Becoming Superman

by J. Michael Straczynski

  We are one now in our determination. One as we recover. One as we rebuild.

  You wanted to send a message, and in so doing you awakened us from our self-involvement. Message received.

  Look for your reply in the thunder.

  A walkie-talkie hissed at me from somewhere inside the trailer. I was overdue on set. Where the hell was I? No time. I had to get it all down because I didn’t know where it was coming from or if I could ever get on this frequency again.

  They knocked down two tall towers. In their memory, draft a covenant with your conscience that we will create a world in which such things need not occur. A world which will not require apologies to children. But also a world whose roads are not paved with the husks of our inalienable rights.

  They knocked down two tall towers. Graft now their echo onto your spine. Become girders and glass, stone and steel. So that when the world sees you, it sees them. And stand tall.

  Stand tall.

  Stand tall.

  I blinked hard, pulling myself back into the room. Less than an hour had passed since I’d written There are no words. I tore out the pages, shoved them in my pocket, and headed out to the set. That night I typed up the script and emailed it to Axel.

  “I opened my mailbox,” he said later, “and there was the script. So I closed my office door, put up a Do Not Disturb sign—something I never did—put my feet up on the windowsill, and read it. When I was done, I knew I was looking at an historic story. Through Spider-Man, Joe had written a love letter to New York City on behalf of Marvel Comics.”

  Later that day, he called to say, “Everyone here is in tears. Where the hell did this come from?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t. I’ve never written anything like it before or since.

  Issue 36 of The Amazing Spider-Man was published in December 2001, with art by John Romita Jr. accompanying what was, essentially, a tone poem meditation about 9/11. It remains some of John’s best work. When Marvel asked what they should do about the cover, I suggested a black cover. That would say all that needed saying.

  Despite my concerns, the issue was taken to heart by fans and the press, including the New York Times. Months later it received the highest recognition that can be given to any comic book, the coveted Eisner Award presented at San Diego Comic-Con. But for me, the most important part was hearing that portions of the book were being quoted in churches, schools, and synagogues. Teachers used it to help kids understand the events of 9/11. Libraries stocked extra copies to meet the demand when the book sold out. Axel called it “one of the top three comics I’m most proud of to this day.”

  I wish I could take credit for all that, but I honestly can’t. I still don’t know where it came from. But I’d give a kidney to get back there one of these days.

  As bad as things had been on Crusade, writing and producing Jeremiah was worse by several orders of magnitude. It was the most horrific, heinous, soul-killing experience of my career, and any attempt I might make to try and describe that nightmare in detail would result in a firestorm of lawsuits. I could only safely tell that story if I had all the participants assassinated, and frankly I can’t afford that many ninjas.

  One of the few things upon which I can safely comment was the disconnect between MGM and Showtime over the show’s direction. Showtime wanted to brand Jeremiah as the kind of program that was only available on their premium cable network: an edgy, profanity-laden, and very, very dark post-apocalyptic series. MGM, which would syndicate the show afterward, wanted something that could exist on the broadcast end of the spectrum: a cute, fuzzy, warmhearted post-apocalyptic series. My attempts to walk the line between those agendas were further complicated by an executive assigned to the project who began doing everything possible to undercut my position, leading to a prolonged battle for control of the show that made every day a living hell.

  Despite the behind-the-scenes drama, Jeremiah debuted on Showtime on March 3, 2002, to solid ratings and surprisingly positive reviews. I was desperate not to go back for year two, but my agent emphasized the importance of staying on because I was still trying to kick the “he’s difficult” reputation, so I reluctantly agreed.

  There was another infinitely more personal and difficult decision facing me. When Kathryn and I got married, I made a promise: till death do us part. I’d spent my entire life trying to prove that I wasn’t my father, and that meant keeping my promises. But living alone in Vancouver for over a year reinforced the fact that I liked being on my own. Yes, I cared for Kathryn, and no, I wasn’t seeing anyone else, I just wanted to be alone. I liked being alone. Just the idea of living with someone had become a source of increasingly irrational anxiety.

  While there are many benefits to modeling oneself after Superman, there’s one big drawback: it assumes invulnerability and precludes the possibility of weakness. But as my anxiety about living with another person continued to worsen, I had to acknowledge that something was wrong, and began seeing a therapist. He started by asking about my previous relationships and my family history. For the first time I talked about how I always felt apart from other people; the limited access to my emotions and my difficulty in reading people; my social awkwardness and the impenetrable membrane between me and the rest of the world.

  “How was your relationship with your mother and father?” he asked.

  “Well, I was shuttled between relatives for most of my early years rather than being with either of my parents, my mom was institutionalized for a large chunk of my childhood, and she tried on at least one occasion to murder me. My father was a violent drunk who was rarely home and kept trying to force-feed me vodka at the age of five, and—”

  Gradually, the terms Asperger’s syndrome, reactive attachment disorder, and PTSD entered the conversation. They explained my social awkwardness and all-absorbing interest in subjects like writing, comics, and, yes, Superman; also my compulsive self-reliance, lack of emotional resonance, inability to form lasting relationships, and a preference for being alone.

  “Being around other people is stressful for you,” he said, “so you avoid stress by avoiding people. The same goes for relationships. As you get older this tendency toward solitude will only become more pronounced. It’s not so much that you’re against marriage as you are against having anyone in your space. Having so little access to your emotions on an interpersonal basis may also explain why you’re addicted to writing. On the one hand, writing all the time provides the perfect pretext for declining to go out and socialize. On the other, you can feel and express emotions via your characters that are otherwise off-limits, which makes you want to stay in that place as much as possible.

  “In a funny way, you’re able to avoid many of the downsides of solitude because you have all these voices, all these people in your head from the stories you write, so you never really feel as though you’re alone. You’re constantly surrounded by people, it’s just that none of them actually exist.”

  Understanding the problems that had stunted my emotional growth was a revelation as profound as the day I put on a pair of eyeglasses and realized my vision was impaired. Suddenly everything in my past made sense. The therapist also helped me understand that by staying in the marriage I wasn’t doing Kathryn any favors. Quite the opposite: I was hurting her. I was desperately unhappy, and it wasn’t fair to keep her tied to me under those conditions.

  A few days later I steeled myself and told Kathryn that I wanted out. I was afraid it would come as a terrible shock, forgetting that she’s ridiculously smart and saw it coming long before I did. Her main concern was to ensure a measure of stability for herself and her parents. I assured her that no matter what happened she and they would never lack for anything. Rather than putting her on a set allowance with an end date, I would take care of all her expenses, without limit, in perpetuity.

  A long time ago I gave her my word that she would never have to work in a windowless office, or anywhere else for that matter, if she didn’t want to do so.
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  And I had no intention of letting that promise fall by the wayside.

  As I write these words in 2019, Kathryn’s future remains secure, and we are better friends than we were during most of our marriage. The pressure is off and we can be the friends we were in the beginning. We speak frequently on the phone, have dinner from time to time, I watch her cat when she goes out of town . . . we’re good. We’re solid.

  Funny what a difference the truth can make.

  I returned for year two of Jeremiah determined to make the best show possible under circumstances even more horrific than year one as the same executive did everything imaginable to escalate the situation through a litany of prevarications, arguments, backchanneling, and direct sabotage. At the end of the season, I told my agent that regardless of how well it performed (and it did quite well), I would not return for a third season. I’d had enough.

  I finished work on Jeremiah in late June 2003 and moved into a house I’d purchased in the San Fernando Valley, confident that there would be no problem continuing my career. By now I’d written almost three hundred produced television episodes and had kept a show on the air for two years despite innumerable obstacles.

  But the Jeremiah executive had spent those two years working his dark magic to blackball me with every network and studio in town. By the time I returned to Los Angeles, my career in television was effectively over. Of course I didn’t know that at the time; no one ever tells you these things, they leave you to slowly figure it out as months pass and the phone doesn’t ring.

  A few weeks later, on July 3, I was awakened at nine A.M. by a caterwauling in the backyard courtesy of the outdoor cats that had moved in before I could do so. Bleary-eyed and half asleep, I staggered out to find a coven of cats surrounding one of the landscaping pipes that carried water from the sprinklers underground to the street; the cap, designed to keep leaves from falling inside, had come off. I looked down the pipe to see a six-week-old kitten staring back at me. I tried to grab him but couldn’t reach that far, and he skittered away into the maze of pipes.

  I called every plumber in the book but none of them wanted to come over, having already started their July 4 holiday. When I finally got someone in from animal control to scope out the situation, she noted that the mewing had stopped. “All these pipes lead to the street,” she said. “I’m sure he’s out by now.” And with that she left.

  I mewed into the pipe to see if I could provoke a response. Nothing came back. Believing that she was right and he was safely away, I went off to run errands, returning at about six P.M. It was still light when I went into the yard and mewed into the pipe. Silence.

  Good, he’s safely away, I thought and started back toward the house.

  Then, from behind me: Mew!

  He was still in there.

  In that instant I flashed back on every cat I’d lost because of my father’s twisted pathology. I remembered wrapping Midnight in one of my T-shirts and putting her in the ground, and vowed on the spot that I would not lose one more cat to the cold ground. Not this time. Maybe I couldn’t save my career, but by god I was going to save that cat.

  I called more plumbers. Same result. Nada.

  I called the fire department. They argued against coming out because it would be dark soon, followed by pre-Fourth fireworks and the possibility of fires.

  “There’s a cat in a pipe,” I said, “you gotta come.”

  Fifteen minutes later, a fire truck rumbled down the street, the firemen climbed off, and I showed them where the problem was. They dug a massive trench, pulled out a cypress tree, cut into one of the pipes, and used a mirror to look around. There was no sign of the kitten, who had moved as far as possible from the commotion.

  They then departed, leaving me with a hole in the ground, a cut pipe, and a dead cypress tree. And there was still mewing going on.

  I know what to do, I thought, I’ll put a can of tuna beside the hole. But if I just left it and went back inside I wouldn’t know if he or one of the other cats had eaten it. So I brought over a lawn chair and sat by the tuna fish, the cut pipe, the trench, and the dead cypress tree until one A.M. The mewing was still audible but growing weaker. Desperate not to lose him, I went back to dialing every emergency twenty-four-hour plumber I could find.

  One finally arrived at three A.M. He fished a snake with a camera at one end down one of the pipes, and now we could finally see the kitten: barely conscious, wedged in tight, half covered in water, he literally had to raise his mouth out of the water to mew.

  “We’ve got to get him out,” I said, noting that he had been stuck down there for at least eighteen hours. “Use the snake to bonk him in the nose, see if we can back him up to the hole the fire department dug.” As hoped, each bonk nudged him a few more inches in the right direction. When he got close, I dived into the trench, oblivious to the spiders and centipedes and god only knew what else, and put my hand in the pipe.

  Then: I felt his fur brush my palm. I only had one shot at this so I waited until he pushed hard, then pulled. He shunked as he came out. “You’re okay, buddy,” I said, “you’re gonna be all right.” As I wrapped him in a towel I realized I was fighting tears.

  I had put too many cats in the ground. Now, at last, I had taken one back out again.

  Had the other cats not drawn my attention, he would have died down there, alone in the cold and the dark. Instead, Buddy lived on for fifteen years and four months as my best pal, my constant companion, and one of the most beautiful souls I have ever known.

  Fall 2003 turned into spring 2004 without offers to work on existing shows or network meetings where I could pitch ideas for new series. I wrote spec pilot scripts that never left the agency. Rather than push for a job as executive producer, I said I was willing to go back to story editor or writing freelance episodic scripts for scale, starting all over again from the bottom, just let me write something for somegoddamnbody.

  Then: tragedy.

  On May 22, 2004, Richard Biggs, who had played Dr. Franklin on Babylon 5, passed away from an aortic dissection, an undiagnosed genetic condition that tore his heart apart. His death was a terrible blow to everyone who had known him. On every show some cast members are liked more than others, but everyone loved Richard. Buff, seemingly healthy, and gregarious, he would hang out with fans at conventions, conduct acting workshops, and hold court at the bar, dancing late into the night. We assumed he would outlive us all. The funeral brought us together in stunned grief. His wife and family occupied the front row of the church, their souls shattered, but so proud of the man, the father, and the actor that he had been.

  Richard was the first main cast member from Babylon 5 to pass away before his time. But to the heartbreak and profound sorrow of everyone involved with the show, he would not be the last.

  As 2004 turned into 2005 without any steady television work I continued writing comics, and though I loved the process, they didn’t cover a fraction of what it costs to live in Los Angeles, especially since I was covering two households, two mortgages, and all the related expenses. It didn’t help that I was having vision problems that cut my comics output from four books per month to one or two at most. Babylon 5 and Crusade were off the air, which meant no residuals, and Jeremiah had bought out those residuals as part of my salary, so there was no money coming in from any of those projects. I’d been digging into my savings for nearly a year in what I hoped would be a temporary situation, but the money was going out faster than anything else was coming in.

  One evening I was in a taxi crossing Los Angeles when I got a voice mail from Walter Koenig, who I had brought onto Babylon 5 to play the role of a telepathic cop. The message was ominous in its brevity: Call me the second you get this. It’s urgent.

  “Have you heard the news about Andreas?” he asked when I called back.

  Andreas Katsulas, who had worked on Babylon 5, was one of the best actors I’d ever known, and his portrayal of Citizen G’Kar was a fan favorite. “No, why? What’s the news
?”

  “He’s dying.”

  I couldn’t process his words. They didn’t make sense. “What do you mean he’s dying?”

  “I heard it from Bill.” Bill Mumy, another cast member on the show, was tight with the other actors and generally knew what was going on with them.

  “Bill must’ve misheard something,” I said. “Let me call Andreas and find out what the hell’s going on.”

  I hung up and speed-dialed Andreas. He picked up the line. “Andreas, it’s Joe,” I said. “Listen, I just heard—”

  He started laughing before I could even finish the sentence. I knew it, Bill got it wrong.

  But he hadn’t.

  “Yeah, I’m dying,” Andreas said, still laughing. “Isn’t that ridiculous? I’m on this great diet, I’ve lost weight, I’m healthier than I’ve ever been, and I’m dying.”

  He explained that during a recent checkup the doctors discovered an advanced case of lung cancer they’d missed earlier; it had been hiding behind his sternum until it was large enough to be seen on either side. “When they took the new X-ray,” he said, “it winked at them.”

  I tried to find something comforting to say, but he brushed it aside. “Look,” he said, “I’ve had an amazing life. I’ve done some really good work. Yeah, I’ve done some shit along the way, but I’m really proud of most of it. I’ve had a great run, and Babylon’s been a big part of that. They’re going to do some chemo to try and beat this thing back, but the odds aren’t great. So if this is it, well, you know, so be it. I’m good.”

  The cast and crew reached out to him over the coming months, but he wouldn’t allow a second’s grief on his behalf. Andreas was bigger than life, a Greek at full throttle, and rather than mourn what was coming, he celebrated his life and his friendships. He approached his death the same way he approached his work: he was fucking fearless.

  That winter, word came that Andreas wanted to have dinner with me, B5 producer Doug Netter, and actor Peter Jurasik, one of our most gifted cast members, with whom Andreas had often worked. Their characters were mirror opposites of each other, and the two actors had become very close.