John Ostrander: Batman and The Gun, Revisited

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...

8 Responses

  1. Steve says:

    Erm…..21 years ago?…..are you in the future?? ;)

  2. John Ostrander says:

    I got the date wrong. It was 1992. I don’t know why I put in 2002. Brain fart, I think.

    • Steve says:

      Nooo, you’re a comic book and sci-fi author!!

      It’s much more interesting if you go with the “I’m writing from the Future!” answer! :)

  3. mike weber says:

    The pro-gun types like to point out that (in their interpretation) gun control laws have never worked to stem gun violence.

    They ignore, of course, the fact that, so long as there are states with as loose laws as Virginia (and, at least at the time 60 Minutes did a story called “The South Carolina Connection”) South Carolina, and so long as people (including criminals) are allowed to travel interstate, the best-written gun laws in other states are effectively rendered non-extant.

  4. Jeremy Sims says:

    Out of curiosity, can you even explain to me the intention of the second ammendment?

    • Mindy Newell says:

      Jeremy, the Second Amendment (Article II of the Constitution) came about because the British army would confiscate the guns of the colonists–by the way, the Third Amendment (Article III) also prohibits the billeting of soldiers in private citizens homes, which the British army also did–to prevent/inhibit uprisings of the colonists against the British government.

    • Sean D. Martin says:

      @Ostrander: There are those who claim that the real intention of the Second Amendment was to fend off the Federal government

      @Jeremy Sims: can you even explain to me the intention of the second ammendment?

      Actually, the folks who proclaim the 2nd Amendment have it almost exactly backwards.

      At the time the US had no standing army. The young federal gov’t had no way to broadly enforce order, except through a militia made up of private citizens. Since they needed to be able to call on “regular folks” to form a militia, those folks would need to be able to have guns.

      The “right to bear arms” wasn’t intended to allow private citizens to revolt against the gov’t they didn’t like. It was to enable the gov’t to put down revolts by private citizens.

      Read up on Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion.

  5. I do think it’s way past time to say that the Second Amendment is a desperate need of an upgrade, that is to have a Second Amendment that reflects the needs of the 21st century America and not the needs of 200+ years ago.

    Our country and it’s entire socitiy, culture, and technology have changed the Third Amendment is irrelevant and the needs for a standing miltra (we have the most powerful military in the world and if not the most powerful in the entire history of the world) and so is that part of the Second Amendment is completely irrelevant as well.

    IF he could start there that certain parts of the Second Amendment are out of date and irrelevant and then talk in civil way about hunting, sport shooting, self-defence, and criminal uses of guns and what makes an “assault rifle” an actual assault rifle (is it the number bullets in a clip/drum, the rounds it can fire in a certain period of time, certain features, etc) then we can move this discussion from the usual attacks and name calling and gun safety laws that MIGHT help lower or stop the number of the horrible events like Aurora and Newtown from happening again.