FULL CIRCLE POP CULTURE:

(From Comics Mythology to TV Series Mythology and Back Again)

Sometimes, things really do seem to come full circle.

It’s not just a story-telling device that can have a sense of dramatic fulfillment, a coming together of disparate people, places and events in the midst of chaos, it occurs in real life, also, and can have just as satisfying an impact as fiction.

In this specific full circle circumstance I am referring to Joss Whedon and J. Michael Straczynski and the influence of and passion for comics to their collective T.V. series and back to the medium both have acknowledged they loved.

J. Michael Straczynski

Joss Whedon

Both Joss Whedon and J. Michael Straczynski have brought the continuity of mythology and the journeys of characters’ lives over a vast period of time, once the prime domain of the comics medium, in the late 1900s, to their television series.

BABYLON 5, BUFFY, THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, ANGEL, FIREFLY, all these wonderful, more or less weekly television series, seized the idea of epic myths filled with iconic characters told in a regularly released format.

Comics were the prime domain for that kind of story-telling, their release schedule seldom weekly, but normally as a monthly or bimonthly (and occasionally as statically released comic series). A serial dose of words and pictures on the printed page, each unfolding issue capable of shaking up the status quo.The long wait between issues.Who knew what could happen to those characters next?
And curiously, as the comics medium continues to struggle with whether they should keep continuity or abandon it or revise it, some of television and even movies have come to embrace it.

Even more curiously,as many comics creators look to Hollywood to option their comics creations as T.V. series or as a movie franchise, in other words, to give them their big break to La La Land and maybe financial salvation, Joss Whedon and J. Michael Straczynski have traveled in the opposite direction, and come to one of the mediums they have both said many times influenced and inspired them as storytellers.

Comics to film to comics.

So much talent in comics have always been passionate about film, just as many film-makers have reveled in comic books.
I have always loved books and comics and films.I was working on film projects and novels before I ever wrote comics.

From my first comics series on a regular basis, in the early 1970s, for Marvel to my first graphic novels, SABRE (written in 1976-77) and DETECTIVES INC. (1969, in a rare, seldom seen edition and 1981, from Eclipse), I wanted to give the audiences stories that meant something to me, with characters they hopefully would come to care passionately about, something both Whedon and Straczynski do consistently in their work..

Those first editions of SABRE and DETECTIVES INC would, in television terminology these days, be considered as pilot episodes for proposed series.

Oh, I never thought of the books in those terms, although I certainly saw both in my head as a continued series.I had at least ten plot lines for DETECTIVES INC before I’d completely written the first one in 1969.Conceptually I had seen the series not just rooted in the mystery genre, but stories that could encompass any genre I wanted.I had at least one that was a straight out fantasy horror motif, THE HIGHWAY MENTALITY.

ROUNDTABLE GLADIATORS took place during a night of card playing, the visuals swirling about the various players, as the night and the stakes raise, with early morn revelations. Another was completely mainstream, with no murders, no crimes to solve, per se, with Denning and Rainier only making a walk on appearance, somewhat, say, the way Will Eisner did many times with the Spirit. This approach wasn’t inspired by the Spirit.I hadn’t read enough of the Spirit at that time for Will Eisner to be an influence.

I hadn’t completed one finished DETECTIVES INC, and I was already envisioning what I thought series could be, and hopefully keeping myself open to new possibilities if I actually got the chance to do new stories with Denning and Rainier.I knew major events that would shape and change their lives from the first time the reader met them; and yet there were also smaller, unexpected, defining incidents that would reveal who they were that came at the very moment I was writing a scene with them, something that, for all the thought beforehand, came quickly and ferociously and seemed real and undeniable true to them.

I never thought in the defining terminology, that entertainment popular parlance that anyone who even half-heartedly follows what’s going on in movies and television knows to some degree.

I never thought of “Story Arcs,” say (a term that I believe gained popularity when Steven J. Cannell; s WISEGUY did long-form narratives), when starting the first series I wrote for Marvel Comics, the BLACK PANTHER.I thought of character and theme and where I believed a scene would most effectively work.I knew, for instance, that PANTHER’S RAGE would be a continued serial.I believe I had originally thought of it as 10 issues in length, which seems odd to me in retrospect.

People are always asking me about influences on my work, and certainly, without a doubt, the Republic serials of the 1930s and 1940s, were in my mind when I wrote the first issue.JUNGLE ACTION #6 – PANTHER’S RAGE 1 has a literal cliff-hanger with the Panther being thrown off a cliff over a raging waterfall.

The reason the 10 chapters seems odd to me now is that Republic serials were most often 12 to 13 chapters in length, and while PANTHER’S RAGE ended up as 13 separate books, it wasn’t due to my initial design.In originally planning the books I knew thematically what I thought each book would be about.I knew the reasons I wanted to write it, even if I didn’t know HOW to write it.I knew my intent, even if I didn’t know exactly what would happen to every one of the characters.

Now, as anyone who has read those books knows, PANTHER’S RAGE only had that one cliff- hanger.Editorial decided they did not want cliff hangers at the time.I’m not sure why, I’m not sure I was ever told,but I followed the edict, and it’s one of the few comments they made that I think helped make the series better.

Each issue held together entirely on its own, thus, theme, character and plot held more cohesively, which hopefully added to reader expectations for 60 days as to what would happen next.I didn’t have a label for it, but it is the same story teller instinct that is so profoundly powerful in BUFFY, ANGELand BABYLON 5.

One of the other reasons that I decided to make the series one inter-connected story-line in the BLACK PANTHER was that, with all the fantastic events transpiring, I felt if there weren’t something cohesive in nature about it, it would seem as if the Black Panther’s kingdom suddenly had all these divergent threats, month after month, as soon as he returned as a ruler.
This just seemed wrong.

Plus, in keeping with the thought of continuity, Wakanda was supposed to be a hidden, African nation.That meant, folks, I’m sure you and I would agree, that about no one outside its borders was supposed to know where the Hellit was!

I had read every Panther story written at the time, before I wrote the first issue.In those days, you could do that, fairly easily.There weren’t decades of books to locate, in many different titles.

And in those days it was possible to own every single issue in which a character had appeared!

Don’t ask me for specifics, because I don’t recall them at this late date, but it was my impression that Marvel was already undermining one of the strong elements of Wakanda, that it was almost a mystical place, imbued with its own reality, rules and ethics, separated from the rest of the world.
And yet, at that early stage many stories centered around some white weasel stumbling onto Wakanda, finding his way back out, and being super villain enough to come back and try steal all its precious commodity, Vibranium.

This just couldn’t be.So, I wasn’t thinking “Story Arcs” when I decided that the Panther stories had to be comic novels.And in keeping with my approach to DETECTIVES INC., before I’d written the first book, I’d already begun to play around with the idea that the next PANTHER comic novel to take place in South Africa.In my reading of the comics featuring the Panther, I realized there’d been scenes about his father, but really nothing about his mother.If I could get the story idea past Marvel, it meant I could have the Panther in a completely different emotional situation and locale, and I could write about Apartheid.

As a human being and as a writer, this seemed vitally important.

The idea for having some place to go, even if I don’t know where it will end, stems from fear.Yes, fear.The same fear I feel approaching writing this column. For any series that I have committed a large portion of my life to, it’s a fear that I won’t have a strong story once the current one ends, even if that’s going to be two to three years down the line.I want to know I have someplace to go that will intrigue me a story-teller, where I will learn something, the lead characters will be taken to places we haven’t seen them before, and the readers hopefully will be the prime beneficiaries.

The term “Back Story” is used by writers in interviews all the time now.

I don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout no “Back Stories.”

Well, not until I read about them in those interviews.

I guess I just never thought much in terms of labels.I didn’t much like them. Certainly had a whole passel of labels thrown at me over the years while writing the books.

But I was always thinking about the characters lives, what lie before them, and just as important, what had shaped them, to become the people they were, the individual men and women, whose lives we’d learn about as the stories progressed.

So, I guess in the long run, I was thinking about “Back Story,” although it was, for me, always just about people, about what slices into us and stays with us, the small things that come back to haunt you when you thought you’d never think about that again.
Or the joys that brighten, even if briefly, the darkest time in your life.Or what makes that character react a certain way to a situation.Denning would react one way; Rainier another, to the same stimuli.

I had to know how they would react.And why.And thus, until I knew it, knew as them, not as me, thus, another reason for the fear.
Joss Whedon has often been quoted that he had a “Mission Statement” for each season of BUFFY and ANGEL.I include ANGEL purposefully, because often the series seems neglected, when indeed it has the same care and meticulous layers as the more well-known BUFFY.

The “Mission Statement” is to the me the intent for a particular season, what the creators look to achieve in that year, and then explore the overall theme within the individual themes and character evolution through each of the 22 episodes.

“Mission Statement.”Wish I could say I had a title for each individual story within a series I ever did.I didn’t.But I respond to the concept, because each story out I had to have some idea of what I hoped I would achieve, what I could give, where the characters would go.I often worried about it down to individual scenes, even if they were only a page in length.Why is this scene here?What does it add to the story?What does it reveal about the characters that we don’t already know.

Actors are supposed to hate “Exposition.”Well, I always hate it when a character goes through a plot explanation, when it is clearly that and nothing more, but not when it comes out of the character, not how what has happened effects them, and their emotional reactions to it.Back to the things human beings never forget.

Straczynski and Whedon (and Marti Noxon and David Fury and Jane Esperson and David Greenwalt and Tim Minear< and others I can’t recall off the top of my head) don’t forget.They reward the viewer who follows their stories passionately, even when they go places some of the viewers might not want them to go.

J. Micheal Straczynski wrote something like 90% of the episodes of BABYLON 5, as well as being involved in all stages of the production of the show.This is extraordinary.The only equivalent of such a body of work that I can think of is when when Stirling Silliphant wrote a huge percentage of ROUTE 66 in the early 1960s. Silliphant literally bled onto the page, week after week.Remember I wrote back there about people asking me about influences on my work:Stirling Silliphant was definitely one of those writers.He taught me you could care, story after story, even when you thought you’d never find a way to do it, that the story mattered, and you could go further than you thought.I should mention that in those days there were close to 40 episodes of a weekly television series a year as compared with the average 22 episodes done in 2004.

I wanted to tell J. Michael Straczinski that’s how highly I regarded his work when he and I were both guests at a Florida comic convention a few years back.I was at a table two rooms removed from the main room, having a schizophrenic weekend.I was with my daughter, Lauren, whose very voice on the phone can make any day a better day, but trying to sell enough books to stay alive.It was the first weekend Lauren and I had where it was just the two of us, since she was five years old. She was dressed as LADY RAWHIDE. It wasn’t my idea.I promise you.I needed gun.There were a lot of people coming to the table not to get my autograph but to get close to her.Hey!I don’ t blame them, but I’m her dad.They had good taste, but just keep your distance. Being with her was delightful, a weekend I’ll treasure forever in that aspect; but seeing so many pros trying to keep their dreams alive in that back room, trying to stay alive, myself,as a writer, that was a harsh downside.

I asked the stalwart leaders of the con to let me know when Straczynski would be in the convention hall, that I’d love to meet him, and tell him how much I loved his work.The Con had contacted me continually before I’d agreed to attend.The courtship was over.You’re here!Now I was told, that could not happen.Oh.They never said they had their “A” list guests. The people on the main floor, not a couple of rooms removed, were not on the “A” list..There were a lot of great writers and artists there, people who have added to the comics medium over decades.

That entire weekend they were treated almost as if they were invisible.

They don’t talk to you that way when they are courting you. It’s all promises and ego stroking and how eager they are to add your name to their Con. And their advertising campaigns.

I suppose they never give what the real deal here is a label, but I think in this instance one surely applies.

It’s a “Class System”, pure and simple.

Then again, you gotta be careful fucking over writers, you can never tell when one of them will be riding shotgun.

Writers can have long memories, even those who can forget why they walked into a room, and what they needed there.
I guess they think you’ll go invisibly quiet into that good night.

J.M.I can get to thank you here.

To place you alongside one of my heroes, Stirling Silliphant, is for me, high praise.Please know, I mean it sincerely..

Joss Whedon has also been quoted as saying that from the beginning he saw Buffy as an iconic figure.

Jon Cooke, in his discussions with me about doing this column, said I’ve created icons throughout my life, and despite the Florida Comic Convention, that I am an icon.

Huh. Who would-a thought? Not me.

I just wanted to write stories that were mine.And if I was at con, even if I was leaping over a table, it was spontaneously me.I had no idea I was going to do it 5 seconds before I did it.

These days I don’t land as easily.

People who know me, will tell you, that when BUFFY and ANGEL were on, back to back, on Tuesday nights, there wasn’t any sense calling Don on the phone, between 8 and 10.I wasn’t going to answer.I wanted to see what was going to happen next. I looked forward to it I’d earned the right to those 2 hours during the week.

I’ve told a lot stories throughout my life, and been told a lot of them.Therefore, it’s not often I’m rarely startled by what happens in most stories, but both Joss Whedon and J. Michael Straczinski made my eyes go wide, made me speak out loud to the television screen.

You have to being doing something right if you can choke me up about a high school girl’s prom and make me have to stop eating because I can’t swallow.

When the Fox network approached Joss Whedon about doing a television series, and he talked about FIREFLY, I’m sure this was in their courting phase, where they wanted Joss there, they wanted his next series, and while I wasn’t privy to any of those conversations, I suspect the suits didn’t really hear what he told them he wanted to do.They just wanted to get a series by him on Fox.
When they saw the pilot episode for FIREFLY, I can just imagine their reactions.

“Hey!This…This is a science fiction western!”

Joss may have told them this, used that exact term, but what they heard were vague echoes of Gene Roddenberry telling NBC that STAR TREK was “Wagon Train in space.”

He gave them an exact term, they just didn’t really understand what the term meant.They didn’t really think it was going to be a science fiction western.With harmonica music?And ball room dances?And showdowns with six guns at high noon, or at some time of the day or night. Sometimes, even swords at dawn! Well, guns may have been all right. Kinda.

Some version of those reactions had to have taken place.I’ve seen and heard and experienced too many of them over the years.
And so Fox began screwing around with the show.It makes you just shake your head at how a decision is made to air the FIRST episode as the LAST one you intend to show.

Now, if you haven’t seen these shows, you can get all of them on DVD.I don’t have the five seasons of BABYLON 5, yet, but the entire five seasons are due to be released, if I understand it correctly, before you see this column in print.If you can afford it, I believe you’ll love what you see. And coming out, around the same time, although again, I’m far from an authority on this, is BUFFY – SEASON 6.This is a hotly debated season.I think long-term viewers were superbly rewarded for being with the show from the beginning.I think it would have been even better if they could have done it for HBO. Find a place where you can buy these at a reasonable price.

If you can’t find DVD sets of these shows, or complete sets of BABYLON 5, and you have access to the Internet, go to the excellent, supreme TV DVD website in cyberpace, TVShowsonDVD.com.

The site was created by Gord Lacey, and his purpose was to keep folks updated on what TV series were coming to DVD.He also gave people a Forum where you can tell the companies what shows you want to see released on DVD. So, all of Joss Whedon and J. Michael Straczyski’s shows are all up there, and they even have a direct link to places where you can order them.

If you want some examples of Stirling Silliphant’s beautiful New York city street poetry, try the recent NAKED CITY DVD single releases from Image-Entertainment.Check out the release with his episode titled TORMENT HIM MUCH AND HOLD HIM LONG, with wonderful Manhattan location filming and a terrific early acting gig by Robert Duvall.

Oh, and as long as you’re up there, vote for Silliphant’s ode to TV road series, ROUTE 66. Episodes like INCIDENT ON A BRIDGE and MOST VANQUISHED, MOST VICTORIOUS had a profound influence on me a writer and as a human being.
And since I’m off on this tangent, and because I’d love to see it, will Warners ever release its initial private eye series, 77 SUNSET STRIP on DVD?Especially the long long RESERVED FOR MR. BAILEY, written and directed by Montgormery Pittman, with a solo performer on screen for the ENTIRE hour, just Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. as Stuart Bailey trapped in a lethal ghost town.Warners has been hiding this gem for decades!

And no, I’m not getting anything, not even the DVDs, for doing this pitch.These are just great stories, by great storytellers, and by many people who love comics.

When I started the third SABRE series in the 1980s, THE DECADENCE INDOCTRINATION, I felt this was the first time I was really going to write Sabre as a real graphic novel.

Like BABYLON 5, this time I’d have the room to tell the most ambitious heroic fantasy I’d ever written, and it wouldn’t just be a graphic novel in ad terms, but with whatever page count was needed to do a real novel.400 pages?500?600?Whatever it took to tell the story.
Kinda like BABYLON 5’s five years to tell the whole story.

When it was done, it was done, and it might be the last time I’d write this kind of story.

The first three issues were supposed to appear monthly.That meant only four weeks between appearances.This was a splendid opportunity to do things I’d never have done if the book were bi- monthly.

I did covers that were radically different than anything I’d attempted before.They didn’t all succeed as well as the initial intent.I did a montage cover with a romantic flavor. The problem was, in the final execution, the cover just never achieved the romantic heat I’d envisioned.

The second issue just had Sabre as a father, holding onto his twins, their diapers leaking and his eyes raised towards the heavens.Kinda like Angel as Daddy.I wanted to do a cover that really harkened back to the 40s comics, like SUPERMAN, with Lois Lane trying to cut Superman’s hair, only to have the scissors break in half, or PLASTIC MAN (Man!Do I love PLASTIC MAN!) with Woozy using the hero as sled.I wanted to show that every heroic comic didn’t have to have a life or death situation on the cover.

On the third issue, I didn’t even put Sabre on the cover, I wanted to redefine Melissa Siren, and I knew many readers loved her as dearly as they loved Sabre.

I think Sabre appeared, oh, maybe for about 10 or 12 pages of the entire issue.And in all three issues, he, and others, were recovering from wounds received during the big finale of the second SABRE series, AN EXPLOITATION OF EVERYTHING DEAR.

I thought it important to show the reality of wounds.Not just the scars, but the painful time of recuperation, and the times when people you care dearly about don’t make it.

SABRE was riding so hot at the time, I didn’t even write BLACKSTAR BLOOD out of the series, his departure scene, because Eclipse Comics publisher Dean Mullaney wanted me to do a 4 issue BLACKSTAR BLOOD mini-series, and I intended to begin it with those goodbyes to the living.

And the dead.

I had detailed the beginning and end of the book.I had the lead villain:Colonel Wormrat. I was at the stage where I knew what it was about, but not HOW to do it! But Eclipse was having trouble finding an artist.

And I didn’t know that there would be almost half a year, not one month, between the cover with Sabre and the babies, and then him not appearing on the cover.

The art was being held in international business ransom.

When the art didn’t show up in time for the next issue, I knew something was seriously amiss.It took me five months to learn that complicated bartering was affecting my book and the life of SABRE.

I had no idea that what had seemed like a terrific thing, and international printing of RAGAMUFFINS, would help bring about Sabre’s demise!

Showing babies being born.That was supposed to hurt sales. Radically!

It didn’t.

Having two gay characters in the supporting cast kissing. Going to kill the book!

It didn’t.

Almost half a year absence?

That killed us!

It was a wound from which we wouldn’t recover.

I had told Dean Mullaney, the publisher and founder of Eclipse Comics, that when THE DECADENCE INDOCTRINATION was done, it could quite possibly be the final SABRE story, and it might be the last time I’d write this kind of genre.

Except, like a television series cut in its prime, we didn’t get a renewal.

125 pages into the story, and we were done.

Sometimes, things don’t come full circle.

Sometimes, the intent and vision don’t become a words and pictures reality.

Sometimes, the story doesn’t get told.

The story doesn’t end.