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Peter David In Memoriam
43 Plays8 months ago
The comics industry lost a legend recently, with the passing of self-described Writer of Stuff, Peter David after a long series of medical troubles. Daryl and Nick, along with our friend Brev from The Movie Defenders podcast, discuss David's work, the legacy that he left behind touching not just a broad tapestry of characters, but the readers of his work.
If you've been moved by Peter's work, and are so inclined to help his family with the burden of the medical costs that remain, please support the GoFundMe established by a family friend:
You can find Brev and The Movie Defenders at:
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Transcript
Introduction to Casual Nerdity Podcast
00:00:11
Speaker
Casual Nerdity is a podcast celebrating and discussing the pop culture that we love. Movies, TVs, comics, books, games, you name it. Our aim is to talk about the good, what worked, and yeah, sometimes what didn't.
00:00:23
Speaker
All with an eye towards building up, not tearing down. Thanks for joining us.
Meeting Special Guest Brev and Comic Interests
00:00:32
Speaker
Welcome back to Casual Nerdity. We are taking another short break from our Clone Watch series, and yeah we're we're coming together for kind of a sad occasion. I actually kind of thought that maybe I should find different intro music, but we're not going to wallow in sad. We're going to celebrate somebody for this next little bit while we as that' said talk. That's great way of looking at things. ah Celebrate Long history.
00:01:02
Speaker
Very long history. And ah as usual, you know, I'm Daryl and with me is Nick. And we and we also have a very special guest from the Movie Defenders podcast. We have Brev on board with us today.
00:01:17
Speaker
But thanks for joining us, Brev. Oh, I'm so tickled pink to be here. I'm just sad the reason why. But I'm i'm honored that you chose me. Oh, yeah. I know that you're you're a huge comic nerd like
Tribute to Peter David's Legacy
00:01:29
Speaker
me.
00:01:29
Speaker
and um And so what brings us here is that ah this past Saturday, as we record this, Saturday, May 24th, Peter David, who described himself as the writer of stuff, passed away at...
00:01:46
Speaker
passed away after several years of serious health issues, but his work spanned a variety of media, comics for which he was best known, novels, TV, movies, and some media journalism in there, video games.
00:02:02
Speaker
um And oddly enough, he was never really a rock star in that sense of the big name, famous creators in these media, but he always really- of created, he created something.
00:02:16
Speaker
huge works and that are influential. Oh, he he absolutely did.
Peter David's Journey in Marvel Comics
00:02:25
Speaker
And just a quick little background in that he started out in the comics industry working for Marvel's direct sales department.
00:02:36
Speaker
um He was responsible for communicating with comic stores and maintaining relationships and the distributors and soliciting the books to the distributors in the stores, but he wanted to write.
00:02:49
Speaker
And um after a while, you know, they they gave him some some issues of Spectacular Spider-Man to write, and they were pretty well received.
00:03:00
Speaker
and But he wanted a regular gig. He was doing that at night. He made sure to keep the Marvel sales side and the freelance writer side separate.
00:03:12
Speaker
He didn't do any writing while he was on the clock doing the day job at Marvel. I can't say the same for my own job. I cannot either.
00:03:22
Speaker
a failed aspiring writer, I can. I can empathize. You are not failed, Nick, because you haven't given up. That's right. You only fail when you start to when you decide you failed and you give up.
Creative Writing Insights and Humor
00:03:36
Speaker
And you like ah you know not not to you know butter up our guest, but you know he has inspired me to pick my keyboard back up. so I'm glad to hear it. I hope that you're I hope that your book is is infinitely better than mine.
00:03:52
Speaker
i had fun writing the two I've written. I'm still working on the third. my my My son keeps getting on me every day that he's further along writing his his first novel than I am my third, and which is true.
00:04:03
Speaker
ah But yeah, I know. I've i've written a little bit, a fair bit. And ah and yeah, so yeah, no. Keep going, Peter Digger. I thought you had a good desk.
00:04:15
Speaker
how did your How did your keyboard fall off again? but don't um But so don't quit your day job. Oh, man.
00:04:28
Speaker
Now, it's only fair to tell you, Brev, that as we have learned on our on our sister podcast, How We Roll Gaming, when we start picking up picking on Nick too much, that means it's the end of the show.
Exploring 'How We Roll Gaming' Podcast
00:04:41
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:41
Speaker
So we don't want to pick on him too much. Got it. Got it. Okay. We'll do. Since you mentioned How We Roll Gaming, Since you mentioned how we roll, I do have a question for both of you fine gentlemen. Yes. On that show.
00:04:52
Speaker
um What was the idea behind the title, how we roll R O L L and not R O L E considering you always talk about the different roles you take as both a player and a GM.
00:05:07
Speaker
Ooh, that's a good question. The, the, The answer is that we came up with the how we roll R-O-L-L for the whole larger future business plan that we have for it, which involves a gaming store.
00:05:24
Speaker
The glorious five-year plan. Yes. Of course. la And so... Podcast, profit, done. Yeah, gotcha. Right. that so they're quite for for you get the pi First you get the podcast, then you get the money, then you get the women.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yes. is that how remarks Question mark, question mark, profit. Right. Exactly. Right. But no, that we we just didn't think of it because it was just the established name that we had come up with because R-O-L-E didn't fit as much with the we didn't think of the pun because it didn't fit with the, uh, the larger concept, but now I'm kicking myself.
00:06:07
Speaker
Thanks for have. I'm going to go. No, no, no, no, no. think we, I thought about that before. It's like, no, no, this works way better. It's like, it's rolling dice is like,
00:06:21
Speaker
ubiquitous in all gaming to it. Yeah. So it opens us to all types of gaming instead of like role play role playing games. It's like that typecast.
00:06:32
Speaker
Well, maybe then you could use it like as a segment during how we roll to say how I roll. And when you talk about specific things for what you're doing on the at the table. i don't know. Take it, leave it.
00:06:43
Speaker
It's up to you guys. i just but i never When I saw the podcast, I was like, oh that would have been such a fun pun.
00:06:52
Speaker
It would have. would have. What we did is like way more open. it like That's what we wanted it to be.
Peter David's Impact on Spider-Man
00:07:00
Speaker
Well, sure. Absolutely. I think that's That kind just shows a little bit about like what Peter David also was really good at. is is he was I always felt as a writer where his strength was he would take an established character, which you usually do when you work at DC and Marvel, and he would dive into areas and attributes for that character that either hadn't been explored really or...
00:07:23
Speaker
um that were or just potentially new areas to say hey i want to i want to open up this door or what would happen if this which is always the great thing about a writer the question is well what if what if this happened or what if that happened and i want to be that's especially great when we get into like his more the characters that he really created but let's start with what he Well, and the work with that that kind of what if is the first thing of his that I encountered. I just didn't know that it was his at the time.
00:07:56
Speaker
eighty It was the first convention that I went to. And, you know, 15 years old. And I the there's a Marvel Comics coming attraction slideshow.
00:08:07
Speaker
I'm going to go to this. And when I say slideshow, this is 85. They were actual slides. in a carousel slide projector. Yeah. good drink Yes.
00:08:19
Speaker
And so and i like like a Microsoft slide. No. And so there's this, you know, Marvel sales guy, right.
00:08:30
Speaker
Who is doing the coming attractions thing. And he gets to, um, this upcoming storyline in Spectacular Spider-Man where Spider-Man's fighting this new villain called the Sin Eater.
00:08:47
Speaker
And um what what he's talking about, what really caught my attention is he's showing a slide, ah ah couple of slides from this issue where, you Spider-Man's fighting the Sin Eater and he's doing the normal Spider-Man thing, right? He's quipping, he's dodging out of the way because of the spider sense and all of that.
00:09:07
Speaker
And the Sin Eater, you know levels his shotgun and fires away and Spider-Man dodges out of the way like normal, you know, with quipping the whole time.
00:09:18
Speaker
who And the shotgun blast hits a bystander. Yeah. and I'm like, whoa, that totally floored me.
00:09:29
Speaker
I had never considered that kind of thing before. It's not your standard superhero comic stuff, especially not in the mid eighty s yeah And again, Spider-Man has played with like the conventions of conventional comics before.
00:09:47
Speaker
The Green Goblin arc, the Death of Gwen Stacy. But it's also like, yeah, this is this is definitely, like in general, Spider-Man has a history of like pushing that boundary. It's like, what do you what do you know of a comic book?
00:10:06
Speaker
but and What I didn't click to until years later was the Marvel sales guy doing the coming attractions presentation was Peter David.
00:10:16
Speaker
He was there in his capacity as Marvel direct sales. Nice. so Selling his own story, right? Yeah. he did not He did not focus on the fact that he's the one who wrote it.
00:10:31
Speaker
That's how much he kept the the day job and the freelance writing separate. ah that that's that's kind of like the concept of sales. but It's like, I don't have to sell myself to the story. If I sell the story that telling.
00:10:49
Speaker
And he, he also definitely set a high bar for this 15 year old going to that con. Cause there were, well, there there were a bunch of these of us goofy ass teenagers who, after the coming attraction slideshow still had all of, all of our goofy ass teenager comics questions.
00:11:06
Speaker
Yeah. And so he found somebody, whoever was watching the Marvel table for him, he got them. Hey, hey, can you, you don't have anything going. You can stay here for a little while longer. Right.
00:11:18
Speaker
They said, yeah, he goes down, finds a spot off the side of the lobby and sits there talking comics with us for the next hour and a half, two hours. thats
Iconic Hulk Run by Peter David
00:11:28
Speaker
false And so yeah once I started recognizing his name and everything a little later on, I was like, hey, that's that guy. I need to pick up something that that he wrote.
00:11:43
Speaker
um I picked up that one issue of Spectacular Spider-Man, but I didn't get the whole storyline until years later. And i was like, why did I only pick up the one issue that got my attention?
00:11:56
Speaker
That kind of reminds me of a thing that i told you about later, but I did encounter like a comic book writer for Star Wars one time.
00:12:09
Speaker
Again, it's probably, there's a whole different story. It was like something similar happened. like just random encounter. It was like, no, no, that was cool. And so not long after that came what was probably the most defining run in his comics career, despite tons of great stuff that he did.
00:12:32
Speaker
um He was basically bugging Marvel for a full-time writing assignment. And they're like, nobody wants the Incredible Hulk.
00:12:45
Speaker
Nope. Nobody wants it. Because at that point in time, like what everything that Stan and Jack done, it was just, it was like for years and no disrespect to the people that had written c Incredible Hulk and drew Incredible hulk for years, but absolutely no shade thrown. Cause listen, they did it. We haven't. So, you know, and a lot of great storylines came from that, but it was just a repeat early what Stan and Jack had built for years before.
00:13:08
Speaker
it's kind of like, all right, this is sort of the same stuff for same thing for 300 issues. Like, oh my gosh, what new could we do with the Hulk? ahha it took and like and i grew up I grew up in the 2000s era of the Hulk, so I got to see like World War Horror Hulk, the immortal Hulk, a whole lot of stuff has been done recently.
00:13:32
Speaker
But yeah can I can understand like there's there is like a time period, it's like I've talked to people who are Hulk fans, like there was a time period, it's like, yeah, what could you do with the Hulk until like this period?
00:13:43
Speaker
Yeah, and none of that would exist without what he would end up doing for 12 years. As far as great runs, Peter David has... If you go back to Marvel and look at the great runs of the work, you're talking about Stan and Jack again on Fantastic Four, Stan Steve Ditko on Amazing Spider-Man, Chris Claremont and all the other amazing artists he worked with on Uncanny.
00:14:11
Speaker
It's the best. It's the top tier. it's It's my favorite run of comic books, period. Watchmen and Sandman are two and three, but Claremont's X-Men is the number one. oh i like I consider those like those are their own separate things.
00:14:27
Speaker
things like in Sort of like continuous comics as comics is a genre. Yeah. Claremont's X-Men is like unique in how strong it is.
00:14:40
Speaker
They will never have it again in Big 2 comics because they will never give over the reins like that ever again. so Nope. um But peter david's Peter David's run, I mean, just the artists he worked with, Todd McFarlane and ah da and Dale Keown were the ones that that kind of bind like Those guys were just, they took his vision in what he was saying, what he created, what he wanted to do with Hulk by, know, bringing back the gray Hulk, making the Mr. Fix-It, going on from there to there. Yes, gray the symbiosis between between Hulk and Banners.
00:15:13
Speaker
um remember standing in Walden books and flipping, i remember looking at that the issue, it was, um the cover was like Hulk ripping through Banner and other Hulk or something like that. And flipped, what is this? was flipping through a kid.
00:15:27
Speaker
I'm flipping through this issue here and standing there and just like ah seeing like the the the Doc Samson, which he'll use this again later. One of the best issues of the next title ever.
00:15:38
Speaker
He's talking and like working through Banner and the Hulk and all this ah psychological damage between the the two of them that they' created. And at the end, he comes out as this symbiosis of all of that. So it's like, I am green. I'm big.
00:15:52
Speaker
i am a sarcastic badass like Mr. Fix-It, but I'm also smart like Banner. And I'm this new version of the whole thing. It's a proto-professor
Hulk's Psychological Depth and Transformation
00:16:02
Speaker
Hulk. It was awesome.
00:16:04
Speaker
yeah And that was one of the things that that he did a lot. He would look at what came before. Because it would it was Mantlo that had... never outright said but suggested that bruce banner had multiple personalities yeah that the hulk wasn't a separate being he was just a different personality given form which honestly always amazed me because like i came again i came in west later in the comics in like 90s and like late like
00:16:38
Speaker
I always imagined that Hulk was always like the Jackal and Hyde thing. Multiple personalities, id, ego, stuff like that. and he That was relatively new when I was coming into it.
00:16:54
Speaker
And he he looked at at actual multiple personality cases he's like, the the actual real world treatment for now it's dissociative identity disorder, then it was multiple personality disorder. He's like, right the real world clinical treatment for this is not trying to separate Banner and the Hulk, which so many stories had been about over the decades.
00:17:23
Speaker
and it The goal is integration. To create a gestalt version of like a better person from these desperate parts.
00:17:35
Speaker
And Brev, you mentioned some of the big names that didn't necessarily start out, but they weren't huge rock stars when they started on Hulk.
00:17:47
Speaker
Correct. And that book underpressed Peter David and the variety of artists that he worked with turned it into a book that really made it a high profile star making book from that book that nobody wanted.
00:18:06
Speaker
Isn't that crazy? I love it when that moment happens. When you get so like when you get a writer that will take a concept and say, you know what? I can do something with this that hasn't been touched. It hasn't been done. I mean, look at what Claremont again picture clairemon to go claremont did on the X-Men, right?
00:18:24
Speaker
Or like Spider-Man in the in the early in the late in early aughts with J. Michael Straczynski took over Amazing Spider-Man. was like... I've got this idea, and I think it could really, really work. and like like Let's look at that. Or John Byrne's run in the 80s on Superman.
00:18:37
Speaker
Or Frank Miller's for Batman. I've got something here that could really, really work. Fuck it, Frank Miller and Daredevil. I've got something could really, work. And they can change the whole book around. All sudden, you go from, we've got mid to bottom tier sales. All a sudden, we're in the top quartile on sales. Incredible Hulk became a must-buy every month because it was that good.
00:18:58
Speaker
yeah it was like just like sales it's like redefining the character an audience like oh this is stale this is this where is this going it's like no no just a fresh view of it yeah it doesn't matter the artist it's like just the press like creative decision could like make the whole thing like oh Now people get it. Now people understand It's like, you just say someone to like approach an old idea and be like, here's what I feel that like that would make sense in today.
00:19:40
Speaker
it's like, people be like, oh, I get it. And you mentioned Bill, I agree. You mentioned to Bill Mantlo a little bit ago. I just bought the Micronauts. I got to get, I got to volume three and wrong volume three. I'm going to get those because if they lose the rights to them again, I want to have a copy, physical copy. Bill Mantlo, you know, like,
00:19:57
Speaker
I'm surprised that as a man that is, actually, i don't want be morbid, I'm surprised that there hasn't been, I'm surprised he's still with us, right? Because yeah he left, he left you did a lot of fun stuff for com for Marvel Comics, for comics in general. And like, I remember when he had Hulk and then he and Byrne had Alpha Flight and then they did a crossover and swapped. Because Byrne had run out of,
00:20:17
Speaker
He burned himself on Alpha Flight. He couldn't get anything else to do. was tired of these characters that he created. He's like, I'm so fucking done with this. I'm sorry, are we allowed to curse? Yes. but Okay, good. He said, I'm so fucking done with this book. I can't stand anymore.
00:20:28
Speaker
I'm going to go take over Hulk probably because he had some good ideas. I think i think a lot of what Burn did kind of led up to what What um Peter David eventually did in Byrne kind of like is sort of a stepping stone for that. But Byrne's main focus, as we all know, was Fantastic Four work. But anyway, um and then Bill Mantlo took over Alpha Flight and then turned it into this sadomasochistic crazy-ass book. If you have never read Alpha Flight, I would absolutely tell you you should read it.
00:20:51
Speaker
And it picks up around issue 10 or 11, and it just kind of flies, no pun intended, all the way to at least issue about Oh, 100 or so. It is such an underrated book, but be prepared to bring tissues and not for a gross reason, but more for like, oh my God, how many people are they going to kill in this book? Jeez, I like these characters. What's going on? it's ah It's an interesting, crazy ass read where you have someone that's allowed to do whatever they want to whoever they want. and you're like, oh my gosh.
00:21:14
Speaker
But, um So Matt, so Bill Mantlo leaves comics, eventually becomes a public defender, then had a horrible accident. He's basically brain dead, but still alive. So, yeah um but so whether of the other reasons why I wonder by these books, because says if Marvel gives him any, he and his family, any sort of residuals, I want to make sure that my money helps to go ah pay for whatever he needs. So even if it's a portion of that, I sure that because he's given me so much joy over my life, I'm gonna do the same for him.
00:21:40
Speaker
I had no idea Peter David was as sick as he was, or also I would been buying the, the omnibus is for his X factor run. And think that they've done the incredible Hulk ones yet, but like I would totally do those. Cause I want to make sure that again, going back to, you know, giving love to someone who gave me so much joy and happiness, um, through my, through, through my childhood and adulthood. And and like, yeah, so his, his, his, his incredible Hulk run was so incredible because like he would take modern things that were happening, like the Gulf war, we all remember that. Right.
00:22:09
Speaker
certainly old enough to remember that and like he would transpose the whole thing i'm not that i said you as in general you right um but like like he even had uh moments that took place there like what would hulk do in those sort of situations think they're made up countries of course but like and like stuff like that was going on and like and they were brought into like the the angley hulk stuff like this like yeah like A lot of it was influenced. Ang Lee used a lot of the influence from Peter David's work because if you're going to go get something, you can use it, go get the good stuff.
00:22:45
Speaker
The problem is Hollywood can't do Dark Phoenix well. and We've seen that now several times. They should stop. just Just stop. Just like go to Genosha, go get the brood, just stop with Dark Phoenix. They just quit. it so um Yeah, go ahead. So when Phoenix shows up in in Doomsday or Secret Wars,
00:23:02
Speaker
Yeah, my co-hosts, I think they did on the movie Defenders, um which ah here's a shameless plug. Go to ah for your fans. If guys don't know, i am part of a co-host, a trio that runs a podcast where we defend movies.
00:23:15
Speaker
And ah both Daryl and Nick are our are our director of our patrons. So thank you for that. And Stephanie, the wonderful Stephanie. And and ah And so we defend movies ah every two weeks and we pick up ones that people normally, people like to poopoo on and we try to defend them. I'm just glad that I came on to be a host with them after they had already covered Dark Phoenix and X-Men Origins Wolverine.
00:23:36
Speaker
Cause I don't know if I could sit there for three hours and defend those. much love to Scott and Donald. I'm glad you did those without me. I already know. and I already have my, my plan movie for them. Yeah.
00:23:53
Speaker
I'm excited to hear it. But like, so back to Peter David. um yeah he had him He had more than Incredible Hulk, right? I mean, like he did Incredible Hulk, what else did he do? Well, shortly after that, the the next big thing that he had was also at Marvel, and that was X Factor.
Revitalizing X Factor and Humor in Comics
00:24:07
Speaker
Oh, yes. Where you you take yet another kind of floundering book. here X Factor had been flopping around for a while because it all it really had going for it for the first few years was...
00:24:22
Speaker
okay, we're going to reunite the five original X-Men and Yeah. yeah And they didn't really have anything beyond that. Once Inferno happened, there was nowhere to take. when the rest Once the resolution of the Madeline Jean Scott storyline happened, there was it was an obvious tank.
00:24:43
Speaker
Much love to Louise Simon said. Love her to death. think she's an amazing, talented a writer. I don't think she's going to listen to this podcast. I'm sorry, boys. She's a lady who's got lots left to do. um But like um all due respect to her, she she took a floundering book away from from Bob Layton that couldn't didn't know what...
00:25:00
Speaker
but All Bob Layton was doing with the first original, it's like five issues of X Factor was redoing what but got their original run of X-Men canceled. And so Louise Simonson shows up, picks up Apocalypse, runs all the way through Inferno and has this amazing, that did what Claremont does.
00:25:16
Speaker
I want action to adventure, but I also want um drama. I want soap opera. I want the will they won't days. I want all the human or mutant interaction, things like that with, with the action. She knew how to do it.
00:25:27
Speaker
She teased it out. Amazing job. Got Inferno and was like, I'm done. And it shows. Yes, it does. when X-Men 97 did really well. Mm-hmm.
00:25:39
Speaker
so with exp ninety seven the really well do and And so... Put off a whole lot of those ideas, condense them, but kept the core ideas and the interpersonal characters.
00:25:56
Speaker
Yeah. But then after the Mirror Island saga happened, where they rejoin all the X-Men together, and then the x then the X-Men revolution or re-genesis or whatever it was happened, and Peter David gets X-Factor.
00:26:08
Speaker
And at this point, he is you riding very high on Hulk. Hulk has become the big hit at this point. Yes. Even though he's still not a rock star in terms of some of the comics creators that are out there.
00:26:22
Speaker
Right. So they bring him into X Factor to do his thing. Yep. And he did his thing. He did. And i I didn't put this anywhere in the few notes that we put together, but it kind of started to show a pattern here. And I had already seen this comment from him in an interview regarding his work on Dreadstar, picking up Dreadstar after Jim Starlin left the book.
00:26:50
Speaker
Jim Starlin, another another Marvel legend. Go on. But have you ever noticed, Brev, that the first couple issues, if he takes over an existing book, were heavy on his humor?
00:27:03
Speaker
He always had a ah touch of humor in there. But his first few issues were heavier on it. So i'm going to be perfectly honest with you. This is 1991, right? So Brev is 14 or something like that, if we're doing the math. 13, 14. Yeah.
00:27:18
Speaker
I am such an X-Men head at this point time. I'm loving adjectives as X-Men. I'm liking Uncanny, even though that was my jam. Claremont was gone. ok Okay, we're we're trying to figure it out.
00:27:32
Speaker
I thought X-Wars was so cool. You know Rob Liefeld, just don't show feet, right? But like, oh, this is badass. This is going to be so much fun. And then you get to X-Factor, and I didn't realize it was supposed to be a comedy book.
00:27:44
Speaker
And it turned me off. ah I didn't make it. I think I didn't even make it. I made it through Executioner's Song. the crossover and i was like i can't do this anymore i don't know what the hell's going on this book is so weird i've gone back and read it i'm like i'm an idiot this is supposed to be funny and i totally did not get it when i was 13 14 15 years old i was like i don't understand this is not serious yeah dumbass that was the point so people said the same kind of thing when he took over dread star okay And i read an interview where he's like, oh yeah, I do that on on purpose because once you laugh with the characters, then it matters more to you when they're in trouble.
00:28:27
Speaker
Very true. Yeah. And so he's like, i'll I'll go heavy on the humor in the first few issues when I'm taking over, especially when I'm taking over from somebody. Everyone's used to the status quo, but here's how I'm going to do the characters and come with me.
00:28:43
Speaker
who come with me, care about the characters, laugh with them. And then when I put them in mortal danger, you're more worried that they might not make it. It's called creating empathy.
00:28:56
Speaker
Exactly. And you mentioned the executioner song. One thing that I remember reading another interview from him that he he absolutely,
00:29:08
Speaker
hated this and I didn't notice it when I was reading executioner song. Cause like you, have had an X on the cover. Then I was reading it. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Um, yeah, the two, two, three X factor issues of that crossover don't feature a single character from X factor.
00:29:27
Speaker
Hmm. Well, Lorna gets her, doesn't Lorna get her jaw broken? No, no, it's Boom Boom gets her jaw broken. Yeah. that's but Yeah, Boom Boom, which is which is funny for Boom Boom. Yeah. they do I don't remember. I just haven't seen the cover of one, isn't he? But like, they're really not featured at all, are they? No, they're they're not.
00:29:47
Speaker
They're not. That was his big gripe. He's like, okay, great. I'm on a high profile X book. I'm now required to participate in the annual crossover. Yeah. And the crossover's plot says to hell with whatever storyline you have going on.
00:30:07
Speaker
you And so... yeah yeah It happens this day. like I was just reading X-Man Hunt and...
00:30:18
Speaker
They have all these things started up on all these books and two of the books do this complete left turn in order to make sure that they can include a story that at least features their characters in this story arc, but it makes no sense.
00:30:30
Speaker
And like the issue in Storm, she gets it she gets like godlike powers. She already has them and now she becomes like ah ah cosmic being level and the next issue she's trying to hide professor x i'm like hold on wait a second what happened to the godlike powers that we just got why do you why are we over here trying to smuggle your your old teacher out of the and of the world i don't understand what's going on here and it's like oh god that's why it's a crossover nobody gave a shit like it doesn't matter yeah no i'd never put that together but it kind of makes sense you know if you go to back to that story arc X Factor is kind of the odd man out because it's, it's obviously very X-Force heavy because it's about Cable.
00:31:07
Speaker
It's very X-Men and Uncanny X-Men because, you know, Scott and Gene are important in that storyline. So i was Professor X. So like X Factor is kind of like, well, I mean, like, I guess the, the, the big thing is we found out Cable's uncle is the leader of X Factor. I guess that's the big moment. Like, like, like what what's X Factor doing this shit?
00:31:24
Speaker
Nothing. So yeah, yeah. It's amazing. They got that story arc pulled off because, um, and that, that, that was the, that show just how strong writer Fabian Niciesa was though, to pull that shit off because he had just gotten the books.
00:31:37
Speaker
I was like, okay, now we have to do a 12 part series or 12 part story arc. It's like, okay. You have to do a 12 part story arc across four different series. Yeah. I'm like, well, I guess I have to do this. Yes, you do. Like, okay. Yeah.
00:31:51
Speaker
Go me. Let's do this. So yeah, no, like I, in and like going back to Peter David, like I, I didn't get it at the time going back and reading it. Cause I went back after, cause Howard Mackey takes over after Peter David leaves. And we'll get to here in a second, but like going back and rereading that also Larry Stroman's art didn't quite jive with me. Now I see it as he has a style that I really do appreciate for the book that he, that they, those two gentlemen were trying to create. I think they do a good job together. just,
00:32:19
Speaker
When you have Jim Lee and his beautiful artwork, Wills Portacio, his beautiful artwork. And not everybody's a Rob Liefeld fan, but I mean, like he has the big, bulky, lots of lots of pockets and lots of bags.
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah, i was um wrote right in I was right in the bullseye of his target audience at the time. yep And I was like, oh, yeah. And now, years later, was like, you sweet summer child.
00:32:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. What McFarlane said recently, someone asked him about like, it's a hard to draw feet. And he, I saw an interview with him. He's like, what you learn in art school is if you can't draw it, well black it out.
00:32:58
Speaker
Use your anchor to make sure it's all black. And so nobody can see how bad you are at drawing, whatever it is you don't think you can draw. I was like, that's clever.
00:33:08
Speaker
So yeah, no, but he created this great book and he had so much fun. And I think, you know, when, when Claremont created the Sinister originally, Claremont Sylvester did, He's this big menacing bad guy. And then when Peter David gets his hands on Sinister during his run, all of a sudden he starts to show himself a little bit more maniacal, a little bit more, little crazier, a little bit like, uh, I'm smart, but I'm a lunatic, which then allows 20, 25 years later, Kieran Gillen and Al Ewing in the recent runs to make him this absolutely narcissistic, egotistical blowhard that is completely ridiculous, but also terrifying in the fact that he will do anything and everything. in fact,
00:33:46
Speaker
Nathan and I were just playing, ah my son I were just playing Marvel United. And in one of the boxes that I got, it's a board game. One of the boxes I got, you can actually be Mr. Sinister. And part of what he could do is fuck over your other, your,
00:33:58
Speaker
you can literally take control of the other person's character who you're supposed to work together to defeat a mastermind. You can literally take over that person, that your, your, your allies character to make them do what you want them to do.
00:34:09
Speaker
And so my son's like, he's like, so why don't you just play this by yourself? Then dad, go I don't know i didn't know what this does. Like I love sinister. And I think a lot of that started with Peter David's taking over Mr. Sinister during X factor and during his run X factor and allowing that like, how, how crazy would this guy have to be after being around for so many years yeah with people's genetics? Like, what little lunatic this is.
00:34:36
Speaker
um I also think that what's great about what what what David did is is like... um He makes Madrox interesting for the first time in the dude's 25 years of publication history. Yes, he did. He's boring as fuck by everybody else. Nobody cares about Jamie Madrox until Peter David gets his claws on him.
00:34:56
Speaker
Also, he makes strong guy, Guido, somebody that actually, like oh, I like strong guy. He's a lot of fun. he's so He's a lovable character. Yeah, he's a bit of a goof, but he's a lovable character. And he gives Polaris some real like, oh, she's not just Jean with Magneto's powers. She has a personality of her own. In fact,
00:35:13
Speaker
Havoc is the least interesting of all the characters in in in in that run. And he's the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Aryan-looking guy who should be the poster boy for the book. And he's the one that's like, oh, he's okay.
00:35:27
Speaker
Poster boy is exactly the phrase I was about to use. But yeah, he took... basically side characters. In the case of Guido, Guido was absolutely a side character.
00:35:38
Speaker
it was a background character that Claremont and Sienkiewicz threw into New Mutants. Yeah. And he was a Lila Chaney's bouncer, right? but guard Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. certain bodygu guard yeah yeah And it's you're really, that's going to be one of the main characters of this book.
00:35:57
Speaker
but That's your top. That's in your top five. Okay. Okay. We'll see what you Yeah. All right. I mean, but you know, it, it's Peter David. I'll trust him, but really? And just from, from the first issue when X factor is having their press conference and Guido had been like, Nope, Nope.
00:36:14
Speaker
I'm, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna have this superhero code name, nothing. And one of the reporters is like, You must be the strong guy, right? Yes, I am.
00:36:25
Speaker
What's your name? Strong guy. a And Havik's like, you can't call yourself strong guy. Oh, yeah, well, I just did. Yeah. i'll Hold on. Hold on.
00:36:38
Speaker
that That was just, and that was beautiful. And from that moment, i was like, okay, I like this guy. a I like this guy. And then you, you throw all of, all of the laughs. You throw the whole, know, strong guy. You can't call yourself strong guy.
00:36:53
Speaker
Then a few issues later, you're like, oh, this dude's in constant pain because of his powers. Yep. So. There's that empathy thing.
00:37:04
Speaker
but empathy you You humans have this empathy thing I don't understand. Well, then he brings back Val Cooper, right? Who'd been a supporting cast member in the Uncanny X-Men that let Claremont had created, i think with John Romita Jr. And she's a government liaison. So she's the human. So she's there. She's going to be part of this now, part of you know the the governmental aspect arm of X-Factor. And he makes he takes val goop val val guer Val Cooper from just a supporting cast character and gives her more personality, it gives her something to do and makes her like, she's still she's still the man. She's still the government, but like he gives her...
00:37:38
Speaker
Gives her things that she can do to help move the plot forward. Makes her interesting. Puts her part of the team, so to speak. And then he brings in the fastest man in the Marvel Universe, right? He brings in Quicksilver. And like yeah all of a sudden, Quicksilver goes from being an Avenger, being a bad guy, to being an X-Man? When the fuck did this happen?
00:37:56
Speaker
Whoa. And it makes it realistic and makes it work. And... Which leads to after that big crossover with the Hulk, you mentioned the the Gulf War storyline parallels.
00:38:08
Speaker
After that, well, X-Factor is a government team. Realistically, they go through a psychological evaluation after this big mission. yeah And one of the best issues of a lot of... Yes.
00:38:27
Speaker
One of the best issues of an X-book ever... the That issue that you know we we hinted at and when we were talking about the Hulk, when Doc Samson is giving the team that evaluation.
00:38:40
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And the the exploration of Quicksilver's personality that it has become my yardstick for whether or not I like how a writer is handling Quicksilver.
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. He's still an asshole, but you get it now. You understand. because he Peter put it in terms that everyone could understand. It's like, so when when you go to the ATM and you're behind someone who clearly doesn't know what they're doing, how do you feel?
00:39:15
Speaker
like i get frustrated, I guess. Great. Imagine my perceptions of the world that I am at that ATM all day, every day. Mm-hmm.
00:39:29
Speaker
With every interaction I have with every person. I might be a little bit of a jerk. That's right. And you know what that did in that moment? Not only do we solidify, and this a genius what Peter, what Peter David did is not only do we solidify and understand Quicksilver at a more profound level than we did before. And he's, there's character that been around for 30 years at this point in time. Like,
00:39:50
Speaker
Nobody had done this. Everybody's like, oh, he's an asshole. But why is he an asshole? Well, peter Peter David just said, because this. We did that. We created empathy. We created a reason to really care for Quicksilver.
00:40:01
Speaker
We also did in those few panels. We finally also touched on x Xavier's dream the way that nobody else really done that before is if you begin to understand somebody from their point of view, all of a sudden your patience for them, your patience for who they are, and your level of caring about them will increase exponentially.
00:40:19
Speaker
and So whether you're talking about somebody from a minority community like the X-Men, the X-Men is a minority allegory. It just is. If you don't get it, I'm sorry, you're not you're reading the wrong book.
00:40:30
Speaker
Right. yeah So like it is a minority allegory. And so you when you start to begin to understand where people come from, whether you are on the autism spectrum, whether you are ah homosexual or lesbian or whether you are poor or straight or white or or black or come from a different country or whatever it is, when you begin to understand that point of view and how is the world, it all a sudden it becomes you understand them, you care for them a little bit more than you did before. And that is what x Xavier's dream is truly about is the integration of different types of people into one world that we're all together, working together for a singular purpose, not pushing each other away because of an us and them mentality.
00:41:11
Speaker
Yeah. David did that. He just put a different spin on it a way that I don't think was quite as obvious as like, it's there on the page. And he says it right in there without having to say it. He uses the subtext of the story of the dialogue to create the message in a different way to look at it.
00:41:27
Speaker
Sorry to get off my soap, get off my soapbox, but this I love it. I love the X-Men because of that. And I, and I am a white, heterosexual, upper middle-class guy from Dallas suburbs.
00:41:38
Speaker
So like, if I can get it, you can get it. like I can understand. You can understand. I'm raised Catholic by God. I'm not supposed to believe that abortion is okay. So I mean, like, this is me.
00:41:50
Speaker
yeah that That is a soapbox that it is perfectly fine to be on, my friend. wo who And that that's one of the things that I always liked about all of his writing is that he he approached the big ideas like that you in a way that was, I'm going to call it user-friendly.
00:42:14
Speaker
Yes. you know if he'd had Quicksilver go off on a a big you know human and mutant allegory in that scene, it wouldn't have hit as hard.
00:42:28
Speaker
Correct. But we have all been in that line at the ATM with somebody going slow. And like oh.
00:42:40
Speaker
Mm-hmm. In that same issue, he also touched on the fact that Lorna suffers from body issues. Yeah. and And was like it was a great moment for her as a character.
00:42:52
Speaker
I'm not sure that I saw that at that age. and I don't think I could recognized that. um But going back and reading, like, okay, I can see where where this was laid in there subtly probably by other writers and other people. And David just kind of found it and mined it and went down further. in it And set the end like talking about the fact that she's anorexic.
00:43:10
Speaker
um Because she ah doesn't care for her own body. And which is great in a superhero book to say there's a woman who doesn't like being half naked. That's hilarious. Because then you're told very early on from the art that most women like to be naked. mean, just look at what Psylocke wears all day long.
00:43:26
Speaker
I mean, like, come on. So women don't wear a bathing suit to do everything. i don't understand. how They don't have all have a luxurious hair, big tits, big asses and like no no, no shirt on. I don't get it. Like that's how all women should think. Right. So anyway, um and I like how he takes Lorna and takes her down that path. At the end of the issue, she shows back up in Doc Samson's face and has this very revealing costume on.
00:43:50
Speaker
It was like, she's like, i own this. And I was like, okay, this is too far now. ah but But that was great because he really started that. Because at that point time, Lorna had just been like Jean with green hair and Magneto's powers. That's all she really was. didn't have a personality. I mean, she was Bobby's ex-girlfriend, um which I love the joke.
00:44:09
Speaker
If you date Bobby Drake, you've got you know like you youre got some problems anyway. um so but um ah But like she was Havok's longtime lover, although that relationship was also rocky and really strange. so i mean like But the fact that you know, he gave her more personality than really anybody else, including Claremont had up to that point. David, David took it amongst himself to say like, I'm going to make this into a character, not just a, not just a power base, but a character.
00:44:38
Speaker
I love that. And i'm I'm going to put a pin in that concept regarding X factor for just a minute. But you, we, his run, unfortunately this time around didn't last very long.
00:44:54
Speaker
yeah And a lot of that um a lot of that was him walking away from the book, already frustrated by the by the crossover requirements.
00:45:09
Speaker
you know I have to interrupt my story for a quarter of the year. In service of somebody else's story. Yeah. Wasn't wild about that.
00:45:20
Speaker
And then in his final few issues, the the editor was rewriting pages of dialogue.
00:45:28
Speaker
um that That'll get you. Your writers love that, let me tell you. They're big fans. Well, If you haven't already heard about this, Brev, next time you go back and look at the run of X Factor, he look at his last issue.
00:45:45
Speaker
And after they had gone to Genosha, you know, how they they had the whole, you know while Rain was under mind control in Genosha and so was Havok, she was...
00:45:57
Speaker
they they were kind of, you know, mind control, slightly bonded together. Oh yeah. Yeah. And there, there's a scene where the two of them are walking down the street, trying to talk through all of this.
00:46:13
Speaker
And that's one of the pages that was rewritten from top to bottom. Really? and what, what, If you look at the artwork, you'll see that at one point they're like you know there're they're walking past a yard and there's a dog that suddenly like perks up and is paying attention when Rain walks by. And his intention was that um view
00:46:44
Speaker
partly through the Genoshans' manipulations and thing, and partly just because of the nature of her powers, Without realizing it, because as we all know, Rain was a very repressed, very good Catholic girl.
00:46:58
Speaker
Rain's powers had her going through heat. Okay. And she didn't know it. she was She wasn't intentionally trying to come on to Havoc, yeah but yeah she had a biological drive and the Genosians mind linking them is what had her focusing on him because of it.
00:47:21
Speaker
Yeah. i knew that I knew that part. I didn't catch the she was in heat. At the end of that, one of the first issues of his run, she ends up like naked basically in his bedroom watching over him. And he's like whoa, that's weird. I don't think that's okay because she's still a minor at the time.
00:47:36
Speaker
so and yeah And so if you if you look at that last issue, They're throwing clues into the artwork, and the the dialogue was originally more blatant about it, and and Havoc was starting to maybe tumble to what was going on. Yeah. Poor Alex.
00:47:57
Speaker
He's just not aware of anything ever. But yeah. and was you know he he They were trying to say, OK, you know I know what's going on with you, but this this ain't right. you just You need to chill out.
00:48:08
Speaker
We need to see what's going on. But you know the the images of the dogs were supposed to be part of part of the big you know clues to what was going on.
00:48:19
Speaker
And the editor was like, nope, we can't do this. yeah And instead of being a a grown-up about it and um and saying, okay, we need to um yeah we need to rewrite some of this.
00:48:42
Speaker
He just took it upon himself to do it. Interesting. that's a And that pissed off, I guess that pissed off David and he was like, I'm out. Yeah. and I'm out.
00:48:53
Speaker
Yeah. ah Which was around the time that we went to Spider-Man 2099, which is a good book.
Influence of Spider-Man 2099
00:49:01
Speaker
It's an awesome book. Yes. And it was the 2099 series. And it's not even close.
00:49:09
Speaker
not Not even close, hands down. um and um you it was the one that launched the whole line. yeah um And again, take the concept of an existing character, take the concept of Spider-Man.
00:49:34
Speaker
but let's rethink it. Let's tweak it. Let's run it through a filter and we'll come up with a new version of the character.
00:49:45
Speaker
Yeah. And a lot of what he did with it was, you know, Does the name Sam Raimi mean anything?
00:49:59
Speaker
yeah We've got the biological web shooters. We've got you know the the little claws that facilitate the wall climbing.
00:50:10
Speaker
ah you know i'm i'm not saying that a lot was borrowed from for the big screen from Spider-Man 2099. But yeah, there it is. yeah yeah It's a great book. And again, like this is a perfect meshing of writer and artist.
00:50:27
Speaker
Rick Leonardo doesn't have like, he has, he has definitely a unique style. And I think that it fits that book perfectly well. Like it's so well. And, and, and the writing of Miguel O'Hara and the story he goes through in that run is just,
00:50:42
Speaker
ah I don't use the word spectacular because that's too on the nose when it comes to Spider-Man. But I mean, like it is it's unfortunate to me that the rest of the 2099 line couldn't come close to what you, doom 2099 was okay.
00:50:59
Speaker
um At times it was good, but again, like that's the problem. We have a villain book. You can only like take it so far, right but like the other books were just God awful ravaged 2099. It wasn't, it was stupid.
00:51:12
Speaker
Ghostwriter 29. I know it's stupid. And the biggest offender of all was X-Men 2099, which was just God awfully bad. Um, but like, um, mean, no disrespect. The people that created them are wonderful people. Stanley created what I was a writer for one of those books. Um,
00:51:27
Speaker
but like it's a, it's unfortunate that the, that the best of them just kept swinging, knocking things out of the park all day long because Peter David's just that good of writer and the rest of them couldn't even come close to how good he, with the world he created, the vision, the characters, all of that. And it was like, Oh, to two Spider-Man, but in a way that made it its own and unique and different. And he He really played in that world.
00:51:53
Speaker
And it was just such a good fucking I've got an original printing with a Rick Lee and Artie signature on it. so Oh, nice. One of my prized possessions. Yep. i I think I have Peter's on it, but I don't have Leonardi's.
00:52:06
Speaker
Nice. So we can combine ours for one. Yes. We merge them together. That's right. That's right. And ah around this time, he stuck well he was already branching out doing some creator-owned stuff.
00:52:18
Speaker
therere I don't have much to say on this one, but it was just fun. There was a very little-known book that he did called Soul Searchers and Company.
00:52:30
Speaker
I remember this. Okay, yes. Which, it it did start off as a pitch for Marvel. Okay. and And he never revealed fully who the characters were supposed to be from Marvel, but...
00:52:48
Speaker
If you know enough Marvel lore, there's there's enough clues to figure it out. There's like one or two characters that nobody figured out who it was. Like ah the main character, I can't even remember their names from Soul Searchers and Company.
00:53:05
Speaker
But the main character was Hellcat. ah Baraka the Fire Demon was Damon Hellstrom. um And the the young witch was, um think her name was Holly, a supporting character from the Vision and Scarlet Witch miniseries.
00:53:25
Speaker
And it was just fun. i mean, the the first how can you not love a book that the first issue has a bunch of evil animated Pinocchio marionettes who kill people by sharpening their noses and lying?
Reinventing Aquaman
00:53:41
Speaker
nice i don't i don't think you can not have fun with that book yeah and and but then he he also made a move over to dc yes and i can't remember which came first i can't remember if um aquaman supergirl or young justice came first i think aquaman i think it was aquaman because wasn't he the guy that took aquaman's hand He was.
00:54:05
Speaker
Yeah. So I think it was Aquaman and then Supergirl and then Young Justice, if I remember correctly. And you Aquaman, he the characterizations of Aquaman today, more or less what Jason Momoa has been playing. I was going to say minus minus the hair being blonde and the hand being gone, that is Momoa's version of Aquaman.
00:54:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Because Aquaman had been a joke. There'd been a couple of. A fucking joke. Ridiculous joke. I'm sorry. Aquaman sucked before Peter David came in.
00:54:39
Speaker
Well, there had been a couple of short but decent runs shortly before he came in. Fair enough. Yes. But I mean, they they weren't super memorable, but they were decent.
00:54:50
Speaker
Right. um And for somebody like me who at that point I would, I was such a DC head that it, it didn't take much for me to say like, Oh, new DC book, gimme.
00:55:01
Speaker
And I would read it. um But they, they turned over the keys to Aquaman and he's like, Oh, he didn't just say, okay, well we're, I'm going to launch a new Aquaman series. No, he's like, okay, we're going to reinvent Atlantis.
00:55:19
Speaker
And he started with the Atlantis Chronicles. and i And the Atlantis Chronicles, have they ever collected that yet?
00:55:31
Speaker
I am not aware of that, no. DC is weird when it comes to its collections, to tell you the truth. This stuff's either really super old or in the last 10, 15 years. I mean, people have people have been asking for an Atlantis Chronicles collection since the miniseries ended.
00:55:49
Speaker
And DC's like, nah. Nah. Maybe it's on DC Universe. I don't know. I used i had a subscription. i was never been ah I've never been a big DC guy.
00:56:00
Speaker
i i have i read ah read more than my fair share. um But like monthly has just never been a thing for me. I usually get trades. ah So I had the subscription for DC Universe for a year and I never i rarely used it. And I was like, okay, i don't need to pay for something I'm not using.
00:56:15
Speaker
oh yeah. Yeah, but maybe one day I'll go back and get it. But yeah. Well, so the we mentioned the synergy that he's had with his artists a few times. Yes. um
00:56:28
Speaker
Atlantis Chronicles has an example of that synergy turning an accident and a miscommunication into a plot point that he carried through his Aquaman run.
00:56:41
Speaker
and what was that? um The artist was Esteban Moroto, who did not speak English. and part of the storyline had this comet crashing towards Earth.
00:56:56
Speaker
And so it's one of the few things that that Peter wrote near full script. Okay. Usually Marvel method, but this one, he didn't go full script, but he was closer to it than usual.
00:57:09
Speaker
And so he wrote a description of the panel that, you know, and we see the face of the comet. And so someone was translating his pages that he sent to Moroto for him to to draw.
00:57:27
Speaker
And that was quite literally translated. And the artist is like, how does a comet have a face? So he drew like this skull face on the comet.
00:57:40
Speaker
the And Peter's like, I didn't ask for this, but I can work with this. And that became a running element through his run on Aquaman that it wasn't just a comet. it There was a connection to an alien civilization and so on and so forth.
00:57:59
Speaker
At first it was just a comet. And it was a the artist misunderstanding the phrasing right they used in the script because of a language barrier. things like And he took it and ran with it when he saw the artwork.
00:58:13
Speaker
happy accidents, baby. I mean, that's, that's what it's all that that's how you want a creative process to work in any, any super form. You're like, if I have to tell you everything, then it doesn't allow you for any sort of your own creativity. And if, and if I, and if you have, and if you do everything gives and doesn't give me a space to do anything. So it's like, how are we going to do this together? And that's,
00:58:31
Speaker
So one the reasons why comic books are the, in my opinion, know I mean, like one of the, if not the greatest media of all time, because it's really limited by your imagination. Can you tell a story visually and in words and can you fit it all into 22 pages?
00:58:44
Speaker
And if not, yeah you get, you get, you get into the 22 pages, right? like howdy How do you, how you like, it can do stuff that movies can't do. It serializes better than television. It's, it's, it's still literature, I believe. And, and so like for people that need a picture when it comes to, when they have trouble reading novels, well, here's a, here's a way to do it with both. I mean, like, that's why comics are so great. If you can find a writer and artist team that really work, like that's why some of the, my favorite things I've ever written have been comic books.
00:59:11
Speaker
I stand by that. yeah. I do too. Yeah. I do too. And, we We have Aquaman reinvented. We have people who um were, at first they were outraged.
00:59:25
Speaker
Oh my God, Aquaman with a hook for a hand. And then once they actually read it, they were like, oh, okay, this this is this is good. And I like this this direction for the character. he he has a personality and he has a drive all this.
00:59:45
Speaker
all of this And then he then gets Supergirl. Yep. Supergirl had been kind of a cipher um since she was reintroduced post-crisis.
00:59:59
Speaker
Yep. And it was just a shape-changing blob. Pretty much. And so he took that shape-changing blob and merged her with...
01:00:11
Speaker
a character that allowed him to ah restore and revitalize a bunch of Silver Age concepts from the character.
Exploration of Faith in Supergirl
01:00:20
Speaker
ah And ah you also added entirely new aspects by making her what the series called an Earthborn Angel.
01:00:33
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And he you he had an interesting, throughout the series his run of the book, had an interesting examination of faith and religion, which you don't see a lot in superhero comics.
01:00:48
Speaker
yeah there There was a supporting character who was a little boy named Wally, who walked around with a baseball bat and a bowler hat on, who was God.
01:01:01
Speaker
And Supergirl's human mother was having this huge, she had been a religious person, was having this huge crisis of faith.
01:01:14
Speaker
And then Wally shows up and she's not believing who he is. And he's like she's like, if if you're, how can you be omnipotent and not know what's happening? It's like, omnipotent just means that I know everything that can be known up to now.
01:01:29
Speaker
Mm-hmm. you know I know everything that exists now that hasn't happened yet. So I don't know what it is. ah can't see all of them. Yep.
01:01:42
Speaker
And, um, and it that aspect of it came, became so closely tied to the character that he launched a creator owned book when he left Supergirl, but it was published by DC called fallen angel.
01:01:59
Speaker
And people were convinced that, Oh, the mystery behind the main character is that she's Linda Danvers from Supergirl.
01:02:10
Speaker
And he's like, no, I promise you she's not. And he even did. And I don't remember if this was in the DC run or after it moved to IDW. He did an issue with a character who was basically Supergirl to show the differences between Lee and Supergirl.
01:02:27
Speaker
Yeah. Love it. No, I'm not, I'm not a big DC guy. So I didn't know most of that. That sounds amazing though. I mean, like, and it you it it shows a pattern and this is what I would say to anybody. Like if you want to make it in the big two, go find a character that's not working.
01:02:44
Speaker
That's all, or there's long forgotten and make a good pitch. have a great pitch and go like, I want to write this character and here's really here's what I can do with it.
01:02:55
Speaker
Here's where I would like to take it. And if you get an editor that believes in you, they'll probably give you a shot. They might give a five issue limited series, see if its see if it sells, see if it's any good. but like like And that's what Peter David did. If you look at these books, I mean, these were trash books. These were books that were not selling well, not doing well. And he'd give somebody, a writer like this,
01:03:15
Speaker
The ability to come in and breathe life into it with something new, something interesting, a different take ah beef, this character back up. All sudden you're like Oh, the sales are going up. They might not be the number one book, but you know, sales start increasing dramatically.
01:03:28
Speaker
Yeah. I mean like this is, this is gonna be awesome. Every ride, this would be great. Every writer's got a take on Batman. Every writer's got an X book in their head. Everybody writers got a Spider-Man idea.
01:03:39
Speaker
You know what? Show me, show me your booster gold. yeah show but show Show me your 10 issue run on Booster Gold, what you would do with that book.
01:03:50
Speaker
show me um Show me your White Tiger book for Marvel. like Show me what that looks like. How how would you bring back Mockingbird? Like give me that book.
01:04:02
Speaker
Can you do that? Can you revitalize a character that's been gone for a while and make them interesting again? Show me that shit. And then we could talk about being clever and creative on something new and original like a Spider-Man 2099.
01:04:15
Speaker
But like show me what you could do with these other ones. like And like if you can do that, oh my God. Because then what it does for those but publishers means they don't have to take a risk on an unknown.
01:04:27
Speaker
They can take a minor risk on a known factor that probably has some sales and you would all in all you the worst that could happen is the sales continue to be bad. The best that could happen is you raise it up a couple of percentage points and all of a sudden you're looking like, oh my gosh, this is the best run of Supergirl ever.
01:04:44
Speaker
It's still Supergirl, but it's the best run of Supergirl ever. Oh, well, crap. Look at that. Like the but you it it shows that you can do it and it shows you have the creativity and you understand the universe and the characters that you're talking about. And that's what Peter David does.
01:04:57
Speaker
So he did so well throughout his entire career. And he went back to Marvel around then and did that very same thing with Captain Marvel. Yep. with with a With a character that could have very easily, and this is not Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel, and it's not Captain Mar-Vell.
01:05:14
Speaker
It was Genisville. Genisville. Yeah, I could never figure out what to say. it was Genisville, who, in my mind, Daryl, could have very easily just been a know-nothing character that had no, because you really had no personality up until that point.
01:05:29
Speaker
yeah um And he was just, he looked cool, and that was great. You know, it doesn't help it doesn't hurt when Carlos ah Pacheco is drawing you for the first few times. I mean, that was always good. But there really wasn't a lot in there.
01:05:42
Speaker
And here comes Peter David. And i will say, I didn't read the whole run, but I read a lot of it. And just like what happened with X-Man, ah Nate Gray, you take a character so far, you can't really take them back. But what a hell of a ride you took them on.
01:05:56
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, like, how cool was this idea to be like, well... He's going to have a lot of problems. He's not going to be your average Superman superhero that can just do everything because he's a good guy.
01:06:07
Speaker
No, no, he's he's he's not that kind of guy. He's got a lot of problems. sand ah Other problems, too, were around this time, Bill Jameis was the head of Marvel e and he hated the book.
01:06:23
Speaker
Yeah, the book was doing well and he hated the book. And was trying to axe it. And so Peter challenged him. Like, you write a book, I'll write a book.
01:06:35
Speaker
Whichever one does better stays. And so Jameis wrote Marville. no And Peter re-launched Captain Marvel.
01:06:47
Speaker
And ah Captain Marvel stuck around. Dude, Marville was a bad book. It looked it i I bought one issue. what the issue I bought was?
01:07:00
Speaker
It was like issue six where Marvel, Marvel publications that we're going to do a contest and to find new writer and a new artist. So here, here, but that, that issue had all of the submission guidelines.
01:07:14
Speaker
I bought that one. I probably still have it somewhere. And my girlfriend's name is not my wife. We looked through the writer submissions and I think I did submit a script for something. Obviously I didn't win.
01:07:25
Speaker
um But like, that was the only issue that book I bought because for those that don't know, that was supposed to be Marvel's chance at going back into the romance genre.
01:07:36
Speaker
Well, it didn't last. It did not. No, it did not. But, and yeah, per personal note with me when Captain Marvel relaunched our son Xander, uh, we, the three of us went to San Diego comic con. He was about six months old and Peter was doing a reading of the first issue of the relaunched Captain Marvel.
01:08:06
Speaker
And so we went to that and in his little stroller, Xander sat there getting, completely enraptured by the reading.
01:08:17
Speaker
ah love it And, um, the last day of the con went by his table to get ah a couple of things signed and he saw, Xander in the stroller and he's like, Oh, well, what's, what's the baby's name? We're like Alexander. He's like Alex or like Xander. He's like, ah, Buffy fans.
01:08:42
Speaker
And he leans down into the stroller he's like, you're very lucky. You were almost named Rupert. And, um,
01:08:50
Speaker
love it yeah He had the audio book that he had read of one of his novels, Sir Apropos of Nothing. And um i was like, okay, well, i got to get this because the way he sat there silent while you were reading, I can play this. and And you have him quiet for however long, because this is when they were all abridged and they were buck on tape.
01:09:18
Speaker
Yes. um But, you know, also coming back to Marvel, well, with captainmer or Captain Marvel, he definitely did take a character that he didn't create.
01:09:33
Speaker
Correct. And it it was a pretty bland one. Very. And he put so much of a stamp on him that later uses of that same take on the on the character um um I'm looking at you, Thunderbolts.
01:09:46
Speaker
He launched when he was in Thunderbolts. It kind of felt like something was missing. Yeah. um But then around that time, or not long after that, don't know if he had a pitch or if it was audience demand, a new X-Factor series.
Character-Driven Narratives in X Factor Investigations
01:10:07
Speaker
yeah okay you Here we're pulling that pin out that that I put in because...
01:10:13
Speaker
That version of X-Factor was driven far more by the characters than it was by the action. Yes. And now we're talking X-Factor Investigations. It was called originally, and then and then it turned into X-Factor again, right?
01:10:28
Speaker
I think it was X-Factor from the beginning, but well it launched with a Madrox miniseries. Yes, yes. i' and as I got that first miniseries and I was like, this is great. And then i think that was about the time when i was getting married and then finances started to get tight and then you start having kids, you get a mortgage, kids, and you're like, I can't, that something's got to go.
01:10:49
Speaker
Yeah, something's got to give. Comics kind of went out the wayside. was on the first thing. all right, we got to get rid of comic books. But like, ah That was a good initial miniseries. And I have heard, I've never read this entire run. I've read bits and pieces.
01:11:02
Speaker
I have heard if you're a Madrox fan, you're going to love it. I've heard if you're not, you might have a little bit of problems. But I also know that he has he was awarded a special award by the LGBT community for his writing on this book. Because, again, he looks at certain characters and is like,
01:11:19
Speaker
this character has been written as a homosexual this entire time. Nobody's come out and said it. So Richter, Shatterstar, it's time to get it on boys. So like he finally just puts it out there.
01:11:30
Speaker
Uh, but like, I know it's a great book and I know it's a lot of fun and it goes on for like what? 100, 150 issues. mean, it's a long run. Yeah. It's a pretty long run. It's a very healthy run.
01:11:41
Speaker
And it's one of those books that always felt like it was on the verge of cancellation. I remember hearing that. Yes. But, it It chugged along.
01:11:52
Speaker
um It made extensive use of Darwin, who was created as a throwaway character in an X-Men miniseries. ah but and they still have a problem with X-Men First Class and Darwin, and we won't get into it. You you and me both.
01:12:09
Speaker
It's like, what the hell is that? The response to adapt to this should have been, okay. Yeah. The response should have been, he shouldn't be in the fucking movie because that's, you what do you do with that character?
01:12:23
Speaker
So anyway, that's not my business. I didn't make that movie. So yeah. And so somewhere in here too, ah he, he signed an exclusive contract with Marvel, which makes sense.
01:12:38
Speaker
It was shortly after Disney bought him out and he, ah again, we're going to put a pin in this for the very end of the episode here. But um he he was very open on social media. you know He had some some health issues around then.
01:12:55
Speaker
And he's like, citing this exclusive with Marvel makes me a Disney employee. And Disney's benefits package and insurance package is too good to resist.
01:13:08
Speaker
That is the tough part. yeah Eventually the man's going to get you. And it doesn't hurt that my family and I are big Disney parks fans.
01:13:19
Speaker
There you go. So we we get employee rates this is going to the parks. I mean, not, not only were they huge Disney parks fans, he proposed to his second wife at the adventures club at Disney, having recruited the cast of the puppet show,
01:13:37
Speaker
that they did at the Adventurers Club into the proposal. That's amazing. the The story about it is incredible. Plus, yeah his sister... um had been in his sister and her husband had been invited to come along.
01:13:51
Speaker
They said they couldn't go at first, but the reason they said that they couldn't go is it was also around like Peter's birthday or his sister's birthday or something. So they were going to go as a secret and surprise him.
01:14:01
Speaker
And they showed up at the Adventurers Club as the puppets are going into the bit. And he's trying to get his sister to shut up so that Kathleen can hear the proposal. She won't shut up.
01:14:14
Speaker
I don't have one, but I've got two sister-in-laws, so I understand they're not shutting up. um ah That's amazing. I love that. That's great. But this run, this run i have heard ive heard many people love this run of X Factor.
01:14:27
Speaker
so Oh, it's great. And it like I say, it's mostly character-driven. Yeah, there's there's some action. There there are actual plot lines, but they spend as much time at the X Factor investigations office dealing with character things.
01:14:45
Speaker
Um, and I can tell that David, cause he pulls back in the characters. He likes the best from his yeah run. Like he pulls back in Jamie, he pulls back in Guido. He pulls back in rain.
01:14:57
Speaker
Um, I don't, does Alex even show up in the book? Nope. yeah maybe maybe maybe a little bit yeah but but not as a regular yeah so it's just evident that it's like i'm gonna take the and he also pulls in richter and shatterstar and a few others and it's like well then siren he pulled in yeah butna yeah the characters nobody really knew what to do with he's like i'll give them a home here i got this which is which is great because as an x-men fan any and avengers fans and Justice League fans, I'm sure i'll so I'll suffer the same problem is like when you get all these characters, you want your favorites, you want to see what your favorites are up to.
01:15:34
Speaker
And you're like, but if my favorite isn't Wolverine or Cable or Deadpool or Cyclops or Storm, I might not see them for a long time.
01:15:46
Speaker
And so you want a writer that's going to come in be like, i got I got the ragtags. Don't worry about it. i got You like Siren? She's going to be in this book. You like Monet? She's going to over here. you want You want a lot of Jaime?
01:15:56
Speaker
I got you covered. like and I miss that about the X title. We had that during Krakoa. We don't have that right now, and it's a little frustrating. So, but that's a different different topic for a different time. So yeah, honestly, the only one that I'm making a point of keeping up with right now is uncanny because of Gail Simone.
01:16:16
Speaker
It is. It's my second favorite in the line. My favorite surprise surprise is Phoenix. That to me, I think is the hands down best book in the title. I think it's the best written and I'm not even a big Jean fan. Jean's fine. I don't love her, but I,
01:16:29
Speaker
I like the fact that I, we get to spend more time with her. I like the cosmic aspect. I think the art is gorgeous, but uncanny is a strong second because it is of the earth bound ones. It is by far and away the best. The rest are kind of, we're having some troubles here, figuring out what to do, but that is a different subject for a different time. My friend, I'll come back on a week. We can, we can rag on from the ashes another day. Cause it is, it is, I don't think we're from the ashes yet.
01:16:58
Speaker
So, um, Well, anyway while all of this is going, while all of this comics work is going on and we've focused mainly on that because that's what he's best known for.
Revitalizing Star Trek with New Frontier
01:17:09
Speaker
he He's got a prolific novel writing career um starting off with ah mostly media tie-ins, a bunch Star Trek novels, ah which were great. One of them is cited as a lot of people's favorite
01:17:31
Speaker
Star Trek novel period that's ever been written, which is Zotti, which deals with the origins of the Riker and Troy relationship.
01:17:44
Speaker
And um yeah fun stuff like Q squared, where you get Q and Trelane together and have some fun.
01:17:55
Speaker
But my favorite of all of the Star Trek stuff that he did was Just like with X Factor, take the side characters that nobody cares about and create a series.
01:18:07
Speaker
Yep. That's half of what New Frontier was. Love that. the The captain was a wholly original character. um The command crew, he brought in a couple of characters that he wrote and created for um some next generation young readers books.
01:18:26
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. And then he brought in like the first officer was commander Shelby from best of both worlds. ah The chief medical officer was Dr. Salar from next generation who was on screen once and mentioned a handful of times.
01:18:45
Speaker
Um, there's one of the crew members is, um Robin Leffler, Ashley Judd's character that was on two episodes of next generation. And these were all characters that Paramount was like, yeah, no, we're, we're, we have no plans to ever use these characters again.
01:19:01
Speaker
Who, who again, who are these people? Yeah. Oh, what you okay. Wow. That's kind of that's a deep pool. Yeah. I kind of use them. Yes, you may. You can do whatever you want. And in fact, the,
01:19:15
Speaker
Unfortunately, and not that any of the Star Trek novels are canon and not that canonicity matters to enjoyment of a book or not, but it was so easy to say that New Frontier was canon because one of the characters that he brought in eventually was Robin Loeffler's mother, who was an immortal And while he never came out and said it through context references by other characters, um they ran into Scotty, who mistook her for Christine Chappell.
01:19:50
Speaker
Someone else heard her heard her voice and thought it was Lwaxana Troi. and someone Someone noted that she sounded like the the ship's computer. so they were very much And she started going by the name Morgan Primus.
01:20:08
Speaker
So it was very strongly hinted that she was number one from the cage. Ah...
01:20:19
Speaker
And, know, now that's not the case because we've explored number one a lot more on Strange New Worlds. But it was it was a nice little bit of fun. He never came out and said it, but he gave you enough.
01:20:33
Speaker
He trusted you as the reader to put all of the pieces that he was giving you together. Which is great as a writer for established canon.
01:20:44
Speaker
I'm not going to tell you what it is, but I want you to figure it out yourself. And if that's the truth for you, then that's great. Yeah. Yeah. And it it was a lot of fun. It didn't hit the reset button at the end of every book.
01:20:58
Speaker
The characters were, ah because Paramount didn't want anything to do with them, they were allowed
New Frontier's Influence on Star Trek Canon
01:21:04
Speaker
to change. They didn't have to have a status quo at the end of a of a book.
01:21:09
Speaker
The characters could change, could grow. Shelby got promoted to captain and given her own ship. And things like that. It's with a lot of fun to read. love that one One tiny little bit of it did make it to canon too, because he gave Shelby a first name.
01:21:26
Speaker
Yeah. And it's the same first name that they used for her in Picard season three when she showed up. Well, there you go. I mean, it wasn't a huge stretch because the, the actress was Elizabeth Dennehy and he gave Shelby the first name Elizabeth.
01:21:44
Speaker
You know what, if that helps the actress give a better performance, then by all means. But they when she showed up on Picard, you she pops up on screen and it was Riker or Picard and like, oh, Elizabeth Shelby. It's like, yes.
01:22:00
Speaker
All of us New Frontier fans. were and the This was a nice bit of of candor from him too, because before they announced Enterprise, when Voyager was about to end, A lot of people in an online new frontier message board community on this is going to date it.
01:22:17
Speaker
AOL. No, we already have, you already have dated it, but go on, go on. I love it. But, but he was part of that community and people were like, they were like, we, we would love for the next series to be new frontier. We want the next series to be new frontier.
01:22:33
Speaker
And he came on and he's like, guys, I love the enthusiasm. If you want to tell Paramount that's what you want to see, that's great. I'm going to tell you, it's never going to happen.
01:22:44
Speaker
Because New Frontier already exists as a concept, and the characters as a crew already exist as a concept. No one at Paramount will get royalties for creating the series.
01:22:58
Speaker
And there we go into why the Zahn trilogy was never going to happen as episodes 7, 8, and 9. our episode seven eight nine Because Timothy Zahn created it meant that Lucasfilm was never going to green light those books because they were never going to be an adaptation.
01:23:14
Speaker
You're never going to happen. As much as I love those three books, too, would have been great. And the 12 year old bread with our this has got to be seven, eight, nine, the 50 nearly 50 year old bread was like, guys, that was never going to It's a non starter.
01:23:28
Speaker
Yep. Non starter. It's a fun. site it's ah It's a fun trilogy and enjoy it for what it is. um You know, M. Zoddy, you don't know this, but um so that is the book that I am the most familiar with. I've never read of the Star Trek novels.
01:23:41
Speaker
I am familiar with it because my first major girlfriend in in high school was a year older than me and she was dating a guy that was a year older than her. And he was a huge Star Trek fan. Like Star Trek The Next Generation was his his jam. He loved it.
01:23:53
Speaker
I've always been more of a Star Wars fan, but I enjoy Star Trek. I've seen more than my fair share. I love the movies. Well, like the the original the original cast movies. But anyway, that sounds that's not the point. um What I want to get to is like, he apparently, Imzadi came out when they were dating and he would call her Imzadi and she would roll her eyes constantly to the where she's like, I'm so sick of fucking Star Trek.
01:24:18
Speaker
so I never watched any it around her because I don't want to piss her off. you know i'm so he's a man yeah but She's like, oh my god, Imzadi, call me Imzadi. I don't even know what that is. we went to bookstore one day and I was walking past the Star Wars novels and i was like, oh, look at that Star Trek Imzadi. I showed it to her. She's like, put that down. like Yep, put it down now. I'm going to go pick up Han Solo at Crisis at Centerpoint Station. Here we go. going to do this one instead.
01:24:44
Speaker
that' That's my connection with Imzadi right there. but So he also did a sequel after, for whatever reason, they decided at the end of Next Generation to put Worf and Troy together.
01:24:55
Speaker
he And he did a sequel that explored that relationship. and um That was weird. That was weird. Just going to go off on a tangent real fast. Oh, yeah. i So I had never seen Star Trek The Next Generation. I counted it when a little bit when it was coming out. I didn't really watch it until maybe about seven, eight years ago.
01:25:15
Speaker
And I never knew that Troy and Worf got together. So when that happened, I was like, huh, that was, that's interesting. was like, well, brev, they're both aliens. So why can't they? I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know i just just decided know that's where this went because that that was everyone's reaction at the time so yeah like okay not two characters that i would have put together but i amm willing to go with this And the series was ending. It's like, okay, cause then because then in one of the movies, was it Nemesis when they finally get married, when Riker and Troy get married?
01:25:47
Speaker
Yes. yeah and And Rick Berman ah made sure that Wil Wheaton's big actual dialogue ended up on the cutting room floor. Anyway. Rick rick Berman.
01:26:00
Speaker
What are you going But yeah he he did a sequel, Imzati 2 Triangle. Ah, yeah. And you know it it it looked at at that, and I was asked to speak at the wedding of some friends of ours.
01:26:16
Speaker
And um you but because this part was requested, i started it off with mawage. Mawage is what brings us together today. of course you did.
01:26:29
Speaker
but But then i i found a passage in Imzadi 2 that I was like, oh, this this is great. This will be nice and meaningful. and And so I read that as part of the speech.
01:26:45
Speaker
And like Deanna Schroeder, tinna And Worf, yes, they have now been divorced for 10 years after maybe 10 years
Peter David's Other Creative Works
01:26:57
Speaker
of marriage. so Anyway, ah i may have been a little too on the nose with what I picked.
01:27:04
Speaker
ha But he also did some original novels, ah knowing your tastes in things. If you have not read his Sir Apropos of Nothing books, I recommend them.
01:27:17
Speaker
I'll check them out. I'll check them out. And he also did a trilogy of books called Nightlife. and Okay. like Night with a K. Love it. You know I have good pun, so I'm happy.
01:27:30
Speaker
He rewrote the first book 10, 15 years after it was originally published. I've got both versions of it. But the the premise of Nightlife, you'll love this.
01:27:42
Speaker
yeah Arthurian legend says that Arthur will return at the time of the world's greatest need, right? Yes. Arthur comes back now and is savvy enough to know that if I say i am King Arthur,
01:27:57
Speaker
you must follow me um because the world is in need. I'm going to be thrown in the loony bin. Correct. Or elected president of the United States. One of the two, Daryl.
01:28:10
Speaker
that That's book two. Oh, really? Really? Is it really? I was joking. Book one is, since he comes back in present day New York City, he runs for mayor of New York.
01:28:24
Speaker
Okay. Okay. And his campaign manager is Merlin, who is the TH White version of Merlin who ages backwards. love merlin Merlin is a smart-ass 10-year-old. I love it.
01:28:35
Speaker
Um, the The second book, um he didn't he rewrote book one in 2000, 2001, as part of a deal to do two more books in the series.
01:28:48
Speaker
And in the second one, he is president. I love it. know he has He has a whole fake identity in all of this. and And then in book three is the aftermath of him actually being outed as King Arthur.
01:29:05
Speaker
I love it. So good, good stuff there. Good, good stuff. He also wrote, um, this one is long out of print. Um, and he was trying to get it back in print for years.
01:29:16
Speaker
It was optioned as a movie that never got made. It's called howling mad. I'm not i' familiar with this one. Okay. A Canadian timber wolf is bitten by a werewolf and turns into a human on the nights of the full moon.
01:29:29
Speaker
I fucking love that idea. idea That's genius. And gets captured in wolf form and sent to the Central Park Zoo where an animal activist you know wants to break him out.
01:29:43
Speaker
This sounds like a movie. And it also features one of my favorite villains that he ever created in his novels, Duncan the Homeless Vampire.
01:29:55
Speaker
Duncan, the homeless vampire, works as an assassin. And he he is the homeless vampire because his way of not being noticed as either an assassin or an immortal vampire is who does everyone ignore?
01:30:11
Speaker
Yeah. The homeless. I was just thinking that if if you're not going to get noticed, you want to be one of the people that nobody wants to look at. And so he he has a sleeping bag that is lined with his native soil that he zips up around him during the day sleeps during the day in the sleeping bag and works and isn as an assassin by night.
01:30:30
Speaker
I need to find this. I'm sure it's somewhere. I'm sure can get somewhere. I have found copies at half price before. If you can't find one, let me know. i will loan it to you because I...
01:30:43
Speaker
think I have two copies of it. I think I found it one time when I found a stack of them at half price, I got myself a second copy. That's the way to do it. um That's the way to do it.
01:30:54
Speaker
But yeah, great stuff. And then he did a fantasy series ah called Sir Apropos of Nothing, which um the the beginning of the second book is right up your alley.
01:31:08
Speaker
it The first two, three chapters of the second book is a parody of the Lord of the Rings. But the one ring goes some place on the anatomy.
01:31:21
Speaker
yeah Ah, now this is up my alley.
01:31:26
Speaker
um And, you know, he he did, ah unfortunately, a lot of his TV and movie media I haven't seen. just Yeah. He did some Babylon 5 episodes, and Babylon 5 just never grabbed me.
01:31:40
Speaker
Me either. But he was also, along with Billy Mewmey from Lost in Space, the co-creator of a Nickelodeon show called Space Cases, um that...
01:31:54
Speaker
if we want to look at it this way, is indirectly responsible for bringing us Jewel State as Kaylee Fry. Because... 12-year-old Jewel State was the precocious engineer of the kids that got stuck on this ship trapped on the other side of the galaxy.
01:32:17
Speaker
and And yeah she she had this rainbow wig on... of course And people will occasionally on social media say like, hey, remember this? and And post a picture of her as a kid on space cases. And she's like, say what you want, but that goddamn rainbow wig bought me a shit ton of Barbies.
01:32:36
Speaker
so You know, and and that's the thing is like, oh, sellouts or whatever. it's like, yeah, I sold out and I bought my parents a house and I bought myself car and I put money away for, you know my children in education. Like, like not not that Brev has done that. Not even close. I think I pray i paid an electric bill with what I've made so far.
01:32:55
Speaker
One month of the electric bill. Maybe. so So, no, wouldn't call myself that. But, like, like but like people get an opportunity, you go and you take it because you never know what's going to come up. So like, yeah, absolutely.
01:33:07
Speaker
Yeah. And, and um he, he did a couple of, uh, uh, remember full moon entertainment that did like the, the direct to video, like grade D science fiction and horror movies. Yes. Now I remember.
01:33:24
Speaker
Yeah. He wrote a couple of those like space Westerns called oblivion. Okay. Yeah. ah Starring Tim Thomerson. One of them had George Takei in it.
01:33:36
Speaker
course he did. um I think I saw one of them. Oh, wait, no. Thomerson may not have been in oblivion. He wrote one or two of the Trancers sequels.
01:33:49
Speaker
Oh my God, I remember Trancers. Oh, I think I watched those late at night while having a couple of libations that might have been alcoholic. Yeah. But, um you know, ah a lot of a lot of just good stuff there. And it's one of those things that I wished I had been more into Babylon 5. It just never grabbed me.
01:34:11
Speaker
You know, I'm sure it's somewhere you could watch it. I'm sure. They only had like, what, one season? Was that right? or Only a couple, right? is It's not as, I mean, I know the serenity. They had five.
01:34:21
Speaker
but man i make that makes That makes perfectly good sense. Babylon 5 had five. That
Fan Interactions and Industry Impact
01:34:27
Speaker
makes sense. what But he I saw him at a convention, and I i will make it as brief as possible.
01:34:33
Speaker
But he told a great anecdote, in and a lot of his fans know this and anecdote, that after he did the first episode of Babylon 5, it was coming up on Christmas or something.
01:34:48
Speaker
And so his his wife had the idea, you should send Straczynski a present. And so they got him a customizable bear, customizable teddy bear.
01:35:00
Speaker
Then they had a little shirt made for it that said Babairlon five. no love it They sent that to him and, ah you know, time goes by and they haven't heard anything back. So he reached out and he's like, Hey, yo we, we sent you a gift. We just wanted to make sure that it made it to you. And he's like, Oh, the bear. Yeah.
01:35:23
Speaker
I'm like, yeah, the bear. What'd you think? He's like, it was very cute. Oh, did you? I don't do cute.
01:35:33
Speaker
And so he's watching one of the next episodes that comes up and Straczynski had written into the script. Somebody comes up to the commander of the station with the bear yeah no one and wants to set up a gift shop on the station selling these bears.
01:35:54
Speaker
And the captain takes it to the airlock and throws it out the airlock. Oh. Oh. And so around this time, Space Cases is on, right?
01:36:08
Speaker
So they do an episode of Space Cases where, and Space Cases is, think of Star Trek Voyager with kids. Okay. Um, and so the kids ship as they're making their way back home, trying to make their way home comes across this bear tumbling through this teddy bear. stump nice face So they, they bring it on. And one of the kids in the crew is like, boy, what kind of idiot throws away a perfectly good bear?
01:36:37
Speaker
yeah right exactly it turns out that this bear is a secret weapon by an alien race called the Strazin. who wanted They want to take over the galaxy, but they don't have the budget.
01:36:52
Speaker
Nice.
01:36:55
Speaker
And this started a a friendly feud between them at cons. People would start going up to Straczynski with...
01:37:07
Speaker
ba bear with teddy bears. the And at one point, Straczynski's doing a panel. He's showing ah ah clip from the show. And while he's up there, people are like sneaking up to the table behind him and putting this line of bears um on the table behind him.
01:37:27
Speaker
And he turns around, he sees he God damn it. yeah And he takes one of the bears and chucks it out into the audience. And this little kid raises raises her hand and is like, if you're giving away bears, can I have one?
01:37:41
Speaker
oh so he scoops up all of the bears and takes them out and dumps them into the kid's lap. And Peter's like, I would have thought that this was just you know an apocryphal anecdote, but I met the kid.
01:37:56
Speaker
who showed me a picture of him or himm or herself with the bears. And I said, you should write Mr. Straczynski a letter and thank him for the bears and tell him that you've named them Babairlon 1, 2, 4, and 5 because three disappeared.
01:38:14
Speaker
fifty And they they kept doing things back and forth. And he was trying to sell space cases to a crowd at a convention And he sees a guy in a full size bear suit in the back of the hall while the clip is playing. Okay.
01:38:33
Speaker
So he, he goes back to him and pulls him out into the hallway. And he's like, well, you know, I was hired to give a singing telegram to Peter David. Oh, that's me.
01:38:46
Speaker
He's like, ah, shit. I was like, well, he's like, can I pay you the same fee for you to not? He's like, I can't really do that. I have to deliver the singing telegram. He's like, well, I've worked really hard to get these people invested in watching this episode.
01:39:04
Speaker
So I'm not going to let it turn my panel into a John's into a Joe Straczynski anecdote. So can you deliver the telegram out here in the hallway? And so he did. And finally he calls Straczynski he's like, look,
01:39:20
Speaker
i I don't want people to think that we hate one another. Can we have a truce now? Nice. um But yeah it was it that kind of thing is just great. that That was the last convention that I saw him at.
01:39:37
Speaker
um And he was he was always very gracious with his fans. um I happened to be just, you know, wandering the dealer's room, waiting for him to be back at his table.
01:39:48
Speaker
um He was happened to be wandering the dealer's room and stopped with, um was talking to this couple um who had stopped him and a couple other people gathered around and I did too. And, you just all engaging in a in a conversation.
01:40:08
Speaker
And he looked at me and he he saw my backpack. And he's like, did you have anything you wanted signed? And i was like, yeah. He's like, okay. And he plopped down in the middle of the dealer's room floor.
01:40:23
Speaker
Awesome. half dozen or so books that I had on me. I love that. And so he was always very, very gracious with his fans. You'd have to be like, because he came up in the sales department.
01:40:38
Speaker
Like, yeah, he understood the power that the fan has have and and what they can do and what they want.
Challenges in Comics Industry
01:40:45
Speaker
ah And that's that that's so it's such such an important thing to understand as any sort of creator is, yes, you want to get your vision out there. But what is is your vision? Something that the that the buyer is going to want to have.
01:40:58
Speaker
mean, you can even go down to like ah Taco Bell bean burrito, right? Like. If that's what people want, then give them the freaking bean burrito the way they want it. like that That's how it is. So if you're going to write, he knew he knew the buyers, he knew the marketplace, and he wrote to them. Yes, his vision, his his style is all in that.
01:41:18
Speaker
But he always made sure that he's going to write for the fans, for the people that are going to read the book, that want to buy the book. well he He won't give it to them necessarily the way they want it because because then he's not a good writer.
01:41:29
Speaker
But he's always going to give them the thing that they want. yeah's That's important for any sort of creator that ever wants to sell anything. Yeah. And i in hindsight, you know when I got saw the news, I think it was Sunday that I saw it, that he had passed away on Saturday.
01:41:49
Speaker
ah I realized, you know, i I've kind of gotten to the point where even though I should have, I knew that he had had the health issues and everything.
01:42:02
Speaker
i had kind of taken his presence in comics for granted. He's always going to be here.
01:42:09
Speaker
And i I definitely should have known better knowing that he had the health issues and having gone through the same kind of thing with George Perez a couple of years ago. Oh my God. Yeah. That one. Yeah.
01:42:21
Speaker
Yeah. That one still hurts. It does. It does. And then losing Carlo, Carlos Pacheco shortly thereafter, who was like, 15 years younger than Perez. it was like, Oh my God, what's happening here? It's like, no.
01:42:33
Speaker
And, yeah and Peter, David and George Perez did a ah few great projects together too. Sure did. Yep. Hulk future imperfect. Did you ever read the novel Hulk? What savage beast?
01:42:46
Speaker
No, I did not know. It's kind of a sequel to future imperfect. have to check that out. Cause future imperfect is pretty bad-ass. and And it as has one of my greatest moments at the beginning. you know Someone is talking to General Ross, who's you planning to up you know going after the Hulk.
01:43:05
Speaker
Oh, really? Really? Ross going to go after the Hulk? Say it ain't so. But then someone says, like I think it's Doc Samson, which makes total sense.
01:43:18
Speaker
He's like, he's the strongest being on the planet. He's handed you your ass multiple times. But what is it that he says every time you go after him?
01:43:31
Speaker
Leave Hulk alone. General, it's a big clue when the most powerful being on the planet says, leave me alone. I just want to be left alone. You leave him alone. There you go.
01:43:47
Speaker
Um, and Saxon violence. which I forgot about that one. Yes. I forgot he wrote that. Yes. Oh, it them puns for days. Oh, yes. Absolutely. You could also always count on at least one groan inducing pun in a project.
01:44:09
Speaker
Um, the The worst one, also in a certain point of view, the best one from Wolverine, Reign of Terra. Yeah.
01:44:19
Speaker
hey You fool. can Can you not see clearly that Reign has gone?
01:44:29
Speaker
That one hurt. Yes. But, you know it is a very clever guy and. And he will be missed, or surely missed. And and I hate ah hate that it happened.
01:44:41
Speaker
You know, it's one of things that i will say, like you mentioned Gail Simone earlier. And like, it's it's sad when you, because I both love it. I love it, but I'm sad for it because she always gives it when we lose somebody in the comics industry. She's always sad.
01:44:57
Speaker
very gracious and humble about posting that on social media to say, you know, we lost one another another great one. And sad to see these people go. And like she she obviously cares about her industry as far as like the creators have come before. And I think it's one of the reasons why her uncanny You know, it's it's not Claremontian, certainly not. But it's the closest we've had to Claremont. That's not him.
01:45:18
Speaker
Yeah. In a long time. Like she understands where she understands the ground on which she's she's she's walking on. And that's one of the reasons that that it is a book that's worth getting.
01:45:28
Speaker
um But and she posted something really nice about Peter David, if I remember from a few when when he died this weekend. And it's like, oh. But you and I both, I'm glad you invited me onto this because you and I both like immediately posted something about it when we saw it. I think was about a couple minutes behind you. I was like,
01:45:46
Speaker
Oh, Darrell, we get it. We get it. We lost a really great one. We lost a voice that's not recognized, but outside the industry until you start talking to people and you tell them like Momoa is Aquaman is Peter David's Aquaman.
01:46:02
Speaker
Like the reason you care about any of these characters is because he made you care about them. The whole thing is not a canceled book because of Peter David. So and you the the Hulk that we've had since Endgame in the MCU That's all him. Yep.
01:46:19
Speaker
Exactly. yeah yeah like It's one of those things like this make me wish that I had been the stereotypical comics market target reader of the time you when comics were at their height of sales of being somebody who was young, read for a few years and aged out and left them behind because we're reaching the point where the The giants from my comics heyday are starting to leave us.
01:46:55
Speaker
Yep. I promised myself when David Bowie died that I would always, if it if an artist came to town that I wanted to see live, I was going to go to him. And since then I've seen a bevy of artists from Springsteen to the cure to Depeche Mode to Hall and Oates.
01:47:11
Speaker
Cause I'm like, I'm going, I'm just, I'm going to make it happen. and There's a few like Elton John came to town and I told Aaron, i was like, I don't have $800 to go see Elton John. She's like, understand. But I mean like I'm when it's reasonable, I'm going cause I want to be in that moment.
01:47:26
Speaker
at least once. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, um we, we've been going for almost two hours. Yes. so I will.
01:47:37
Speaker
I do just want to wrap up ah that we, we, I mentioned, we lost Nick RIP. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nick, Nick fell off somewhere, but, um, I, I mentioned the exclusive contract that he signed with Marvel in part to get the benefits.
01:47:59
Speaker
Um, and, uh, one of ah One of the things that has been it's been known for a few months is that at some point, I presume, you know Marvel was really good about you know after his initial stroke, they were still giving him work.
01:48:18
Speaker
um There were quite a few series of miniseries and short-lived series that they had him doing. I don't know when or if that exclusive deal ended. I can only presume that he was no longer under...
01:48:33
Speaker
the mouse's generous insurance plan because he didn't just leave a legacy of great work behind, but there's also unfortunately some significant medical debt left behind.
01:48:50
Speaker
um a family friend started to go fund me a few months ago for them. It's still active. So I'm going to put the link in the show notes. Um,
01:49:01
Speaker
I won't go into the weeds about the horrible current state of our medical structure because we don't have one. um But you we we don't have health care. We have symptom management. But anyway, there you go. You're not wrong.
01:49:22
Speaker
But um you it's it's kind of disheartening when you know i will soapbox a little bit. there There are companies like Marvel and Disney that you know we've we just mentioned his version of Hulk being an endgame.
01:49:40
Speaker
Endgame making... over a billion dollars for Disney and Marvel studios. And, you know it's not a real big secret that comics creators don't get compensated very well, especially for work for hire.
01:49:58
Speaker
Correct. Like for the big, for the big two, for the big publishers. So, you know, maybe one day that might change there, there might be some, fairer compensation and and profit sharing in that. But until then, i am going to put a link to the GoFundMe in the show notes.
01:50:19
Speaker
um I know that times are tough for everyone and not everyone might be able to contribute to that GoFundMe. But if you are and his work touched you in any way, a couple of bucks will, I'm sure, would definitely be appreciated by Kathleen and the girls.
01:50:38
Speaker
to help you free those medical costs it's very nice to be daryl to do that yeah this it's a it's an interesting market um that's why image comics i'm glad it's still i hate when i was a kid i hated image comics for everything it stood for because it took my favorite artists away from my favorite books but again as i got older i was like okay i get it and i've learned so much about the big two and i'd love to write for one of them but i would also understand that Writing for either DC or Marvel, you have to have a lot of concessions because they're not your characters.
01:51:07
Speaker
um But i've been in I've been in product management design long enough to understand that the apps I build are not my apps. but So yeah there's somebody else's apps. Anyway, we'll get on that soapbox. But what I'm going to say is that um ah it's still what what what an opportunity and what a legacy he has left behind.
01:51:24
Speaker
from the work he has done ah and you know image you go back to image comics for a second i looked into that before i don't know if i have the tenacity to write a monthly series i wish i did i wish i had that kind of space in my life i just don't um because the the compensation package they have is pretty nice for at image again ah you look it up you get to keep ah it's your ip they they do take a significant portion because they're putting out the print run but you get to hold the under the majority you get to hold on there to your creation and you do get the majority of the money that it generates so um so that's nice but like but again it better be pretty outstanding if you have no name which marvel and dc gives you an opportunity to put your name out there yeah so it's it's a tough it's a tough thing but you're not going to get a whole lot of money so anything you do is theirs so
01:52:14
Speaker
Yep, it's all theirs, and you sometimes you even have to fight for a special thanks to in the 10 minutes of credits that none of us pay attention to while we're waiting for the post-credits stinger.
01:52:28
Speaker
Yep, no kidding. Yeah. but thank Thank you, Daryl, for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on and for talking comics. bre I really appreciate it.
01:52:39
Speaker
um I'm serious. I would love to, if you want to, i don't know if the, if your other hosts are for this, but if you want to, maybe we can do a retrospective on the, from the ashes storyline, what's going on there or any of the current runs of stuff i'm I'm in. If you want to talk about the absolute runs, I've been collecting some of those over at DC. Yeah.
01:52:57
Speaker
So if you're up for that, or if you just want to talk about classic comics, I am, I'm your man. Absolutely. I will. Even if it's just you and me, I'd be glad to do that. I need to get caught up on reading the X books and the absolute books. I'm closer to getting caught up on the absolutes.
01:53:13
Speaker
they They're better. They're better. I don't know what Tom Brevoort's doing, but. I hope he's got a plan because it's questionable. um But like the absolute absolute Batman's been fantastic. Absolute Flash has been quite interesting. I've enjoyed it.
01:53:29
Speaker
And I'm sure somebody somewhere will say absolute Green Lantern is woke material all over the place. But I actually like what they're doing. I think, well, this is interesting. And there's another Green Lantern...
01:53:41
Speaker
main continuity book you can go read if you want Hal Jordan. this one's This one's different. I'm like, okay, I kind of want to see where it's going on here. yeah I haven't read Absolute Green Lantern yet, but I have watched um the Casually Comics YouTube channel look at and issue one.
01:53:59
Speaker
And I was like, that's different. Oh, yeah. I was like, okay. Issue two is even deeper down the whole, like, Oh, Al Ewing, I'm very curious where you're taking this right now. So like, and that is what I want. I want something that's going to drag me in, but like, um, you know, I've been, well I've been collecting also a Spider-Man, Joe Kelly's back. amazing. I've been enjoying that one. Uh, so like I'm a comics nerd. I have been since I was a kid, I'm a movie nerd. And so unfortunately it doesn't leave a whole lot of time for television for me. So usually my wife controls the TV remote. So we were,
01:54:34
Speaker
watching friends earlier today and I was laughing and chuckling that and while reading comic books and you know so it means movies movies and comics are my main jam when it comes to that so yeah and those all day long And here in a couple months, ah well, he you've already been invited on for our casual nerdity Fantastic Four episode. That's right. I'll in for that for sure. That's what happens.
01:54:59
Speaker
And then I'll be over visiting you guys on Movie Defenders in August. And I finally settled on Galaxy Quest like I sent you. Love it. Yes, yes, yes. And I'm excited about that one.
01:55:13
Speaker
Your wife will be joining us on Movie Defenders at the end of June to discuss Good Morning Vietnam! Yes, we we she picked that. She sent it to you guys.
01:55:25
Speaker
And then she's like, this is not on any streaming service and all of our physical media is boxed up and in storage right now. and And I got to look and I was like, it's four bucks to buy it digitally on Amazon. Yeah.
01:55:38
Speaker
So yeah we we were watching part of it to the other night and she's like, this isn't the only time I'm going to be watching it before then. i was like, oh, i I don't doubt it. But I was offended when she bought it and started to to play it. And she's like, have you seen this? I was like, not only have we watched it together and discussed it multiple times in the 25 years we've known each other we own the physical copy and I'm the one who bought it she just looked at me as as as she can do I have to tell you because her two choices were Good Morning Vietnam or Newsies and she's like which one do would you rather do it where she's like which one do you think would play better and I have to tell you Daryl
01:56:31
Speaker
i don't like So I was like, good morning, Vietnam. Sounds great. know, if it was, if if Stephanie wants to talk newsies with somebody, you me and we could take our wives on a double date and they can sit there and blab out newsies all day my wife loves newsies she loves she will sing long with it all day long i'm like what is going on in this movie um this is like child labor she's like exactly i'm like and this is entertaining so but so and yeah and went when i was listening to your latest backlot tour episode and and uh and yeah mentioned you mentioned know
01:57:06
Speaker
maybe Maybe have me come on for Les Mis. like Don't threaten me with a good time.
01:57:13
Speaker
Sorry, my headset went out for a second. What did you say? Oh, I said when ah when Donald was was talking about maybe having me on for Les Mis, don't threaten me with a good time. Oh, man, I will...
01:57:24
Speaker
I'm let's do it. I, I really enjoy that movie, but I understand why people don't. So, um, I mean, and just you, me, and I wanted us to watch Scott, just try to figure out something to talk about the movie. Like, okay, well, he will rattle off the plot.
01:57:38
Speaker
And then you guys discuss when you're ready to talk about it. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I ever told you, but I did a 12 part year long Star Wars campaign that was Les Mis.
01:57:50
Speaker
You did tell me that. And I have told my son about that because he is getting he's in all he's all in all in the musicals all now. And I was telling him about how i was like, well, my friend Daryl actually ran a Star Wars campaign set.
01:58:02
Speaker
And like he took Les Mis and adapted it for Star Wars. And he was like, I bet that was fun. i'm like, I bet it was. Oh, yeah. um If Nick were still with us, he could tell you how he nearly died three times climbing down the same ladder by rolling spares.
01:58:17
Speaker
I believe it. I it. But i I will let you go. it is getting late, my friend. Yes, it is. And thank you once again for coming on. We will definitely...
01:58:30
Speaker
get you back on, even if it's just you and me talking comics and we'll, we'll see you again on, on the FF episode until then. i i will speak for Nick who, you know, hopefully his house didn't collapse around him or anything.
01:58:44
Speaker
or Say, say, say goodbye to everyone. And we will see you next time. Next time should be um another clone watch episode. Then when we get into July clone watches out the window for Superman and fantastic for.
01:58:59
Speaker
So thanks for listening and we hope to see you next time. This has been casual nerdity. We hope you've enjoyed your time with us and look forward to having you back.