Four-Color Critiques #8: I Love You, Peter David.

Four-Color Critiques #8: I Love You, Peter David.

Apr 28

I get the vague sense that this is not a popular feeling to feel, and yet, there it is. I love Peter David. Heart him. Enjoy the shit out of his writing.

Peter David

Come on. How can you not love that guy? He looks like Clemenza from The Godfather after gastric bypass surgery.

But this isn’t about how dashing Peter David looks. No, this is about what the man writes. Which is to me almost always good stuff.

And yet, he gets a lot of shit…I think? I often see him derided as a low-rent hack, relying on pop culture references and misplaced comedy to give the appearance of sharp dialogue and character development.

It’s true; David’s a funny writer. And it’s also true that he enjoys his pop culture references. And maybe he’s done a boatload of hack work, and I’ve just been fortunate enough to never read it.

But for me, he’s always been so much more than just an overblown geeky gag man; he’s got a subtle grip on characterization, dialogue, and twisty plotting that makes him a top-notch genre writer.

But then, I’m a little biased. I’ve been a Peter David fan since I was practically a kid.

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Pre-teen Matty loved Star Trek: The Next Generation, and loved the library, so it made sense that pre-teen Matty checked lots of Star Trek novels out of the library, including the early work of Peter David. Memory is failing me, as it usually does, but I recall a sequence in one of his TNG novels that literally made me cry with laughter. It involved a Klingon and a sex joke? It was at the beginning of a chapter? I need to research this.

I enjoyed David’s work to such a degree that my friend Steve and I labored over a short parody script of “Spock’s Brain,” the legendarily awful original Trek episode, using the TNG characters and cleverly titled “Data’s Brain.” I was dying to hand it over to David at a convention, to have him validate my adolescent sense of nerdy humor, so I went to a local con, and he was there…

…and he spent about ten minutes refusing to accept the script, out of some fear he’d be sued when he subconsciously plagarized the “brilliant” ideas within.

I continued to soak up the guy’s work, especially as I quickly discovered comics. His Trek comics, Aquaman, and first X-Factor runs were all landmarks in my formative geeky years. Somehow I totally missed out on his Hulk and Young Justice runs, though I’m catching up on the Hulk stuff via the Visionaries trade paperbacks.

Then I lost track of comics, and gave up on Trek novels, and Peter and I didn’t speak for a few years. I call it my “lost weekend.”

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When I got back into comics in 2006, I quickly recalled my fondness for David’s work and started picking up Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. Though it had supposedly suffered a pretty rocky launch thanks to being wrapped up in some crossover or another, by the time I showed up, it was just another Spidey title, though one that focused on Peter’s gig as a high school teacher. It didn’t last very long, but it had its moments, like Mysterio attacking Peter and a group of students in the school, a pretty classic superhero setup (secret identity must perform heroic acts in front of the public without revealing he’s a superhero) with a Spidey-specific twist. The stories were pretty light in contrast to JMS’ way-too-angsty take on the character over in Amazing, so it was just the dose of the Web-head (and the David) that I needed.

I knew about David’s work on X-Factor, but damn, those X-Men books are hard to break into at the best of times, and just coming back into the comics world, I was terrified to wade into that pool. I’ll read the trades, I thought, and last night, I finally did.

Shit, you guys. X-Factor is fucking great genre comics. It’s damn good genre writing PERIOD; it would make a great TV show, or crime novel series, or BBC radio drama, whatever. In its own way, it’s a bit of an American mash-up, rolling together superheroics and soap operatics in the Mighty Marvel Manner with crime noir tropes, then basting the entire confection with the aforementioned David characterization and humor.

There’s definitely some funny moments here, but David hangs back on the overt gags, preferring instead to focus on character-driven humor and sketch out his cast via inner monologues and interactions. In David’s hands, Jamie Madrox has become one of the most compelling characters in comics today; it was David who finally managed to give Multiple Man a personality through the most obvious route, marrying his character defects to his powers. So he’s not just a guy who can multiply; every time he multiplies, some segment of his personality appears, and he never knows what he’ll get. His every character virtue and flaw is just waiting inside to emerge uncontrolled every time he uses his powers. It’s a great tweak that leads to a sharp twisty ending for the first issue of the regular series.

And then there’s Layla Miller. From her first appearance in the series, I was hooked. I understand that she was actually introduced in House of M, the Bendis-scripted event series that I read once and don’t have much of an inclination to read again. In David’s hands, she’s this inscrutable walking plot grenade, a literal living mystery who walks into a detective agency of all places and starts filing like she’s been there her whole life. I’m trying to avoid spoilers on Layla’s true origins and the nature of her powers, but I’m already fascinated by her. Frankly, you don’t see many well-written girls in their early teens in comics these days, so just for that reason alone, she’s a great character.

Like all great noir, there’s an undercurrent of dread to X-Factor, as they take up operations in the wake of the Decimation that deprived the vast majority of the planet’s mutants of their powers. David has wisely chosen some damaged characters for this incarnation of the team: Rictor, who lost his powers and his direction with the Decimation; Rahne “Wolfsbane” Sinclair, whose deep religious beliefs are constantly at odds with her violent feline nature; Guido “Strong Guy” Carosella belies the pain his mutant power causes with a never-ending stream of wisecracks. Likewise, Mutant Town has become a dark place, rife with suspicion and anger, the perfect setting for a noir superhero team.

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So there. That’s my love letter to Peter David. To me, he’s not just “that funny guy” or “that pop culture reference guy.” In fact, he’s “that great genre writer who p
ecks out crackling dialogue and sharp characterizations, and is often damned funny to boot, and never did read my Star Trek parody script, damnit.”

17 comments

  1. Sarah

    Great piece. My biggest connection to PAD is probably still his Star Trek novel work — one thing I always really appreciated was he seemed to be just as much of a romantic/shipper as me. He gave me WHAT I WANTED in those Imzadi books. I get the sense I would enjoy X-Factor as well. Too bad he couldn’t look at your parody script…the possibilities are endless.

  2. Fantastic article. I feel the same way about Peter David’s work. He was the first comic book writer I discovered on my own and came to regard as a favorite, and he’s very, very rarely disappointed me. X-Factor, even at its rockiest, has been one of Marvel’s best titles every month.

  3. Ken

    Peter David was always one of my favorite ST novel writers. I even liked the silly things that may have annoyed some readers. I mean, who else is going to name minor characters Maror and Charoset? (Secret Jewish Passover humor. Bwahaha.)

  4. Awesome article! I commented at NYCC that the only way I was going to go to the ‘Jim Shooter Appreciation’ panel is if I could watch PAD & Claremont heckle it, Statler & Waldorf style. If only.

    I don’t know how far you are in X-Factor, but I second everything you say about its awesomeness. It wavers a little around the various crossovers, but in recent months it’s come back with a vengeance. And Layla rocks.

    Sarah, I’m pretty sure you’d like this book, too — esp. knowing you’re a Gen X/Monet fan.

  5. Sarah

    Check it out, Matt! Maybe it *is* a popular feeling to feel.

    Caroline: I still think Monet has one of the weirdest origin stories/histories EVER — for that reason alone, I’m glad she’s still around. Thanks for the rec, I’ll check out X-Factor!

  6. Matt

    The PAD love warms my heart! For some reason, I thought lots of bloggers were mostly dismissive of his work. I’m glad I’m not alone.

    Well, in this specific regard, at least.

    Jennifer: I’m the same way–in comics, I think PAD was maybe the first writer where I said, “Ooh, I like that guy, I want to read whatever he does.” Probably like I said, because I sorta followed him over from Trek novels.

    I will say I did try to read Tigerheart and had a hard time getting into it. I have a feeling I’ll like the Sir Apropos books just fine someday when I find time to read them.

  7. Jeff

    Tigerheart is great. As is X Factor. And Young Justice (which I used to kind of dislike for being too silly; I think I was too old/too young when it was coming out to really love it like I do now). Oddly, – or maybe not, since I don’t know a lot about Trek – I have never read his Trek books.

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