Since it’s been announced at the Philadelphia, I’ll tell you guys that I’m going to be doing a 1602 limited series. It’s going to be focusing on “The Fantastick Four,” and will feature von Doom, the Four Who Are Frightful, a kidnapping plot with Shakespeare as the target, and an epic adventure to the ends of the earth–literally.
There will be more details on newsarama.com in the next couple of days.
PAD
Hunh. “X-Factor” has been nominated for a Harvey for best new series. I’m fairly sure it’s the first time that anything I’ve worked on has gotten a Harvey nomination. Who’d’ve thought?
PAD
The evening news in NY last night had interviews with people-in-the-street and NY execs expressing “outrage,” “Surprise,” “shock” over the fact that the government has slashed the terror defense budget by forty percent. This brilliant decision to cut back on funding for a city that’s been attacked twice in thirteen years, claiming that there are “no national icons” that would present targets (because the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, Radio City Music Hall, etc., apparently don’t count) while stepping up money and protection for cities that would not seem to be on anyone’s radar–Jacksonville, FL, St. Louis, MO, Milwaukee, WI, Louisville, KY, and Omaha, NE–has officials claiming they’re stunned. Stunned!
Why are they stunned? Beats me.
New York didn’t vote for Bush. Not only that, but one of the major Dem challengers for 2008, Senator Clinton, represents New York. Nothing like trying to slap a black eye on NY’s representation (“Our funding got cut! Why weren’t you watching out for us?”) Florida, meantime, is Jeb Bush’s backyard. Missouri voted for Bush. Kentucky went for Bush. Nebraska went for Bush. Wisconsin went for Kerry, but only by 49.8 as opposed to Bush’s 49.4. Close enough to flip in 2008.
I have no idea how anyone can think that this administration, which outs its own CIA operatives in order to exact vengeance, would have done any different.
PAD
I’m just kind of curious. Rich Johnston (who has graduated from simply running assorted rumor…I’m sorry, rumour…bits strung together to actual whole investigative columns about things that matter) has done a very interesting commentary and overview of the upcoming sure-to-be-controversial “Lost Girls” which apparently the author, Alan Moore, himself describes as pornographic. It’s high-priced, but hey, it’s Moore. So I was curious as to whether anyone here was planning to order it.
PAD
I have to say, coming back from the NSF has given me new appreciation for the military. So as we spend this quiet Memorial Day weekend (disinclined to brave the typical traffic), I keep thinking about all the officers I met and spent time with, and what will happen to them and what sort of challenges they’ll be facing. Until now, I’d only met Veterans whose war fighting days were past them. But now I think of the hazardous and uncertain future my new friends and acquaintances will be facing, and I will be keeping my fingers crossed for them in their upcoming duties and responsibilities.
PAD
Siryn finally deals (or doesn’t) with the death of her father (which I found out about the same time as you guys did, so it took five months for us to be able to get to it) and Spike & Drac form an uneasy alliance for the first time in their association. Whad’ja think?
PAD
So over on the Byrne board there’s a lengthy thread about the Hulk which consists, for the most part, of bashing my work on the title because, well, it’s the Byrne board, so it’s SOP. But what really fractured me was the following comment from John:
“Once upon a time, when a writer wanted to “do something different” s/he left the character/title being worked on, handing it over to someone who wanted to continue with the established motifs. Some time around 25 years ago this started to change. Writers like Claremont and David, as well as others, began changing the books/characters to suit their interests of the moment….It’s the same old song — the characters being made to serve the needs of the talent, instead of the talent serving the needs of the characters.”
You just have to love that from the guy who, before my run on the title, was handed a character who was unmarried and transformed into a monster when he got angry, and over the course of the run he split the character in two, separating them into two individual beings, thus eliminating a dynamic that had been in place for a quarter of a century, married off the hero, and basically wrote a series of stories that were indistinguishable from “Godzilla”–dedicated scientist and his group of equally dedicated followers pursues a furious green monster he’s accidentally unleashed upon the world. Stories that, in short, had nothing to do with the Hulk.
And that’s not even counting what the master of lip service to authorial intent did to the Vision, turning him white and unemotional when the original Vision was neither.
That John Byrne. What a crack up.
PAD
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