A Tribute To Peter David

Although he never reached the heights of fame enjoyed by contemporaries like Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman, and Warren Ellis, writer Peter David nevertheless created as imaginative and influential a body of work in comics as anybody since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby revived the moribund superhero genre in the early 1960s. David passed away this week after suffering from a host of health issues for years, including kidney disease, a series of strokes, diabetes, and even a mild heart attack. David was 68 years old.

Born in New Jersey, David fell in love with comics at an early age. Encouraged to write by his father, who was a newspaperman and film critic, David decided as a pre-teen to become a reporter, and graduated from New York University with a degree in journalism. When his initial attempts at a career in that field fell flat, David turned to fiction, placing a few stories in publications like Asimov’s Science Fiction. Scribes like Harlan Ellison, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and even contemporaries like Gaiman and Terry Pratchett inspired David’s writing. While trying to find his feet as a writer, David worked in publishing for E.P. Dutton and Playboy Paperbacks before taking a job in the sales department at Marvel Comics.

Quickly promoted to Sales Manager by Marvel, David unsuccessfully pitched stories to various Marvel editors. He found an ally in writer Jim Owsley (who later changed his name to Christopher Priest and took Marvel’s Black Panther character to new heights, creatively and commercially). When Owsley was elevated to an editorial position, he began buying stories for the Spider-Man series from David, and his first comics writing was published in June 1985. There would be hiccups – Marvel Editor-In-Chief Jim Shooter didn’t like a sales guy crossing over to the editorial side of the company and removed David from the book. But when Marvel editor Bob Harras offered David The Incredible Hulk series, he took the ball and ran with it.

For all intents and purposes, The Incredible Hulk was a dead book with weak sales, so offering it to David was a no-lose proposition by Harras. Little did anybody know at the time is that the writer would spend the next 12 years on the title, reimagining the character like nobody before him. David played with the Hulk’s multiple personality disorder that previous writers had established, taking the superhero in new directions while working with fan-favorite artists like Todd McFarlane and Dale Keown. After writing The Incredible Hulk for a year as a freelancer while still working in Marvel’s sales department, David reached out to DC Comics and got an assignment writing a four-issue mini-series for 1930s pulp character The Phantom.

David went full-time as a comics writer in 1988, and quickly made a name as an innovative and intelligent storyteller. David’s work for Marvel in the late ‘80s and throughout the 1990s included characters like Wolverine, She-Hulk, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and X-Factor as well as 44 issues of Spider-Man 2099, featuring a character that David had created. For DC, David was given a seven-issue Aquaman mini-series in 1990, which led to a subsequent mini-series, Aquaman: Time and Tide, the success of which resulted in a re-launched monthly Aquaman series circa 1994-98 that saw David reinvent the character in a manner that was subsequently used as a blueprint for the Aquaman movie.

David’s work on DC’s licensed Star Trek comics series led to opportunities to write novels in the Star Trek universe, and he subsequently penned three books in the main series, as well as eleven Star Trek: The Next Generation novels and eighteen titles in the Star Trek: New Frontiers series that he created in the shared universe. David also wrote five Babylon 5 novels, and book adaptations of comics-related films like The Return of Swamp Thing, Iron Man, Batman Forever, and the first three Spider-Man movies, among others.

Among David’s fifty novels are his original Sir Apropos of Nothing fantasy trilogy and, credited as “David Peters,” six books in the Psi-Man series and six books in the young adult series Photon. David’s 2010 novel Year of the Black Rainbow was co-written with musician Claudio Sanchez of prog-rockers Coheed and Cambria and was published alongside the band’s album of the same name.

David also wrote his insightful, and often times controversial column “But I Digress…” for Comics Buyer’s Guide magazine from 1990 until the magazine stopped publishing in 2013. Inspired by his friend Harlan Ellison, David donated his earnings from the column, and two book-length compilations, to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. He also wrote two instructional books, 2006’s Writing for Comics with Peter David and 2009’s Writing for Comics and Graphic Novels with Peter David, and he assisted Star Trek actor James Doohan with his 1996 autobiography Beam Me Up, Scotty. David wrote several screenplays, including for the Babylon 5 TV series and movies like Trancers 4, Oblivion, and Oblivion 2: Backlash and he also wrote for video games. With actor and musician Bill Mummy, David co-created the Nickleodeon TV series Space Cases, which ran for two seasons.

An outspoken critic of the comics industry treatment and exploitation of its writers, David walked away from more than a few series over creative differences. The father of four daughters, David had an affinity for writing female characters like She-Hulk and Supergirl, and bemoaned how publishers and readers alike discounted female-oriented books.

His feuds with industry figures like Jim Shooter, former collaborator Todd McFarlane, and Gary Groth, publisher of The Comics Journal are the stuff of fanboy legends. A diehard liberal, David was a staunch supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, and received a GLAAD Media Award for his work on the X-Factor series. A free speech advocate, David saved his most potent literary venom for conservative politicians and the religious right, but wasn’t afraid to criticize liberal politicians. Most importantly, David wasn’t hesitant in admitting his errors, either.

He called himself a “Writer of Stuff,” and few have been as prolific as Peter David. He may not be as well known as many of his contemporaries, but David’s three decades-plus of stellar writing has created a pop culture legacy as strong as any creator.