Becoming Superman

by J. Michael Straczynski

  Harlan Ellison and I have almost nothing in common.

  Harlan is Jewish and loves to bargain, to hondle, to drive sales managers almost to the verge of suicide in the course of seeking the best possible deal.

  I am Gentile, and cannot bargain my way out of a paper sack. (For which see my forthcoming short story, “I Have No Jews, And I Must Buy Retail.”)

  I am tall.

  Harlan is . . . not as tall.

  (At a PEN International fundraiser a few years ago, we approached Ed Asner only to have him break into laughter at the sight. He explained that side by side, we looked like the New York World’s Fair Perisphere and Trylon.)

  Harlan comes from Cleveland. I hail from New Jersey.

  I have multiple degrees from San Diego State University.

  Harlan was booted out of Ohio State University with the lowest GPA in history, by record.

  At 80, Harlan still has all his hair.

  At 60, I . . . well, let’s just say I’m always the first one in a crowd to know when it’s raining. But then, I stand considerably closer to the sky.

  I was moved to see that the man who had been my inadvertent mentor for over forty years, and my friend for nearly thirty, had mentioned me in the book’s dedication, and signed the front page To Joe—Ever and always my best pal & trail-pard! Yr. Friend—Harlan Ellison.

  I’d told Harlan that I was writing my autobiography, in which he featured prominently, and promised to get the manuscript to him for his review as soon as it was ready. I wanted him to understand, from deep inside the words, what he had meant to me as a friend and role model.

  How’s the book going? he would ask. When can I see it?

  It’s going well, I would reply, and soon, I promise. I wanted the draft to be letter perfect.

  But I should not have awaited perfection.

  After a stroke in 2014 left him bedridden and nearly paralyzed on his right side, Harlan went into a state of slow decline. The last time I saw him . . . well, this takes some explaining. As a younger man, Harlan owned a waterbed that was built into an impressively raised platform accessible by carpeted steps on either side. Given the many photos taken of models draped over that bed in provocative poses, surrounding a rather dashing Harlan, I think he considered it a sorta-kinda Mayan temple dedicated to his frolicsome sensibilities.

  After his stroke, it became his prison and an impediment to visitors. Located in the corner of the bedroom, there was only about a foot of space between the last step and the wall, which made standing there difficult. The long steps on the other side put visitors several feet away and forced them to stand since sitting in a chair would put them out of his line of sight, adding more layers of isolation to his condition.

  During our last visit, I began by standing in the narrow space on his left between the bed and the wall, but I could see that he was having difficulty raising his head to look up that high, so I circled around to the other side, which was even worse.

  Screw it, I decided, and climbed into the bed beside him.

  For two hours we talked about everything, anything, and nothing in particular. His voice was still strong but his eyes were sunken and tired, as though his soul was trying to sneak out of the room without anyone noticing. When Susan left to prepare dinner, he confessed to feeling like he was slowly disconnecting from the world; he was tired of the struggle and ready to check out.

  “You’re a fighter,” I said. “You’ll be around long after I’m gone.”

  He waved away the reassurance. “How’s the book going?” he asked.

  “Still sanding it down,” I said. “So you’re going to have to stick around to read it.”

  “Well, I definitely want to read it,” he said, “though I’m not sure I want to see you again.”

  We laughed for quite a while at that one. The line was typical of his acerbic humor, but I could tell there was something more to it. Then Susan returned to let him know it was time for dinner.

  As I sat up to take my leave, Harlan reached over and, to my surprise, kissed the back of my hand. When it came to other guys, Harlan was not a terribly affectionate man, and I could feel my eyes stinging with the kindness of that gesture.

  Then he glanced up at me, and I could see the thought behind his gaze as clearly as if he had said the words aloud. Good-bye, my friend, and don’t come back. Don’t see me like this again.

  Harlan Ellison, who was the closest thing I had to a father figure outside of a comic book, passed away in his sleep on June 28, 2018, at the age of eighty-four, and though he never had the chance to read this manuscript, I know that he knew how much I learned from him, and what that relationship meant to me.

  As a kid who grew up on Harlan’s work, I never imagined that I would have the chance to meet him and become his friend . . . that the trajectory of these two eccentric bullets, fired from different ends of the country, would one day strike in midair, forever altering both. What are the odds that a street kid in New Jersey with dreams of becoming a writer, who looked to the words of a complete stranger in California for succor in times of distress, would end up as his friend? What are the—

  Wait a second.

  What actually are the odds? Let’s deconstruct the math for a moment, because this is important.

  The chances of me ending up in LA aren’t too bad. Becoming a writer? A bit less likely. Becoming a successful writer? More doubtful still. Getting to know Harlan? Not probable but not unthinkable. Becoming his friend? Rather difficult given how high he kept the walls. Having the opportunity to help him as he helped me? The odds aren’t great, but they pale into insignificance against the chances of doing all that and being asked to write an introduction to a new edition of one of the very first books I ever owned.

  Conservatively, I’d put the odds of hitting every one of those at about a million to one. The number is probably much higher if I were to sit down and really do the math, but let’s say a million to one to make this easier.

  Next item: What are the odds that a kid from nowhere who loved comic books like Spider-Man would become a successful writer in the comic book business, including a six-year run on Spider-Man?

  The odds against that are ridiculous. But let’s keep them at a million to one.

  Item the Third: What are the odds that someone who grew up in love with Lost in Space, Star Trek, and other science fiction television shows would become one of a very small number of people to create a new science fiction universe in his own TV series?

  Much higher than a million to one. But again, conservatively, let’s keep it there.

  Item the Fourth: Having used the Hugo Award as my standard for what books to read, what are the odds that I would win not just one but two Hugos, especially since only eight writers have won two or more Hugos since they started giving them out in 1967?

  Million to one. Easy.

  Item the Fifth: What are the odds that a kid who based his personality on Superman’s values would be given the chance to re-imagine that character for a new generation, something only a few writers have had the opportunity to do? Or that this new iteration would repeatedly land on the New York Times bestseller list?

  Ditto. Million to one. The odds of landing on the NY Times list alone are that high.

  Item the Sixth: What are the odds that a kid who loved The Twilight Zone and admired Rod Serling would meet him in person, become one of only a handful of people to be on staff on a new version of The Twilight Zone, and write a script in posthumous collaboration with him?

  Let’s stick to a million to one. But you and I know that the odds are much higher.

  Item the Seventh: What are the odds that a kid from the inner-city streets of Newark and Skid Row would go on to write movies for Ron Howard and Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and Kenneth Branagh and be nominated for a British Academy Award?

  A million to one. At least.

  I could go on, but the point’s been made: the odds of any one of those things happening are a milli
on to one against.

  But in the aggregate, the odds of any one person doing all of those million-to-one things are a tredecillion to 1 against.

  Which is another way of saying 1 to the 42nd power.

  That’s a 1 followed by 42 zeroes.

  Written out, the odds are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 against all those things happening to the same person.

  But all of those things did happen, and they happened to me, so the question becomes: Why?

  I’m not a social creature or a glad-hander. I’m riddled with social anxiety, not terribly good looking, not great at public speaking, and frankly I’m a pain in the ass. Some might even say I’m “difficult.” By all rights I should be hard-core unemployable.

  So again: Why?

  As kids, we embrace that which gives us joy because we don’t know any other way. We spontaneously sing, act, dance, and tell stories until someone—usually an adult—says stop that or you’re embarrassing yourself or you’re not very good at that or wait until you’re older or let someone else do that. It’s the tyranny of reasonable voices alluded to previously. Those voices cause us to unlearn our passions inch by inch until that which gives us joy is sanded away, leaving behind a shell that does what it is told by family, friends, teachers, and employers.

  I think the reason so many unlikely things happened to me is because I never listened to those voices; because I came out of the womb snarling at anyone who told me there was something I couldn’t do; because I learned that to win I only had to say yes, I will one more time than somebody else could say no, you won’t. I never walked away from what gave me joy, never surrendered my dreams to those who would profit by eradicating them.

  All the things I loved and believed in as a child—not just science fiction movies and TV shows and comic books, but also the importance of kindness, of doing the right thing for no other reason than that it is the right thing—I still love and believe in today. And one of the most important things I believe is that if we love something and have even an inch of aptitude, we can become successful at it because our love for the work will sustain us through the hard times required to get good enough at it to earn a living. It may not be the best possible living, you may not be able to afford a yacht, and from time to time you may find yourself teetering at the edge of the abyss, but wouldn’t you rather make a thin living doing what you love than a slightly better living doing what you hate?

  It’s easy to fall asleep in our lives, lulled into somnolence by routine, by the day-to-day sameness of work and responsibility until suddenly something happens to wake us up: a divorce, a wedding, a death, a birth, or a diagnosis. In that instant we’re awake in ways we previously were not, and for the first time in a very long while, we ask: Is this it? Is this the sum total of my life? Is this the way it has to be?

  Taken in order, the answers are: no, it’s not, and it doesn’t have to be.

  When I sold Changeling, not one studio executive cared about my age, if it was my first script or my fiftieth, where I went to school, what my grades were, or where I grew up. All they cared about were the words on the page.

  It doesn’t matter if you’re seventeen or fifty-seven, if you come from a poor background or a rich one, if you went to the best schools or the worst. It. Doesn’t. Matter.

  What matters is listening to the small voice at the back of your head that says This is what gives me joy.

  It’s about fighting naysayers and self-doubt when you feel you can’t fight for even one more second. It’s about standing up when all you want to do is lie down until life stops hitting you. It’s not easy. It was never meant to be easy. But it can be done if we choose to do it.

  “Whenever I think of you, I see you with your dukes up, fighting your way out of a corner.”

  I believe that if we do what we love fearlessly, with joy and commitment, the universe bends to our intent. Quantum mechanics tells us that the observer affects the observed. We are the observers; our lives and the world around us are the observed. If time is a matter of perspective, if speed and movement are relative to perception, if Schrödinger’s cat is both alive and dead until we look inside the box, then the same must apply to our capacity to envision the lives we want for ourselves and to make that happen.

  If my life stands for anything, it’s to offer proof that it’s possible to choose your own path, to break the cycle of violence, abuse, and doubt; that it’s possible to fight and win.

  That’s all. Not that winning is guaranteed, just that it’s possible.

  Here’s why that matters:

  The threshold theory of human development holds that people will generally fail to do something as long as they think it’s impossible. The ones who succeed are those who can see past the horizon and imagine themselves doing it, and slowly, through struggle and self-programming, convince themselves that the impossible is possible.

  For the whole of human history no one had run a sub-four-minute mile until British runner Roger Bannister in 1954. On its own, that’s an interesting factoid. But what’s more interesting is what happened afterward, when John Landy also broke the four-minute mile within just a few months of Bannister’s achievement. In the years that followed, others did the same.

  They had not become significantly faster runners than they had been before, nor did they train any differently. They were the same after Bannister’s achievement as they were before it. So what made the difference? Why could they do then what they couldn’t do before?

  Because they knew it was possible.

  Believing the task impossible, they had been unable to achieve it.

  Knowing that it could be done, they did it.

  And that is the point of this digression: not that success is guaranteed when we decide to pursue our dreams, just that it’s possible.

  One of the dopiest things DC Comics ever did was to declare that the S on Superman’s chest was a Kryptonian letter symbolizing hope. That symbol is an icon around the world because it means something different to everyone who sees it. To some, sure, it may mean hope; but to others it means strength, honesty, freedom . . . it means what you need it to mean, allowing us to project onto a fictional character the better and nobler aspects of ourselves. We cherish images of Superman doing amazing things because they let us imagine that we are capable of doing such things ourselves, that they are possible.

  For me, Superman represented all those qualities plus persistence, the refusal to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds. No matter how badly he got hurt or how many stood against him, you just knew that he would get up and keep fighting, that he would die before giving up.

  If he could do it, then I could do it.

  And if I can do it, frankly, anybody can do it.

  We have no control over who beats us up or knocks us down, or the obstacles that stand between us and our dreams. But we have absolute control over how we choose to respond.

  You didn’t come from the best schools.

  Doesn’t matter, get up, keep fighting.

  Your parents were alcoholics, violent, or abusive.

  Doesn’t matter, get up, keep fighting.

  Your friends and family don’t believe in you.

  Doesn’t matter, get up, keep fighting.

  They’ve got you pinned down in the schoolyard, the office, the house.

  Doesn’t matter, get up, keep fighting.

  You come from the streets, the farm, the projects, from nowhere.

  Doesn’t matter, get up, keep fighting.

  The bullies are bigger than you are, will always be bigger than you are.

  Doesn’t matter, get up, keep fighting.

  Doesn’t matter.

  Get up.

  Keep fighting.

  By taking responsibility for our lives, our mistakes, and our dreams, we break the patterns of the past and free ourselves to fight for our future, for what gives us joy, and for the possibilities of a better future.

  And with that choic
e ridiculously beautiful and powerful things begin to happen.

  As I write these concluding words, it is November 2018, and despite everything that has happened in my past I am struck by how profoundly fortunate I am: I get to spend my days and nights making up stories about things that never happened, but which feel as if they did.

  Online and at conventions I’m approached by fans who, as kids, watched He-Man, She-Ra, and The Real Ghostbusters, progressed as teens into Captain Power, were old enough for the more complex stories of The Twilight Zone, hit Babylon 5 and my comics work in their twenties, then later discovered my work in movies and on Sense8. Some among those fans are writers themselves, who graciously insist that they learned their craft by studying my work. If that is as advertised, then I am a doubly fortunate man.

  My home is my Fortress of Solitude, containing mementos of past battles, both the losses and the victories. The walls are covered in comic book art, so that everywhere I look, a friend is looking back at me, and on my desk is a statue of the Superman I birthed.

  How unlikely. How marvelous.

  Every day I go into my office, turn on the computer, and apply fingers to keyboard.

  I have no idea where the words will take me next.

  I know only that the journey will be amazing.

  Acknowledgments

  To ensure the accuracy of the events described in this volume, as many still-living witnesses as could be found were interviewed or asked to read the manuscript to confirm, amend, or dispute these events from their own perspective. My thanks therefore to the following fact-checkers and interview subjects: Kathryn Drennan, Mark Orwoll, Cathi Skoor (née Williams), Tim Pagaard, Jeri Taylor, David Moessinger, Walton Dornisch, Frank Skibicki, and my sister Theresa.

  My appreciation also goes to my assistant, Stephanie Walters; first-reader Jaclyn Easton; litigation attorney Karlene Goller, and my personal attorney of over twenty years, Kevin Kelly, of the Gendler-Kelly law firm, who reviewed the manuscript and steered me clear of danger; Buddy the Miracle Cat (BuddyTMC to his hip-hop friends); and the Astonishingly Insightful Axis of agent Emma Parry and editors Eve Claxton and Domenica Alioto for their assistance in wrestling this beast of a book to the ground.