Month: March 2004

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 hëll 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 hëll 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.”