John Ostrander: Should This Man Be Considered A Role Model?

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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5 Responses

  1. Mindy Newell says:

    Struggling man succeeds, becomes rich and powerful and famous. Man cheats on wife while spewing words about feminism and equality and publicly praising wife. Ex-wife chooses to feel herself empowered by publicly detailing events that happened while married to ex-husband. Ex-husband, through a spokesperson, says that allegations are misrepresented.

    Old story.

    Speaking of that Grimjack scenario, John, do you remember the MAGNUM, P.I. episode, “Did You See The Sun Rise?,” the third season premiere of the series?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7vW1oEKP1k

    One of Magnum’s friends has been killed by a car-bomb meant for Magnum; the last thing he said before starting the car was a suggestion that he, Magnum, and a third person with them drive up to a lookout point and watch the sunrise.

    At the end of the episode Magnum contrived to be alone with the killer, a Soviet agent known as “Ivan.” After a mildly civilized discussion Ivan, who has diplomatic immunity and is on his way out of the country, walks away, saying, “I know you, Thomas. I know you better than your mother…you would never shoot an unarmed man…

    Magnum: Ivan.

    Ivan: Yes?

    Magnum: Did you see the sunrise this morning?

    Ivan: (a bit puzzled) Yes, why?

    And Thomas Magnum, the hero of a TV detective show in 1982, when heroes still didn’t do morally questionable things on television, turns around with something wrong with his eyes, and fires a single shot, with the episode ending on a freeze-frame of the muzzle flash.

    • Kenny Todd says:

      I loved Magnum p.i. I watched it with my grandma every week. When I saw that episode i was mad. I asked my grandma why he did that. She said every day is a choice between right and wrong. Sometimes you do a wrong thing for the right reasons. It was tough to get through my head but she was right.

  2. kittenkind says:

    This is some bull. Saying you don’t deserve an award is customary false modesty. If he really didn’t think he should be honored, he wouldn’t have accepted the award. He wouldn’t have given a pompous speech about how English speakers should replace the word “feminist” with “genderist” so men and women who like to “dress pretty” can feel more comfortable. He is pretty far from “indifferent honest”, but he certainly shares much of the misogyny of Hamlet in the rest of the Nunnery scene.

  3. “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” — Walt Whitman

    Like John, I cannot know the minds of either Joss or Kai. I can, however, speculate that Joss could know the difference between what he said and what he did, and accept that, while he fell short of his own standard, he likely still believed what he said to be utterly true. This is not to say that he should be held blameless; only that he might have felt the need to reiterate a truth that, if he fell short in practice, might be wise to make clear for others before they might face such a situation.

  4. Nameless says:

    I haven’t been following this much, but can one not be a feminist (or not… a genderist? anti-genderist…?) and cheat on your spouse? I am not defending it but can’t you think of them still as equal to you as a sex/gender but also be a cheat? Whose to say if he was with a man (presumably he isn’t a misandrist) he wouldn’t also cheat.
    Couldn’t a bisexual, for instance, for instance cheat on both men and women? I am not advocating cheating or defending having affairs I’m just not sure there is a correlation between marital fidelity and feminism and marital infidelity and sexism. I have known many men who are very sexist and yet are married and don’t cheat on their wives, so the opposite seems conceivable.
    As I say I haven’t been reading up on this so there could be more to it; for all I know he could be being accused of slapping women around and chucking cans at them because he thinks women are the “weaker sex” or that it is man’s right to take women cos’ they are objects or something. The way people have been describing it they have only been focusing on the affairs aspect.

    I hope people don’t think I am saying cheating is right (I have nothing against mutual open relationships if that is a couple’s bag though), just musing.