Becoming Superman is both a gruesome and mundane portrait of the creator of Babylon 5
Aux Features Book Review
You likely know the work, though you might not know the name: J. Michael Straczynski. A writer for hire in the truest sense, Straczynski, or Joe to his friends and JMS to his fans, can seemingly write anything. Maybe you grew up on his cartoons he scripted: He-Man, She-Ra, The Real Ghostbusters. Or the television shows he created: Babylon 5, all its spinoff sequels and movies, and, more recently, Sense8. Or the films: Changeling, Thor, World War Z, Ninja Assassin. And the comics—over 13 million issues sold—for Marvel (including his instantly legendary response to 9/11 in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man), DC (most notably the Superman: Earth One series), and his own Joe’s Comics line.
With so many projects and publications floating out there in the multiverse—including novels, short fiction, and blog posts—it’s difficult to pinpoint a Straczynski style. In Becoming Superman, he adds another title to his rambling oeuvre: memoirist. Here, in the book’s second half, he details the ins and outs, pitch meetings, rejections, and successes of the writerly life, or, as the subtitle states, his Journey From Poverty To Hollywood. None of which makes for particularly interesting storytelling, unless you’ve been itching to know why he abandoned a co-producing gig on the formulaic crime drama Murder, She Wrote after two seasons.
But then there’s the first 200 or so pages, a gruesome portrait of this Average Joe artist as a young man. Here, Straczynski’s memoir more than lives up to the promises of its sub-subtitle: “With Stops Along The Way At Murder, Madness, Mayhem, Movie Stars, Cults, Slums, Sociopaths, And War Crimes.” Even Angela Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher couldn’t dream up a family saga this violent, this ghastly, a litany of traumas he endured: incest, rape, physical, verbal, and emotional abuse.
Most of this misery was doled out by his father, the ne plus ultra of bad dads. Charles Straczynski was a Nazi Youth who never spiritually left the party. A likely war criminal who took part in the massacre of the Jewish community at Vishnevo, Ukraine. And a man who forces his son to wear his old Nazi uniform, murders his pet cats, and shreds the comic book collection that provided little Joe with solace and, to paraphrase his favorite childhood superhero, a sense of truth, justice, and a better way out of the situation he was born into.
If there’s a Straczynski style it might be located here, in his idealization of that Kryptonian-turned-American torchbearer of light and hope and peace. Joe never saves the world à la Superman, but pulls through with a heart, spine, and soul of steel. If only that were enough to recommend Becoming Superman, a read suitable for Straczynski superfans only, wherever in this marvelous multiverse they may be.
108 Comments
Yeah, JMS should be doing a Sci-Fi and Superhero Masterclass series.I’d pay $100 for that, and I still haven’t finished Herzog’s!
Herzog has a Superhero Masterclass series!? Where tf do I sign up!?
How are those Masterclass videos? I have seen some advertised and the cost pushes me away
The price is worth it solely for Scorcese and Herzog.
Have you watched the Gaiman class?
Nah, but David Lynch’s Masterclass is worth it too.
If there’s a Straczynski style it might be located here, in his idealization of that Kryptonite-turned-American torchbearer of light and hope and peace.Shouldn’t that be Kryptonian-turned-american? Kal-El isn’t a radioactive green rock…
You’re absolutely right; it’s been fixed.
“Kal-El isn’t a radioactive green rock…” But how do we know for sure?! RELEASE THE SNYDER CUT
I have to admit, from the sounds of the first two hundred pages I don’t think I can find it in me to begrudge Joe wanting to spend the last hundred talking about Murder, She Wrote.
The latter half of everything JMS writes is always a letdown, so, y’know, no surprise there.
Babylon 5 season 4 would like a word with you. (And while I’m willing to give you the first half of S5, the second half is OK to great and the show sticks the landing.)
That landing, man… that landing.
To be fair JMS didn’t know if B5 was getting a fifth season until the last minute. The episode where Sheridan was tortured by Earth was supposed to be the fourth season finale and his rescue the fifth season premiere. It’s why the second half of season four feels so rushed and the fifth season so meh.
According to JMS, he had his entire Season 5 notes accidentally tossed by the cleaning crew in the hotel he was staying at during a con a bit before shooting was to start. Moreover, the entire Byron arc of the first half was to be centered around Ivanova, only Claudia Christian bailed on him last minute. He had to transplant the entire arc whole cloth onto Lyta Alexander, who wasn’t really a good fit. It’s a wonder it wasn’t worse than it was.
Claudia Christian didn’t bail at the last minute, she was fired. She asked for some time off to make a movie, and the studio terminated her contract instead.She was a guest at Toronto Trek the weekend it happened, so I heard her side of the story first-hand and raw; there was no time for her to spin it. I don’t think Straczynski was involved in the firing, but I do believe she got shafted.
According to him, she wanted a reduced number of episodes, which he had no problem with, but the same pay, which effectively meant a per-episode raise and would require renegotiating with the rest of the cast members who had already signed their contracts. I guess one person’s fired is another person’s quit, depending on your POV.
Ultimately, it’s a he-said, she-said…
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/misc/cc-leave.html
Moreover, the entire Byron arc of the first half was to be centered around Ivanova, only Claudia Christian bailed on him last minute. He had to transplant the entire arc whole cloth onto Lyta Alexander, who wasn’t really a good fit. It’s a wonder it wasn’t worse than it wasLyta wasn’t the problem with the Byron arc, the problem was Byron.
Well, JMS also had all of his S5 notes tossed during a con he was attending, so had to start over. Having said that, Byron still sucked.
When something worked on B5, JMS is a TV genius. When it didn’t work, he’s the victim of outside circumstances.
checks
Nope, never said that. He wrote some clunkers and his comedy was often painful, but you’re welcome to try to both write and produce a TV show and let me know how it goes.
Ah, the old “if you’re not a creator, you can’t criticize” canard. Nope. Can’t write and produce my own TV show, but I can still point out where B5 sucked (and where it was great). In fact, maybe trying to write nearly every episode of the show from mid-s2 onward was precisely the problem. Again, not having done this myself, seems like if you had collaborators then losing one set of notes wouldn’t be such a problem.However, my comment was directed less to you personally than to the thread (and to discussions of JMS and B5 in general): He didn’t know he was getting a fifth season. Claudia Christian quit. Someone tossed his notes. There are a whole bunch of external excuses, and these come up every time we discuss B5. But maybe, despite all his vaunted trap doors and doublings, JMS’ plan for B5 was just too rigid. I mean, I love how all of the foreshadowing in S1 pays off down the line. But it seems like maybe B5 could have done with a little of the ol’ DS9 “plot jazz” (and a fucking writers’ room).
Well, for all its warts, B5 was JMS’ baby and he felt (rightly or wrongly) it was his story to tell. I liked DS9 well enough, but there’s something to be said for writing by committee and we won’t even get into “Lost” and any other number of serial dramas that are making shit up as they go in that writer’s room.Regardless, I wasn’t excusing it, merely explaining it I thought the first half of S5 was bad and he has to own it. All of us have been adversely affected by external events, yet we still take responsibility and he’s no different.
Has he ever properly explained why he bailed on the Squadron Supreme comic series? Because I never bought another comic of his after that. The fact that he just dropped the series mid story without any kind of chapter/volume end was a real f*** you to the readers.
Now that I’ve got my pedantry out of the way. I’m disappointed that this doesn’t seem to live up to its promise. I’ve been interested in JMS since I was reading his Usenet posts as Babylon 5 was airing.I feel like his wildly varying oeuvre makes him a fascinating individual, though I’ve never been a fan of his comics work, though I’ve only read his SC stff, and not the Spider-Man things he and Joe Quesada are kind of infamous for…
The first half of his Spider-Man run (Up to Sins Past or so) is great.
With obvious exception of OMD, his run on Spider-Man is the best Spider-Man I have ever read…and boy have I read a lot.
I’m more of a DC guy, so the only Spider-Man comics run I’ve read is really the current Life Story mini series by Chip Zdarsky. (I’m also back-ordering Zdarsky’s Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man run in trades)
You need to read more Spideys, then, because JMS’ run is ghastly. Totems and sewage monsters and, grossest of all, those Osborn love-children.
And his Superman tenure was even worse.
I like to consider the Stacy Twins to be clones of Gwen that were genetically modified with Goblin Serum. It’d explain the rapid aging since Warren’s clone stuck suffered from similar symptoms and Osborn hired Warren to fuck with Peter’s head during the Second Clone Saga.
Oh
Seconded. Then at the arc you mention it drives off the biggest goddamn cliff in the universe.
I found that with a lot of his comics stuff. Rising Stars also starts off really well, as does his Superman. They all just kind of tail off after the while.
Up to and including sins past? Lol, isn’t that the one where Norman Osborn was retconned to have raped Gwen Stacy and impregnated her, and then sent her away to have the children randomly between two issues of the 60s comic run. Also JMS’s Spider-Man run gave us Eziekel and the whole spider spirituality bullshit. His stories during that run stank, frankly from beginning to end. I think it was his characturization of Spider-Man that was spot on and endures. He has a lot to do with solidifying what makes an adult Spider-Man work. He had a good voice to his writing, he just wrote shit plots.
I haven’t been a big fan of the comics of his I’ve read, but he does have quite the resume. He wrote a Real Ghostbusters episode about a guy who gets dumped and tries to bring about Ragnarok, I first saw it 30 years ago and was haunted by it — revisiting it recently, it still holds up quite well, lots of ominous dread and pain, the Ghostbusters themselves are sort of side characters.
The Janine episode he returned to pen and try to fix the character..
holy shit, i think i remember that one! the guy with the flute?
That’s the one!
I like the concepts of Rising Stars and Midnight Nation, or at least thing they sound cool. But I haven’t tried them out yet.
Rising stars is interesting. I was reading it when it was coming out. It ran into huge delays in the back third which made it tough to stay engaged in. It’s also very much a product of its time. Some of the character outfits and costumes are verrrrry late 90s/early 00s in a bad way. Look, girl with low slung cargo pants and thong rising above! Went back and read it in trade awhile ago. It was enjoyable. It starts off strong, falters in the middle, and has an interesting ending. I don’t love the art (even though I generally like the same artist’s work on astro city — Anderson?). It doesn’t quite live up to the potential of its premise, but it’s worth a read. It’s less than thirty issues iirc.
Straczynski’s straight down the middle as a writer. Sometimes great, sometimes unbearably overwrought and clunky, usually neither.Judging by his conversations with fans in public spaces online, he’s also the exact sort of guy who’d fill pages with the minutiae of his version of some piddling conversation behind the scenes of some show he was on years and years ago, or the version of it he remembers now, anyway, so this book as described here certainly seems like his style.“Straczynski superfans… wherever… they may be” is about right. I’ve known fans of “Babylon 5”, but never diehard fans of Straczynski as a specific talent.
I’m a Straczynski fan, even if I’m well aware of his faults. I credit three writers with proving to me that a writer can be a celebrity, and that writing would be what I wanted to do with my life. Those were Joss Whedon, J Michael Straczynski and Kevin Smith. I am a super fan of all three of them.And at least Straczynski and Smith didn’t ruin justice league.
♫ Who’s the leader of the gang, that’s great for you and me?
S-T-R-A-C-Z-Y-N-S-K-I ! ♫
On the one hand, “you and I” is incorrect grammar and would rhyme “I” with
“I.” But on the other, it’s a better rhyme than “me” an “I.” Maybe “Who’s the leader of the gang, and just a stand-up guy?”?This has been “a stranger gives notes on your fun rhyme” with me, a stranger.
“You are technically correct. The best kind of correct.”
“Here, in the book’s second half, he details the ins and outs, pitch meetings, rejections, and successes of the writerly life, or, as the subtitle states, his Journey From Poverty To Hollywood.” – I know I will find that interesting – guessing less humorous than Tom Lennon and Ben Garant’s book about becoming a/instructing how to be a successful screenwriter, but a look into a world most people aren’t and will not be a part of, no?Also, viewing all Those ‘more mundane’ stories through the lens of someone who has dealt with the first 200 pages… But maybe it doesn’t land! Hoping it does
“a read suitable for Straczynski superfans only”Okay, that’s me.
You’d think JMS wouldn’t want people remembering his relationship with Superman considering how his run on the book started with Supes basically leaving a kid to die at the hands of drug dealers because “Over there has to stand up for itself.”.
I know it’s not fair to take a panel out of context, but this reads like the epitome of pseudo-intellectual horse shit. I see that he did that walkabout nonsense as well.No wonder so many readers have given up on Superman.
To be fair, the walkabout in B5 works a bit better because the character admitted to himself it was selfish to just leave his post in the middle of a war when everyone is dying.
The account you’re replying to is pretty much all just comments that post panels and pages out of context that semi-kind-of-relate to the topic of stories on this site. The readings provided are surface-level trivia, often inaccurate.It’s weird and bad IMO, but it does give a good impression of what a lot of comic book fans on the Internet are like.
I know it’s not fair to take a panel out of context, but this reads like the epitome of pseudo-intellectual horse shit.Pseudo-intellectual horse shit? In a JMS joint? Perish the thought!
I’d rather read about his time on Murder, She Wrote or what it was like writing almost every episode of Babylon 5. That’s more interesting to me.
That 9/11 Spiderman issue sure was…something. I mean, a lot of Marvel heroes are based out of New York, so it made sense to address it in the comics. Me and my friends always figured the (in)famous panel of Dr. Doom shedding a tear wasn’t because of the tragedy of the WTC building going down……but rather because the Baxter building was still standing.
RICHARRRRRRRDS
God this comic was terrible. I know they had to acknowledge 9/11 but really, Doctor Doom weeping over some civilians? They should have kept it to some heroes. Maybe Kingpin. This was pure cheese.
The only comic treatment of 9/11 that I really felt was worth anything, and not transparent pandering, was Brian K. Vaughan’s.Don’t call me that. If I were a hero…
Man, that first Ex Machina Final Panel reveal was something else. That book started off so strong and ended so weak. Just rushed and unearned at the end.
Almost twenty years on it’s hard to remember what a shock this was for people. At the time it felt to a lot of Americans like the greatest tragedy in world history. In the MCU 3,000 dead is basically just Ultron getting loose again.
If you haven’t had a chance to read Rising Stars, I highly recommend it.
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How AVClub picks its targets is a mystery known only to the treasurer and God(Satan?) But writing a negative review of a life because it’s both too boring and too sad is just too sad, too obviously about a commitment to shitting on the official enemies. Pick one criticism, half too lurid or half too dull, then say it ruins the book. Or just admit you don’t like life in your reading because it doesn’t have a sufficiently satisfying dramatic arc.
Yeah, this felt unnecessarily mean-spirited and kind of perfunctory? Like I’m not even sure the reviewer finished the book.
Another incoherent rant from the guy who can’t tell black people apart.
It’s not a review of a life, but a review of a book.
I always forget that he was so heavily involved with Sense8, since it seems so specifically the product of Lana Wachowski’s own life and obsessions. But he cowrote everything apparently and was a strong creative voice on it. Maybe he was responsible for the plot elements that made sense?
I loved Sense8, but I can’t remember any plot elements that made sense.
Well, touché
You know, the thing is… JMS has had one single qualified success : Babylon 5. Everything else he has done has either been a failure (The many B5 followups, for example) or been only a partial success (His comic book writing and Sense8). I am not sure he ranks high enough to bother with a book. I liked Babylon 5 as much as the next person but he doesn’t have a long track record of wild success artistically or commercially.
I preferred B5’s failed spin-offs to any of Stargate SG-1’s.
All I have to say is… “Legend of the rangers” – in which people karate fought spaceship battles.
I’m not saying Legend of the Rangers wasn’t shitty. But I do think the volume of good stuff he wrote far outweighs the bad.
You’re a mentalist, my friend.
I get the impression he’s had a rather Frank Herbert-like career, in that he’s written plenty of things and isn’t exactly a one-hit wonder, but he’s still mostly known for just one thing.
He’s written many things but, truth be told, knowing about those many things doesn’t help him all that much.
And, hey, I like “Babylon 5”, but by the end of the series, it’s pretty much the definition of “success, qualified”.
B5 was great. I make no bones about that. But I also have to say – it had clunker parts to it and those clunker parts made up about half the running time of the show. It’s just that the parts that worked, worked so well that they made up for the parts that… didn’t work.
I’ve noticed that when a show sets up a good myth arc but doesn’t stick the landing it frequently causes people to forget about all the good things about the show. I think B5 is kinda the opposite of that in that its well-executed storylines made people forget about the weaker points of the show.
Honestly, continuing to write in Hollywood at all for as long as he has is a success. In an industry where you never tell anyone your age and they’re always looking for the next new thing, anyone with a long list of credits didn’t get it by accident, even if they weren’t often the showrunner.
Babylon 5 is probably the most interesting scifi-show of the nineties, reacting to Star Trek, anticipating future trends in tv, and being so obviously a compromise between unbridled ambition and very low budget. The mistake is to presume its qualities are all down to JMS, a mistake JMS encouraged.
Most of his career is the work of someone writing to make a living, and I’ve always been glad to see his name on things, even if I have no interest in it.
But B5 is an iconic show that he can be proud of, there’s nothing like it.
What do you think of DS9?
I love DS9, and it’s a much better made show than B5. But it’s also a lot less strange than B5, Star Trek in the nineties was a bit more of a generic, corporate production. Babylon 5 was like a homemade amateur circus compared to Deep Space 9, but you have to admire its ambition, and its weirdness.
My counterpoint to that (and the Star Trek universe) is while I like ST, B5 was far more realistic. Not only did the staff have to worry about a budget and resources, but B5 actually brought up a point about rebellions – who is gonna fund this noble struggle anyway? It also showed us the reality of down below – I am sure is a more real universe, DS9 had a down below and poor people, but they did not seem to count much to the creators. And decisions in B5 had consequences far more than they did in DS9. But then again, DS9 was to B5 like Family Guy was to the Simpsons. Sure, B5 had some weak points – but I think the strong points outweighed them to a great degree.And yes, I would be one of those JMS superfans.
Oh, absolutely. B5’s universe was worked out far more than Star Trek’s,
and its politics are more relevant than most of DS9 ever was (the Bell riots two-parter being an exception).
Babylon 5 sometimes suffered from its low budget, but on the other hand it also forced them to be more creative. I also think that without its weak points the show would have been less itself. The bad jokes, the portentousness, they all add to the larger whole. Never has a show been greater than its parts than B5.
I rewatch my dvds once a year or so, and it is eerie that no matter what year it is, B5 seems very relavant. Xenophobia, news manipulation, government propaganda – always fits something going on in the world.
It’s a bit harsh to compare DS9 to Family Guy. Other than that, your point makes sense. I’d still take DS9 over B5 though. The acting and directing was pretty stellar for a 90s Trek show.
I meant more that the idea for DS9 looks suspiciously like a pitch to WB from JMS before – DS9 is a fine show, probably my favorite of the STs. But ST always seems like a fantasy future where only captains and legends matter. What I liked about B5 is how it subverted that idea. Sheridan and Gkar become legends and it is an uneasy cloak for either to wear.
Ambition, sure, but I don’t see what’s so “weird” about B5.
Well I mean, he did write over a Hundred of the 120 odd episodes. Like that is literally unheard of in television history.
You’re wrong. You forgot about Jeremiah, starring Luke perry and Sean Astin. You forget that he was one of the most influential amazing Spider-Man comic writers of the 90s, if not the most. And he taught me how to scriptwrite with a guide to screenwriting, and even then it was obvious he oozed with experience and wisdom and that book is old as fuck now.Especially considering the trauma this man has endured, to which I knew nothing about, leave the damn guy alone! Talk about kicking a guy while he’s down and grew up in serious nazi abuse. Also, I dunno if you know this, but he wrote over a hundred of Babylon 5s 120 episodes. Personally. That’s unheard of in television.
1. In case you didnt bother to read my post, I did mention Babylon 5. A couple times.2. I didn’t forget Jeremiah. I was being polite by allowing that particular work to be forgotten.
I have access to an advance copy and have skimmed through most of the book. It reads as oddly slack and insubstantial. The stuff about writing for “Murder She Wrote”, the “Twilight Zone” remake and even “Jake and the Fat Man” is surprisingly the most interesting. The “Babylon 5″ section is disappointingly compacted and omits some of the more interesting aspects of the show’s creation such as how much it actually deviated from the original premise and why. There is also too much about the instantly forgotten “Changeling”.There is an awful lot of grim navel gazing, especially about his dad and the decline of his marriage (although the stuff about his dad is crazy). I would also echo the comment that the man’s career doesn’t really warrant an autobiography. Definitely only for the most hardcore fan.
Shades of the abusive childhood that Darrell Hammond wrote about in his reviewed autobiography.
Who can forget his work on the 80’s revival of Twilight Zone?
Not sure if you’re kidding here, but it was seriously some good shit. Bruce Willis did an adaptation of Harlan Ellison’s “Shatterday” that was magnificent, and there was a version of Richard Matheson’s “Button, Button” that was better than the original short story. It’s highly underrated, mostly because everyone shits on reboots and only remembers the dozen or so fantastic episodes of the original series and not the endless forgettable “he was dead/a marooned astronaut/a dead marooned astronaut” stories.
DEAD serious comment. I’m constantly amazed when I watch an episode (I own the DVD set) and see his name in the credits. Dude had a hand in all sorts of classics.
I always thought the reboot was quite good, and felt like it had aged and updated well. Especially the one where the woman can stop time by shouting – that was the perfect TZ episode for the 80s.
Wow, big fan of JMS but never knew his home life was so fucked up. It surprises me because a lot of writers who come from such twisted home lives (and many whos “twisted” home lives are really just normal suburban teen angst) tend to write a lot darker works. JMS can write a dark story but a lot of his works are hopeful and optimistic in a lot of ways.
I haven’t watched Sense8 yet, I didn’t know JMS was involved. Been meaning to watch it and was getting closer to it (meaning, running out of other things to watch before it) but now I’m more interested.I didn’t know anything about his life, that sounds like a hell of a bio.
I watched purely out of an innate interest in anything JMS is involved in.It’s meandering nonsense for the most part with only one or two out of the 8 main characters being halfway close to compelling.Some of them are completely indefinable, some of them are only definable using stereotype.It is a very disappointing show.
I do appreciate how the son of a Nazi Youth chose to admire a superhero created by two Jews.
Not only that, I always liked the way he handled religion in B5. One of the main characters is a Russian Jew, and he handles her faith in a very sensitive way. I did not know about that aspect of JMS’s childhood, so yeah, he went completely opposite of his father.
So, how many of the ~400 pages reference Captain Power (and the Soldiers of the Future)?I already know the answer is “not enough,” but I have to ask anyway.
I love Straczynski, he has a book called a guide to screenwriting that taught me everything I need to know about writing a script.
In Becoming Superman, he adds another title to his rambling oeuvre: memoirist.After reading several comics by Straczynski, I can confidently say he’s always been a memoirist. He’s just a little more subtle in those. Somehow, he even foretells the future in a couple of them. Check it out: https://gutternaut.net/2019/07/j-michael-straczynski-reacquainting-with-humanity/
it’s difficult to pinpoint a Straczynski style.It’s not difficult. It’s not difficult at all. [cue ominous music; cut to credits]