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I read over my column when it saw print this week in CBG and was rather surprised to find about a quarter of it missing. While running a section about Howard Stern and censorship that was basically a reiteration of stuff I said earlier in this blog, I then went off on a further tangent which I thought might get some controversy going, since CBGs been pretty quiet lately.

Well, apparently it’s gonna stay quiet, by choice.

Below is the entire section of my column that was deleted without my being informed:

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I was endeavoring to delay announcement of this until Marvel was set to publicize the new projects I have coming up with them. But Joe

Since a lot of people have been asking me, I’ll be posting about it tomorrow at noon.

PAD

There was some discussion of setting up a scholarship fund at a college in memory of Julie Schwartz, but Neil Gaiman suggested an alternative idea that DC has embraced. The notion will be to provide a fund (in conjunction with a college yet to be determined) which will pay for an annual lecturer of note (a different one each year, of course) to come to the university and talk about the popular arts, comic books, science fiction and fantasy, and their impact on our culture.

I will be contacting Matt Idelson, my editor on the Julie memorial comic I’ve been assigned to, and will be requesting that all monies I would have earned in connection with this endeavor be donated directly to the Julie Schwartz Adjunct Lectuerer Fund.

Anyone else interested in contributing can send donations to the Julius Schwartz Scholarship Fund (that’s what it’s currently called; it will likely change, but I figure, why confuse the people in the mail room), c/o DC Comics, 1700 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

PAD

MJ Norton, the only person (I believe) who correctly identified my niece, Emma, was suffering from gastroesophogial reflux. The doctors concurred with MJ’s diagnosis. It’s easily controllable with medication and eventually she’ll grow out of it, so she’s already doing much better and Beth and Rande are just thrilled not having to change her into a new outfit four times a day.

Again, thanks to all concerned. And MJ, you win…well, nothing, really…unless you want, I dunno, a bag of memorial vomit. But I’m kind of doubting it.

PAD

DC has announced the Julie Schwartz tribute comic project, in which they gave covers of classic Julie comics to various writers and we are to produce 11-page stories tying in with the covers. This has been in the hopper for a little while, but since they’ve announced it (check out Newsarama.com) and attached my name, I figured I’d tell you that I’m scheduled to co-write mine with Harlan Ellison (Harlan would do the plot, I’d turn it into a script) and the cover we’re doing is Justice League of America #53, which features the JLA being attacked by their own weapons. (Hey, Glenn, if somehow you have a copy of this cover laying around, feel free to post it here.)

PAD

(UPDATE: Peter, I’ll look through my collection for Justice League of America #53 as soon as I get back from the hotel I’m at with your wife. –GH)

(UPDATE 2: Oh, all right. Here. –GH)

We left at 7:30 AM to drive into Manhattan for Julie Schwartz’s 9:30 memorial service. It’s a drive that I can make in as little as an hour, so I allowed two. Naturally it took three (thanks to accidents snarling traffic on literally every possible way into the city because so few people seem to comprehend travelling at the proper speed for conditions), so we missed a good portion of it, which frustrates the hell out of me.

It was certainly well attended: I’d guesstimate between 100 to 150 people there. Speakers that we saw included Neil Gaiman reading a eulogy from Alan Moore (which Neil will likely be putting up on his blog), Irwin Hasen, Maggie Thompson, Tony Tollin, and Bob Greenberger reading on behalf of Len Wein. Paul Levitz, visibly choked up, made some concluding comments, followed by some final thoughts from one of Julie’s granddaughters. Copies of Julie’s autobiography were available on a table upstairs for anyone who wanted one, and most of them had disappeared by the time we left. I didn’t take one because I already had a copy, signed to me by Julie. It’s that much more valuable now.

PAD

(UPDATE: Alan’s note, which was not so much read by Neil as channeled, is now up here. -GH)

Terrorist representatives today announced they were abandoning further retaliatory plans against allies of the US-led war on Iraq when a nine year old girl pointed out to them that–had terrorists not destroyed the World Trade Center–George W. Bush would never have been able to muster the support to attack Iraq in the first place.

“Yeah, that lapse in clear thinking was our bad,” said terrorist spokesman Abu Al Bumen. “If 9/11 hadn’t happened, Bush could never had ridden a wave of fear and anger right into the middle of Baghdad. I mean, the kid had it right. She didn’t really leave us a lot of wiggle room, y’know?”

The startling turnabout began when nine year old Terri Schwindenhamer of Tulsa, OK, wrote a letter to the editor that appeared in the Tuesday New York Times. Young Schwindenhamer, whose letter was headlined “Could Someone Explain This To me,” pointed out in part, “I don’t understand why the terrorists are hurting people over stuff the terrorists themselves helped to happen.”

Al Bunem, in a taped interview airing on the Spike Network, stated, “We just hadn’t considered it that we…I mean, we were blowing up innocent people over events that we initiated. Frankly, I don’t know what the hell we were thinking. Bottom line is, we pretty much screwed the pooch on this whole revenge thing. So, y’know, we’re reconsidering our options.”

“Actually, we’re thinking of getting into management of national political campaigns. Turns out we’re pretty good at that.”

If George W. Bush was running five points ahead (or more) three days prior to the election here, and God forbid there was an attack accompanied by terrorist warnings that this was reciprocity for Iraq, would it turn the election around for the less popular party (as it apparently turned the election around in Spain)…or would it cause Bush to win by an even wider margain?

PAD

I thought it used to be that winter came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. Lately it seems to be coming in like a lion and going out like another lion, and the lamb is off being shishkabob somewhere. As I write this, snow is coming down hard and steady, and shows no immediate sign of slacking off. Terrific.

At least it’s happening today instead of Thursday, when Julie Schwartz’s memorial service will be happening.

PAD

Season 8 of “South Park” debuts this Wednesday. I know exactly what I’d love to see them do at some point, since it’s such a gargantuan target. I’m putting it onto extended entry just in case, by some unlikelihood, I happen to be right.

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I endeavored to post the following at the dccomics.com message board in response to a criticism one reader made about “Fallen Angel #9.” To my astonishment, it was repeatedly flagged as containing language that was in violation of terms, and it wouldn’t post it. Keep in mind the word “Hell” is quoted from an already existing post. I tried to e-mail the board overseers but, guess what? Their e-mail doesn’t work.

Does anyone have a clue what the posting below could possibly contain that got me an automatic message scolding me? (Remember, the quote part is from the previous poster, and the rest is from me):

“Dislike: The dreaded Hell Hound. I think it took up too many panels and I didn’t care for the obligatory smash to death. Sometimes this title is too “mature” for its own good. Showing blood and violence all of the time doesn’t make for a good story. In fact, I think it tends to take away from it.”

Well, the fight only took three pages, an average of 2-3 panels a page. To me, that was minimum; otherwise he wouldn’t have seemed like much of a threat. As for the blood and violence–have you ever been in a fight? Or seen someone in one? The blood pumping, the adrenaline rush…it’s not like in comics where people are in a fight and then back off the moment the foe is down. In real life, the adrenaline keeps surging, and you’ll watch as people will go after a fallen foe until either their energy wears out or someone pulls them off (look no further than Bernhard Goetz, who walked up to a man he’d already shot and was no longer a threat, and shot him again.)

For all its fantasy elements, the watchword for “Fallen Angel” is “realistic.” It was realistic for the Angel to be so pumped with adrenaline after the fight was over that she had to do something with it, including pulping the creature that had just been trying to kill her. Her emotions were real, and the blood was real.

If you go back and do a real panel-to-incident count, I think you’ll find there’s less violence in an average “Fallen Angel” than many other books. But when it does occur, I don’t clean it up, make it all nice and sanitized. There’s enough titles already doing that. In this one, blood and genuine streaks of human cruelty–when they are presented–are shown in their unvarnished ugliness.

PAD

I’ve had good times in Spain. Met lots of charming, enthusiastic comics fans there during my several sojourns.

And now people are getting blown up. Initially 170, and you just knew that number was going to keep climbing, and it is. I keep worrying one of the smiling folks I met are just dismembered corpses now. And even if it’s no one I knew, that certainly doesn’t make it “better.”

Yet it was “comforting” somehow to think it was Basque separatists, because then it wasn’t “our” problem, it was Spain’s. Except now, with even separatists distancing themselves from the blast, Al Qaida is claiming responsibility…ostensibly to punish US allies over the attack on Iraq. Which leads me to wonder if people who were yelling that there were Iraq/Al Qaida links are perceiving this as a good thing (“Proof!”) or a bad thing (“Oh, right, people got killed.”)

I would stop short of saying that the blood is on Bush’s hands. Madmen don’t need rational reasons to kill others. Iraq was just another excuse for the acts of madmen, who might well have committed the same atrocities in Spain while putting some other spin on it.

And yet, if it is Al Qaida, we will be blamed for it. Don’t doubt that. The Spanish government backing the US was a spectacularly unpopular move. We went into a war searching for non-existent WMDs and, a year later, Spanish civilians are being turned into pinatas with that action being cited as the cause for it. Yet another reason for yet another country to hate us.

The insanity is just escalating. Blood on our hands? On second thought, Hell, why not. In the horror show of escalating terrorism, where the only answer for violence that so many people can come up with is more violence on top of more violence, there’s enough blood for everyone.

PAD

A bunch of the regular shows are taking a break, but “Alias” was new, and a new series entitled “Wonderfalls” had a promising debut last night. Kinda spoilers follow…

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