usually is when kids aren’t upchucking. And if I were to be philosophical about it, I should be glad that she didn’t puke while she was riding behind me in the backpack.

PAD

Blah3 has compiled a list of about 800 other “Fair and Balanced” websites here. Dive in.

I received a box from Wizard via Fed Ex today. I cracked it open and, much to my surprise, discovered that I’d won the 10th Annual Wizard Fan Award for Favorite One-Shot (Hulk: The End.) Shows how much attention I was paying. I didn’t know I’d won, or even that I was up for it. And it was given out at Chicago, a convention I hadn’t been invited to, but would have gone to if they’d asked.

It’s a really nice award. A statue of a little boy reading a comic book. Much nicer than the old ones.

Thanks to everyone who voted.

PAD

Was I the only one who, yesterday afternoon, upon learning that power was going out all over the country and that cell phone systems were down, thought, “Damn. Skynet’s gone active.”

PAD

The lights went out around here at approximately 4:03 PM. Thirty seconds later, the lights came back on. For the first time since I had it installed ten years ago, the heavy duty emergency generator outside the house got a major workout. Not only did we have lights, phones and a working refrigerator, but even the cable stayed on. We had more neighbors coming over in one night than in the last month as folks came by to make calls, watch the news, and just look up at the lights with about as much amazement as Edison’s neighbors must have done when they swung by to see what the latest invention he (or his people) had come up with. The amusing thing, as darkness fell, was watching cars cruise by and slow when they passed the house as the drivers must have thought, “Oh, the power’s back on…wait…”

I admit I did keep worrying about that “Twilight Zone” episode, but fortunately the generator is loud enough that neighbors would attribute the continuing power to that rather than aliens.

The thing that bugs me is imagining bin Laden watching CNN in a cave somewhere, snickering over the continual reassurances that it wasn’t terrorists. Before 9/11 I doubt it even would have occurred to anyone; no one shouted “Terrorists!” in the previous NYC blackouts. But concerns have so insinuated our culture that terrorism has become the first line of panicked reaction.

This has been another fair and balanced blog entry.

PAD

From a newspaper called “The Scotsman”:

Arms race fear over new bomb

by JOHN INNES

US SCIENTISTS are working on a space-age weapon that experts fear could trigger a new arms race, it was claimed last night.

The gamma ray bomb blurs the line between conventional and nuclear explosives. It produces an enormous burst of energy from atoms without involving nuclear fission or fusion.

Just one gram of the explosive could store more energy than 50 kilograms of TNT.

A gamma bomb would produce little fall-out compared with a normal nuclear weapon, although undetonated particles could cause long-term health problems for anyone breathing them in.

Despite the fact that research is at an early stage and a practical weapon may not be built for many years, some experts are already worried.

Dr Andre Gsponer, the director of the Independent Scientific Research Institute in Geneva, believes countries without such weapons would not be able to fight ones that possessed them.

The result could be a arms race – or, worse, a decision to resort to nuclear weapons, he claims.

Third issue of the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is out this week. One more issue and then #5 starts the original stories, albeit still drawn in the style of the animated series.

So whad’ja think?

PAD

Out this week. Whad’ja think?