Category: 1

You know…when I wrote that open letter to Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas in CBG, it was a desperation ploy that I figured had a 50/50 chance of getting me fired off “Captain Marvel.” I never in my wildest imaginings thought it would evolve/mutate into the current status. There’s an update in Newsarama over on Comicon.com.

I set out to accomplish two things: Keep the price down and get attention for the book. Both of those have been accomplished. I took some hits doing so, but hey, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it. What amuses me most are the fans who seem to think that the success of CM in this three-way competition is somehow a given. I don’t assume that at all. Think of the average retailer placing his orders. Over here, you’ve got the solo writing debut of Bill Jemas, whose name is attached to some of Marvel’s hottest-selling titles in a decade. Then you’ve got the launch of a new “Ultimate” book, and those titles have been a thumping success. And lastly, you’ve got Peter David, whose titles sell in the bottom of the top 100 (if there) relaunching a series that got wildly positive reviews and *still* didn’t sell particularly well.

With those givens, where are *you* going to put your ordering dollars?

There’s a fine line between being pessimistic and being realistic. I endeavor to aim for the latter; it just comes out as the former.

Good news is, within the next week I’ll be shipping out the Captain Marvel sample script pages. With over 500 requests, it’s just taken some time to get them copied and signed and stuffed back into envelopes. God bless the post office for giving me a deadline: Postage goes up end of the month, so they’ve *got* to be shipped out by then.

PAD

Well, this is a hoot. According to the following link, William Shatner is going to undertake the sort of role that has heretofore been left to everyone from Vampira to Elvira: He’s going to introduce a series of horror flicks, in this case for the Sci-Fi Channel. Apparently they’re all from the low-budget vaults of Charlie Band’s Full Moon Productions. The reason it’s pertinent to this particular board is that at least one of them is going to be by yours truly: “Oblivion,” the science fiction western spoof that represents one of the few films Band actually spent some serious money on. I hear tell “Trancers” will also be represented, and if the fourth and fifth entries in the series are there, then those will be mine as well. Although the only “horror” in the Trancers films I wrote was the budget slashing that caused them not to film the majority of the action scenes, and wildly scale down those that were filmed.

Supposedly Shatner will be interviewing people in conjunction with the films. I can’t wait to see who he talks to for “Oblivion.” It’d be a hoot if it were George Takei, wouldn’t it?

PAD

First off, Happy Father’s Day to all concerned.

Second, on the off-chance that people actually read this website to find out about my writing endeavors, I thought I’d mention that not only is KNIGHT LIFE out in the stores even as we speak, but it got a starred review in PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. This is the second original fantasy novel of mine to be singled out for that higher level of recognition from PW (the first being SIR APROPOS OF NOTHING), so I’m on kind of a roll.

Here’s what PW had to say, in part: “Arthurian legend gets another kick in the pants with this rollicking rewrite of bestseller David’s first novel, originally published in 1987. Extensively updated and lovingly revised, this hilarious romp in today’s New York features a cast of zany characters, zippy dialogue and enough action and plot twists to satisfy most satirical fantasy fans.” The rest of the review goes on to summarize the book, but hey…go check it out for yourselves.

PAD

Well, as of this moment in time it’s pouring rain, which is not gonna make my drive to Molloy College in Rockville Center any fun this evening (the Southern State Parkway tends to flood.) But I’ve gotta be there, because tonight is the final dress rehearsal for the show “Checking Out,” in which I play a neurotic Jewish (typecasting, I know) psychiatrist who–along with his two siblings–endeavors to talk his theatrically inclined father not to “check out” of life prematurely. The play was written back in the mid-70s by playwright/actor Allen Swift as a vehicle for himself as the father. And everyone who’s my age, get this: among Swift’s acting credits is voice work on such forgotten cheesy gems of our collective childhood as “Diver Dan” (he was the voice of Dan, Baron Barracuda, Triggerfish, et al), “King Leonardo,” etc. Yes, all those shows that we loved as kids and would be mortified to let our own kids see now since we would NEVER hear the end of it. (“Oh my God, Dad, this makes ‘Power Rangers’ look like ‘Masterpiece Theater.'”)

For those local to the area and want to see dates and times, or just interested in seeing a pub shot from the play (I’m on the left), go here.

PAD

Some weeks ago, I posted an item with thoughts about Israel. Since then I got some supportive comments, and also a bunch of anti-Semitic foulness (saying Jews are a rat-like race who deserve to be exterminated, that kind of thing) warning me against discussing such things on my comics website. Because, y’know, where do I get off deciding what to talk about on my website? Since I don’t want to give any of those fine anti-Semitic folks the slightest impression that I might be taking their warning seriously, I thought I’d post my latest concern over what might happen next. And considering that two weeks ago I was commenting that I was worried Marvel might go up on the market now that things are going well, and now the Comicon “Splash” is reporting that very thing as a possibility, my worries tend to materialize.

A couple weeks ago, 17 Israelis were blown up. In retaliation, the Israelis dropped a bomb on Yassar Arafat’s bed, knowing that he wasn’t in it. Kill 17 Israelis, lose a mattress. Even the most jaded Middle East watchers were wondering what was up with that. How is even briefly pressing back in on Arafat but doing nothing beyond that commensurate with the loss of 17 lives?

And I keep thinking about Sean Connery in “The Untouchables,” telling Kevin Costner’s Elliot Ness how to take on Al Capone. He said, “You want to know how to get Capone? Here’s how you do it. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago Way, and that’s how you get Capone.”

Here’s what concerns me. With anti-Semitism on the rise, with the Palestinians showing far less interest in a homeland than they are in simply killing Jews and killing Jews and killing Jews, the Israeli government may decide they’ve nothing left to lose. Imagine the following edict from Ariel Sharon (a guy with two girls’ names, so he’s already testy):

“The Palestinian people do not distinguish between innocent people and military targets, and believe they can kill Israelis with impunity and will continue to do so. Very well. We shall do likewise. If next week, a suicide bomber kills ten Israelis, we will round up a hundred Palestinians at random. Men, women, children, makes no difference. Men and women are killing us, and children are being raised to kill us, so they’re all the same. We’ll round them up, line them up and kill them. Boom, dead. If in retaliation a bomber kills a hundred Israelis, we will round up and execute a thousand random Palestinians. For every one Israeli who dies, ten Palestinians will die. And if this is upsetting to the Palestinian people, there’s an easy way to stop it: Stop blowing up Israelis. Your collective fate is in your hands.”

How would the world react to that? Well, they’d probably scream at Israel. But they’re doing that anyway. They’d probably lose sympathy for Israel. But they’re doing that anyway.

*Should* this happen? Am I hoping it will happen? God, no. It’s a barbaric notion.

But I’m afraid that, sooner or later, it might. Because that’s the Chicago Way.

PAD

I offer the two items without comment and allow you to draw your own conclusions.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (Oklahoma City)–June 12, 2002–Four in five Americans would give up some freedoms to gain security and four in 10 worry terrorists will harm them or their family, a new Gallup poll shows. About one-third of those polled favor making it easier for authorities to access private e-mail and telephone conversations. More than 70 percent are in favor of requiring US citizens to carry identification cards with fingerprints, and 77 percent believe all Americans should have smallpox vaccinations. “It was amazing the percentage of people who are willing to give up freedom to get back some sense of personal security,” said Elaine Christiansen, senior research director for The Gallup Organization. “These aren’t people who were necessarily near the Twin Towers, near the Pentagon, near the Murrah building. These are average people.”

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN–“Those who are willing to give up some essential liberties to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

PAD

Well, Frank “Boom Boom” Balkin was up to the task, and got the straight info on the rumored “Supergirl” film reported on Filmjerk.com.

It turns out that (unbeknownst to the DC editors I queried) Akiva Goldsman really does have a Supergirl film in development. However, the assertion that the film consists of nothing more than a crunched down abridgment of the first fifty issues of my run on the comic is apparently without foundation. According to Goldsman’s people, the treatment would not be a version of any one particular Supergirl, but instead an agglomeration of several different comic book incarnations…the aim being to produce a dark and less-than-sunny version, which doesn’t sound like either version of Supergirl as I’ve written her. Based on that info, my guess is that the alleged treatment included on the Filmjerk website was a summary of the first fifty issues prepared by someone working for Goldsman as an informational piece (which would explain the specific references to the comics) rather than something by Goldsman himself intended to serve as a film treatment.

Nevertheless, I was dead wrong in thinking that the entire report was without foundation, and Filmjerk scooped everybody, including me. Although I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering dámņëd near every DC character with any name recognition is in development these days. But because of that, it means very little that Goldsman is attached to it at this point. I mean, heck, who’d’ve thought that a Kevin Smith-generated Superman script based on Superman vs. Doomsday–the most high-profile, media-reported comic book confrontation in a decade–would have burned alive in development hëll? So those of you worrying that a Supergirl film would be a camp repeat of “Batman Forever,” keep in mind the odds of any film ever being made are very slim.

PAD