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“Beauty and the Beast” from two years ago

Marvel Comics has been acquired by the Disney Corporation.

Seriously.  I’m not kidding.   This is the AP article:

Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of 5,000 Marvel characters.

Disney said Monday that Marvel shareholders will receive $30 per share in cash plus 0.745 Disney shares for every Marvel share they own.

It said the boards of Disney and Marvel have both approved the transaction, but it requires an antitrust review and the approval of Marvel shareholders.

PAD

X-Factor is not canceled. The following month will see the numbering switch to issue #200, and the story is double sized so we need to give the artist extra time to get a jump on it.

PAD

Edwood’s eyebrow raised almost imperceptibly, but everyone happened to be blinking at that precise moment, so his act was, in all actuality, imperceived.  He stabbed at his potato (or was it potatoe?)-made voodoo doll of Jakob.  He had done many things to the spud… effigy… spudigy thing that he had secretly kept in his pants since chapter fourteen.  Over the course of the past few days, he had molded it into many shapes, including his favorite failed politicians, Michael Dukakis and Dan Quayle, and a potato bug.  And have you ever seen a potato bug?  Those things are disgusting.  My sister once found one in her shoe when we were kids.  I think it scarred her for life.  Anyway, Edwood even molded the spud into a snaggle-toothed Shark Boy at one point.  But for now, since no one in the Gap seemed to be fawning over his perfectly-coiffed beauty, or even approached him to see if he needed assistance, he was content to jab a perfectly-formed finger into the eye of what now looked like normal old Jakob. (more…)

Kathleen took Ariel and her stuff up to college today. I keep thinking of how lucky I was to marry Kath, because second wives sometimes have little interest in children from the previous marriage (probably why stepmothers get such a bad rep in fairy tales.) But Kath has been Ariel’s main maternal figure for the past decade, and done a terrific job raising her, so it was nice that she was able to bring Ariel up to Connecticut (leaving me, on deadline, to get more work done.) And soon Ariel will be heading off to Ireland as part of a freshman program; how’s THAT for an intro into co-ed life?

I’m going to miss her terribly; I’m so used to having her around. But this is the most exciting time in her life ever, and I’m confident she’ll take full advantage of it.

PAD

A whole bunch of years ago, when I was sitting in a court room during divorce proceedings, I noticed the words, “IN GOD WE TRUST” emblazoned on the wall above the judge’s bench. And I leaned over to my attorney and, indicating the wording, said, “So…the whole separation of church and state thing…?”

“Not so much,” said my attorney.

Well, a blow for remembering that shoving God in your face isn’t exactly always appreciated was struck in Kentucky when a judge ruled that a state law regarding homeland security had crossed the ever-flexible line in that regard. The law apparently treated survival in a manner similar to the way AA treats alcoholism: You have to acknowledge your dependence on a higher power for survival. And the judge rightly said, “Uh uh. Unconstitutional.”

The state representative–who is, not coincidentally, a pastor–declared that it wasn’t a matter of religion. “God isn’t a religion. God is God!” he declared. He also pointed out that the words “In God We Trust” appears on all the money. Which is true. But the mandate to put the newly declared national motto on all the money (not just the few coins on which it previously appeared) didn’t occur until the 1950s, at the same time that the words “under God” were inserted into the pledge of allegiance. You know, back when Congress was desperate to prove that we were different from the Godless commies, not to mention falling over each other to weed out Reds in our society and consequently ruining the careers and lives of a lot of good people.

Not that we’ve moved beyond the need to persecute people, harass them, and boycott them simply because of opinions they might or might not possess; the spirit of Tailgunner Joe is alive and well to this day, I can assure you. So the insertion of God into various aspects of life by government fiat has a not-so-proud legacy. I’ll be interested to see if the good pastor’s observation about the money triggers the next law suit.

More details can be found here:

Yeah, yeah, I forgot to do it yesterday.

PAD

A Meth ring in Colorado was using comic books to launder the profits of their endeavors.

Kind of brings a whole new meaning to the term “Stash Wednesday,” doesn’t it.

I’m totally serious. You can find out more here:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/08/25/meth.ring.arrests/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

PAD

With Ariel preparing to go to college, we wound up having one last family overnight. Friday night I took Ariel to see “Hair” while Kathleen took Caroline to see “The Lion King.” The family then stayed over at the Marriott Marquis. The next morning, as with her sisters before her, Caroline got to go to the American Girls store and get her own American Girls doll. Then in the afternoon we all went to see “The Little Mermaid”–

GODDAMMIT! A TRIPLE PLAY?!? TWO MEN ON, NO OUTS, DOWN TWO RUNS, AND THEY HIT INTO A GAME-ENDING, UNASSISTED TRIPLE PLAY?!? SON OF A BITCH!!!!

–and had a really great time. It’s a shame the show’s closing the end of the–

I KNOW THEY’RE “AMAZING,” BUT WHO NEEDS THIS KIND OF AMAZEMENT?!?!

–month.

PAD

New issue of X-Factor this week, plus other stuff.

PAD

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, the folks who produced the renowned Neil Gaiman-themed perfumes, have debuted their latest entries in the line: Sachs & Violens, based on the characters created by George Perez and yours truly. Sales of the scents will go to benefit the Hero Initiative.

If S&V sales are successful, there’s always the chance they will expand the line to incorporate the other current residents of Bete Noire including the Fallen Angel. Find out more here:

BPAL Sach and Violens

An orange Ford Mustang GT skid to an abrupt stop before the building entrance, then impatiently revved its engine. To be clear, it wasn’t Stan, the kid in the driver’s seat, who was impatient, it was the car. Stan had his palms clutched against his ears but even the radio blaring ’N Sync could not drown out the incessant exposition emanating from the backseat.

“Then Edwood tried to get away from me,” Bela continued ceaselessly, “but I followed him across the country—”

“We’re here,” Stan interrupted with what Bela detected was a sharp tone.

“But I haven’t even gotten all the way through Book Two yet,” she said, pushing the front seat forward so she could squeeze out. (more…)

It’s been reported that one Doug Manchester, who donated $125,000 to the cause of getting Prop 8 through because apparently he felt so strongly that gay marriage posed a threat to straight marriage…is now in the midst of a divorce action.

How could this possibly be? After all, Manchester helped get Prop 8 passed. Marriage should be safe in California and yet…here it is threatened again.

Perhaps Mr. Manchester should donate $125,000 to a new proposition that would outlaw divorce. Let’s see how well that works out.

Details can be found here:

Ironic Divorce

PAD

Bela tried to keep up with the strange little man, but she felt way too out of her element here. For all of the strange characters that she had come across in the last few days, this was the first time she truly felt like she had to *think* about what was going on.

And she didn’t like it.

Plus, there was far too much going on; she could already feel the narrative drifting away from her. (more…)

For all you do…this space is for you!

PAD

Many years ago, I was attending Mark Gruenwald’s memorial service. I was just standing there, minding my own business, looking quietly at some of the displays, and a woman walked up to me and said, “Excuse me…are you Peter David?” I said yes. She said, “I just wanted to tell you, you’re a terrible writer. Just awful.” I stared at her and said, “Thank you for sharing that.” She walked away.

If Internet blogs had existed as such at the time, I’ve no doubt she would have blogged or twittered about it.

Flash forward to a fan attending the Chicago Wizard Con and he discovers that, unannounced, Rob Liefeld is sitting at a table. Is Rob sitting their boasting abut his greatness? Is he talking about how his contributions to Marvel are the greatest ever? No. He’s just minding his own business, drawing a sketch of Wolverine.

The guy, fulfilling a personal ambition, walks up to Rob Liefeld and thinks it the height of hilarity to tell him that he demands Rob apologize for “Heroes Reborn.” (more…)

Bela woke suddenly, finding herself abandoned in the hall, and miffed that everyone who should have been standing around adoring her had, in fact, abandoned her instead of adoring her.

“Well that’s just great,” she huffed in a huff. “How will I pitch the rest of this story if everyone leaves me and I don’t know what’s going on?” she whined in her whiny voice.

She was so distressed by this turn of events, the hairs on her arms and legs (she hadn’t seen a leg-razor since the story started) began to stand on end. Then the hair on top of her head began to spike outward. She became aware of a taste in her mouth, like touching her tongue to a 9-volt battery. She pulled a 9-volt battery from her pocket and touched it to her tongue, and decided that that was indeed the taste.

The air began to crackle with blue electrical discharges. There was a bright blue flash as a ball of blue energy popped into being, then shattered into tiny blue fragments, which shattered again when they hit the floor into tiny blue powder. Where the ball had momentarily been, there was now a man. He was wearing a dark brown trench-coat, a dark brown short-brimmed fedora, and a potato-hued mask with many brown spots covered his face. There seemed to be no pattern to the spots. In fact, as she stared at them , she realized that they were moving across the surface of the mask.

The man seemed to look at her (she couldn’t be sure because she couldn’t see his eyes through the mask but she was there so what else could he want to look at), then turned his head as if to survey his surroundings. “Hrm,” he muttered. Bela began to ask him who he was and if he wanted to adore her too, when the man began speaking aloud to himself. (more…)

I figure every so often I”ll just toss out a general “anything goes” topic. Anything you want to discuss, feel free to throw it out there. You may want to try for stuff that isn’t being covered elsewhere. Anything topical, anything that’s caught your interest and you want to bring up, go right ahead.

PAD

UPDATED: Okay, this isn’t actually going the way I thought it would. This wasn’t intended to be an “ask me questions” thing. I figured it to be more along the lines of, “Here’s something that’s bugging me at the moment or that I’d like to speak out about” space. If I’d intended it to be, “Ask me about things,” then I would have called it that. I didn’t want this space to be about me; I wanted it to be all about you guys.

So now the only question is: How will the Usual Suspects try to spin this so that it’s a negative for Clinton and/or Obama?

PAD

Issue #2 of “Fallen Angel: Reborn” is out this week. Plus there are probably a few other titles coming out as well.

PAD