Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities All Peter David thread

Happy 62nd Birthday to PAD!

And check out the recently published trade of his Marvel webcomic "Avengers: Back to Basics." Good fun.

The Hulk Team Supreme is back together for Incredible Hulk Last Call, a one-shot due in June:

https://www.cbr.com/peter-david-dale-keown-incredible-hulk-last-call/

This is actually PAD & Keown's third reunion. The first was Hulk/Pitt in 1996, the second was Incredible Hulk The End in the early 2000s.

I was surprised to see an Incredible Hulk by PAD Vol. 1 Omnibus (collecting Incredible Hulk 328 & 331-368, Web of Spider-Man 44, Fantastic Four 320 and material from Marvel Comics Presents 26 & 45) being shipped this month. Its solicitation totally escaped my notice! Needless to say, for someone who loves getting quality runs in Omnibus format, ordering that one thru In-Stock Trades was a no-brainer! It should be here in a few days!

I thought about it a bit and ordered the Todd McFarlane cover from the monumental issue 345. The other choice was the cover from issue 333 by Steve Geiger. It was a harder choice than I thought, even given Geiger's relative obscurity. It's pretty evocative.

That's wonderful news!

Enjoy it, my friend!

And yes, I agree about that Steve Geiger cover (IIRC, he did a few more Hulk covers around that same time.) Very underrated artist.

So...there's the first issue of a new, PAD-written Maestro mini-series which is supposed to show the previously untold tale of the Hulk's transformation into the Maestro.

I don't know...I think some untold stories should remain untold, allowed to shine in each individual reader's imagination.

Put it this way, even if the flashbacks to the 7 Soldiers of Victory's fateful battle against the Nebula Man (in Stars and STRIPE) had been written by Len Wein instead of Geoff Johns, I still would've been annoyed.

But...PAD's my favorite writer, and I feel I should support him whenever I feel even vaguely intrigued by a new work of his.

Decisions, decisions...

The more support he gets for this, the more chance he'll tell the untold tales that can be told.

Point well taken.

Thanks, Thoth.

So I have been following the Maestro mini-series. The first couple issues were kinda meh, but the third issue found PAD back on form. I'm guardedly optimistic that the conclusion two issues from now will be as good as the conclusion to PAD's previous go-round with these characters, the 2015 Secret Wars Future Imperfect tie-in mini-series (and one of the few decent things to come out of that awful Event.)

Oh, Marvel, you fooled me again! For the last time, I hope!

Overall, the Maestro mini-series was slightly above-average modern-day PAD product...except for one thing.

It's all setup for ANOTHER series, Maestro: War and Pax, still written by PAD and beginning later this month...but not to be purchased by yours truly.

I love PAD as a creator and a person, but I just cannot continue to partake of these stories with no endings. He's not to blame. The comics industry is.

"But that's why these stories are so great," sayeth the comics-industry apologists, "because there are no endings, just like in real life."

I say thee nay. I read superhero tales to ESCAPE from real life!

But I don't think I'll be buying any more new superhero comics from now on. I'll just be re-reading my old ones.

Famous last words, I know. We shall see what the future holds.

Except for readers whose stories end after being crushed to death having inexpertly stacked all the crossover issues for one of these reading atrocities.

Just as I had been hoping, the first issue of "Joe Fixit" is the best thing PAD has written in at least 15 years, maybe even 20!

CHECK IT OUT!

Thanks for the recommendation Fickles. Check it out, I shall.

Yay! Thanks, Thoth. Hope you like it enough to buy all five issues.

I liked it and thought it was pretty good. Everybody felt right in character with plenty of tension and hooks for the future.

Glad you liked it, Stile. And, yeah, PAD could teach Bendis a thing or two about giving each character their own distinctive voice. Not to mention keeping the dialogue spare and to the point.

If silly shop has it, I'll take a look on Tuesday.

My reading of Hulk, Spiderman and Daredevil has been minimal, and certainly around the era this is set.

It's a solid enough issue. It introduces us to the key characters easily. A nice bit of craft is the airport scene. Spidey gives the reader infromation on the Hulk, while waiting in line. From what I know of Spidey, things don't often work out perfectly. Here, he will be charged for changing his plans, as The Kingpin arrives. That's a nice, unstated bit of character work. Spideys sense of responsibility comes at a price. Spidey sense tells you what a threat Kingpin is, and then one tracer bug later, we switch to Kingpin and his plans.

One quibble would be that Kingpin's bodyguards allowed Spidey to get close enough, to not only place a bug, but to have Kingin and Spidey have a face off. It did show us never to underestimate Spidey's resolve, but I was surprised that Kingpin moved on. Sure, he has other plans, but he does seem to have a massive ego. Perhaps a goon breaking that one up/ or having allowed Spidey to have been pushed into Kingpin (helping seal boyguard's later fate). Interesting to see early body-cam footage from back then too.

We don't get a lot of background as to why the Hulk is Mr Fixit in the story (the catch up in the text page was a nice, well placed touch). And that's just fine. Any internal dialogue from Fixit, would have undermined him as a Hulk controlled force in the story. Without him, his boss wouldn't have got rid of the Maggia, Without him, Kingpin would have arrived and gone about taking everything over. Without him, local residents would have been injured or killed by robbers. That he's working for what seems like a mobster also reinforces the moral position of this Hulk. He's not a rampaging monster. He's not a hunted irradiated scientist. He's not proactively using his power in the area. He's doing good things for bad people. It's an interesting mix, underenath a guy who looks and talks like a gangster movie stereotype.

Kingpin's undoing is balanced by a show of ruthlessness at the end. The solid build up of the characters' reacting to each other and changing their plans accordingly (craft points to PAD) leads to Kingpin's decision at the end. And it's somethign that's mroe than interesting enough to pick up the next issue.

Random thoughts:-
The early Marvel Masterworks showed the early Hulk fluctuate through a number of variations of the Gamma born Jeckyll/ Hyde dynamic. Fix it, despite appearances, is a more subtle take on how one of those could have played out over an extended period. The pace and structure of the early Marvels, hinted at such possibilities, but didn't allow for that.

Dark Horse's The Goon may be a hilarious, twisted child of this period of the Hulk. If you've not read it, any issue is a good place to start.

I think I saw a mention of Hulk-as-Gangster back when it was published, or perhaps a mention in a Marvel Handbook. I would have just raised an eyebrow on the change, and moved on. But that goes back to my first line, about not having read much of the character (very early, disjointed reprints). The origins of this version are definitely in there.

Glad you mostly enjoyed it, Thoth. Your one quibble is valid and well-taken. I look at it like the Kingpin dislikes making a show of things in public. In private, of course, it's a whole other matter. My one quibble, as I already said in another thread, is that Cinar's hatching looked so sloppy in the first limo sequence that Kingpin appeared to have a combover. Or a bad hairpiece.

The parallels with the earliest Hulk stories are worth mentioning, and I'm glad you brought them up. PAD has always said that those issues are the cornerstone of all his work on the Hulk. For the record, the Jekyll Hyde stuff came from Jack Kirby, and the anger-induced transformations came from Steve Ditko, who replaced a busy Kirby early on, and pretty well developed the now-familiar Hulk formula himself (Ditko also created the Leader, the Hulk's archenemy.)

The 2nd issue of Joe Fixit is even better than the first! The artwork looks more assured, and PAD continues to show great form. I sensed from the start that this is exactly what he prefers to write nowadays, this kind of comedy-noir.

While I greatly enjoyed the 3rd issue of Joe Fixit on first read, I began to see on second read that PAD has fallen into a trap common for superhero comic book writers with a large and loyal following.

Namely, if the reader is not already a hard-core PAD fan with extensive knowledge of his previous Hulk stories, this issue might be difficult to understand.

I hope at least some readers stick around until the end of this miniseries. But in the end, while it might not win PAD many converts, it's certainly a great pleasure for the faithful.

I hadn't recalled that there was a PAD thread out there. I'm going to chime in somewhat belatedly with extreme love for his Young Justice. Great stories with great humor and also capable of gut-wrenching emotion as well. The man had RANGE. I also very much liked his Supergirl, and I will single out issue # 23 of that run, which has possibly the best exploration of freedom of speech that I've ever seen (the last page being especially brilliant).

And I will add my vote of praise for The Atlantis Chronicles. Brilliant stuff.

Thanks, Chaim.

Greatly appreciated.

In a desperate search for fresh creative inspiration, I dusted off my X-Factor trades.

Now I'm writing again, and, at the same time, having one of the most fun re-reads of all my life! I'm already up to Volume 7, which begins with the "birth" of the "baby" and the subsequent repercussions.

Thanks, PAD.

On a somber note, PAD has been dealing with still more serious health problems since late last year. I contributed to the GoFundMe campaign, and get every update that is posted by Kathleen David. Last I heard, PAD was able to stand up for the first time in months. That's a great relief.

At the time of the whole baby Sean arc, I had the notion that Madrox can, at least unconsciously, summon specific dupes (like the one that hates him) more than once, so that it seems entirely possible that *someday* he might accidentally summon baby Sean again (or learn to do so deliberately). Who knows if Sean will still be a baby on that day, or conveniently aged up to toddler, at least...

It could even be clarified / retconned that Jamie's power had nothing to do with baby Sean's disappearance, but that baby Sean, like his daddy, is a 'killcrop,' mutant-from-birth, and his disappearance / merging with Jamie, was *his* mutant power manifesting for the first time, and not Jamie's! (Either he merged with Jamie and has no idea how to 'turn it off', and is now a passenger inside Jamie, which, given the last 9 months of his life was being a passenger inside of Theresa, and he's just a baby, might be his idea of 'the way things are supposed to be', or, plot twist, he didn't merge with Jamie at all, Jamie just felt a tingle and misinterpreted it, and instead baby Sean was kidnapped by Tryp or something, and is going to be raised in an alternate universe by Jamie's worst enemy to hate him and be sent to kill him someday... Cause that's stupidly convoluted super-villain 101!)

It's a great run.