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J. Michael Straczynski: Becoming Superman
Oscar Wilde once said memoirs were written for two reasons – self justification and revenge. He might have added therapy while he was at it, had he been living in a post Freudian age. Regardless on whether the people in question are interesting in themselves, there are not that many compelling autobiographies (telling your own life is messy in a way fiction isn’t; not coincidentally, Dickens only wrote fragments of straightforward autobiography, didn’t finish them and wrote David Copperfield instead), and/or if the it’s one of your average celebrity memoir written and standardized by a ghost writer.
When last year I heard that JMS would be publishing his autobiography, I was interested because Babylon 5 remains one of the most important and beloved things in my life of imagination and fannishness, and I liked and/or admired in varying degrees many other of his works – a lot of his Spider-Man run, the ill-fated Crusade, Changeling I thought was impressive, Supreme Powers for the first three volumes fascinating, and Sense8, of which he’s one of the three „parents“ (along with the Wachowskis) was something I got really fond of. Also he’s a writer with strong opinions, so no danger of standardized ghost written blandness. About his personal life, I didn’t know anything, so I had no expectations in terms of what kind of story he’d tell. In the lead up to the publication, which happened yesterday/today (depending on your time zone), I gathered he’d had what is euphemistically known as a „tough childhood“, and being a B5 fan, I knew about the various production travails (Did Paramount pinch the concept for DS9? Controversy, Michael O’Hare’s departure and the reasons, last minute grant of a fifth season and so forth). But that was about it.
Now that I’ve read it: forget the euphemisms, imagine the worst possible childhood (and youth) and abusive family, multiply. Not surprisingly, it takes up a lot of the book. The fictional worlds it reminded me of a bit were, btw, not any JMS created ones but the darker Stephen King novels – imagine Rose’s backstory life in Rose Madder crossed with Dolores Clairborne (JMS‘ father is very much like Rose’s and Dolores‘ husbands), and some Apt Pupil, but without the decent characters and with the nihilism of Revival. Then again, nihilism isn’t the right words, because what the title of the book refers to is that Superman, first in his George Reeve in the 1950s tv show incarnation and then in the comics, provided a life line and hope to young Joe, literally the only adult in his life to embody kindness, courage and compassion. (Seriously, the Straczynskis are a horror story. Trigger warning for constant physical abuse, sexual abuse, incest, attempted infanticide, and murder of humans and pets. Oh, and Holocaust participation by family members. Were they a King novel, though, there would be at least some alliances and affection between, say, siblings, instead of them being, as JMS puts it, strangers locked together by a shared threat. And a protective mother. Whereas the grandmother in this tale is one of the abusers, and the mother, starting out as a teenage prostitute, a constantly beaten up victim unable to form any attachment to any of her kids, or even to fake the slightest bit of tenderness, which is also where the attempted infanticide comes in.) It’s less escape from than survival of a horrible reality via fiction, and also the rejection of any values imparted by rl surroundings in favour of the ones imparted by fiction. The emotional importance of Clark Kent in this book really can’t be overstated. (When veteran writer JMS gets to write Superman, it’s more of an high point than when B5 finally gets green lighted.)
(Sidenote: like many a B5 fan, I’ve sometimes kidded about the initial thing – you know, Jeff Sinclair, John Sheridan – but considering this rl background, methinks the most autobiographical elements are Vir’s two outbursts, about his family in s2 and after killing Cartagia complete with „someone who could possibly love someone like me“ in s4.)
In addition to being a book about surviving abuse, it’s very much a book about writing (articles, tv, comics, a movie); it struck me that the various villains in JMS‘ writers‘ life tend to be anonymous or studios per se (be they Warner Brothers or Paramount) – possibly because of law suits? Anyway, if you want to be critical, he may be cheating a bit by only listing the attempted or real studio executive interferences which were or would have been clearly to the detriment of the tale told (as in The Real Ghostbusters or the TNT demand for a rape scene in Crusade which he refused), and makes no mention of criticism about, say, his elevating Sheridan to a Great Man of History in the later seasons. Or Byron. (Mind you: after reading about young JMS briefly hanging out with a cult because these were literally the first people hugging him and being nice before wisening up to the dangers of charismatic leaders, I’m seeing the Byron scenes and Lyta falling for him in another light.)
He is capable of self criticism when it comes to his relationship with his wife Kathryn Drennan (who wrote the B5 episode By Any Means Necessary as well as the novel To Dream in the City of Sorrows), blaming the failure of their marriage as marriage squarely on himself. (As presented by him, they work much better as best friends, which they were before marrying and have gone back to post divorce. Since he quotes her (in the present) a lot in the book, the claim of a post marital positive relationship seems plausible.)
The writing project he was involved with longest was the story that became The Changeling, which he first started to research for as a young reporter and didn’t write as a movie until decades later, and thus, there’s more about it in the memoirs than about B5 (not to mention that the B5 stories have been told already elsewhere). As the prologue (after a foreword by Neil Gaiman) deals with location search on Iceland for Sense8 and we’re back to Sense8 in the final chapter, there’s also a thematic wrap up here since one main motivation for writing Sense8 with the Wachowskis, he says, was that they believed people now would be receptive to a story where kindness and connection wins over cruelty. (Sidenote: true, that.)
Most touching moment of fannish moment of sadness in this reader: the dying of Andreas Katsulas, which takes up several pages and is differently presented from the other B5 cast deaths. (Richard Biggs was a shock out of the blue, Jeff Conway and Jerry Doyle self destructed via addiction, and Michael O’Hares mental illness made his case particular already. Andreas Katsulas had cancer, and the way JMS describes it faced it heads-on in a larger than life Zorba the Greek manner, complete with dinner with friends, among them Peter Jurasik and JMS.)
Most „hm, yes, maybe, I don’t know“ moment about a fannish argument: comes when he’s about to quit The Real Ghostbusters in protest about the TPTB wanting Junior Ghostbusters, a softened up Janine and the sole black character relegated to driver duties. The objections to the later two being said, the argument re: Junior Ghostbusters goes thusly: TPTB: kids identify with kids more than with adults! JMS: No, they don’t. Kids want to be Batman, not Robin. They need the hope that if they train hard enough, they can be Batman one day. But Robin can already do all this superhero stuff at their age. There’s no hope of being Robin. So they don’t identify, they resent him.
On the one hand: I remember loathing teenage sidekicks, which in my later teens and early 20s seemed to be everywhere. I didn’t start to like (some) teenage sidekicks until I was in my late 30s or thereabouts. On the other hand: I never wanted to be either Batman or Robin. (Or Superman. Lois Lane, otoh…) So what do I know?
Utterly unsurprising reveal if you remember one Crusade episode dedicated to a cat: JMS is a life long devotee to felines. The fate of his first two cats is gruesome due to his ghastly family, but then, once he’s away from them, we get the rescue of a cat out of distress with ensuing fifteen years of companionship. Followed by further happy feline/writer symbiosis. Superman would approve.
In conclusion: dark story compellingly told. Not just for fans. But definitely not if you’re easily triggered. (Honestly, how that man ever made it out of childhood coherent, I don’t know.)
When last year I heard that JMS would be publishing his autobiography, I was interested because Babylon 5 remains one of the most important and beloved things in my life of imagination and fannishness, and I liked and/or admired in varying degrees many other of his works – a lot of his Spider-Man run, the ill-fated Crusade, Changeling I thought was impressive, Supreme Powers for the first three volumes fascinating, and Sense8, of which he’s one of the three „parents“ (along with the Wachowskis) was something I got really fond of. Also he’s a writer with strong opinions, so no danger of standardized ghost written blandness. About his personal life, I didn’t know anything, so I had no expectations in terms of what kind of story he’d tell. In the lead up to the publication, which happened yesterday/today (depending on your time zone), I gathered he’d had what is euphemistically known as a „tough childhood“, and being a B5 fan, I knew about the various production travails (Did Paramount pinch the concept for DS9? Controversy, Michael O’Hare’s departure and the reasons, last minute grant of a fifth season and so forth). But that was about it.
Now that I’ve read it: forget the euphemisms, imagine the worst possible childhood (and youth) and abusive family, multiply. Not surprisingly, it takes up a lot of the book. The fictional worlds it reminded me of a bit were, btw, not any JMS created ones but the darker Stephen King novels – imagine Rose’s backstory life in Rose Madder crossed with Dolores Clairborne (JMS‘ father is very much like Rose’s and Dolores‘ husbands), and some Apt Pupil, but without the decent characters and with the nihilism of Revival. Then again, nihilism isn’t the right words, because what the title of the book refers to is that Superman, first in his George Reeve in the 1950s tv show incarnation and then in the comics, provided a life line and hope to young Joe, literally the only adult in his life to embody kindness, courage and compassion. (Seriously, the Straczynskis are a horror story. Trigger warning for constant physical abuse, sexual abuse, incest, attempted infanticide, and murder of humans and pets. Oh, and Holocaust participation by family members. Were they a King novel, though, there would be at least some alliances and affection between, say, siblings, instead of them being, as JMS puts it, strangers locked together by a shared threat. And a protective mother. Whereas the grandmother in this tale is one of the abusers, and the mother, starting out as a teenage prostitute, a constantly beaten up victim unable to form any attachment to any of her kids, or even to fake the slightest bit of tenderness, which is also where the attempted infanticide comes in.) It’s less escape from than survival of a horrible reality via fiction, and also the rejection of any values imparted by rl surroundings in favour of the ones imparted by fiction. The emotional importance of Clark Kent in this book really can’t be overstated. (When veteran writer JMS gets to write Superman, it’s more of an high point than when B5 finally gets green lighted.)
(Sidenote: like many a B5 fan, I’ve sometimes kidded about the initial thing – you know, Jeff Sinclair, John Sheridan – but considering this rl background, methinks the most autobiographical elements are Vir’s two outbursts, about his family in s2 and after killing Cartagia complete with „someone who could possibly love someone like me“ in s4.)
In addition to being a book about surviving abuse, it’s very much a book about writing (articles, tv, comics, a movie); it struck me that the various villains in JMS‘ writers‘ life tend to be anonymous or studios per se (be they Warner Brothers or Paramount) – possibly because of law suits? Anyway, if you want to be critical, he may be cheating a bit by only listing the attempted or real studio executive interferences which were or would have been clearly to the detriment of the tale told (as in The Real Ghostbusters or the TNT demand for a rape scene in Crusade which he refused), and makes no mention of criticism about, say, his elevating Sheridan to a Great Man of History in the later seasons. Or Byron. (Mind you: after reading about young JMS briefly hanging out with a cult because these were literally the first people hugging him and being nice before wisening up to the dangers of charismatic leaders, I’m seeing the Byron scenes and Lyta falling for him in another light.)
He is capable of self criticism when it comes to his relationship with his wife Kathryn Drennan (who wrote the B5 episode By Any Means Necessary as well as the novel To Dream in the City of Sorrows), blaming the failure of their marriage as marriage squarely on himself. (As presented by him, they work much better as best friends, which they were before marrying and have gone back to post divorce. Since he quotes her (in the present) a lot in the book, the claim of a post marital positive relationship seems plausible.)
The writing project he was involved with longest was the story that became The Changeling, which he first started to research for as a young reporter and didn’t write as a movie until decades later, and thus, there’s more about it in the memoirs than about B5 (not to mention that the B5 stories have been told already elsewhere). As the prologue (after a foreword by Neil Gaiman) deals with location search on Iceland for Sense8 and we’re back to Sense8 in the final chapter, there’s also a thematic wrap up here since one main motivation for writing Sense8 with the Wachowskis, he says, was that they believed people now would be receptive to a story where kindness and connection wins over cruelty. (Sidenote: true, that.)
Most touching moment of fannish moment of sadness in this reader: the dying of Andreas Katsulas, which takes up several pages and is differently presented from the other B5 cast deaths. (Richard Biggs was a shock out of the blue, Jeff Conway and Jerry Doyle self destructed via addiction, and Michael O’Hares mental illness made his case particular already. Andreas Katsulas had cancer, and the way JMS describes it faced it heads-on in a larger than life Zorba the Greek manner, complete with dinner with friends, among them Peter Jurasik and JMS.)
Most „hm, yes, maybe, I don’t know“ moment about a fannish argument: comes when he’s about to quit The Real Ghostbusters in protest about the TPTB wanting Junior Ghostbusters, a softened up Janine and the sole black character relegated to driver duties. The objections to the later two being said, the argument re: Junior Ghostbusters goes thusly: TPTB: kids identify with kids more than with adults! JMS: No, they don’t. Kids want to be Batman, not Robin. They need the hope that if they train hard enough, they can be Batman one day. But Robin can already do all this superhero stuff at their age. There’s no hope of being Robin. So they don’t identify, they resent him.
On the one hand: I remember loathing teenage sidekicks, which in my later teens and early 20s seemed to be everywhere. I didn’t start to like (some) teenage sidekicks until I was in my late 30s or thereabouts. On the other hand: I never wanted to be either Batman or Robin. (Or Superman. Lois Lane, otoh…) So what do I know?
Utterly unsurprising reveal if you remember one Crusade episode dedicated to a cat: JMS is a life long devotee to felines. The fate of his first two cats is gruesome due to his ghastly family, but then, once he’s away from them, we get the rescue of a cat out of distress with ensuing fifteen years of companionship. Followed by further happy feline/writer symbiosis. Superman would approve.
In conclusion: dark story compellingly told. Not just for fans. But definitely not if you’re easily triggered. (Honestly, how that man ever made it out of childhood coherent, I don’t know.)