J. Michael Straczynski

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J. Michael Straczynski
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J. Michael Straczynski

Joseph Michael Straczynski (born July 17, 1954) is an award-winning American writer/producer of television series, novels, short stories, comic books, and radio dramas. He is also a playwright, journalist and author of a well-regarded tome on scriptwriting. He was the creator, executive producer and head writer for the science fiction TV series Babylon 5 and its spin-off Crusade. Straczynski wrote most of the Babylon 5 episodes, notably an unbroken 59-episode run including all of the third and fourth seasons.

He is also a participant in Usenet and other early computer networks, interacting with fans through various online forums (including GEnie, CompuServe, and America Online) since 1985.

Straczynski is a graduate of San Diego State University, having earned Bachelor's degrees in psychology and sociology (with minors in philosophy and literature). While at SDSU, he wrote prolifically for the student newspaper, at times penning so many articles that the paper was jokingly referred to as the "Daily Joe." Straczynski currently resides in the Los Angeles area.

Straczynski's professional name is J. Michael Straczynski, although informally he goes by "Joe". In print, and particularly on Usenet, he is often referred to by his initials JMS.

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[edit] Early years

Straczynski hails initially from Paterson, New Jersey, but has also lived in Newark, New Jersey; Kankakee, Illinois; Richland, Texas; Chula Vista, California, where he graduated high school; and San Diego, California.

According to the jacket bio for the first edition of his scriptwriting text (see Other work below), Straczynski had a play produced when he was 17, a sitcom produced when he was 21, and sold his first movie script when he was 24. By the age of 28, he had credits that included television and film scripts, radio scripts for Alien Worlds[1] and the Mutual Broadcasting System, a dozen plays, and more than 150 newspaper and magazine articles. He had also been teaching his craft for several years at various lectures and seminars in California and elsewhere.

He also spent five years co-hosting the Hour 25 radio talk show on KPFK-FM Los Angeles with Larry DiTillio.

[edit] Television, radio and film

Straczynski started in television in 1983, working on various animated shows, and he quickly worked his way from staff writer to executive producer, culminating in his most famous television work: Babylon 5 (which won back-to-back Hugo Awards). He wrote 91 out of Babylon 5's 110 episodes, as well as the pilot and five television movies. The character-driven space opera is also notable for its five year story arc, emphasis on realism, and its pioneering, extensive use of CGI for its special effects. Straczynski was also creator and executive producer of B5's aborted sequel series, Crusade, for which he wrote 10 of the 13 episodes.

Straczynski created Jeremiah, loosely based on the Belgian post-apocalyptic comic of the same name. He wrote 19 of the 35 episodes.

A partial list of Straczynski's other television credits:

Additionally, Straczynski was involved in She-Ra: Princess of Power, and Spiral Zone, from which he removed his name and used the pseudonym Fettes Grey (derived from the names of the grave robbers in The Body Snatcher). He also wrote an episode of CBS Story Break (an adaptation of Evelyn Sibley Lampman's The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek), as well as an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, where he was supervising producer at its inception.

Straczynski has also worked on television movies. Outside of the five Babylon 5 films, he wrote the award-winning adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, an attempted Captain Power spin-off pilot, Captain Power: The Beginning, and a Murder, She Wrote movie, Murder, She Wrote: A Story to Die For, which he also produced.

In 2006, he sold a feature film entitled Changeling to Imagine Entertainment (although the productions status of the project remains in flux[2][3]), and an original 20-part radio drama series entitled The Adventures of Apocalypse Al for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that debuted in September 2006.

On June 27, 2006, Variety reported that Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment have purchased the rights to Straczynski's thriller The Changeling. Variety named Imagine's co-founder, Ron Howard, as the potential director. More recently, it has emerged that Howard has chosen to direct another project instead,[2] although Straczynski claims that Howard will instead produce, with the task of direction falling to another "a-list director".[3]

In 2005, Straczynski began the process of publishing his Babylon 5 scripts.[citation needed]

[edit] Print

[edit] Novels, short stories and nonfiction

Straczynski is the author of three horror novels - Demon Night, Othersyde, and Tribulations - and nearly twenty short stories, many of which are collected in two compilations, Tales from the New Twilight Zone and Straczynski Unplugged. He wrote the outlines for nine of the canonical Babylon 5 novels, and is the author of four Babylon 5 short stories published in magazines and (as of 2005) not yet reprinted.

Straczynski has also been a journalist, reviewer and investigative reporter, publishing over 500 articles in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Writer's Digest, Penthouse, San Diego Magazine, Twilight Zone Magazine, the San Diego Reader, the Los Angeles Reader and Time.

Straczynski wrote The Complete Book of Scriptwriting (ISBN 1-85286-882-1), often used as a text in introductory screenwriting courses[citation needed], and now in its third edition.

[edit] Comic books

Straczynski has long been a comic aficionado, and during the 1980s wrote an issue of Teen Titans Spotlight, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek and Babylon 5 comics. In 1999 he started writing Rising Stars for Top Cow / Image Comics. Eventually he worked mostly under his own imprint, Joe's Comics, for which he also wrote the Midnight Nation miniseries, and the illustrated fantasy parable Delicate Creatures. Marvel Comics then signed him to an exclusive contract, beginning with a run on The Amazing Spider-Man. He has since written for titles including Fantastic Four.

Straczynski's work for Marvel includes:

[edit] Controversy

Straczynski's run on Amazing Spider-Man has included several controversial retcons, such as suggesting that Spider-Man's powers may be mystical/totemic instead of science-based.

Other notable stories include ASM #36 where Spider-Man comments on the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, ASM #38 where Aunt May learns about Peter's secret identity once and for all, and ASM #509-514, an extremely controversial story-arc. In it, Spider-Man deals with the memory and past actions of his dead girlfriend Gwen Stacy, including the discovery of her having given birth to Norman Osborn's children.

[edit] Graphic novels and collections

[edit] Supreme Power trade paperbacks

[edit] The Amazing Spider-Man trade paperbacks

  • Volume 1: Coming Home (#30-35)
  • Volume 2: Revelations (#36-39)
  • Volume 3: Until The Stars Turn Cold (#40-45)
  • Volume 4: The Life & Death of Spiders (#46-50)
  • Volume 5: Unintended Consequences (#51-56)
  • Volume 6: Happy Birthday (#57-58, #500-502)
  • Volume 7: The Book of Ezekiel (#503-508)
  • Volume 8: Sins Past (#509-514)
  • Volume 9: Skin Deep (#515-518)
  • Volume 10: New Avengers (#519-524)

[edit] Fantastic Four trade paperbacks

  • Volume 1: (#527-532)
  • Volume 2: The Life Fantastic (#533-535, Wedding Special, My Dinner With Doom and Death in the Family)

[edit] Rising Stars trade paperbacks

  • Volume 0: Visitations (#0, ½, Preview)
  • Volume 1: Born in Fire (#1-8)
  • Volume 2: Power (#9-16)
  • Volume 3: Fire and Ash (#17-24)

[edit] Other

[edit] Other work

[edit] Awards

He has received a good deal of recognition for his work, including a nomination for the Comics' Buyer's Guide Award for Favorite Writer in 2000.

His awards, numbering in the dozens[citation needed], include: two Hugo Awards, the Bradbury Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a Saturn Award, the E Pluribus Unum Award from the American Cinema Foundation, the Eisner Award, the Inkpot Award, and three technical Emmy Awards (for Babylon 5 itself).

[edit] Trivia

  • Straczynski coined a fictional food product called "spoo" . While most prevalent in the Babylon 5 universe, the term has been applied to foodstuffs in Straczynski's earlier works.
  • Straczynski appears in a cameo role as a technician in the final episode of Babylon 5, which he also directed. He is the technician who turns out the lights for the final time on the station.
  • In 2004, Straczynski was approached by Paramount Studios to become a producer of the Star Trek: Enterprise series. He declined, believing that he would not be allowed to take the show in the direction he felt it should go. He did write a treatment for a new Star Trek series with colleague Bryce Zabel, and there are persistent rumors that he might be asked to develop another Trek series in the future.[citation needed]
  • Straczynski was supposed to write a screenplay adaptation of the comicbook GrimJack, but the unavailability of the rights to the GrimJack character following First Comics' bankruptcy forced the project to be shelved indefinitely.[citation needed]

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Alien Worlds Radio Show Index. Accessed August 15, 2006.
  2. ^ a b Fernandez, Jay A. (2006-10-11). The big name gets distracted. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved on 2006-10-25.
  3. ^ a b Straczynski, J. Michael (2006-10-11). JMSNews. Synthetic Worlds. Retrieved on 2006-10-25.

[edit] References

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Howard Mackie		 Amazing Spider-Man writer
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Karl Kesel		 Fantastic Four writer
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