La Zona Muerta

Peter Allen David got it. He was a journalist. He wrote stuff. The amazing thing was… Marvel editorial didn’t want him. They were locked in battle against the forces of the Sales Department, which is where PAD got his foot in the door at Marvel. It took maverick editor Jim Owsley (now known as the great Christopher Priest) to break the formerly unthinkable taboo of hiring a writer out of Sales… and it would furthermore take editor Bob Harris casting around for Incredible Hulk, a book NO ONE AT THE TIME WANTED TO TAKE OVER, so tarnished was it to finally cement PAD as a part of the Marvel firmament. They finally let him start writing stuff.

Of course by then… he was just about to break out as a writer at DC for the licensed Star Trek title, a terrific run which somehow captured the characterization, the VOICES of the original crew and balanced them with new characters. The ongoing Trek series picked up in quality under his stewardship and PAD was selected to relaunch the title when Star Trek V rolled out. He was also chosen to write one of the first Star Trek: The Next Generation original novels in the interim between the end of the first series and the relaunch due to his work on the comics. He even came up with a neat way to tie up some of the loose ends from his first run on the decidedly out of canon comic in that novel. He wrote movie adaptations and cheesy mass market paperback schlock under a different name (the perhaps not so creative David Peters). The “stuff” listed on his resume began to grow.

And then, suddenly, someone at Paramount, a person I won’t name but who was Gene Roddenberry’s assistant, someone desperate for power and who finally just took to speaking for Gene, decided that Star Trek couldn’t have HUMOR in it, simply because he didn’t like PAD’s scripts.

STAR TREK.

NO HUMOR.

So bad became the problem between this representative of Paramount and David that his editor at DC tried submitting one of PAD’s scripts with his name stripped off… and this person at Paramount accepted the story with no issue whatsoever. PAD, at that point bowed out of working on the comic, obviously, but went on to be one of the more prolific authors of Star Trek novels as Pocket Novels didn’t have to put up with the whims of someone trying to be the new Roddenberry. And while we’re on that subject… he didn’t just write Star Trek novels… he wrote THE BEST Star Trek novels. The one where Q fights Trelane? That was Peter David. The one where we find out that the Doomsday Machine from the original series was an ancient weapon of war to engage the Borg? PAD. The first original DS9 novel? PAD. The one that actually makes Counselor Troi and Commander Riker into fleshed out characters with a relatable backstory? Peter David. An entire series OF HIS OWN to write,featuring his OWN characters and fun background characters from all over the canon? A special something afforded to NO OTHER author of the hundreds of ST novels? Yup, that was Peter David. That’s some surefire stuff.

But let’s get back to that green fella for a bit.

My level best impersonation of Gary Frank and Cam Smith from the unforgettable Incredible Hulk #420, of course written by Peter David. Jim Wilson, Hulk’s long time friend and occasional sidekick lies dying of the AIDS virus leading to a tragic denouement for Wilson and a shocking end to the comic I’ll never forget

I loved this book. I couldn’t always AFFORD it, I had Transformers to buy. X-Men. Silver Surfer. Avengers and Daredevil and Iron Man when my finances aligned. But every time a copy of PAD’s Hulk came across my hands… I loved it. By the time I was a young adult with my own money… there was only about a year and a half to two years left of that TWELVE (!) year run… but I was able to finally start filling in the back issues. Hulk went from the simple (perhaps too simple) “don’t get me angry or Hulk will SMASH” guy to a complex, nuanced, somewhat psychological thriller, still with the big, dumb action pieces the book always had, and a huge dose of sardonic humor. Sure, the book would have dumb puns (in one issue, Hulk beheads a foe from ‘the Head Shop,’ itself a dopey play on words and as he holds his foe’s head in his hands, the head EXPLODES, saying “I’m a head of my time,” in something that won’t pay off for nearly forty issues. Not everything PAD did was a winner) but the book was heartfelt, with the reader entry characters of Betty Banner and Rick Jones, always there to quip, to provide commentary on the nonsense happening around them.

“Rick, we’re grown ups. A ‘hot’ kiss… it doesn’t MEAN anything,” an exasperated Betty says after she and Rick swap spit during a harrowing ordeal.

“So, like should I tell Bruce…?” Rick asks.

“NO!”

There are SO many good moments in the Hulk run and despite the high quality of nearly all of PAD’s artistic collaborators on the title, the book really came to be known as PETER DAVID’S HULK, a swing back from the artistically driven books that had become the norm in the 90s. Since he had that sales department experience, he had the ability to project out when the status quo needed to be shaken up and he would reinvent the strip all over again, shifting from adventures with Hulk being chased by anti Hulk soldiers to being a leg breaker in Vegas (that’s LAS Vegas) to being the Hulk all of the time with Banner’s brains and leading a strikeforce of heroes to reverting to the puny form of Bruce Banner when he got angry to being one of the greatest supervillains of all time in a future dystopia to being a horseman of Apocalypse to detente (!) with General Thunderbolt Ross. So powerful, so effective was PAD’s final issue… which was about an unknown, unseen writer interviewing Rick Jones at some undefined point in the future about his adventures with the Hulk and all the adventures to come that we wouldn’t see because PAD had been removed from the book… Marvel editorial had to put in a three page coda by the incoming creative team to tell you the book wasn’t CANCELLED.

“I could keep on telling stories about the Hulk… keep on GOING, but there’s OTHER things in life, you know? It’s like what Bruce told me. Realize what’s important… family. loved ones, THAT’S the important thing. You’re not the FIRST writer to come and ask me about the Hulk. And yeah, I could keep on talking about him for ages… but sometimes you reach a point where something STOPS you. Where you say that’s it, NO MORE stories. I’ve said all I want to say right now. Talk to somebody ELSE, okay? I’ve said ENOUGH about the Hulk… Like I told you… I’ve said enough… I’ve said enough.”

–Peter David, talking directly to us, the reader through his guise on the page as Rick Jones.

Like Rick in that last story, I could go on and on. Spider-Man 2099 (so principled was David that when the editor of that title was fired from Marvel unceremoniously, he left the book as well). Aquaman. Young Justice. Supergirl, which sort of, somehow would inexplicably become his creator owned title, Fallen Angel. Soulsearchers and Company (eighty issues of a book hardly anyone had read). Small returns to Hulk (he DID have more to say, after all, including the incredible, pun slightly intended, Hulk: The End, a story of Hulk’s last days on Earth), and Hulk adjacent books. Runs on the Spider-Man of today. Captain Marvel (the son of the original). Spy Boy. Two different runs on X-Factor. Other novels like the Sir Apropos of Nothing series, or Howling Mad (a wolf gets bitten by a werewolf and becomes a MAN every full moon. Exactly as wacky as it sounds). Space Cases, a kind of cult sci fi TV show created by him and his pal Bill Mumy. A number of dreadful movies. A ton of fill ins and mini series. A Stan Lee “auto” biography. Sachs and Violens. THE LITTLE MERMAID, for Odin’s sake.

Peter David was a writer of stuff, and as it turns out, to me… it was damned important stuff.

And like Rick Jones, I’ve said enough.