Greg responds...

LadyHawk. I LOVE this concept. I'm not as thrilled with the execution. It's been TOO long since I've seen it to go into detail, but I felt with that cast and those ideas it should have been a MUCH better movie. I actually tried to get Disney to option the rights to turn it into an animated film. But TPTB weren't interested. I do recall that the music is really dated and inappropriate to the subject matter.

Somewhere In Time. Which one is that? All those time titles melt together for me.

Dead Again. Is that the Branaugh/Thompson movie?

Dracula. The Coppola one?

Frequency. Didn't see it.

Raiders of the Lost Arc - Loved it.

Temple of Doom - Hated it.

Last Crusade - Hated it.

Scarface - Which one?

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Amazing film.

Greg responds...

Laura San Giacomo. Currently a regular on "Just Shoot Me".

Greg responds...

Not particularly.

Greg responds...

I'm not sure about "equal". That's subject to interpretation.

But Death, Nekron and the Black Racer all appeared in the same issue. And yes, I wrote it.

I love that it's called "infamous". I heard that Neil was pissed off about it. I feel NO GUILT. His own editor had the opportunity to comment on the script. Hell, she could have sent it to him for his comments. Had either she or he notified me with concerns, then of course I would have changed the script to address those concerns. But there was no comment until AFTER the thing was published. And then suddenly, I was "in trouble".

The one thing I do feel bad about is that Death was miscolored in the issue. But that was beyond my control. I never saw the color proofs.

Otherwise, I tried to be faithful, and even intentionally vague. Death never says what she is. Captain Atom guesses at her function and at her relationship to the other "death" figures (i.e. the Racer and Nekron). No one in the issue says that he guessed right. So even if what he said was completely off-base, there's still nothing in the issue that contradicts anything that was established about the Endless. At least not to my mind. One can always choose to believe that Captain Atom was simply wrong.

And if the problem is that she even appeared on the page with Nekron and the Racer, then I have no sympathy. Neil chose to set his characters in the DC Universe. He even absconded with Destiny. I have no problem with that. But it's a shared universe by definition. There were death concepts in it that pre-dated his.

Now, here's the thing. Neil and I have never met or spoken. I don't actually have any conflict with him, and I definitely don't want to generate one now. I'm a huge fan of Sandman. Heck, I don't know if he even remembers the issue at all. I don't know if he ever really had a problem with it. I just heard he did.

(So do I have a chip on my shoulder about it or what?)

Greg responds...

You're welcome.

Greg responds...

I used to live on Queen Florence Lane in Woodland Hills, California.

He was looking to gain power. Queen Florence Island was a place of power. He didn't want to share.

Greg responds...

Never heard of 'em.

It's kind of a long story, but in a nutshell here are a few factors as to why I gave up comics in 1996:

1) Many of the comics I was reading at the time ended their run. Love & Rockets. Sandman. Etc.

2) Other comics I was reading became UNREADABLE. Hulk springs to mind. It wasn't really Peter David's fault. But by that time Hulk was the only Marvel Universe Book I was still reading. Then the Marvel Universe split in two or something, and I couldn't make heads or tails out of Hulk anymore. DC's Universe wasn't that much better.

3) Comics I still wanted to collect, like Cerebus, were becoming hard to find. There was no longer a good comic shop near my office. I couldn't go every week like I used to. So I'd try to go once a month. I'd miss an issue and not know it for another month when the NEXT issue came out. By that time, finding that back issue became VERY difficult.

4) Because so many comics I used to love were gone or unreadable, I was down to collecting very few titles. Given that I collected so few and the logistical difficulties of getting to a decent store, I was no longer feeling the old, "Gotta get in there and by the next issue of everything" pressure. Half the time I did go, I no longer found ANYTHING that I wanted.

5) I didn't plan on quitting. I went to a store in November of 1996. Didn't get around to going again in December or January of 97. By February or so, I realized that I had gone a while without... and that I didn't MISS IT AT ALL. This was a shocking revelation to me. SHOCKING. I'd been addicted to comics for DECADES. I had a huge collection -- particularly huge since from 1985-1987, I got every issue of every comic being published (with very few exceptions) for FREE. (I was on staff at DC at the time, and the various publishers had a gentleman's agreement to provide each other with free copies). Once I found I didn't miss it, I decided to quit. Freed up a ton of time and money.

Greg responds...

Oberon clearly doesn't realize that she's a member.

Greg responds...

1. I don't think so. But maybe.

2. Yes.

Greg responds...

That's a risk. It's also one of the reasons I moved the setting from 2158 to 2198. I wanted to get far enough into the future that most everyone from the original would be dead no matter what.