
So I was already reading the Incredible Hulk by the time Peter David came on as the regular writer. Picking up threads established by previous creative teams — Bill Mantlo giving Bruce an abusive father and the preexisting elements of a multiple personality disorder, and Al Milgrom bringing back the grey-skinned version of the Hulk from the very first issue — David intertwined them into a long, engaging adventure over the next twelve years of his run. A complicated portrayal of the Hulk’s mental state was the central focus nearly the entire time, giving us wildly different interpretations of the character beyond the most famous “Hulk Smash!” version (one David famously had said he wasn’t interested in writing).

And what’s fascinating is that, ever since David’s run, the multiple-personality aspect has been, more often than not, a central tenet of the Hulk titles. I would say this makes David’s tenure on the book certainly the most influential. Even after John Byrne returned as scripter for the Hulk series in 1999, even that was a reaction against David’s influence, trying to twist the narrative back to the Hulk What Does All the Smashing business.

But Immortal Hulk, often held up as one of the greatest modern Hulk stories (with, um, a caveat), would not exist without David. The current horror-themed Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Nic Klein run on the character wouldn’t exist without David. Even that weird Donny Cates/Ryan Ottley Hulk-as-rocket-ship-piloted-by-Banner series wouldn’t exist with David. The ultimate version of the Hulk we see in the movies we would not have without David.

And it wasn’t just Hulk he wrote. Oh no. I can’t possibly list everything he’s worked on (EDIT: but customer Corey did!), but the great DC Comics kid team book Young Justice, the weirdest take on Supergirl, the strange mystery/horror/fantasy comic Fallen Angel, the X-Men spin-off team X-Factor, half of the DC Vs. Marvel mini (with Ron Marz — bit of a mess, but thanks to those two at least it was an entertaining mess), Captain Marvel, Sachs & Violens…
…and Star Trek.

Boy howdy did he write some Star Trek, and it remains some of the best Trek in comics to this day. Mostly wrote Classic Trek era, though he occasionally dipped into Next Generation, they were some of the most run TV-to-comics adaptations ever published. Some scenes and lines of dialogue from those still flash into my head to this day.

And Star Trek novels, he wrote too. Plenty of them, to much acclaim (and sales!). Of note is an odd little crossover between the classic Trek comics he wrote and the first Next Generation book he wrote, Strike Zone, where a minor character he was…encouraged to remove from the comic by the Trek Powers That Be, returned under a slightly different name in the novel to have his story wrapped up.

There were more novels than just that, such as movie novelizations (including the classic Return of Swamp Thing adaptation that manages to get Alan Moore in there as a character!), novels based on other franchises (such as Babylon 5) and his original novels (Knight Life – King Arthur returns and runs for New York Mayor, Sir Apropros of Nothing – lamed-legged thief makes his way through life with wit and not-always-good luck, Howling Mad – wolf bit by a werewolf changes into a man under the full moon).

Of course there is also his TV and movie work, writing for Space Cases and Babylon 5. Two of his movies were Oblivion and Oblivion II: Backlash, one of those borrowing the “not…SWEENEY!” joke from his Star Trek comics…I’m already going overlong on this, I’ll explain that gag later. Anyway, both those movies got the MST3K-style Rifftrax treatment and I always wondered how David felt about that. The movies were…what they were, you could definitely pick out David’s style in the script, but, well, it’s amusing enough to watch, and the actors looked like they were having fun.

This only really scratches the surface of everything he’s done. The man wrote a ton of comics and books, plenty of which are very entertaining. David can be a little too jokey at times — the man never met a pun he didn’t like — but the basics were solid and he knew how to tell a story and tell it well. And the man wasn’t perfect…he had a…very unfortunate blow-up at a convention that caused him to write this mea culpa.

As you probably know, David and his family had to repeatedly turn to crowdfunding to pay his medical debts, which is a damned shame. One would thing someone at Marvel or Disney or Sony could have ponied up 1% of whatever money they made off of Spider-Man 2099, a character David developed and has subsequently been used in movies and marketed in spin-off toys, and paid off literally all of his bills. Or that comic companies and their corporate owners could come up with some better way to treat their older and/or ailing creators after years of Generating Content that they then use to make piles of money in other deals.
Maybe this will be the final straw that finally gets these companies to do something about this.
But it probably won’t be.
Of course, if we had a proper healthcare system in this country none of this would be a problem in the first place. But ’til then…the GoFundMe is still open for Peter David’s medical bills, which his family still needs to pay. Please contribute if you can.
So long, Peter.
