Tangled Webs: Peter David VS Erik Larsen

This is the story of a long-lasting comics feud between notable Spider-Man creators, which drew other professionals into its orbit. On a list of the top fifteen feuds in comics history, Peter David VS Erik Larsen was ranked #6, while Peter David VS Todd McFarlane was #9, and Todd McFarlane VS Neil Gaiman was #7 (David and Larsen both took sides on this one.) It starts with an argument about Doctor Octopus, and gets into larger questions about whether the founders of Image Comics live up to the standards they’ve established, and whether the writers and artists at Marvel were making appropriate long-term decisions for those characters. It ends with one of the two men facing financial ruin, and the other being in the position to save the day.

Before he was one of the founders of Image, Erik Larsen was best known for his Spider-Man work. He was the writer and artist of the “Revenge of the Sinister Six” arc of Spider-Man, which had a scene in which Doctor Octopus defeated the Hulk.

Peter David, the writer of The Incredible Hulk at the time, didn’t care for this depiction. He had Doctor Octopus appear in the pages of The Incredible Hulk and get his ass kicked.

Later in the story, the Hulk made a thinly veiled reference to Image Comics, implying that Erik Larsen was holding back on his Spider-Man run and saving his best ideas for his creator-owned comics work.

There were further disagreements between the two that were heightened by their platforms (Peter David wrote a column for the magazine Comics Buyers Guide, while Erik Larsen was one of the top spokesmen for Image Comics.) Larsen took some early digs in the letters pages of Savage Dragon. In response to a fan who wrote in (Issue 9) “The Savage Dragon is the coolest character around. I bet you he could even beat up the Hulk.” Larsen wrote “The Hulk is a wimp.” When an Alex Guvin wrote in to the fifteenth issue “You are so stupid! I picked up you’re (sic) book – The savage (sic) dragon (sic), and it was so stupid. It was issue 7 and it was realy(sic), realy(sic), stupid, because you are a bad writer and a drawer(sic)!” Larsen responded with “Nice pseudonym Peter David, but I’d recognize that distinctive style anywhere. Thanks for your support.”

Initially, there seemed to be more disagreements between Peter David and Todd McFarlane, about whether Image was living up to the high standards it set up, Peter David was unfairly trashing Image in his columns, and some of the guys at Image should treat others with more respect. The two had a formal debate in Comicfest ’93 in Philadelphia about whether the media treated Image and Todd McFarlane fairly. The recording has been preserved for posterity twenty-five years later.

Of interest to Spider-Man fans, at about 47 minutes in, Peter David gives his thoughts on Todd McFarlane’s writing, largely based on his Spider-Man run. About 51:30 in, Todd McFarlane discusses his decision to make his writing debut with the Spider-Man monthly title.

Moderator George Perez provided an illustration of the proceedings. Peter David summarized his version of the events.

Larsen seems to agree that Peter David won, although he believes it wasn’t because of a superior position, writing in the letters column of Savage Dragon #20…

As far as the big debate goes, Todd came woefully unprepared for the event—he hadn’t read any of your columns directly before the debate, and certainly didn’t bring along copies from which to pull quotes. I doubt that Todd saves them. He also neglected to spend hours preparing or enlisting the aids of his friends to help him prepare. I’m told Harlan Ellison was busy. Todd was there to have some fun, for the most part.

Larsen further defends McFarlane in #22, suggesting Peter David was wrong to take him at his word.

Todd often brings up approximate numbers as examples, and taken literally they just don’t hold up. There’s nothing malicious intended—he just takes a wild guess at times. He also makes wild generalizations and speaks for other people even if they disagree. Surely you’ve noticed that pattern by now. To continue to take everything Todd says literally, after all this time, indicates, at the very least, an inability to learn from your mistakes.

The feud between Peter David and Erik Larsen was kindled when Peter David wrote in his column that an award was owed to The Wacky Image Tyke.

Most in Need of a Reality Check

That Wacky Image Tyke: Things are fine between myself and several of the Image guys, but there’s still one who, it would seem, believes that Todd McFarlane fumbled the “Bash Peter David” ball and has endeavored to recover it and run with it. His behavior leaves several of his peers shaking their heads in exasperation. I will withhold his name and instead refer to him as That Wacky Image Tyke or, simply, T.W.I.T.

Once accused of aping McFarlane’s art style, apparently he’s endeavoring to mimic Todd’s “Bully Boy of Image” persona as well. T.W.I.T. has continually used his comic’s letters pages to take potshots at my reputation and ability (a sort of savage drag-on, if you will). He employs the familiar tactics of unsupported smears, fabrications, and snide references. (He’s even taken to tacking on condescending diminuitives to the ends of people’s names.)

At first he simply edited out reader comments defending me against his diatribes, while making sure to run ill-informed slam letters. Nowadays he does run the occasional supportive commentary, but continues in his replies to incite those readers who don’t know any better and annoy those who do.

Best of all, T.W.I.T. tacks something to the effect of, “But you know, attacking Peter David and John Byrne is pointless and we really should stop” onto every gratuitous slam or irrelevant shot. (Most recently he ran an illiterately composed letter and “jokingly” claimed I was the author. Hey, at least the letter writer signed his name.)

But the next month (or even next page) he’s right back with same old same old.

One wonders about his motivation beyond simple mean-spiritedness.

I figure one of two things: Either T.W.I.T. truly values my opinion—in which case, he’s picked an odd way of going about obtaining my approval—or else the mere fact that I ever dared critique his comments has angered him, because nothing less than 100% approval will do. Which is kind of pathetic, really. As if he’s concerned he’ll vanish if the applause stops.

In Savage Dragon #20, Peter David wrote a letter explaining his disagreements with Larsen. In response to a claim he ripped off Larsen’s dialogue, he wrote “I have never swiped, lifted, stolen, copped or pilfered in any way, any of your dialogue. I hate to disillusion you, but—if my life depended on it—I couldn’t remember a line of yours that I read.” He added “I think it’s safe to say that we can file this claim away with your earlier false statement that “I’ve held back characters so that (I) can own them.” Which one would that be, precisely? Sachs & Violens, with its nudity and profanity, was unpublishable by mainstream Marvel. Soulsearchers & Company grew from a proposal that was, in fact, rejected by Marvel. That covers my creator-owned titles.” He also notes that about four percent of his columns have had to deal with Image, while the majority were about Marvel & DC, and he hasn’t faced professional repercussions for any of the things he said about the big two, while Image has been much more sensitive.

Larsen’s response was four and a half pages long. He noted that a scene he had with the Hulk in “Revenge of the Sinister Six” arc was very similar to something Peter David did in the Incredible Hulk. Here is the relevant scene from “Revenge of the Sinister Six.”

Here it is in the Incredible Hulk. Larsen believed the similarity to be intentional.

Peter David later noted that having the Hulk take out someone using his finger is something he’s been doing for a while, going back to Incredible Hulk #341, so there was no effort to imitate Larsen.

Larsen replied that Peter David’s Hulk and his Hulk had very similar quips about giving the finger to a villain.

In his response to Peter David’s letter, Larsen explained his efforts to make Doctor Octopus appear to be more impressive, writing “He’d gone from being a menacing master planner to a fat dork chasing Peter Parker’s aunt around and I thought I’d try and undo some of the damage done.” The defeat of the Hulk was meant to have that effect, “Certainly, if a writer wants to show that a character was one of the toughest guys around, there are few ways of demonstrating that better than having them fight or even defeat the Hulk.” Larsen suggested that the scene is plausible, “I’ve often wondered why nobody ever lifted the Hulk. He weighs 1000 pounds, a lot by our standards, but Spider-Man can pick up a car, why not the Hulk? So I had Ock lift the Hulk with his new arms holding each of Hulk’s limbs and then beat him senseless (Ock propped his new arms on the grounds so that his human legs weren’t required to support the Hulk’s weight- in case you were wondering.)” He also blamed Peter David for not adequately explaining how Doctor Octopus escaped jail between the pages of his appearances in “Revenge of the Sinister Six” and The Incredible Hulk, and suggested that the revenge on Doctor Octopus wasn’t helpful for Marvel bringing back the old status quo where Doc Ock was just a joke villain, “What possible benefit did your trashing of my story have? It wasn’t like everyone was going to start using Doc Ock as a new standard by which strength is measured. The Hulk defeated Ock and everyone had a good laugh at the petty fat dork.”

Peter David had referenced Larsen’s supposed antipathy against comic book writers. Larsen said that this was in the context of a response to the writer Mike Barr, who had suggested Image Comics was a problem because the emphasis on artists meant that it was taking away jobs from writers. Larsen said he had no problem with writers who can’t draw, but that in his view Barr wasn’t a good enough writer to demand employment, and that an artist writing his own work has the potential for growth. He suggested Peter David had taken statements out of context before, noting “When Image was just getting started, you got a hold of our press release and did us all the favor of interpreting it for us. I’d said in there that “in many ways, we’ve been holding back. Some of our best characters have yet to be seen, and will appear for the first time.” You took that to mean, not as I meant-that I wasn’t giving to Marvel some of the best characters I’d created, but instead, that I was “slacking” and doing substandard work at Marvel.” He suggests Peter David could have included the characters from Sachs & Violens, and Soulsearchers in the pages of his Marvel monthlies, before making them leads elsewhere, and that it isn’t important how much space he devotes to Image in the column, but whether it is fair.

There are larger arguments between the two about whether the Image founders are hypocrites, especially when it comes to their creator rights of their employees, and whether the people at Marvel and DC are making decisions that are in the best interests of the properties. Larsen suggested that Peter David was using characters like Bi-Beast as comedy relief in The Incredible Hulk, rather than taking advantage of their potential. In Savage Dragon #21’s letter pages, Larsen wrote “Peter, as well as a lot of folks in comics, are doing whatever they can to draw attention to themselves. That’s why they killed Superman and Captain America, broke Batman’s back, turned Spider-Man into a clone, gave Jim Wilson AIDS, and trotted out abortion issues all in the most cliched fashion possible. How transparently superficial can this stuff get before readers stop buying into it?” Peter David would believe that his stories about a supervillains’s daughter being injured in the bombing of an abortion clinic, or a former Hulk sidekick taking extreme measures to rid himself of AIDS have artistic merit.

Both men were drawn into another comics feud. After his initial arc on Spawn, Todd McFarlane did single issue stories with four of the biggest writers in comics: Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Dave Sims and Neil Gaiman. Gaiman’s issue was the most consequential with the introductions of Medieval Spawn (the first time an earlier version of Spawn had been introduced in the comics) and Angela, introduced as a hunter of hellspawn. There were some legal arguments between the two, as Gaiman claimed that McFarlane had promised him the rights to these characters, as well as the rights to the British Marvelman/ Miracleman. In these arguments, Peter David took Gaiman’s side, and Larsen took McFarlane’s. The Hollywood Reporter has a summary of the suit, Maggie Thompson went into more depth on the legal proceedings, and Neil Gaiman covered his version of events on his blog.

Erik Larsen poked fun at the argument that Medieval Spawn was a new character in the pages of Savage Dragon #96, by introducing a villainous henchman named Medieval Sandman.

The same issue included a riff on Ultimate Spider-Man.

Peter David was impressed by the judge’s thinking, especially on the question of whether the character of Dark Ages Spawn was clearly an effort to avoid compensating Gaiman for Medieval Spawn.

There were few more disagreements between Peter David and Erik Larsen. There was a scene in the Incredible Hulk in which the Hulk dressed as Savage Dragon for Halloween. In 2009, Larsen complained about how the Spider-Man meets Obama story of Amazing Spider-Man was similar to a story in Savage Dragon and that his characters had endorsed candidate Obama, whereas Marvel was taking advantage of the goodwill of Obama’s election after the fact. Peter David wrote about it in his blog.

He feels betrayed and wounded because Marvel has Barack Obama encountering Spider-Man, asserting that plot elements were swiped from Savage Dragon. He states on Comicon.com:

I hear that they’re even doing a story similar to the one I did four years back, where an image-altering villain disguises himself as the President (in my story the Impostor replaced President Bush and took his place for a speech–in theirs the Chameleon, the shape-shifting villain, is going to spoil a speech being given by President-Elect Obama). The whole mess just feels really underhanded. I feel betrayed and, frankly, ripped off and in the real world–the one outside our funnybook bubble–Marvel will spin themselves as these great innovators who came up with this terrific publicity stunt–instead of the thieves they are.

I can totally sympathize. I remember some years back when I had a storyline in which the Hulk had to face the dilemma of giving a friend a blood transfusion in the hopes that it would cure him of AIDS. Imagine my chagrin when, a year or so later, The Savage Dragon had to face the dilemma of giving a friend a blood transfusion in the hopes that it would cure him of AIDS.

Boy, was I pissed off.

Adding insult to injury, Larsen had claimed years earlier that the Hulk story in question represented what was wrong with Marvel. There would also be a major distinction between endorsing a candidate for President, and embracing a figure who holds the office. Impostors pretending to be famous people is hardly an innovation of Savage Dragon. A Marvel Two-in-One issue had the Impossible Man pretending to be Jimmy Carter.

One of the longest-running feuds in comics ultimately concluded through an act of magnanimity. Last year, Peter David had significant financial troubles, and owed the IRS $88,000 as a result of unpaid taxes from the 1990s. As he wrote in his blog, Erik Larsen was the one who offered the advice that helped him get his finances in order.

Further credit must go to Erik Larsen, who asked me if I had any artwork from some of the comic book greats. I did have a couple of pages that I had acquired twenty years ago for a couple of thousand dollars (back when money wasn’t a problem.). I had no idea that the prices for such things had skyrocketed in the intervening decades. I sold the pages I had and that income enabled me to cover the remaining gap.

They’re presumably on better terms now than when they were arguing with one another in the Savage Dragon letters pages. While the arguments got petty at times (this article’s just over 3,000 words and there’s stuff in the letters pages that I didn’t get to), and some factual mistakes were made (at one point Larsen accused Peter David of ripping off the Terminator when he wrote a story about a comic book villain created before that movie), it was about meaningful questions of artistic integrity, the business decisions in publishing, and the significance of individual writers and artists. Despite how heated these arguments could get, when one of the men needed help, the other did the right thing. Just like the characters in their stories.