Originally published September 24, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1349
So we were busy last week ushering in the Marvel Age of non-coincidence, as espoused in the relaunches of mainstays such as Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk. It had been the humble suggestion of BID that Marvel obtain the rights to Classics Illustrated (which shouldn’t be much of a stress; after all, they used to publish Marvel Collector Items Classics) and put John Byrne in charge so that he could work his magic touch on all those annoying literary coincidences which have plagued various works. Coincidence, happenstance—these are antithetical to quality comics stories, and the new MCI would do away with such unlikely circumstances as:
Marvel Classics Illustrated Presents: Tarzan of the Apes. So let’s get this straight: Kala the she-ape Just So Happens to lose a child (an infant ape which tumbles to its death when she is escaping an enraged bull ape) just in time to switch the baby’s skeleton with the crying and recently orphaned John Clayton (and future Tarzan). And later on in the book, Jane Porter Just So Happens to wind up in the exact same territory of Africa that Tarzan’s parents were abandoned, and even finds the cabin that was his birthplace. (And we never do figure out how Tarzan, who left a note for them warning them off, was able to spell out his name in the note considering that he did not learn oral reading or spelling. Since he couldn’t sound out any letters, he couldn’t transliterate his name.)
Just can’t buy into it? No problem. You see, the fact is that everything that occurs in Tarzan of the Apes, the new and improved Marvel version, is actually a diabolical scheme on the part of Professor Porter, working in tandem with D’Arnot, his secret homosexual lover, wherein they will manage to get Jane married off to the remaining Clayton (the other Clayton, not Tarzan), then have Tarzan kill him in a fit of animalistic jealousy, be condemned and executed, and Jane would then inherit all the Clayton estates and property.
Marvel Classics Illustrated Presents: Gulliver’s Travels. It’s absurd. How could it be that one man winds up shipwrecked on Lilliput, and then goes to place after place after place that no one else has ever been to—places that, upon close reading, come across like a send-up of society and all its foibles? No, the fact is that Gulliver is never cast ashore anywhere. While on the ship, Dr. Gulliver is experimenting with some new and fascinating painkillers based on opium. His experiments go awry, unfortunately, and he collapses to the deck and proceeds to have a series of the most incredible hallucinations and dreams that you have ever seen.
Marvel Classics Illustrated Presents: The Three Musketeers. D’Artagnan, through sheer impetuousness, Just So Happens to anger the three tightest Musketeers in the troop—Athos, Porthos and Aramis—so that they challenge him to a duel within hours of each other? Nope. Preposterous. Too unbelievably contrived for words.
In the vastly superior Marvel retelling, D’Artagnan does not simply come trotting in from Gascony as the naive innocent. No, far from it. D’Artagnan starts out in league with Richelieu, the manipulative Cardinal who schemes to make sure that the right to carry guns is in no way threatened. (Oh, wait, that’s Charlton Heston. Sorry.) D’Artagnan is, in fact, Richelieu’s right hand man, working in tandem with Roquefort in exchange for a year’s supply of Roquefort’s precious cheese stash. The plan is that D’Artagnan is to lure the Musketeers to the place where the duel is scheduled, whereupon the Cardinal’s men then arrests the Musketeers. It’s a win/win situation. If the Musketeers surrender, they’re under arrest. If they fight, they’re outnumbered and get killed.
However, what Richelieu does not reckon with is D’Artagnan’s being replaced by an amnesiac Skrull who, upon finding himself in the midst of a duel, automatically takes the side of those who are outnumbered. It is, in fact, the imposter who is by the side of the Musketeers for the majority of the book until the climactic confrontation whereupon the evil D’Artagnan is revealed for the cretin that he is, and—in an ironic twist—the good guy Skrull goes into hiding. However, his ability to duplicate someone else’s appearance is a deft set up for his return as the good Louis in The Man in the Iron Mask.
Marvel Classics Illustrated Presents: Huckleberry Finn. Just imagine: Huck Finn is on the run and Just So Happens to meet up with Jim, the slave, who is also on the run. Coincidence? I think not. Actually, it turns out at the end that the entire thing has been one massive practical joke set up by Tom Sawyer, Tom’s Aunt Polly, and Aunt Polly’s lover, Huck Finn’s father (who is, in fact, not a nasty brutish drunk but a pretty sweet guy who just acts tough because he has difficulty getting in touch with his feminine side). Concerned that Huck’s adventurous nature is going to get him in serious trouble some day, they orchestrate a series of events whereupon Huck gets to undergo a remarkable series of events—with Jim sent along secretly to keep an eye on him. In point of fact, Jim is not a slave at all, but a freed slave who is capable of perfectly good diction and just puts on that dialect in order to fool Huck. Having learned how dangerous the world is, Huck returns to Hannibal wiser and chastened, having finally gotten all that adventuring out of his system. The nice thing about the improved version in particular is that it eliminate all of the nasty controversial elements (the word “ņìggër” is replaced with the word “fella”) that have brought the book under fire all these years.
And then, of course, there’s the book that involves the biggest conspiracy theory of them all.
I mean, think of how vastly improved all these various stories have become when chance and happenstance have been eliminated, to be replaced by plots, plans, and elaborate intrigues. But there is one great work that, now that I think about it, wouldn’t have to be restructured at all. I mean, you may think that conspiracy theories are something new. That looking for some sort of reason behind the rhyme—no matter how tortured and unlikely—is a recent phenomenon. Not so. There is one impressive work that features the single most contrived and unlikely conspiracy of all, and people have been reading it for years. In fact, its underlying themes are so pervasive that it continues to inform the world we live in to this day. I am, of course, speaking of:
Marvel Classics Illustrated Presents: The Bible. Once upon a time, Greek plays hinged their resolution on the gods descending from Olympus in a large device and setting matters right. This was called deus ex machina, or “God From the Machine.” That may seem somewhat contrived from a literary point of view, but really, when you get down to it, the Supreme Being(s) is/are the ultimate catch-all and explanation for everything.
Conspiracy theories stem from trying to make sense of a world gone mad. A world where lone gunmen can hit their targets, or stupid accidents or human foibles can rob the world of beloved personalities—this is a world that is just too dámņëd random. People intrinsically prefer order of some kind. Conspiracies bring order from the chaos.
Why is this happening, we ask? God’s will.
Why have fundamentally good people been made to suffer? God’s will.
From a literary point of view, it’s a spectacular dodge. Where else can you produce a work wherein the editor says, “Wait a minute… why is this happening?” And you can shrug and say, “Who can understand the workings of God?” “God’s ways are mysterious.” “There is a master plan at work, but we cannot begin to understand it.” (Much like any average issue of X-Men.)
And the Bible is the underpinning for the conspiracy theory of life that goes on to this day. People pray for the mercy and aid of a being who lets all the hideous things that prompted the calls for help to happen in the first place. It might be that all prayers, broken down to their essence, translate to, “Hey, c’mon, it’s enough already.” The Marvel Classics version of the Bible, with very little tweaking, can present God as a “malign thug” as Mark Twain once characterized him.
The fact is that mankind has been trying to make sense of the world long before the Grassy Knoll. Why is this happening, what’s going on, what’s up with that? And the answers always come back to: God or gods. Why is there lightning? Zeus is honked. Why is there an earthquake? Loki is writhing in agony.
John Byrne has very openly and publicly debated whether or not God exists. I’m not sure why. God should be more vigorously embraced by writers everywhere. The fact is that God, and all the acts of God that stem from His presence, can plug the hole of any story. God is tailor-made for the realms of both fiction and fact because He is such a glorious catch-all. In the final analysis, what else is God, really, but the biggest conspirator of all?
(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)
• 
Coincidentally enuff (see what I did there) I was just talking last night with a friend about playwriting. She brought up Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling (http://io9.com/5916970/the-22-rules-of-storytelling-according-to-pixar), which if you have any interest at all in writing is a great primer. And why wouldn’t it be, those guise at Pixar know a thing or too about story crafting…
But anyway the point being rule #19; Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
There straight from the masters themselves. So its all okie John, nothing to retcon here. Back to business.
Peter, I’m sorry for posting this right here, but I can’t find an email address to send it to you directly and the John Byrne references make it too easy.
I can’t find Peter David’s email and I doubt I’d be welcome on John Byrne’s board, but I’ve been amusing myself reading old messageboard threads about a particular conflict between the two. At an early professional meeting attended by superstar writer/artist John Byrne, Peter David – then working in Marvel’s sales department – handed out sample copies of a future issue of “Alpha Flight.” When Byrne saw the pages, he exploded with rage that the death of Guardian had been revealed.
After reading many pages from both mens’ websites, I think I’ve figured out how to square the circle between their disagreement. Not in every particular, but in the crucial ones anyway.
The one I truly can’t figure out is JB saying “Peter David handed out xeroxes of Guardian’s death at a con” and PAD saying “It wasn’t at a convention; it was at a get-together for retailers.” Byrne didn’t work in sales and was probably at his own table, selling sketches and doing a lot of signatures – because who wouldn’t want his autograph or a piece of original art? – but I think it’s stretching a point to think he’d mistake a “retailer convention” for an actual comicon. If he did ten shows a year, then after twenty or thirty years, a get-together for retailers might blur in with all the rest. However, at the height of his popularity, Byrne consciously chose to restrict his convention attendance to the Mid-Ohio Con and it’s doubtful his memory is that bad. He says it was a convention, David says it was getting together with the retailers, and there’s no shaking either of them from their respective positions on that point.
About the incident, PAD said “The material in question was handed to me by Denny O’Neil, the book’s editor when I – in my capacity as sales manager at the time – was going around collecting material to put into the package. And when I said to him, ‘Are you sure you want me to include this in the material?’ Denny replied, ‘Sure, what’s the harm?’” Yet Byrne said “When I confronted Denny, later, he professed complete ignorance of the whole thing. And, of course, he absolutely assured me there was no way in hëll he would ever have authorized David handing out xeroxes of the end of the story.” On the Byrne board pages I’ve been reading today – he points out that believing PAD’s story requires Denny O’Neil to be a liar to one or the other of them.
I can’t say whether or not O’Neil is a liar. When made aware of the argument, he said it happened a long time ago, his memory was never great and has gotten worse after recent health treatments. While saying he liked and respected both Messers Byrne and David, O’Neil pointed out that the incident never came close to the importance in his life that it obviously did to them. In my opinion, if he’s lying, it’s about forgetting what really happened because there’s no way in hëll he’s gonna get involved in this internet argument.
[I was drawn in – har! Did you see what I did there? – to the argument by reading Jim Shooter’s blog where someone asked him about it. Shooter claims no awareness of the issue in the first place. Really, it comes down to JB vs. PAD. When Titans Clash indeed.]
Sez Byrne: “Let’s check the details. First, it was a convention. I was sitting at my table signing books and doing sketches when a fan came up to me and said ‘So Guardian is the one who’s gonna die, huh?’ I smirked my best smirk and said ‘That woud be telling.’ The guy smirked back and thrust the xeroxes at me. ‘No, I know it’s Guardian. Peter David is handing out xeroxes.’
From reading the various internet posts, some people say there was a foreshadowing that one of the members of Alpha Flight would die. I can’t speak to that one way or the other, because I’ve read two issues of “Alpha Flight” in my life, one of them in 2009 [the “Secret Wars II” crossover] and the other a few months ago [#1, which had nice art, especially Heather’s cheesecake scenes, but was basically only worth reading for Puck’s punchline at the end of the story.] But keeping in mind the context of the times. Marvel had passed DC in sales, the coherent universe-with-continuity still worked reasonably well, and the then-recent deaths of Phoenix and Elektra had re-established Marvel Comics as the company where anything could happen. Without reading “Alpha Flight” or knowing anything about the fan-chatter in that pre-internet era, it would be surprising if the co-perpetrator of Jean Grey’s death *didn’t* have that sort of uncertain ‘somebody’s gonna die’ feel about whatever he was working on at that point. Or, I dunno, one of the team might turn out to be gay or something. Making the audience guess is a major part of serial fiction, and whatever buzz might have been about “Alpha Flight” at the time, the unpredictability would be a major factor. For all the uninitiated reader would know, Byrne might be creating a new Gwen Stacey every couple of years just to kill her. The question is Who? Just Imagine if he went over to DC and took over one of their characters…
Byrne continues: “I then sought out David and discovered that he was, indeed, doing just that, sitting behind his table and handing out xerox copies of the death scene (which did have Heather in it. He got that much right.) I exploded. I threw a fit – but nothing else. I demanded to know what the %#$@ he was doing sabotaging a story I had been working on for more than a year. A story whose Big Reveal the Alpha office had somehow managed to keep out of the fan press. David did his best deer-in-the-headlights impression, and said it was his ‘job’ to promote the books. ‘BY GIVING AWAY THE ENDINGS??’ By this time I was pretty much on the verge of having a stroke”
About the pages in question, David says “It wasn’t Guardian’s death. It was an unlettered two page dream sequence in which Heather was seeing a dessicated Guardian tearing out the ground.”
What happened when PAD showed the pages to [whoever] at [wherever]? “Retailers at the get together had no idea that the sequence actually indicated that Guardian really died. I know this because when John showed up at the get-together, he looked at the material, screamed at me at the top of his lungs, ‘How could you be showing this to retailers?!? It gives away the fact that Guardian dies!’ and stormed out of the room, slowing only long enough to kick over a standing ashtray on his way out. At which point stunned retailers said, ‘Guardian DIES?,’ started looking at the xeroxes again, and were muttering, ‘I thought it was just a dream sequence…’
The point where Peter David’s argument is, in my opinion, irrefutable, is that there would be nothing to gain by spoiling the ending. He was just a guy who worked in sales and was still a year away from selling his first story to Marvel. Even if Denny O’Neil flat-out told him “Here’s the pages, spoil the story!!!” he’d still be reluctant because Marvel editorial and Marvel sales weren’t very close in that period, a point David has often made when discussing his transition from sales to writing the actual books. The point where Byrne’s argument is, in my opinion, irrefutable, is that from his perspective as creator/writer/artist who’d been setting up the storyline and then staring at his drawing board all day every day [minus the other titles he was working on] he knows how the story has gone/is going/will be going better than anyone else on the planet.
Denny O’Neil didn’t authorize the reveal of Guardian’s death, the “end of the story.” He authorized unlettered pages of a dream sequence featuring a dead Guardian. To him, and certainly to PAD, it was a free look at pages that will appear an issue or two after the big dramatic death. They give hints, they excite the fanboys – and retailers were and are comic book fanboys – but they don’t actually reveal anything. From O’Neil’s point-of-view as long-time editor and writer of a gazillion comic book stories, it wasn’t intrinsically different than showing a glimpse of, say, a future issue of “Spider-Man” where there’s a dream sequence of Uncle Ben haunting Spidey. And it’s drawn by John Byrne, wanna look?
From PAD’s point-of-view, as a fanboy and someone as well-versed as possible in actually selling the dámņ books to stores that just recently bought cash registers – as opposed to assuming the little fûçkš will keep buying them from the newsstands – he’s genuinely worried about giving away future developments after he already knows Guardian has died, probably from reading the finished pages/proof copies because he’s a fan and ‘A new issue of Alpha Flight is ready??? Hëll yeah!!!’ He checks with editorial and the editor assures him that showing a dream sequence is not a problem. It wasn’t the end of the story.
To Byrne, the creator/writer/artist who’s spend a year watching his hand move around on the drawing board as he builds to this point, it’s the equivalent of handing out unlettered previews of “X-Men” #138, with all of the X-Men except Jean Grey standing around a gravestone with Byrne/Austin-inscribed “Here lies Jean Grey” on it and Scott Summers remembering all the good times he had with Jean Grey. If you can’t connect the dots and realize something is going to happen to Jean Grey in the near-future, you are too stupid to live.
When and where the incident happened, I can’t say. I was barely in grade school, gimme a break. But Byrne saw his pages directly indicating Guardian’s death being handed out by someone who knew Guardian would die to people who were still ignorant of what the next issue would hold. Editor Denny O’Neil made it happen, but he didn’t lie about it and, as editor, was doing his job no less than JB or PAD.