Meh, maybe its a 'celebrity' author thing or something. I met Peter David a few years back. I had quite admired his work at the time and told him so- his response was something along the lines of "Yes yes well of course... I *am* good." The problem was he wasn't kidding and seemed very disinterested in being at the convention he was at. Then again we all have bad days so you never know.

On a side note I find it interesting and a bit heartening that several older comic creators have been brought back into the fold! When I last was reading comics (up to about '98) it seemed as if the punk artists had taken over (McFarlane, Liefield, etc) and instead of creating better comics it was all about splash pages and alternative covers, etc. I know that and more (speculation and so on) led to the crumble of the industry for awhile. Its a bit frightening though that, as I look through a current issue of Wizard, the 'hot' books are not so much story-driven ones but... *gasp*... alternate covers! Now the comics I've been picking up lately are entirely for the stories and to see what's been going on and I have no desire to 'collect' per se anymore (wallet won't allow it) but I hope that I didn't come back just in time for another useless speculation boom.