J. Michael Straczynski

Encyclopedia : J : JM : JMI : 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 Crusade. Straczynski wrote most of the Babylon 5 episodes, notably an unbroken 59-episode run including all of the third and fourth seasons.

Most recently (Spring/Summer 2006) he has sold a feature film entitled Changeling to Imagine Entertainment which Brian Grazer will produce and Ron Howard may direct; an original 20-part radio drama series entitled The Adventures of Apocalypse Al for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that will debut in September 2006; and has a network series entitled Borrowed Lives in development with Touchstone Television.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

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. He is a friend and collaborator with speculative fiction author Harlan Ellison, a student and friend of Norman Corwin and an outspoken admirer of the work of Rod Serling.

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.

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 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.

Television

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, gritty 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:

• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe - Staff Writer; specifically writing 8 episodes
• Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors - Staff Writer, specifically writing 11-14 episodes
• The New Twilight Zone - Story Editor; writer of 11 episodes
• The Real Ghostbusters - Story Editor; writer of 21 episodes and one Special
• Jake and the Fatman - Executive Story Editor; writer of 5 episodes
• Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future - Executive Story Editor; writer of 13 episodes
• Murder, She Wrote - Co-Producer; writer of 7 episodes

Additionally, Straczynski was involved in , 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.

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.

In 2006, Straczynski began the arduous process of publishing all of his Babylon 5 scripts via www.babylon5scripts.com, a 14 volume, 6,300 page opus that also feature 50+ page original introductions and commentaries, as well as memos from B5 and his personal photos.

He 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 Magazine, San Diego Magazine, Twilight Zone Magazine, The San Diego Reader, The LA Reader, as well as writingt feature articles for TIME, Inc.

Comic books

Straczynski has long been a comic aficionado, and wrote a few comics during the 1980s, namely an issue of Teen Titans Spotlight, The Twilight Zone, and Star Trek. With the exception of the Babylon 5 comics, television work took over most of his writing duties throughout the 1980s and 1990s, until 1999 when 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 acclaimed Midnight Nation miniseries, and the illustrated fantasy parable Delicate Creatures.

Soon, Straczynski developed a good reputation in the comics industry, and Marvel Comics signed him to an exclusive contract, beginning with a run on The Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel's flagship title. Other successful titles for Marvel followed, including Supreme Power and a run on Fantastic Four.

Straczynski's work for Marvel includes:

• The Amazing Spider-Man - from Vol. 2, Issue 30
• Supreme Power - acclaimed 2003 reboot of the old Squadron Supreme
• Strange: Beginnings and Endings - miniseries detailing Doctor Strange's origins
• Fantastic Four - from Issue 527
• Dream Police - under the Icon Comics imprint, only issue (it was a one shot)
• The Book of Lost Souls - ongoing series, started in September 2005, Icon Comics imprint
• Bullet Points - miniseries, 2006
• Silver Surfer - miniseries, 2006

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.

Graphic novels and collections

''

• Volume 1: Contact (#1-6)
• Volume 2: Powers And Principalities (#7-12)
• Volume 3: High Command (#13-18)
• mini-series

''

• 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)

''

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

''

• 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)

Graphic novels

• Midnight Nation - Entire 12-issue series collected in one volume
• Delicate Creatures
• Strange: Beginnings and Endings- Entire 6-issue miniseries

Other work

Straczynski wrote The Complete Book of Scriptwriting (ISBN 1852868821), often used as a text in introductory screenwriting courses, and now in its third edition.

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.

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, include: two Hugo Awards, the Ray Bradbury Award from the Science Fiction 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).

Trivia

• Straczynski is the creator of the word spoo.

• The asteroid 8379 Straczynski, discovered in 1992 at the Kitt Peak National Observatory, was named in honor of Straczynski.

• Straczynski appears in a cameo role as a technician in the final episode of Babylon 5, which he also directed.

• In 2004, Straczynski was approached by Paramount Studios to become a producer of the 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.

• Straczynski is often credited as being the first TV producer to directly engage with fans on the Internet, and have their comments impact the look and feel of his shows (see Internet marketing and fan influence on Babylon 5). Two of the more prominent areas where he could be found were GEnie and the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated

• 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.

• Straczynski claims to have read the bible cover to cover twice before he decided to become an atheist.

External links

• [JMSNews], an exhaustive archive of Straczynski's online postings from 1991 to the present.
• [Straczynski's Official Site], is babylon5scripts.com
• [City of Dreams], a series of 8 audio plays written by JMS and available free as streaming audio.
• [Marvel Catalog], a listing of recent and upcoming Marvel comics written by Straczynski
• [Worlds of JMS]
• [] at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• [Bibliography] at SciFan
• [Bibliography] at B5races

|- style="text-align: center;"

 

---

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

?