About the Author
J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI began his career writing for the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, the San Diego Reader, and TIME Inc. as well as publishing novels and short stories. He has written hundreds of produced television episodes for such series as He-Man; She-Ra; The Real Ghostbusters; The Twilight Zone; Walker, Texas Ranger; Murder, She Wrote; Babylon 5; Crusade; Jeremiah; and Sense8, the latter four of which he also created. His movie work includes Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-nominated Changeling; Ninja Assassin; Thor; Underworld: Awakening; and World War Z.
Straczynski has worked for Marvel and DC Comics, writing The Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Thor, The Silver Surfer, Wonder Woman, and Superman, selling more than thirteen million issues in total, and his Superman: Earth One graphic novel series appeared consistently on the New York Times bestseller list.
He has won the Hugo Award, the Saturn Award, the Ray Bradbury Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America, the Eisner, Icon, and Inkpot Lifetime Achievement Awards, the Space Frontier Foundation Award, and the Eagle Award; he shares in two Emmy Awards; and was nominated for a British Academy Award for his screenplay for Changeling.
Straczynski has been profiled in Time magazine, Newsweek selected him as one of their Fifty for the Future, Daily Variety selected him as one of their top-ten screenwriters to watch, and he has had an asteroid officially named after him by the International Astronomical Union, straczynski-3469, chosen because he and the asteroid have “an eccentric orbit.”
He’s not entirely sure how he feels about that part.
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Copyright
BECOMING SUPERMAN. Copyright © 2019 by Synthetic Worlds, Ltd. Introduction copyright © 2019 by Neil Gaiman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Superman, the Superman S-Shield and costume, and all related elements, are © and TM DC Comics. Used with permission.
Excerpts from The Amazing Spider-Man here, Spider-Man, and all related elements are © and TM Marvel. Used with permission.
Harper Voyager and design are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers LLC.
Cover design by Owen Corrigan
Cover photographs by Chris Fanning
FIRST EDITION
Digital Edition JULY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-285785-9
Version 06142019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-285784-2
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* On the plus side, marrying her father’s brother meant she wouldn’t have to change anything that had been monogrammed or etched with her last name.
* The document refers to Evelyn as an “infant” because at the time of the events in question she was still a minor under the law.
* She would eventually be committed five times, three involuntarily, twice of her own volition, per court documents filed later. During these hospitalizations she was frequently subjected to electroconvulsive (shock) therapy.
* I once asked her how and why she started talking to her dog in the first place. She said, “Because there are things I know about your father I can only tell to a dog.” Odd as this statement was, it would become important later.
* Adjusted for inflation, that’s about thirty-eight dollars in 2019 currency, a good value by any standard, proof that the market for pagan babies is still strong and should be offered on the Nasdaq Stock Market at the first opportunity.
† The Pagan Baby fund still exists today, though it’s now called the Missionary Childhood Association. I can only assume that buysomepaganbabiescheap.com was already taken.
* Years later, that scene, with only a very few small changes, wound up in a little movie called Changeling.
* Following this genetic cul-de-sac to its inevitable conclusion, I am my own second cousin.
* My grandmother was not one to let the grass grow under her feet. Or any other part of her anatomy.
* Had those comics been kept in the condition they were that evening—and believe me, they would have been—at the height of the comics boom they would have been worth nearly three hundred thousand dollars. Just my pristine copy of Amazing Fantasy #15, Spider-Man’s debut (current value: $27,000) would’ve covered tuition at the best university in the country.
* And the craftsmanship would be impeccable.
* More accurately: after my father confiscated the film camera I’d earned by selling a buttload of greeting cards door-to-door in the belief that I might one day make movies . . .
* And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I trained for a career as a television writer.
* Years later, I would write a tribute by proxy to Midnight in the pages of Superman: Earth One.
* And it’s ridiculous that this still bugs me. Arguing over writing credits on this piece of nonsense is like fighting over who had the better suite on the Titanic.
† A “maze of excitement” couldn’t be more incorrect. A whirl of excitement, perhaps, or even a haze of excitement, but not a maze. A maze is a physical object, while excitement is conceptual. They have no business being in the same sentence with each other.
* A typical amateur writer’s mistake, overstating the case in an attempt to create importance or drama.
† Unless the author has changed genders since the title and credit, “I was ten” would suffice.
‡ I have no idea what the hell happened to this sentence.
§ Given the political situation at the time, they were almost certainly saying “You’re going the wrong way.”
¶ More poor writing. One doesn’t have to enumerate every aspect of an action. For this, “The ship’s arrival” would have sufficed.
* Horror does not beset anyone. Something horrific can befall someone, and a person can be beset by problems, but horror does not beset.
† Da-da-da-dummm!
* These “helpers” were young Jewish girls who were apparently forced to work for Sophia.
† A German railway soldier at the station.
* In later years, ITT was successfully prosecuted on a range of criminal charges, including helping conduct coups in Brazil and Chile, and for violations of the Arms Export Control Act. My father was perfect for this place.
* I’m still working on this one.
* Coffee was never served, so why they called it a coffeehouse is any
one’s guess.
* My social awkwardness never really faded. I once overheard a woman I knew tell her friend, “This is how you flirt with Joe: you start taking his clothes off, otherwise he hasn’t got a goddamned clue.”
* Now I understood why the clip was missing; my mother had attempted suicide before, so he probably thought she might try something like this.
* Years later, after Harlan and I became friends, I reminded him of this exchange. As it happened, he remembered the conversation very well. “Were you offended by what I said?” he asked. I replied, “Had you been wrong, I would have been offended, but you were right.”
* Yes, they misspelled it.
* Mark went on to become the international editor at Travel + Leisure magazine, spending twenty-nine years on their masthead, the longest in the magazine’s fifty-year history.
* After graduating from SDSU, Dave Hasemyer would go on to a stellar career as a journalist, eventually winning a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on climate change.
* For this reason Zeno’s Greek philosopher peers considered him a troublemaker, and a pain in the ass.
* And if there was a T-shirt representing my life, that’s what it would say.
* Applying for the job.
† Told you.
‡ Dork.
§ Big dork.
* It should be mentioned that despite repeated efforts over the years to verify this story one way or another, nothing definitive has emerged.
* And yes, I know that there is an art to carpentry just as there is a craft to writing, just in case there are some really tough but artistic carpenters in my neighborhood reading this. Doesn’t change the essential point.
* Thirty-five years later, the thousand dollars has still not been paid. A recent email to this individual led to his reply that he was still making “best efforts” to produce the script and thus wasn’t liable to pay me a dime.
* To my shame and regret this strategy proved successful in silencing me. When interviewed about the church a year or two earlier by the San Diego Reader I voiced my concerns but stopped short of describing Ken’s liaisons, afraid of being further harassed or even sued.
* A formal apology from the church wouldn’t come until February 2007, nearly thirty years after the fact.
* This was my first introduction to the Prince from a Distant Land Scenario, about which more later.
* Ask your mom.
* It’s the black rolly-thing the paper goes around . . . ask your grandmother . . .
* The only exception to this was my aunt Theresa, who would sometimes backchannel information that she thought I might need to know.
* Bad guys in the ’80s had a lot to learn about goal management.
* Which is either Ame and Jennie or a river in France.
* In later years, Mike’s father, George Hodel, would emerge as one of the prime suspects in the infamous Black Dahlia murder. Apparently both our fathers had something to hide.
* Phil’s problem with cocaine was generally known but rarely spoken of until after his death in 2005.
* See the previous section on the stupidest series names in television history for an explanation of that title.
* “Imitation is the sincerest form of television.” —Fred Allen
* It should be noted that Rubin was convicted of battery in 1980. By contrast not a single incident of real-world violence was ever attributed to Captain Power.
* Pretty haughty for a guy who had barely made his first sale a few years earlier.
* At the request of my attorneys it should be stressed that this is simply a joke and not a commentary on the skills of either of these two actors, who are equally remarkable and talented despite one being deceased.
* The irony was not lost on me that my last script for Jake and the Fatman was entitled “Goodbye.”
* The Black Tower at Universal then was kind of like the Black Monolith in 2001, except that it lowered your IQ when you touched it.
* Once again, and totally by coincidence, my last script for Murder, She Wrote was entitled “Final Curtain.” The lesson I’ve taken from this is that I must never write a script entitled “Joe Gets Hit by a Bus.”
* http://io9.gizmodo.com/5985727/the-strange-secret-evolution-of-babylon-5
* Yes, the same initials as Commander Jeffrey Sinclair and Joe Straczynski; I sometimes sign my work.
* I also cleaned up his spelling.
‡ Great Maker was a term created by Babylon 5 fans for me, à la Roddenberry being the “great bird of the galaxy.”
* I had already bought this for her, unbeknownst to him.
* For which I wrote twenty-one of the twenty-two episodes, with Neil Gaiman providing the only freelance script in three years.
* Q: What do you get when you cross an agent from CAA with a ham sandwich? A: A ham sandwich that never returns your calls.
* In June 2008 Daily Variety named me one of their Top Ten Screenwriters to Watch, a list of up-and-coming writers who were otherwise all in their twenties or early thirties. In photos taken at a party given to mark the occasion, I look like somebody’s father sent to drive them home after the festivities.
* So technically we could’ve entitled this book Superman Becoming Joe, but that would have been weird and I don’t think it would have sold many copies.
* The back-and-forth discussion and upload described here and further downstream can be found at http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/vishnevo/v_pages/vstories_forget.html.
* His reply is located at http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/vishnevo/v_pages/vish_gb_archive1.html.
* I later remembered my father’s description of a second attack on Vishnevo that he “happened” to witness, and wonder to this day how much more there may have been to that story.
* In these and similar conversations, I wasn’t idly sticking my nose in his business. When you’re the showrunner, anything that can affect production is your business. In a way, you’re the dad of the production team, which on reflection means maybe I wouldn’t have been a bad father after all.
Becoming Superman Page 42