John Ostrander: Making a Better Superman

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.

You may also like...

6 Responses

  1. demoncat_4 says:

    doubtful warners is suddenly for jl going to fire henry and have tyler take over as superman more since they like having their tv and movie universe considered separate dc worlds as for a superman spin off not likely to happen since warners has a show about superman early days on krypton in the works. and like gotham preventing batman from being used on other dc shows. it will proably prevent any use of a superman spin off for a while.

    • Kevin Wilsone says:

      Not trying to be mean here, or troll, but I really hope English is your second language. With no punctuation or proper grammar it was hard to glean from what you wrote what it was that you meant. However I’m responding because I want to comment on a couple of points. First the Krypton series won’t have anything to do with Superman. I assume it will include his parents, but remember he was an infant when he left the planet. Secondly, having that series on the year would not preclude them from producing a Superman series if there was a market for it and they could make money doing it. Likewise, unless you’ve read or heard something that I haven’t, the existence of Gotham is not prohibiting anyone from doing a Batman series.

  2. Eric says:

    Henry’s Superman is way better. I don’t want Christopher Reeves’ Superman, nor do I want Adam West’s Batman! I thought Tyler’s performance was good for the show, but that take on Superman would be horrible for the movies… In the movies, Superman IS becoming the confident, hopeful Superman we know. We start to set that at the end of BvS. Let him evolve, will ya’! I absolutely love the more realistic feal DC has and I haven’t met one person who didn’t agree. I hope it doesn’t get ruined.

    • Samael says:

      Odd. You look at real life heroes from small towns, and they behave way more like corny, goofy, warm and fuzzy folks who know how to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties.

      “Realistic”, meanwhile, behaves like the kind of guy who wants to argue that Superman sucks, and who would throw a temper online, until DC kills off Jimmy Olsen for him. He can’t even pretend he cares about human life, after he took a Dragon Ball Z fight out of the cornfields and into Smallville, just to show he’s got way more testosterone than that cartoon.

      It’s not realistic at all, and it tells me horrible things about those who consider that mirror universe, straight out of a bad Star Trek episode, an accurate reflection of our own.

      • Joseph Handibode says:

        Not like marvel thor, hulk who love to kill people. Captain america, ironman all killed people yet its ok. Oh if batman or superman do it there is problem lol.

  3. Rick Mercer says:

    Superman does not need to be presented as ‘evolving.’ One of the biggest thing that DC movies and most superhero movies do is assume that everyone wants to see the origin story and the development phases of a character. WE ALREADY KNOW THIS! We know who Batman, Superman, Spiderman are from years of exposure in TV series, cartoons, books,and comics. Just give us an evil villan, a cool plot, and we’re off to the races. Let’s have some fun for once, like Berlanti. If I wanted a realistic comic universe, I’d look in the mirror.