Peter David, 1956-2025

A few different fandoms were rocked over the weekend with news that prolific writer Peter David had passed away at the age of 68, after numerous years of health challenges. Of the many sites with the news, I'm linking to IGN almost at random.

Peter David's career is difficult for me to unpack, with work as a comic-book writer and a novelist that spans decades. On the comic side, I could probably compose extensive individual essays on his 12-year run on The Incredible Hulk that spanned the 1980s and 1990s, his reinvigoration of Aquaman and Supergirl in the 1990s, and his "all-different" approach to the X-Factor team for Marvel in the 1990s. He co-created Spider-Man 2099. I can think of several good, important projects I'm omitting here in the interest of brevity.

On the novel side, he wrote for both his own projects (I'm especially fond of Howling Mad, about a wolf who becomes human after being bitten by a werewolf) and many licensed properties; his Star Trek novels were particularly acclaimed. (I could go down another rabbit hole here as to which Star Trek novels are more interesting, and why . . .)

Oh, and – combining those two difficult-to-summarize paragraphs – he wrote one of my favorite Star Trek comic runs of all time as well. I encourage RPG gamers who want inspiration for how to have interesting, impactful, ongoing stories in a licensed universe with established characters to seek it out.

Speaking personally (and perhaps selfishly), this death hits me particularly hard. His 1980s run on Spectacular Spider-Man is one of the earliest comic books which made me appreciate that comics didn't just happen but were specifically written by individuals – which means that, if you like that creator, you can track them down for more works you'll probably enjoy.

Professionally, when I became editor of Pyramid magazine in 2000, one of the biggest panics I had to grapple with was, "How am I going to compose something interesting about games every week?!?" As I wrote in a 2003 article: "The tone and general approach of 'Random Thought Table' itself has been heavily influenced on Peter David's own weekly 'But I Digress' column" – referring here to his long-running feature in Comic Buyer's Guide. (If you own the Pyramid HTML archive, you'll find several other instances where I mention Peter David – although I always had this impostor-syndrome fear of "do I look like I'm trying to copy his homework without making it too obvious?" Even the title of my column, Random Thought Table, was something of a game-related homage to But I Digress.) Even now, the DNA of my casual-but-informative writing – such as my contributions to the Daily Illuminator – has been heavily forged by Peter David.

I got to meet Peter David at Dragon Con in the 2000s, where I tried to explain the above without sounding absolutely crazy. Barring a black-Sharpie convention-line sign, there's a balancing act in the calculus of "How many meaningful works can I get a creator to sign without ticking off others in line or looking like a psycho fan?" I'm sure I got the math wrong. Even attempting to limit myself to bringing works that I liked the most, I still had more than I was comfortable asking for signatures.

Still, he signed my copy of his collected But I Digress essays . . . and it means so much to me. But that covers just one world – not the many worlds in which Peter David dwelled.

That paragraph would normally have been my pithy, heartfelt conclusion. However, the reality of creative industries intersects poorly with simple aspirations of tribute. Thus, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the long-running GoFundMe that had been established to help provide for Peter David's medical needs in recent years, and which will no doubt be needed as final expenses are resolved by his family.

-- Steven Marsh