JOHN OSTRANDER: Fighting Words

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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11 Responses

  1. M. Sean McManus says:

    Damn it. Now what do we do about this?

    • Terence Kelley says:

      Sean: mention TOBACCO HEARING when you write your Congressman and Senator.Its a start.

  2. Linda Gold says:

    Well John your right, every night I start to watch Countdown thinking things can't get any worse and there it is. Now Congress is supposed to give the insane manic who is our President 50 billion more for this mess. This has got to stop.

  3. Elayne Riggs says:

    I remember when whistleblowers were regarded in the media as heroes, and the kind of "snitching" that was frowned upon was sticking your nose into your neighbor's business when you had no right to and when that neighbor wasn't harming anyone. Now this sort of snitching is encouraged (gotta root around in people's private bedrooms, after all!) and the worthy whistleblowing is seen as more criminal than the activity it's designed to publicize. This isn't just in politics; my husband was, to all intents and purposes, the whistleblower of the CrossGen mess a few years ago, and he never saw a single penny of the $1400 they owed him.

  4. Glenn Hauman says:

    Oh, you haven't even begun to get pissed yet. Try this: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/160763

    • Mike Gold says:

      Glenn, right now John's in the middle of writing a GrimJack graphic novel, a half dozen Munden's Bar stories, a new project with Ian Gibson, probably some Star Wars and he's personally binding each and every copy of the "postponed" Showcase Presents The Suicide Squad tome. So maybe pissing him off even more isn't in his best interest.Besides… Don't get John angry. You wouldn't like it when he's angry.

      • Glenn Hauman says:

        1. But John writes some of his best stuff when he's angry. It's like Billy Joel when he's in the middle of romantic angst.2. John couldn't possibly be writing new GrimJack and Munden's Bar stories. If he was, there surely would have been a news story on ComicMix. Ergo; he isn't.

  5. Terence Kelley says:

    Had a Federal prosecutor been running an active investigation on this corruption, perhaps this would be a story of fines and jail terms for those guilty…but the prosecutor that had the courage to pursue this was FIRED by the GONBUSH BUNCH.Now why to you suppose that happened?If you assemble all the prosecution cases active prior to the GONBUSH BUNCH massacre, determine which were pursued by their replacements and which were "discontinued" .The defendants getting off the hook must have felt wonderful. Then the Republican National Committe reminded them of the "gentleman's agreement" that a donation of 45% of the amount saved on attorney fees should be offered up to the American Country Club folks.See? A wonderful solution–everyone is happy–but for the whistle blowers and me….What should we encourage our Congress & Senate to do?Ask them to consider a hearing similar to the Tobacco Hearings—give all of theseparticipants an opportunity to lie to Congress.

  6. John Ostrander says:

    Herre's another article that has appeared on MSN Money, really getting into which company is making the most money off of Iraq. Here's the link: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Co…Want to guess the top earner? Go ahead. It's Halliburton offshoot KBR, prominently mentioned in my column. The new article says The War in Iraq cointinues to be funded by Emergency Spending rather than the Pentagon budget so it receives less oversight. We have a war that's been going on for HOW many years but it's still being treated as EMERGENCY funding? We KNOW we're going to be there for awhile; the President insists on it. Yet, we can't PLAN for it in the Budget?The encouraging thing is that I AM seeing more media coverage of it. This drum has to be banged often and loudly, especially with the elections coming up because its the ONLY time that politicians pat even a MODICUM of attention to We, the People.