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

I've just read on Comicbookclub that PAD died on 24 May.

I can't say I knew too much of his work but enjoyed his X-Factor and the few Hulk comics that I've read.

RIP PAD, your work was inspired.

I've lost an inspiration, a mentor, and a surrogate uncle.

Please, everybody, keep his wife Kathleen, and his daughters Caroline, Ariel, Gwen, and Shana in your thoughts and prayers.

Rest in peace, Peter. I'll miss you so much.

That's all I can manage to post right now.

The picture that's been painted about his declining health over the last few years had me half-expecting this for a while. But knowing it is now a fact that he's gone and that his body of work is now complete is extremely saddening and just surreal. No doubt in my mind that he's among the very best writers of comics there ever was and will ever be. He was also an excellent novelist--I can attest to that, having read several of his Star Trek novels and one of his originals, Howling Mad.

This is such a terrible loss.

Rest in peace.

Beautifully put, Lardy. Thank you.

I still feel numb and not-quite-here, so please excuse the randomness of this and other posts to come in the immediate future.

One of the first things I did after I woke up today was to open one of the four boxes which contain my Peter David collection.

I skimmed the surface, and the first thing that leaped out to me was one of his more obscure works, issues 7 & 8 of Justice League Task Force (gorgeously drawn by Sal Velluto,) where a special mission forces J'onn J'onnz to reluctantly use his shape-shifting powers to become a female Martian. Like a lot of great PAD works, it's riotously funny (Gypsy gets a ton of priceless quips) but it also encourages the reader to think outside the box. It was also ahead of its time -- a story from the JLA Big Guns era also had J'onn as a woman, but it was entirely played for cheap laughs (IIRC, it was not written by Morrison, but by Millar.)

Compared to the tons of work he did for Marvel, PAD did way too little work for DC, most of it between 1993 and 2003. After DiDio was finally shit-canned in 2020, I held out hope that PAD might work for DC again. Then, a couple years later, came the health crisis that Lardy alluded to, and...it's not going to happen now.

Atlantis Chronicles. Aquaman. Supergirl. Young Justice. Sins of Youth.

Please re-read one or all of the above sometime soon, and think both of what we've lost and what we'll never lose.

Another one I am sad to hear we have lost.

I need to have another go at Supergirl. Didn't finish it last time.

I think my clearest memory is a story from his Hulk run, when Betty wants to have a heart to heart not with Bruce but with Hulk. I can't remember much of the details but I do remember the conversation bringing Hulk around from wanting nothing to do with Betty to leaping off with her in his arms to help her.

He had a great touch with the characters he wrote.