Judd Winick

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Judd Winick at Midtown Comics East in New York City, June 24, 2004.
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Judd Winick at Midtown Comics East in New York City, June 24, 2004.

Judd Winick (born February 12, 1970 on Long Island, New York) is a American comic book and comic strip writer/artist famous for his 1994 stint on MTV's The Real World: San Francisco, as well for his work on such comic books as Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Pedro and Me, his autobiographical graphic novel about his friendship with Real World castmate and AIDS educator Pedro Zamora. In 2001, Winick married his Real World co-star Pam Ling. They had been living as a couple since 1994, and had a baby in May of 2005.

Contents

[edit] Early Life and Career

Winick and his older brother, Orin, were raised in a middle-class family by liberal, “atypical parents” (his father, an insurance broker, and his mother, a homemaker) that Winick felt placed their sons’ happiness above their own. Despite this, Winick was unhappy as a young child, mostly because he found school boring and difficult. He found solace in drawing, a pastime he enjoyed for as long as he could remember, because it set him apart and made him noticed. He continued his artistic interests throughout his school years, drawing, painting, and acting in school plays. He also maintained good grades and participated in soccer, track, and the student council. Winick began cartooning professionally at 16 when his single-panel strip, Nuts & Bolts, was picked up by Anton Publications, a newspaper publisher that produced town papers in the Tri-state area. The strip ran weekly, and Winick was paid $10 a week.

A seminal event that helped shape Winick’s liberal social views occurred during his third year of high school when a liberal social studies teacher that Winick admired, Lou Marrett, announced, by writing on the blackboard, the message, “I AM GAY.” The students were surprised and confused, having thought that Marrett was happily married, but Marrett explained that his wife was a beard, or a cover for his homosexuality. Marrett made this announcement because he wanted to provoke his students into thinking about and asking challenging questions about its implications, such as whether the boys in the class were worried about him making a pass, whether the girls were similarly nervous before he made his “announcement,” whether they thought he should be allowed to teach, etc. Marrett revealed at the end of the class that he wasn’t really gay, and that he only made this announcement as a thought experiment, which Winick says got him thinking about confronting important questions from different points of view.

Winick graduated from high school in 1988 and entered the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor’s School of Art, intending to emulate his cartoonist heroes Garry Trudeau and Berke Breathed. His comic strip, Nuts and Bolts, began running in the school’s newspaper, the Michigan Daily, in his freshman year, and he was selected to speak at graduation. UM also published a small print-run of a collection of his strips called Watching the Spin-Cycle: The Nuts & Bolts Collection. In his senior year, Universal Press Syndicate, which syndicates strips such as Cathy, Doonesbury, The Far Side, and Calvin & Hobbes, offered Winick a development contract. In early 1993 Winick lived in a tiny apartment in Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts, with his roommate, fellow writer Brad Meltzer, struggling to develop Nuts and Bolts for UPS while working at a bookstore, but in early June that year, UPS decided not to renew Winick’s strip for syndication, feeling it could not compete in the current market. Unable to convince other syndicates to pick up the strip, Winick, was forced to move back in with his parents in July, doing unfulfilling T-shirt work for beer companies. Judd also had Nuts & Bolts in development with the children’s television network Nickelodeon as an animated series, even turning the human characters into mice, and proposing new titles like Young Urban Mice and Rat Race, but nothing came of it.

[edit] Experiences with The Real World

In August, Winick saw an advertisement on MTV for the next season of that network’s reality tv show, The Real World, which would take place in San Francisco, and decided to apply, hoping for fame and a career boost. After passing through the first three levels of the casting process, the producers of the show, having approximately 40 candidates left, conducted an in-person, videotaped interview with Winick in November 1993, asking him a number of personal questions, including how’d he feel about living with someone who was HIV positive. Taken aback, Winick gave what he thought was an enthusiastic, politically correct answer, but inwardly had his reservations, and having never met anyone HIV-positive, pondered his own discomfort, in light of his supposed liberal leanings. Winick was contacted in January 1994 with the news that he was accepted as a cast member on the show. While he assumed the earlier question about an HIV roommate was merely hypothetical, the producers revealed to him that one of his roommates would indeed be HIV-positive, though they did not reveal to him or any of the other castmates which one.

Winick and his six castmates moved into the loft at 953 Lombard Street[1] on Russian Hill on February 12, 1994. Succumbing to stereotypes, Winick thought that castmate David “Puck” Rainey was the one with HIV, since he had scabs on his body that Winick thought may have been Kaposi's sarcoma lesions, which are often associated with AIDS sufferers, but these were simply the results of numerous accidents that Puck, an avid bicycler, suffered. Winick quickly bonded with third-year medical student Pam Ling, and with Pedro Zamora, who became his roommate and best friend. When Winick and Zamora first moved into their room, Winick asked him what his occupation was, and found out the truth when Zamora said that he was an AIDS educator. Winick realized, after knowing Zamora for only two hours, that he liked Zamora, and that his earlier reservations about living with someone HIV-positive had instantly evaporated. Because of some lingering reservations about sharing a room with someone HIV-positive that Zamora may have sensed, Zamora educated Winick on ways in which the virus could and could not be transmitted, and did so subtly, via casual conversation, so that Winick didn’t even realize it. Winick observed how Zamora’s HIV status and his life as an educator was a part of his life, watching his lectures and appearances on shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show. After Winick informed his parents of his roommate’s condition by telling them to watch the show, Zamora was the first person Winick’s father wanted to meet when he came to San Francisco to visit.

Winick also became close to Ling, with whom he would talk when she came home late at night from her shifts at the hospital, and as the weeks went on, Winick, Ling and Zamora became inseparable, with Winick and Ling often attending his lectures as schools in the Bay Area, which allowed Winick to learn more about HIV and AIDS. Castmate Cory Murphy joined the trio about halfway through their stay in the loft, often joining them on outings. Winick found himself falling in love with Ling as well. Often finding her asleep while sitting up in bed with books across her lap and a pen in her hand, Winick would often put her things away, turn off the light and pull her covers over her. The other castmates sensed Judd’s feelings for her when Winick put on a mock episode of This is Your Life for Pam’s birthday, dressing himself in a tuxedo as the host, and having each of her other castmates enter to greet Pam, as occurred on that show, with the final surprise guest being her then-boyfriend, whom Pam did not know would be there. Though the other castmates realized from Winick’s expression when Pam and her boyfriend were reunited that he had feelings for her, this point would not be mentioned on air until a reunion show featuring the first four Real World casts the following year.

Winick’s Nuts and Bolts began running in the San Francisco Examiner in March of that year. His roommates were so proud that Zamora gave the cash-strapped Winick ten dollars to buy a stack of the first issue in which the strip appeared.

Winick did not get along with castmate Puck Rainey. Despite initially thinking, as most of the castmates did, that he was a fun and interesting person, Rainey eventually alienated each of his housemates, including Winick. At one point Rainey received a T-shirt that featured four guns arranged in a swastika on the back. Puck denied that it was a swastika, claiming it was an Indian symbol (in fact, the swastika did originate among Hindus, Jainists and Native Americans before it was adopted by the Nazis). Nonetheless, Winick, a Jew, asked him not to wear it, but Puck refused, which Winick considered a betrayal of trust.

Zamora did not get along with Rainey from the start. In addition to Rainey’s poor hygiene, his insistence on controlling conversations, and his refusal to compromise on household issues, he was particularly abusive towards Zamora, mocking his Cuban accent, and denigrating his career as an educator. Winick has described Rainey as “obnoxious” and “homophobic”, and Zamora, realizing that the stress of his confrontations with Rainey was contributing to his deteriorating health, threatened to move out. Winick, Ling, Murphy, and their other two castmates, Rachel Campos and Mohammed Bilal, voted Rainey out of the loft. Zamora’s health continued to deteriorate, however, as he suffered night sweats, Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia, and weight loss, and slept more and more. He soon recovered, but Winick and Ling grew more worried about him as a result, often covering up for him during their weekly “confessional” interviews with the producers by telling them that he was doing fine when they knew otherwise.

Winick observed Zamora as he fell in love with Sean Sasser, a fellow AIDS educator whom Zamora had met yet years prior, and whom Zamora had begun dating upon arriving in San Francisco. Sasser proposed to Zamora, and the two exchanged vows in a commitment ceremony in the loft.

The cast moved out on June 19, 1994, and the first episodes of The Real World San Francisco began airing a week later. Zamora would visit his family in Miami before returning to San Francisco to live with Sasser, and Winick would move to Los Angeles. When Winick, Zamora, Murphy and Ling met again that August for a reunion party, Zamora looked haggard, and suffered headaches. Whereas Zamora had previously been talkative, he was often silent for long periods, found it difficult to follow conversations or remember locations of places he had known for years. Though he claimed to Winick that he was simply tired, Winick suspected he was very ill. Zamora went to New York City for a scheduled interview on CBS This Morning but cancelled. His contacts at MTV convinced him to see a doctor, but when he arrived at the MTV offices he didn’t know where he was. Zamora was diagnosed with toxoplasmosis, which causes brain lesions, resulting in fatigue, headaches and confusion. Winick flew to New York, where Zamora, scheduled for a national AIDS education lecture, asked Winick to substitute for him. While medication alleviated the toxoplasmosis, further tests revealed he had Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), a rare and usually fatal viral inflammation of the brain that breaks down the electrical impulses of the nervous system. Zamora was given three to four months to live.

Pam Ling went to see Zamora after getting the news, and realized upon reuniting with Judd that she was in love with him. Their feelings deepened in the coming months as they spent time with the bedridden Zamora. After recovering from a biopsy, Zamora was flown to Miami to be with his family, with Judd joining him, and continuing to lecture for him. The PML slowly took away Zamora’s ability to speak, though during Judd’s subsequent visit to Miami that September, then-President Bill Clinton called Pedro to thank him for his work, with Winick and Pedro’s friend Alex Escarno listening in, and Pedro, elated at the call, was able to respond. A few weeks later, Winick was speaking at the University of Michigan when Pam called him to tell him that Pedro did not have much time left. Winick went to Miami to be with Pedro. Surrounded by Winick, Ling, Sasser and his family, Zamora passed away around 4:40am EST on November 11, 1994 the day after the final episode of The Real World San Francisco aired. Winick would continue his career as an AIDS lecturer, speaking at over 70 schools across the country throughout 1995, before finding it too emotionally draining to continue.

[edit] Life after The Real World

[edit] Career

[edit] Comics

Not too long after moving out of the San Francisco loft, Winick began doing illustrations for The Complete Idiot's Guide to... series of books, and has done over 300 of them, including that series’ computer-oriented line. A collection of the computer-related titles' cartoons was published in 1997 as Terminal Madness, The Complete Idiot's Guide Computer Cartoon Collection.

In May 1995, Winick, finding the weekly Nuts and Bolts unfulfilling, decided to attempt syndication again. After he revamped the strip by having his favorite character, Frumpy the Clown, move in with a family, Creator’s Syndicate began running Frumpy the Clown in 30 national newspapers on July 1, 1996. Some of the newspapers eventually began to cancel the strip, feeling that the character was “not a good role model” and “inappropriate for family newspapers”, but Winick had by then found a daily strip to be creatively and technically unfulfilling anyway, and ended the strip in June 1998. Winick also left strips because he had begun work on an autobiographical graphic novel, Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss and What I Learned, about his friendship with Zamora.

While working on Pedro and Me, Winick also began working on comic books, beginning with a one-page Frumpy the Clown cartoon in Oni Press’ anthology series, Oni Double Feature #4, in 1998, before going on to do longer stories, like the two-part Road Trip, which was published in issues #9 and 10 of the same book. Road Trip received the comic book industry’s highest honor, the Eisner Award, for Best Sequential Story.

Winick followed up with a three-issue miniseries, The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius, about a cynical, profane grade school whiz kid, who invents a myriad of futuristic devices that no one other than his best friend knows about. Barry Ween was published by Image Comics from March through May of 1999, with two subsequent miniseries published by Oni Press, which also published trade paperback collections of all three miniseries. Barry Ween was also optioned by Platinum Studios to be adapted into an animated series, but to date, nothing has come of this.

Winick’s graphic novel, Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned, was published in September 2000. It was awarded six American Library Association awards, was nominated for an Eisner Award, won Winick his first GLAAD award, has been praised by creators such as Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, and Armistead Maupin, and has been incorporated into school curricula across the country. Among its other awards are:

Winick’s work in mainstream superhero comics has received much attention for storylines in which he explores gay or AIDS-oriented themes. In his first regular writing assignment on a monthly superhero book, DC Comics' Green Lantern, Winick wrote a storyline in which Terry Berg, an assistant of the title character, emerged as a gay character in Green Lantern #137 (June 2001) and in Green Lantern #154 (November 2001) the story entitled "Hate Crime" gained media recognition when Terry was brutally beaten in a homophobic attack. Winick was interviewed on Phil Donahue's show on MSNBC for that storyline, and received two more GLAAD awards for his Green Lantern work.

In 2003, Judd Winick left Green Lantern for another DC book, Green Arrow, beginning with issue #26 of that title (July 2003). He gained more media recognition for Green Arrow #43 (December 2004) in which he revealed that Green Arrow's 17-year-old ward, a former runaway-turned prostitute named Mia Dearden, was HIV-positive. In issue #45 (February 2005), Winick had Dearden take on the identity of Speedy, the second such Green Arrow sidekick to bear that name, making her perhaps the most visible and most positive mainstream HIV-positive superhero to star in an ongoing comic book, a decision for which Winick was interviewed on CNN. [3]

Winick’s other comic book work includes Batman, The Outsiders, and Marvel's Exiles. Winick was also responsible for bringing Jason Todd, the second character known as Batman’s sidekick Robin, back from the dead, and making him the new Red Hood, the second such Batman villain by that name. Winick also wrote a five-issue miniseries for DC’s Vertigo imprint called Blood & Water, about a young man with terminal illness whose two friends reveal to him that they are vampires, and that they wish to save his life by turning him into a vampire himself.

[edit] Television work

Winick created an animated TV show named The Life and Times of Juniper Lee in 2005, which is currently in its third season on the Cartoon Network.

[edit] Personal life

Winick and Ling moved in together a year after their Real World stint. Winick proposed to her in March 2000, wearing a gorilla suit. They married in a civil ceremony on August 26, 2001 [4]. Writer Armistead Maupin spoke at their ceremony. They had a child in 2005.

[edit] Sources and external links

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