Micah Wright

Micah Wright
Born Micah Ian Wright
(1974-02-07) February 7, 1974
Lubbock, Texas, United States
Nationality American
Area(s) Writer
Notable works
 Stormwatch: Team Achilles
http://www.micahwright.com/

Micah Ian Wright (born February 7, 1974 in Lubbock, Texas) is an American author who has worked in film, television, animation, video games and comic books. He is a tribally enrolled member of the Muscogee_(Creek)_Nation.

Biography

Limited early biographic detail that Wright has posted on-line about himself,[1] indicates that he was the child of a parent in the US Navy and lived overseas. Wright was born in Lubbock, Texas[2] and graduated from the University of Arizona with degrees in political science and creative writing. While at school, he was involved in a weekly sketch comedy show named "Comedy Corner" where he started as a writer and eventually became a performer.

After graduating and moving to Los Angeles, Wright got a job at Nickelodeon Animation and was soon hired to write on The Angry Beavers. Episodes that Wright wrote were nominated for a Daytime Emmy in Sound Mixing and for an Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement in a Daytime Animated Television Program.[3] After Wright finished work on The Angry Beavers, he created Nickelodeon's first action-adventure pilot, Constant Payne, an anime-inspired Dieselpunk science fiction show, with an aesthetic inspired by "Russian wood-block propaganda posters of the 1920s and 30's."[4] Constant Payne was shelved because Nickelodeon was angered over a union organizing effort by the WGA,[5] that Nick suspected was spearheaded by Wright, and later due to network fears of violent programming in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Since 2001, Wright has worked primarily in the field of video game writing. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America, west where he is the chair of the Video Game Writers Caucus, the vice chair of the American Indian Writers Committee, and serves on the steering committee of the Animation Writers Caucus.

In 2007, Wright and his writing partner, Jay Lender, were instrumental in creating the WGA's first ever Video Game Writing Award as part of the traditional film and television Writers Guild Awards. According to the WGA, the award is designed "to encourage storytelling excellence in videogames, to improve the status of writers, and to begin to encourage uniform standards within the gaming industry, to spotlight a wide range of quality work by video game writers, raising their profiles and validating their contributions to this rapidly maturing medium".[6]

His graphic novel Duster was released in 2015.[7]

In March 2016, the film They're Watching which he co-wrote and co-directed with Jay Lender was released day-and-date to theaters and on video on demand services by Amplify Releasing. It is currently available on Netflix.

Controversy

Shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Micah published an anti-war protest book, You Back the Attack, We'll Bomb Who We Want! The book, a satirical collection of old military propaganda posters repainted to feature modern anti-war messages, featured an introduction where Wright claimed to have been a former United States Army Ranger Sergeant, who experienced combat in Operation Just Cause, the 1989 invasion of Panama (when he would have been 15 years old). Wright gave a radio interview on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.[8] In 2003, gossip columnist Richard Leiby wrote a two-page article extolling Wright's poster work for The Washington Post.[9] Wright's credentials were immediately questioned by real Rangers who contacted Leiby. A year later, when Wright learned Leiby was writing an exposé questioning his military service[10] he confessed and apologized online[11] that he had never served in the military, and that his only military experience was as an ROTC student in college.

Following Wright's exposure, Seven Stories Press, the publisher of You Back the Attack, canceled Wright's second book of remixed propaganda, If You're Not a Terrorist, Then Stop Asking Questions. The book was later published by a division of Random House. Wright's comic book Stormwatch: Team Achilles was canceled at #23, leaving one issue unprinted by publisher DC/Wildstorm.

In December 2006, Seven Stories Press published a new book of remixed posters and political commentary by Wright, Surveillance Means Security, which dealt with controversial domestic surveillance by the George W. Bush Administration. Publisher Dan Simon stated that "In 2003, Micah made the mistake in characterizing his introduction as autobiographical, when it was a fictionalized account based on the experiences of others. In other words, fake but true. That book and the present one were collections of art and political commentary, and the mistake he made in his introduction had no bearing on the power of his art or the usefulness of his commentary. We at that time canceled a new book that had been scheduled, and went through a demanding and difficult period of truth-telling and eventual reconciliation with Micah. Just as I do not believe in capital punishment, nor do I believe that we had a responsibility or even the right to censure Micah or to banish him indefinitely. We consider him part of our community and we consider that he and we both learned from his mistakes back then. The work in his new book is as strong as ever, and we're excited to be publishing him". In the book's Acknowledgments section, Wright wrote "Thanks to Dan Simon for recognizing that we're all human and we all make mistakes, some of us bigger mistakes than others. Thanks to Richard Leiby for helping me see the way out of my hole".

Bibliography and filmography

Video games

Books of political commentary

Television episodes

Film

Comics

Short stories

Collected editions

Notes

  1. ↑ "Micah Wright". Micah Wright. 1997-05-11. Retrieved 2015-09-20.
  2. ↑ "Lubbock, Texas". City-Data.com. Retrieved May 31, 2014.
  3. ↑ "The Angry Beavers (1997–2001) : Awards". IMDb.com. Retrieved 2015-09-20.
  4. ↑ "Micah Wright". Constantpayne.com. Retrieved 2015-09-20.
  5. ↑ Jimmy Kustes. "Micah Wright on Constant Payne, Invader Zim, and Batman's producers | Toonzone Forums". Toonzone.net. Retrieved 2015-09-20.
  6. ↑ "wga's first videogame award". Wga.org. Archived from the original on 2015-11-01. Retrieved 2015-09-20.
  7. ↑ "DUSTER: The Graphic Novel by Micah Wright — Kickstarter". Kickstarter.com. Retrieved 2015-09-20.
  8. ↑ "You Back the Attack, We’ll Bomb Who We Want!–A Collection of Remixed War Posters". Democracy Now!. Archived from the original on 2007-11-14. Retrieved 2015-09-20.
  9. ↑ "Vintage Propaganda's Revisionist Visonary". Pqasb.pqarchiver.com. 2003-07-06. Retrieved 2015-09-20.
  10. ↑ Woodrow, John. "Washington Post: Breaking News". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2015-09-20.
  11. ↑ "Mea Culpa". Micah Wright. 2004-05-08. Retrieved 2015-09-20.

References

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