To my astonishment Top Cow agreed to everything.
Now I just had to figure out how to write the damned thing.
The first issue began with a mystery to hook the readers: someone has murdered Peter Dawson, the story’s invulnerable man. How do you kill someone who can’t be hurt? The investigation becomes a delivery mechanism to introduce the other characters as suspects and delve into their lives. It was a soap opera at a time when the emphasis was on big action books. I had no idea if it would succeed or fail, so I was just as surprised as anyone else when it became a top-selling title.
Top Cow wanted to capitalize on the success of Rising Stars with another series, so I reached back to an image that struck me while sitting on a bench in downtown San Diego after one of my post-mugging midnight marathons, the idea that there were two street corners, two San Diegos, two realities existing side by side: the daytime world of secretaries, workers, and office politics, and the midnight world of hookers, drug dealers, and violence. Both occupied the same geographic location, separated only by the tick of the clock: a daylight nation and a midnight nation. It had taken me twenty years to process that moment well enough to finally write about it.
Midnight Nation’s lead character, LAPD Lieutenant Detective David Grey, is investigating what appear to be a series of gang murders when he’s attacked by supernatural forces that literally steal his soul. Deprived of his anchor to this world, David passes into a shadow version of our reality populated by thrown-aways and runaways, the homeless and the lost. He learns that his soul is being held in New York by the Other Guy (the Devil, though we never specifically identify him as such) and that if he doesn’t get it back he will turn into the same sort of creature that attacked him. But nothing in this world works as it should, including vehicles, so he has to walk there from LA, which will take a year. Along the way, he has to defeat the forces trying to stop him while fighting a more personal battle against the darkness that is slowly transforming him. And since the book would be coming out in twelve monthly installments, I could tell his story in real time.
Accompanying him on this journey is Laurel, an ancient, angelic entity who has made this journey many times before, but each attempt failed when her companions surrendered to their darker impulses. Embittered by her experiences, Laurel doesn’t want to get emotionally involved with David, but gradually comes to believe that maybe this time things will work out. As they battle their way across the country, their relationship shifts from antagonism to a love story with a bittersweet but hopeful ending. An existential murder mystery where the victim is also the detective, Midnight Nation is a horror story, a love story, a social polemic about hope and self-sacrifice, and one of the most personal books I’ve ever written. The story allowed me to exorcise the demons from the night I was nearly beaten to death, and the spiritual issues I was still dealing with in terms of the God Thing.
Aided by the phenomenal artwork of Gary Frank, Midnight Nation proved even more successful than Rising Stars. After being beaten down by the bitter pill that was Crusade, writing comics was fun, restoring my soul and reminding me why I started writing in the first place.
In 2000, comic artist and editor Joe Quesada became editor in chief of Marvel Comics, which was suffering through one of the worst periods in its long history, marked by plummeting sales and a bankruptcy that nearly destroyed the company. Tasked with restoring Marvel to its former glory, Quesada and Marvel publisher Bill Jemas traveled to the Wizard World Chicago Comic Convention in hopes of hiring writers and artists who could help Marvel regain its position in the market.
I was there that weekend as guest of honor, and was enjoying a stroll through the dealer’s room one afternoon when I heard someone yell “Stop him!” I turned to see a man in his twenties racing my way, clutching a stack of original artwork worth several thousand dollars that he had just stolen from one of the tables. As the dealer gave chase, everyone parted like the Red Sea, eager to avoid being hurt or caught in the conflict. What happened next was documented by Peter David, who was also attending the convention, in a column entitled “The Adventures of Joltin’ Joe Straczynski.”
A young guy attempted to shoplift in the dealer’s room. He was spotted and tried to bolt, but didn’t get far. As reported by a witness, who was on the scene in the Chicago Con dealer’s room:
“I heard a noise, people running and yelling. And I turned and Joe and another man were converging on a young man from either side. Joe grabbed him from the right, wrapping his arm around the guy’s shoulder and immobilizing him.
“Another man whom I imagine to be the victimized dealer caught up with the guy, telling him not to struggle, that they weren’t going to hurt him but he was definitely busted. I also heard him say, ‘Do you know who this is?’ pointing to Joe. The guy didn’t seem to care; he just seemed angry and scared.
And people wonder where Joe gets his ideas.
The thief was younger and stronger than me, but at six three I’m pretty solid. He was so surprised that anyone jumped into his path that he didn’t have time to react before I put him on the floor, hard. The dealer and I then held the thief until the police showed up.
Afterward, one of the convention organizers asked me, “Why the hell did you do that? You could’ve gotten hurt.”
I took him to where I’d been standing when the guy made a break for it, in front of a ten-foot-tall cutout of Superman. “How could I stand in front of that, in front of him, and do nothing?”
Later that day, still pumped on adrenaline, I was back in the dealer’s room when Quesada and Jemas introduced themselves and told me how much they liked my work. “Would you be interested in doing something for us at Marvel?” Joe asked.
“Sure,” I said. I assumed they wanted me to write a miniseries or something small, since both Rising Stars and Midnight Nation were limited-run books. “What did you have in mind?”
“How would you like to take over The Amazing Spider-Man?”
Spider-Man is Marvel’s flagship character, second in worldwide recognition only to Superman. There have been a number of ancillary Spider-Man titles over the years, but The Amazing Spider-Man was the core title for the entire publishing division. While Superman had always been my icon, as a kid I collected every issue of The Amazing Spider-Man I could find, including his debut in Amazing Fantasy #15 (all later destroyed by my father). I was drawn to Spider-Man because like me, Peter Parker was skinny, geeky, and often bullied by other kids. For him to get amazing powers was every kid’s wish come true. His impact on American culture was huge, so it made sense that they would want to start rebuilding the company with Spider-Man. As the saying goes in the comics business, “As goes Spider-Man, so goes Marvel.”
And they wanted to give him to me? Spider-Man? Seriously?
“Are you sure you’ve got the right guy?” I asked.
They laughed and insisted they knew exactly what they were doing. The only catch was that if I took the job I’d have to be exclusive to Marvel. So did I want it or not?
I hesitated. Having never done an open-ended, monthly comic for a major, iconic character, I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. Besides, being exclusive would mean shutting down Joe’s Comics. I’d just started the imprint and we had a lot of momentum going forward. Did I really want to walk away from all that? Besides, there were rumors that Marvel was going to be sold off within the year. If that happened, I would have given up Joe’s Comics for nothing.
On the other hand: it was Spider-Man, so I said yes.
Shortly after I returned to Los Angeles, MGM called to ask if I’d like to take a shot at writing the pilot script for Jeremiah, a TV series that had been in development at the Showtime cable network for over a year. Based on a Belgian comic book, the story was about young characters fighting to survive a harsh, post-apocalyptic future caused by a race war years earlier. The project had stalled out in development, and MGM felt that the only way to revive the project was by walking in with a bulletproof script that would wo
w the network.
I was excited by the challenge of bringing a project back from the dead, so we made the deal and I began writing the two-hour pilot movie. The biggest problem was figuring out how to populate a post-apocalyptic world with young people to the near-complete exclusion of adults. My solution was a bioengineered virus triggered by the presence of certain hormones. If you were an adult, your hormones were functioning and you got the disease and died; if you were a kid, your hormones had not yet fully kicked in and you survived. It was a clean, mean solution to the problem. (In researching this, I asked several virologists if such a designer virus might one day happen. They said that it’s not only possible, it is inevitable. You’re welcome.)
When I didn’t hear back for several weeks after turning in the script, I figured the project had dead-ended. Then I was called to a meeting with executives from MGM and Jerry Offsay, president of programming for Showtime. Jerry began by saying that he considered my script one of the best pilots he’d ever read. I didn’t take his kind words too seriously, as such things were usually a prelude to a tsunami of detailed notes, leading to more drafts and more changes before ending with good work but it’s not something we want to pursue, thanks for playing and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
“I love this so much,” Jerry said, “that rather than just producing the pilot I’ve decided to commission the first full season based just on the script.”
It took me a moment to process what he’d said. He didn’t want to just shoot the pilot? Didn’t want a focus group? Didn’t want a dozen more revisions? He was going to series based on the script? Holy crap.
After the fall of Crusade I figured I’d have a lot of time on my hands before things started to break. Instead I was writing The Amazing Spider-Man, finishing up Midnight Nation, and Jeremiah was going straight to series.
I was sure that 2001 was going to be the best year ever.
To this day I remain staggered by the magnitude of that misapprehension.
Chapter 30
Lost in the Tall Grass with Jeremiah
In June 2001, I began writing and prepping Jeremiah for production in Vancouver, Canada, where I would live for the next two years. At around that same time, my first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man hit the stands, illustrated by the massively talented John Romita Jr., whose father was one of the original Silver Age Spider-Man artists. To freshen up the character of Spider-Man, I decided to take something we think we know about him and turn it upside down to see what it looks like. It’s a given that Peter Parker got his powers from the bite of a radioactive spider, but nobody had ever asked why. Was it really just random chance, or was there some larger force involved? Did the radiation give the spider the power that it passed to Peter, or was it trying to give Peter the power it already had before the radiation killed it? The answer to those questions would provide over a year’s worth of stories.
I used those early issues to repair Peter’s broken relationship with Mary Jane, and to do something that I’d wanted to see for decades. Peter’s aunt May had always been portrayed as a fragile, frail old woman who would fall over dead if she learned his secret. But I never bought that sexist perspective for a second. This was a woman who buried Peter’s parents and her own husband, then raised a young boy alone. That takes courage, stamina, and a spine made of solid titanium. Peter may have gotten his powers from the spider but he got his strength from Aunt May, so during my run she finally discovers his secret. Not only does she not die, she embraces this side of his life and becomes his greatest ally. I wanted to show that those who love us can carry the burden of our secrets and accept the truth of who we truly are.
The relaunched Amazing Spider-Man performed beyond Marvel’s expectations and helped set the stage for their recovery as a company. I would stay on to write seventy-four consecutive issues, one of the longest runs in the character’s history.
Filming on Jeremiah began on September 7, 2001, at the Bridge Studios in Vancouver, also home to the Stargate series. Four days later I was awakened by a frantic phone call from Kathryn in Los Angeles. “Terrorists are attacking the country!” she said. “They’re attacking the World Trade Center!”
Like the rest of the world I spent the next several days riveted by the tragedy, aching for the loss of those who died and the suffering of those who survived. The images of that attack will remain forever fixed in memory.
Speaking of that time much later, my editor on The Amazing Spider-Man, Axel Alonso said, “The Marvel office was closed on 9/12 so most of us returned to the office on 9/13. The wounds were very fresh. I was sitting at my desk, looking at a drawing of Spider-Man, when a realization suddenly hit me. I emailed Joe and said, ‘I know you’re working on the next script for a story-in-progress, but a thought occurred to me: Spider-Man is the quintessential New York City superhero. Wouldn’t it be kind of odd for us to act like nothing happened?’
“Shortly after I got a terse reply: ‘Right. Let me think on it.’ And that was that.”
I went radio silent because I couldn’t figure out how to give Axel what he wanted. The need to drop this into the next issue meant that I would have only about three to four days to get it written, and I didn’t think I had the skill set to pull it off. I was still trying to force the event to make sense for myself, let alone anybody else.
This prompted a call from Joe Quesada. “We really need to deal with this,” he said. “Just because we’re a comics company, that doesn’t mean we should ignore it. We can’t ignore it. Yeah, most of our readership are adults, but there are a lot of kids who read these books that don’t stay up to watch Nightline or the evening news. They need to understand this. We need to understand this. Many of us lost friends in the Towers. We need to say something about this situation from within the context of the Marvel Universe.
“Yours is the best book to do that. Peter Parker is a New Yorker. Of all the characters in our universe he’s the one best suited to put this in some kind of perspective. He needs to speak for himself, for the book, for all of us. And we think you’re the guy to do it.”
“I just don’t think I can,” I said. “I’m sure the words needed to address this are in the dictionary somewhere, but which ones and what order to put them in . . . I have no idea.”
“Just do me a favor and think about it, see if anything comes up. It’s a hot potato, no mistake. There are lots of folks who might think it’s inappropriate for this to be discussed in a comic book. If you get it wrong, you’ll be crucified. But if you can make it work, we’d appreciate it.”
He was right about the risks. Already, the brutal murder of over three thousand innocents was being politicized to curtail civil rights, whip up prejudices, and broaden the war to those who had nothing to do with the attack but were more politically convenient. But none of that changed the fact that an act of unspeakable horror had been perpetrated and those responsible needed to be called out by every voice in the nation. I had no idea how to thread that needle. The only thing I knew for certain was that the events of 9/11 couldn’t be integrated into a traditional story or fictionalized in any way because doing so would trivialize them.
But if it wasn’t a story, then what was it?
The next day we were shooting an episode of Jeremiah in the Greater Vancouver Resource Development, a huge swath of ancient, old-growth forest where moss hangs off the tall trees like shawls, waving in the wind. The perfect place for reflection. While the crew set up for the next shot I retreated into the producer’s trailer to make one last attempt at writing the script. My laptop was back at the office, so I opened a bound notebook and stared at the blank page. Just write the first thing that comes to mind.
I wrote, There are no words.
I stared at the page. No words.
Follow the thought, I decided.
Some things are beyond words. Beyond comprehension. Beyond forgiveness.
How do you say we didn’t know? We couldn’t know. We couldn’t imagine.
/> The sane world will always be vulnerable to madmen, because we cannot go where they go to conceive of such things.
I struggled to keep up as the words tumbled out of my head. My pen raced across the page. Automatic writing.
What do we tell the children? Do we tell them that evil is a foreign face?
No. The evil is the thought behind the face. And it can look just like yours.
Do we tell that evil is tangible, with defined borders and names and geometries and destinies?
No. They will have nightmares enough.
Perhaps we tell them that we are sorry. Sorry that we were not able to deliver unto them the world we wished them to have.
That our eagerness to shout is not the equal of our willingness to listen.
That the burdens of distant people are the responsibility of all men and women of conscience, or their burdens will one day become our tragedy.
Or perhaps we simply tell them that we love them, and that we will protect them. That we would give our lives for theirs, and do it gladly, so great is the burden of our love.
Faster now. Writing of the retribution to come:
Whatever our history, whatever the root of our surnames, we remain a good and decent people, and we do not bow down and we do not give up. The fire of the human spirit cannot be quenched by bomb blasts or body counts. Cannot be intimidated forever into silence or drowned by tears. We have endured worse before. We will bear this burden and all that come hereafter because that’s what ordinary men and women do. No matter what. This has not made us weaker. It has only made us stronger.
In recent years, we as a people have been tribalized and factionalized by a thousand casual unkindnesses. But in this we are one. Flags sprout in uncommon places, the ground made fertile by tears and shared resolve. We have become one in our grief.
Becoming Superman Page 33