STRACZYNSKI DROPS WRITERLY WISDOM AT THE IMAGE EXPO

J. Michael Straczynski’s Dream Police

Image Comics held its second Expo at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on July 2. The Expo offered fans, media, and retailers a uniquely intimate chance to hang out with some of the flat-out best comic creators around today. Some of the creators in attendance included Rick Remender (STRANGE GIRL), Robert Kirkman (THE WALKING DEAD), and Mark Millar (KICK-ASS).

As the Expo began winding down for the day, most of the remaining attendees queued up in San Francisco’s cool gray winds for their turn to collect autographs from author Robert Kirkman. Meanwhile, J. Michael Straczynski (TEN GRAND) dropped gems of wisdom for aspiring writers to a mostly empty theater. “Write one story every week for a year,” Straczynksi suggested as a way of honing writing skills, guaranteeing that what is produced by week 52 will be noticeably improved over week one.

Straczynksi also offered some keen insights into approaching longer story arcs (he wrote nearly every episode of TV’s BABYLON 5) and his secret to writing.  Know your characters like you know your best friend. If your best friend cracked his shin on a table in a dark room, you would know exactly what he’d say before he said it, Straczynksi explained, and the same should be true for your characters. He elaborated further, saying that you should be able to drop your characters into any situation and know exactly how they’ll react and “watch it play out like movie in your mind’s eye.”

Straczynski also announced that his mini-imprint, Joe’s Comics will be expanding with two former Marvel ICON titles, DREAM POLICE and THE BOOK OF LOST SOULS, bringing together all of his creator-owned titles under the Joe’s Comics banner.