Even More Random Stuff

digresssmlOriginally published April 23, 1993, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1014

More miscellaneous stuff:

Recently announced, confirmed, and hotly anticipated: the triumphant return of Seduction of the Innocent, at Oakland’s Wondercon. Huzzah for the folks at Wondercon for cajoling the group back together.

Still, as supportive as Wondercon has been—

San Diego, with the larger and more intense turnout, really rocked.

‘Twould be nice.

* * *

From the How Quickly They Forget department, I am reminded of the guy on a computer board who—in the midst of a discussion about X-Men—referred to the “Glory days of Jim Lee.” Or, for that matter, the story related to me of the fan who stubbornly insisted that the Juggernaut was a Jim Lee creation.

Now nothing against Jim Lee—not remotely. Jim is a great guy and a superb talent. But shouldn’t “glory days” fall into some time period further back than, I dunno, a year and a half? I mean, when I think “glory days” of X-Men, I think Chris Claremont and John Byrne if we’re talking sheer power—or Claremont and Dave Cockrum when we’re discussing imagination and building excitement. Or Roy Thomas and Neal Adams for style and novelty in storytelling. And, of course, Stan and Jack for the invention of it all.

I knew attention spans were getting briefer and briefer, but this is ridiculous.

It’s one of the reasons I’m so pleased to see those marvelous articles detailing the life of Harvey Kurtzman. Not only is it his just due simply because of who he was, but it serves as a valuable tool for those fans who have absolutely no clue as to what Kurtzman accomplished in his remarkable career. Anyone who skipped past those pages to get to my silly column would be well advised to go back and re-read CBG #1011 slowly and thoughtfully.

* * *

Here’s something about Tony Isabella that Tony doesn’t know (at least, I don’t think he does): Long before I worked for Marvel in any capacity, I submitted a story idea for a What If–?, the subject being, “What if Gwen Stacy Had Lived?” (Gwen, for all you fans who think Spidey’s glory days were also a year and a half ago, rather than the Lee/Ditko/Romita Sr. years, was one of the three great loves of Peter Parker’s life, and she was killed by the Green Goblin, although I think Gerry Conway helped.)

And I submitted it in the exact format I would wind up describing more than a decade later in my column. And after waiting about a month I called up Marvel to check on it, and got this friendly guy named Jim Shooter on the phone who was very polite and told me that yes, he’d read it, and he thought it was a good story, but unfortunately they were already doing a What If? along those lines, written by Tony Isabella. And lo, I wished many curses down upon Tony’s head, which obviously worked because he’s still in Cleveland.

But Jim Shooter encouraged me to keep trying because he said I showed promise.

I haven’t thought about that conversation in years. I wonder if Jim remembers?

(Hëll, you should have seen Mark Gruenwald’s face last year when I reminded him that, before I started at Marvel, I entered the Marvel Plotting Game at a New York Comic Book Convention. Got up on stage and pitched a Daredevil story about a guy who had a pacemaker that was actually a bomb, and only Daredevil knew because he could hear it, but he couldn’t convince anyone because no one knows about his hypersensitive hearing—somethin’ like that. They told me I should work on it, and it sounded interesting. I think Ralph Macchio was on the panel of judges; I don’t recall who else. I don’t think I won, though. I wonder what happened to the guy who did?)

* * *

If (If? Who am I kidding? When) Ron Perelman decides to sell Marvel Comics, I hope he sells it to Universal or Paramount or some major movie studio. That way perhaps Marvel might finally get a live action movie that doesn’t bite.

(I’m sorry, I don’t want to sound negative, and I’d be happy to be wrong about this simply because after Captain America and The Punisher and Howard the Duck Marvel could use a break—but I’m not holding out tons of hope for the Fantastic Four movie. Sure, the picture in CBG looked spiffy—but Mark Salinger looked good in the Cap costume, despite the rubber ears.

(Then again, being owned by Warner Communications didn’t make Superman III & IV winners, did it?)

* * *

The latest entry in the “Help the would-be writers” ongoing drama in But I Digress comes from an editor named Raymond E.  That’s it. Raymond E. Now there’s a name that thwarts Don and Maggie’s anti-honorifics stance. I mean, a second reference in which he’s referred to as E looks kinda stupid. Then again, “Mister E” is taken. Ah well. At any rate, Raymond writes:

I read with interest (as I do all your BIDs) your column regarding the letter from Rick in Missouri, who wrote in to chastise your advice to aspiring, not to mention “fledging,” writers. His was a most curious response to what I felt was thoughtful and helpful information. I suppose he’d rather you said, “Forget it, everyone! No more new writers will ever be hired.” He sounds like one of those guys that thinks he’s a brilliant writer and can’t understand why he’s not published yet.

Regarding your invitation to other editors to share their stories with you—

I am an editor with a small publisher called Parody Press. As the name suggests, we do parody comics—usually mocking other comics. I have recently been actively looking to expand our talent pool and have placed ads in the major trades to attract talented individuals who can write and/or draw humor subjects. As the unofficial submissions editor as well, I am required to filter through all of the writing submissions that cross my desk. Some of them are so unbelievably hard to read that I have a tough time referring to these folks as “writers.”

I honestly thought that the tricky part to looking through them would be to muddle through all of the bad ideas to get to the good ones. I found instead that most of my time was taken up trudging through spelling mistakes, punctuation screw-ups, and serious problems with clarity. Often I have no idea what is going on, never mind the question, “Is it funny?”

I usually send out a note that explains the shortcomings of the work in not too diplomatic a manner along with a few comments on my editorial policies and the comedic sensibilities to give them a sense of what to submit in the future. It boggles my mind that some folks will send in that kind of sloppy work and expect a positive response.

So if you are interested in what non-Marvel editors have to say to writer wannabes, I would ask that they refer to a dictionary when posed with a word they do not know how to spell; that they acquire a thesaurus to expand their vocabulary; to proofread their material about a zillion times; and to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite!

I was amazed when you mentioned that Glenn Greenberg, the submissions editor at Marvel, had yet to run across a writing submission that was worth purchasing. I was also amazed that some Marvel editors said that some people actually submitted their screenplays. I hope that they were being facetious, and not really referring to actual screenplays. This practice makes as much sense to me (as) sending in my film school essay comparing and contrasting Charles Chaplin to Buster Keaton, and me asking for the regular assignment on Captain America.

In short, I am not very sympathetic to those that call themselves writers without demonstrating that presumption. I’ve never considered myself a writer (although I did manage to dazzle my English teacher with my creative writing in high school, only to shrug it off) but these readings almost give me the impression that I’m Samuel Beckett in disguise. A sad state of affairs.

Thanks for lis’nin.’

Samuel Beckett in disguise, Raymond? That’s easy enough to check. Look in a mirror. If you see someone else’s reflection staring back at you—particularly Scott Bakula’s—then you may, indeed, be a disguised Samuel Beckett.

By the way, I double checked, and no, facetious was not the intention when talking about submissions. Joey Cavalieri confirms that he gets genuine screenplays, albeit not of anything produced. Part of that might be because the screenplays Joey gets are roughly a hundred pages longer than any normal screenplay should be. So not only are the submissions in the wrong format for comics; they’re even in the wrong format for what they’re supposed to be, proving once again that two wrongs do not make a right (although, as we all know by now, two Wrights make an airplane).

Yeah, sure, there are longer screenplays than the standard 120-page maximum. But I somehow doubt that Michael Blake, the author of Dances With Wolves, is approaching Marvel about writing a fill-in of Ravage 2099.

* * *

I just saw the Batman: The Animated Series answer to Thelma and Louise again, namely “Harley and Ivy”: the team-up of Miss Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy as they embark on a crime wave. Now I’m even more aggravated that there are no plans for action figures of them.

Quick. Everyone write to Kenner. I called information and got their address, which is the kind of thing you do when it’s 1 a.m., you’re getting punchy, you’re going out of town at the end of the week and trying to get out two columns so you won’t fall behind and break your record of—my God—almost three years now. At any rate, their address is Kenner Products, 615 Elsinore Place, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.

Tell the manufacturers to make two versions. After all, if they can make Combat Belt Batman and Turbojet Batman (or, as I call it, Rocketeer Ripoff Batman. Check that helmet. Dave Stevens has a case here), then dammit, they can make multiple Harleys and Poison Ivys. One version would be them in costume, and the other would be them out of costume wearing those sexy little nightshirts.

Yup—I’m tired, all right.

By the way, Paul Dini, the episode’s writer, has a new telephone answering machine message with Arlene Sorkin (Harley’s voice actress) ingratiatingly explaining why “Mr. D” can’t make it to the phone. Obviously I’m not going to print Paul’s number; but if anyone reading this is a friend of his, give him a call if you haven’t done so in a while. It’s a hoot.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at To Be Continued, PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Keep circulating the tapes.)

5 comments on “Even More Random Stuff

  1. If (If? Who am I kidding? When) Ron Perelman decides to sell Marvel Comics, I hope he sells it to Universal or Paramount or some major movie studio. That way perhaps Marvel might finally get a live action movie that doesn’t bite.

    Now THAT’S funny……

    1. And very odd, too, because Marvel started making good movies, and that’s probably a lot of the reason Disney bought them. 🙂

  2. I remember during this same time frame if there was EVER going to be a decent film based on Marvel’s characters. Five years later, when “Blade” hit it big,I remember Wizard announcing with cheer, “At last! A decent Marvel movie!” Sine then we have been treated to 2 more Blades, 3 Spider-Mans, 2 more versions of the Punisher, 2 Hulks, 2 Iron Mans, 2 Fantastic Fours, 3 X-Mens and a Wolverine. While the results on all these have been mixed, I feel only the trio of films directed by Mark Steven Johnson – “Daredevil”, “Elektra” and “Ghost Rider” deserve to be mentioned in the same breath with Marvel’s pre-1998, incredible embarrassing efforts in terms of suckitude. But even they were far better in terms of production values and scripts if you look at them objectively.
    With “Thor”, “Captain America”, “The Avengers” and the “Spider-Man” reboot a certainty, those bad old days look more and more like ancient history. Thankfully.

    1. It should be pointed out that, aside from casting Jennifer Garner in DAREDEVIL, Mark Steven Johnson had no involvement in the ensuing ELEKTRA film. Not that that makes it suck any less.

  3. Whoa… OK, so this article was a little small revelation for me:

    Back when I was, oh, I don’t know, 16 or so and had just decided I was interested in submitting some stories to comic book publishers, I was practicing writing one-page synopses and came across an editor (I don’t remember who, but he wasn’t Marvel, I think) suggesting that at conventions, the best you can do is throw out story hooks and if the editor is interested, “whip out your one-page summary with a flourish” (this single phrase I remember).

    The off-hand example this editor threw out was the story hook Peter mentions himself giving in this article: “Daredevil is the only one who knows a politician’s pacemaker is a bomb, but the politician hates superheroes and doesn’t believe him!”

    I thought to myself: Well, that’s a fun hook. What would I do with that? And to practice my own one-page synopsis, I took the idea and turned it into a story. Which of course I never submitted, as the idea wasn’t mine.

    So apparently “Daredevil & The Pacemaker Bomb” was viral by a little over a decade ago – and how could I have known that it started with Peter David at a convention?

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