Jeff Ryan

Ending with closing the door in the mid-1970s is EXTREMELY Godfather-coded!

Weltanschauung!

They're not answers, they're responses to clues.

@ryannorth.ca I thought you stopped writing this comic after 58 issues.

Other than the nine donuts, I kept to my strict diet this morning.

There is no RULES OF GRAMMAR book, no elected grammar judges, no laws. We're just making it up. And if enough people make the same mistake...that becomes a new rule of grammar.

I've teared up twice during the TRAILER.

AI is the sauce all kitchens want to serve but no customers want on their food.

[starts wheeling a portable trebuchet inside the CN Tower's elevator, for science]

Thanks, Peter David. The world's a less comic place without you in it.

And the person who made it all, who turned c-list characters into real, live, breathing wonderfully flawed often hilarious characters-- that person didn't get his final years the way he wanted them.

I was worried this day would be coming, and I'm sad about it. I grew up loving PAD and his work, and for decades I've never run out. Now I know it'll be a finite supply.

Many of the people at Marvel know and love PAD (and he was referred to) and I think gave him work expanding upon his evil-future-Hulk Maestro stories. But they didn't have to.

But his work was for hire. There's no two-way-street relationship. If you drove for a rideshare app and five years later you get into a severe car accident, the rideshare app probably isn't going to help you out.

Peter David helped give up Smart Hulk, Miguel O'Hara (Spider-Man 2099), and so many others: he's been thanked in a dozen different superhero films.

As a freelancer, no matter how good his money and his health insurance he was out of luck. He hadn't been a Marvel employee for decades: he was only as good as his last script. All freelancers are; it's why so many employers opt for the gig economy.

Then he got sick.

I'd seen him talk at various conventions: he was patient with his time, and actually engaging with everyone who wanted to talk with him! That is superrare: not many people have the energy or the charisma or the heart or the humility, not all at once at least.

His X-Factor went from a comic a bit ashamed of being the grab-bag of third-rate mutants to being proud of their screwed-up loser status. That sort of league-of-losers ethos would come to define Marvel's heroes: no Guardians of the Galaxy without it.

From there we got my favorite era of Hulk: call it Merged Hulk or Smart Hulk or Professor Hulk. As Jim Rugg pointed out, it was essentially a (green) Superman comic: a very smart very powerful person trying to fix all the world's problems.

His Hulk quickly changed the Why-army-man-no-leave-Hulk-alone status quo to one where he was snide, smart, and gray, becoming a Vegas bouncer.

He was one of Marvel's most reliable writing, cranking out seeminlgy endless issues of Spectacular Spider-Man and Incredible Hulk and X-Factor.

In the final chapters of my book about Marvel, I mentioned one of the biggest tech advantages for the comics world was GoFundMe. I was thinking of Peter David when I wrote that.

I can tell it's not a regular tricorder because of the variant beveling.

I would never say anything bad about my fellow writers.

Now that Emile Zola jerkface, that Emile Zola would badmouth people all day long. That nearsighted schmuck is always saying bad things about his fellow writers!

But I had told myself it was going to be Batman.

You guys and you "Classics" like Gatbsy...like it's so easy to come by, I got my upstairs knackered head to toe with Mary Higgins Clark softcovers. I'd KILL for a quality piece of hoity-toity literature.

You dingbats find the ONE BEAR IN THE WORLD you can take on, huh? Punishment for this should be having to steal a grizzy for a day. Get all Ransom on Red Chief on the thieves.

Yeah, my contents look just the same as this. Except add in a dozen books dropping f-word on the titles telling you to get off your lazy ass, three novelized Lifetime movies, and a Wimpy Kid left out in the rain until the pages crackle.

You want celebrate? I got a real real, uh, "well-loved" copy of Shōgun in here. None of youse kids these days with your Doja Cats remember what it was like for something ACTUALLY GOOD to show on on the boob tube. And the great "Anjin-SAN!!!" bit happens like 30 pages it: you can't lose.