(Comics Retailing) Comics writer Peter David and his wife Kathleen are the proud parents of a new daughter, Carol -- congratulations all around. The baby was named after a former Marvel Vice President of New Product Development, the late Carol Kalish, who was also a dear friend of David's. The birth prompted him to reprint the eulogy he wrote some eleven years ago for the Comics Buyers Guide on the occasion of her tragic death at the age of 36; he concludes his introduction of the piece with this paragraph:
"And I'd like you all to do us a favor -- link heavily to this column. Right now on Google, the first thing that pops up when you search on 'Carol Kalish' is a screed by Gary Groth that is not the way she should be remembered, and I want that damn thing out of first place."
Gee, reading that, you'd think that evil bastard Groth had some pretty bad things to say about poor Ms. Kalish, wouldn't you? You would of course be thinking wrong. While Groth makes no pretense of despising what he saw as the work she performed -- selling cretinous junk to impressionable children -- he had nothing but nice things to say about her personally, and even noted her refreshing lack of euphemism when describing her in action as a businessperson. From the essay in question:
"She was, in an odd sort of way, forthright about the crassness of her employer's marketing methods. Once I witnessed a retailer timidly question Marvel's strategy of filling their comics with sex and violence; Kalish's reply, which was almost refreshingly free of the specious nod to morality to which less assured marketing tacticians would resort, was that little boys liked sex and violence and Marvel was in the business of selling comics to little boys. Hence and therefore."
So what's got Mr. David so persnickety? The actual subject of Groth's notorious essay, of course, which was not Carol Kalish so much as the Christ-like beatification she received after her death, from industry professionals who to judge by their writings were convinced that the late Marvel flack shit diamonds and pissed champagne. I remember the period well, and Groth's essay actually captured the tenor of the outpouring in pretty accurate fashion. From the same essay:
"Collectively, the letters in CBG praising Kalish offer a glimpse into the popular mind, its worship of managerial competence disconnected from moral direction, its need to inflate professional skill into private virtue, its unfortunate tendency to turn bonafide personal devastation into bathos, its compulsion to jump on a bandwagon regardless of relevance or appropriateness.
"Most of the letters are embarrassingly insubstantial, the anecdotes trite, the praise hollow and generic: for her 'business savvy and drive,' her 'enthusiasm, her generosity, and her good humor,' her 'wonderful balance of idealism and pragmatism,' her 'wit and grace,' and so forth. Peter David, for example, devoted an entire column to her that read more like a trailer to a Neil Simon comedy than a heartfelt reminiscence. (Compare it to Bhob Stewart's magisterial and moving recollections of Wally Wood in Comics Journal #70). He was so stunned by the death of his friend that he was, he tells us solemnly, unable to write more than one page of X-Factor that week, which is a ludicrous way to convey one's grief, however accurate. It isn't the sincerity one questions, just the ability to convey it with eloquence or dignity."
By all means, do read both essays; they make for an interesting contrast in any number of dichotomies at play within the comics industry, both then and now. Just don't be suckered into thinking Peter David wants Darth Groth's damnable screed knocked out of the top of the Google rankings for the awful, awful things it says about Ms. Kalish -- the truth is a little closer to home than that...
Update, 8:45 AM - Talk about your cock-ups. Laura (this one, I think) hit me with a rather cross email, noting that the post on Peter David's website that started this whole jerimiad was posted not by David by by his webmaster, one Glenn Hauman. While this doesn't completely invalidate this entry, it does make that last paragraph completely unfair to Mr. David, to whom apologies are duly proffered.
