Dialing Up

Originally published February 7, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1212

Picking up from last week:

So there I was, loaded up with software for America Online. Now I was really in need of some sort of method for picking up messages off the Internet, as my former server had collapsed. And also—I blush to disclose—I’d never in my life gone “websurfing,” a term that I must admit completely befuddles me. Who the hëll made it up, anyway? I mean, talk about your mixed metaphors. What sort of image does that bring to mind, surfing a web? It makes no sense. You surf on water; you crawl on a web. How do you surf a web? It’s like saying, “I’m going to mow the linoleum.”

In any event, I was interested in giving the famed AOL a whirl, but quickly found it impossible to get through on any of the half-dozen or so phone lines that allegedly would give me access to the service. I would try from time to time during the day or in the evening, and always it rang busy, busy, busy. Apparently some people get on AOL and simply stay there for hours at a time, an activity exacerbated by a new flat billing rate. I’m unfamiliar with what the rate structure was before, but—operating purely on guesswork—I’d surmise that AOL probably figured that by going to a flat rate, what it’d lose on hourly billing would be offset by the increased number of customers. It may have been right—except if enough people are told, “Don’t bother with AOL, because you can never get through,” then the strategy will be counterproductive and it should have anticipated that.

I’d call and it would always be the same thing.

Busy, busy, busy.

Then, one evening, I got through.

A-ha, I thought. My problems are over, I thought.

Nope.

For starters, I couldn’t find a name.

“PETERDAVID” was taken. So was “PDAVID,” “PADAVID,” PAD,” and every other variation I could think of. Even references from my work such as “DOCBANNER” or “ORIN” were gone. I finally chose a name that I will very likely change (and, as a result, won’t print here).

I got on and immediately everything came to a halt as I was informed that the computer was “adding art.” It added the art. I waited. I moved my mouse in position—

And then it added more art.

I waited. Got ready to click.

More art.

Finally when AOL had had its fill of making me wait for art, it allowed me to make my way over to the Nickelodeon board—

Where I sat as it added art.

And more art. And more. “Enough with the art already!” I shouted at the computer screen. The computer didn’t care. It ran through time bar after time bar of art being loaded on. Thus far my entire involvement with AOL had consisted of busy signals, frustration over trying to find a useable name, and sitting there and staring at the screen informing me that, yup, even more art was shooting my way.

Finally it had added enough art, and I went over to the board on which I could read fan postings about Space Cases. Waited for art. Once there, I found that Nick fans were apparently up in arms over the fact that we had been moved over to 6:30 p.m. Sunday while another series called The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo (which the fans had dubbed, “The Misery Files of Shelby Poo”; whattaya want, it’s kids) had been dropped into our prime time slot of 9 p.m. Saturday. I decided it would probably be better for me to stay out of the line of fire, so I went over to “DC On-Line.”

And sat and waited while AOL added art. And waited. And waited some more.

Finally I went into one of the DC chat rooms. There I found people with names such as Jdani, TMAlisman, Bran, and Sboy, some of them with numbers following their names, chatting about comics. I watched for a few minutes as they speculated about things that were going to be coming up. I got an “Instant Message” with someone asking me my age. “40,” I typed back. “How old are you?” The response came back shortly: “7.” That was a conversation that didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Finally, I typed on open board, “Hi. I write Aquaman and Supergirl.”

And I waited.

There was a pause, and then the responses trickled in.

“Uh huh.”

“Sure.”

“Right.”

I typed back, “No, really. I do.”

Sboy promptly informed the room, “Yeah, and I write the rest of the DC line.”

“I’m not kidding!” I typed.

They didn’t believe me. They flat-out did not believe me.

It was an entertaining position to be in. DC reps had urged me to try out AOL, to come meet and greet the fans. And after all the work I’d gone to get on the dámņëd thing, participants now thought that I was an impostor.

I supposed I couldn’t entirely blame them. Fakes have been known to populate various boards. For instance, two of the female leads in Space Cases have had people come on board pretending to be them. In one instance the impostor was actually a teenage girl who was looking for attention. In the second instance, more disturbingly, it was a man in his 50s who was looking for teenage girls. Then there was the person who posted commentary on Usenet under my name—commentary that included an assortment of racial epithets.

So, intellectually, I could understand the doubt. Nonetheless, it bugged the hëll out of me.

What I was really afraid of was that they would start asking me trivia questions in order to prove my identity. You gotta understand, there have been times where I’ve forgotten the year I was born. My memory is notoriously bad; I’m always dependent on editors to make sure I don’t inadvertently contradict myself. A fan once asked me what my first issue of Dreadstar was, and I didn’t have a clue.

And then, who should suddenly materialize but a fellow identifying himself as John L. Byrne. At first I wondered whether he was an impostor, but the other denizens of the chat room seemed to know him, so I went on the assumption that John had proven his identity to the satisfaction of all concerned at some previous point. I complained to him that they didn’t believe I was who I said I was.

John was skeptical, too. “Why don’t you have a profile?” he asked. I turned sideways and displayed the left side of my face to the monitor. No one seemed swayed.

(I later on learned that members create descriptions of themselves called “profiles” so users can find out something about the people with whom they’re talking. I subsequently created a profile for myself, and then checked out the profiles of others whom I encountered in the course of my time on AOL. I quickly learned that the whole profile business was of questionable merit. One person went by the handle “InvsblWmn.” I checked the profile on a hunch and, sure enough, the profile listed the user’s “real name” as Susan Storm-Richards, and the place of residence was Four Freedoms Plaza. So much for that.)

So I thought about it a moment. I remembered that John had called me a couple of months ago, angered because he’d been informed that we were being portrayed in the pages of Spawn as members of the Ku Klux Klan. I’d known about it and blown it off ages ago because, really, who cares? Well, John did, and he wanted to know if I’d join him in a lawsuit. I wasn’t interested because I know, better than anyone, that all McFarlane craves is publicity and a suit would give him exactly that. Besides, we had no leg to stand on. Ultimately, Todd was just acting like a jerk, and if acting like a jerk were actionable, over half the people in the industry would find themselves looking down the barrel of litigation (and I don’t exclude myself).

So I reminded John of the conversation we had.

No dice. Apparently John had been openly complaining about it some time ago, and felt that I could easily have gotten the information from publicly available sources.

So I thought a moment more.

I thought about how John had come to produce the back cover art for the BID trade paperback. At the time that I approached John about it some years back, the identity of the front cover artist was a bit of a mystery. I had told people that it was going to be produced by a major comic creator who was “the last person you’d expect.” This naturally catapulted most of the Image crew into the front-line ranks of guesses. However, the truth was that it was (as you know) going to be produced by Neil Gaiman. But this was a tightly guarded secret for no other reason than that I thought it’d be fun to keep the fans guessing until the book came out.

But we were going to need back cover art. I had a basic idea of what I wanted. There was going to be a copyline which read, “What the Critics think of But I Digress,” followed by artwork of John doing something ghastly to a copy of the column (or, for that matter, to me.). When I approached John about the possibility, he said, “On one condition: You have to tell me who’s doing the front cover. I want to know who I’m going to be following.”

So I told him. And he thought about that a moment and then said, “Okay, I can live with that.”

So on AOL I reminded John that he was the only other person to know Neil was going to do the cover for the BID trade paperback.

“Better,” responded John. “Not completely convincing, though.”

Geez, Louise. This was rough sledding.

And then John wrote, “If you’ve still got my phone number, call it and let it ring twice—if you can.”

Rising to the challenge of the “if you can,” I dug up my Rolodex and dialed his number, which is 310-278-5444.

(Okay, okay, that’s the phone number for the Hotel Sofitel in Los Angeles. Bet I had you going there for a moment, though. And it’s a really nice hotel, by the way.)

So I dialed John’s number.

Busy.

Naturally. If there was one thing that had become clear to me, it was that everything connected with AOL was a struggle. Nothing came easily.

I wrote, “It’s busy.”

“It wouldn’t be busy,” he replied. Several people in the room were openly chuckling which, when you think about it, takes extra effort on a computer board. You actually have to type out chuckling noises.

I thought, well, great, now what? Maybe it’s not me. Maybe I should just slink away, defeated.

And then John wrote, “Maybe you were dialing the office line instead of the home line.” (Or perhaps it was vice versa, I don’t remember.) He continued, “Dial the same number but with the last number being a 7.”

Even as I dialed I was instantly envious. How the hëll did John manage to get two lines separated by only a digit? I have three lines in my house, and each one has a completely different exchange.

It rang twice and I quickly hung up.

And John promptly vouched for me.

Several people said “hi” and one person wrote, “Peter David is a pussy.” I wondered if it was the same guy who I ran into ages ago, the first time I’d ever tried AOL, who had greeted me with, “Your work suuuuuucks.”

In any event, I’ve been on and off AOL since then. Still takes forever to get on. The only time it’s at all easy is at ungodly hours of the morning, like 3 AM. I also finally (sigh) surfed the net, coming upon a bevy of Space Cases websites.

I can see how people can get sucked into these things. The first time I tried my hand at webs, I played with it for a while and then glanced at my watch to see how much time had passed. I’d figured fifteen, twenty minutes. I was horrified to discover I’d been at it for an hour and a half.

Busy busy busy…

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to a Second Age Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)