I found out earlier today that comic book legend Peter David died at the end of May.  (I don’t know how the news escaped me.)  He was 68 years old.  He passed away in East Patchogue, NY, which isn’t too far from my childhood home.

What a loss.  David was an amazing talent — his writing in the early 1990’s (especially Spider-Man 2099) was one of the things that made me truly love comics as a medium.

He was also an outstanding advocate for the freedoms of speech and press.  He wrote a truly enjoyable blog that I followed for years, where he occasionally focused on constitutional issues.  He broke them down with admirable ease and clarity.  (He had an instinctive grasp of concepts that doubtless contributed to his success as a writer.  I often thought that if he hadn’t decided to be a storyteller, he would have made a great attorney.)

Rest easy, Mr. David.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons