Year: 2005

Well, we seem to be up and running again, although curiously enough the site remains inaccessible via Firefox. Explorer is getting the job done, though, and my thanks to Glenn for his infinite patience as he was being deluged with queries as to what the hëll was going on.

Of course, when one is making a big new announcement about coming onto a title, that’s exactly the moment you want your website to crash. My advent on Spidey was being actively discussed everywhere on the internet…except here. Well, except here and the John Byrne board, where an entirely positive thread about my taking on Spider-Man–a thread that violated absolutely none of the Byrne board rules–vanished into the ether, deleted by the PTB. Threads bashing me remain securely in the archives, naturally. In the interests of full disclosure, the Byrne board moderators might want to add that, in addition to troublemakers and threads filled with hostility and bile, that positive threads about me are also unwelcome and will be deleted or banned, just to save posters trouble.

In any event, we’re back, and no, I didn’t watch the Bush press conference last night. I watched “West Wing” repeats instead, because gosh darn it, if I’m going to spend time with a fake president, it’s gonna be Jeb Bartlet.

PAD

As many of you surmised, we had major site problems here. We were unable to post, our spam blocking was disabled and we were unable to delete comments, which led to us turning off comments altogether lest we get swamped.

We’re in the process of cleaning up now, which required some herculean efforts by the good folks over at Hosting Matters. Bear with us all while we straighten this out.

When “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man,” the new Spidey series coming from Marvel late this summer, hits the stands, it will be launching with a different creative team than previously announced: Mike Wieringo as artist, and yours truly as writer.

I’m really excited about this, since it’s been years since I’ve written on ongoing Spidey title and fans have been asking when, or if, I’ll ever have the opportunity again. I’m pleased to be working with Ringo, whose art I’ve very much enjoyed, and am grateful to editor Tom Brevoort for offering me the assignment (and Joe Q, naturally, for giving the final OK). Spidey was my very first comic work for Marvel, and it’s great to be back.

PAD

Had a rough night. Caroline has been vomiting or having diarrhea for a couple of days, and we were worried what would happen if we left her in her crib. So I kept her in the living room where she slept in my lab pretty much the whole night while I stayed more or less awake the entire time. I kept my hand lightly on her stomach, and every so often I’d feel her stomach muscles tightening and have that much warning that she was about to barf, so I’d quickly get a large pot in front of her so she could puke into it. By 6 AM I felt like Kari in that Jack-Jack short cartoon, at which point Kath came downstairs and relieved me of duty. I literally don’t recall going up the stairs to bed.

Then I had to drive out to JFK in the afternoon to pick up Ariel, returning from visiting her mother in Arizona. Her plane was scheduled to get in at 5:15, and I wasn’t looking forward to driving back during rush hour. Then I suddenly thought, hey, we’re all the way in Queens, the Mets are at Shea tonight, let’s see if I can score some tickets and we’ll take in the game. Which was what I did, and we wound up in field level seats watching the Mets beat the Braves 5-4.

And, of course, now I’m working. Caroline, whom we took to the doctor who basically said to us, “It’s a virus, twenty dollars please” as we knew they would, seems to be recovering. So I’ve got the nursery monitor on, listening to make sure she’s okay. If something sounds amiss, I’ll try to get upstairs before she wakes up Kath.

Onward.

PAD

Even more Twisted ToyFare Theatre: “Seder-Masochism”

The site that dares to ask: Why is Moon Knight different from all other knights?

UPDATE: Randy Lander points out that this was published elsewhere first, which I didn’t realize. The link has been removed. My apologies.

A high school teacher in Florida is looking to put together a comic book curriculum for a course on comics. The book budget will likely be non-existent. He’s looking to score forty copies each of UNDERSTANDING COMICS and Parts 1 and 2 of MAUS, I presume either for as cheaply as possible or free.

Anyone who thinks they can help out, in whole or in part, please e-mail me at padguy@aol.com, and I’ll give you the specifics.

Thanks.

PAD