JOHN OSTRANDER: That’s A TV Wrap, Part 2

John Ostrander

John Ostrander started his career as a professional writer as a playwright. His best known effort, Bloody Bess, was directed by Stuart Gordon, and starred Dennis Franz, Joe Mantegna, William J. Norris, Meshach Taylor and Joe Mantegna. He has written some of the most important influential comic books of the past 25 years, including Batman, The Spectre, Manhunter, Firestorm, Hawkman, Suicide Squad, Wasteland, X-Men, and The Punisher, as well as Star Wars comics for Dark Horse. New episodes of his creator-owned series, GrimJack, which was first published by First Comics in the 1980s, appear every week on ComicMix.

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8 Responses

  1. Martha Thomases says:

    Gee, John, I respectfully disagree about the Sopranos' ending. Those last few minutes, sitting in the diner, waiting for something to happen, looking at every single person as a possible killer, were excruciating. And that's what Tony's life is like all the time. He's in Hell. That's what happens when you have his life.

    • John Ostrander says:

      As a comment on Tony's life, I can buy it. As the end of the series, I really don't. Chase created an expectation and then, like Lucy with Charlie Brown and the football, yanked it away. Chase raised expectations just to confound them. The viewer has NEVER had much of a say on what happened on THE SOPRANOS but now we get to pick our ending? Feh. Should Chase have the right to end the series any way he wants? Of course. Doesn't mean the ending doesn't blow chunks. I've noted that people who LIKE the ending wind up reading a lot INTO it; I'm just saying what I SAW and, for me, it really didn't work. Of course, as I've said, your mileage may vary.

  2. Glenn Hauman says:

    Legion of Del? Do you get flight rings?

  3. Brian Alvey says:

    I didn't mind The Sopranos ending. It was like the "spot the clues" poster they did for season four, only with video instead of stills.I agree that The Shield is under-rated. It's my favorite tv series. I watch an episode and think "I didn't think it could blow my mind more than it did last week and then BAM!" or "I can't believe they just did that on television!" Then I'll have the same reaction the next week.

  4. Alan Coil says:

    I am the issue of Del!My father was Delbert, as is my nephew.

  5. John Tebbel says:

    "My first reaction, like most of the other viewers, was that my cable has suddenly gone out." Preach, brother. Congratulations to cable/dish for being unreliable after all these years. Makes telco seem like the will of G*d.

  6. Tom Galloway says:

    Problem I have with Eureka is that I have lived in "places" like that; I've worked at both MIT and Google. The scientist characters just don't ring true, and I really resent that the "normal guy" star always solves the problems/situations. Yes, I understand dramatically that he's, well, the star of the show, but there's this undercurrent of "See, the geniuses aren't really that smart 'cause they don't have good ol' common sense" / anti-intellectualism that bugs me. And there's just not the sort of sense of fun and play in either the scientists' actions or dialogue that I encounter.For a much more accurate and better portrayal of this sort of culture, I highly recommend the mid-80s movie Real Genius, set at "Pacific Tech" (read: Caltech). With only a couple of mild exceptions (the first time we see the college President, he's a bit too spacy, and the scene of Mitch in the dining hall just doesn't ring true in terms of the other students' reactions), it's a very accurate portrayal of how these folk act.