Comics as a medium...

 Posted on 8/15/1996 by J. Michael Straczynski <71016.1644@compuserve.com> to CIS


Michael Beemer <71551.1670@compuserve.com> asks:
> I thought that while I was passing that along to you, I'd ask
> what you think of comics as a medium to tell *your* stories? Do
> comics give you the same range that a novel or a TV script does,
> or do you find them too limiting?

In general terms, a comic allows you to do things that you could
never afford to do in a TV series or movie. There's the constraint of
the artist you choose...a great artist can elevate a book, a bad one
can sink it no matter how good the storytelling...and having grown up
on comics all my life, and enjoyed the work of Miller and Moore and
Gaiman and David and others, I think they're a terrific form of
expression and storytelling.

In regards the Legion...setting aside the reality that after the
situation with the B5 comic, which I felt wasn't being done correctly,
and said so vociferously...if there's any book I'd love to do (after
any of the Superman titles), it'd be the Legion of Superheroes. It's
gone through some tough times, mainly in the Giffin days which were as
much a screwup of the concept as Byrne's Superman, but I have a lot of
loyalty to the characters, having come into the title back at its
formation out of the pages of Adventure Comics. I'd do it in a hot
second, but I'd want to take it a bit back to its roots, and I'm not
sure they'd go for that.

jms