John Ostrander: The Face in the Mirror

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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1 Response

  1. George Haberberger says:

    The furor over the all-female Ghostbusters was lost on me. Who cares? Ghostbusters is frivolous movie. You can change the gender of the principles in movie like Ghostbusters with no repercussions.

    The Magnificent Seven was also remade recently and yes, Denzel Washington replaced Yul Brenner and that was appropriate. But again, all of the seven leads were male. They HAVE to be. Could there be an all-female Magnificent Seven? Only as a parody, because defending the helpless by killing the oppressors is an inherently masculine attribute. Killing is a masculine attribute. Women can and do kill. but that is an anomaly.

    What kind of movies would Steel Magnolias or Fried Green Tomatoes be with the genders switched? They would be ridiculous. Biology cannot be denied.

    That is why when a movie depicts a 110 pound woman defeating a 170 pound man in a physical fight it pulls me right out of the movie. In professional wrestling and boxing, women do not fight men. Hell, there are weight classes in those sports so heavy weights don’t fight light weights.

    So replacing women for men in lead roles isn’t necessarily a plausible endeavor. That is not bias or an unwillingness to identify with the character, it’s being realistic.