by Ed Conley

At last weekend's HeroesCon in Charlotte, North Carolina, fans got a much closer experience with their favorite creators than they might get at other cons. J. Michael Straczynski's marathon panel was no different. Answering questions over two hours, fans got an intimate look at his writing process, his battles, and his career.

Attendance was pretty much split evenly between Babylon 5 fans and Spider-Man fans. The B5 fans got to find out that Warner Bros. has approached Straczynski about doing more live-action B5. It will be something smaller than a film and may start up in August. It will not deal with B5's Telepath War. He also just sold a movie to Ron Howard that could be in production by January. Sam Raimi is interested in a Rising Stars TV series. And he has another deal that he cannot discuss until the San Diego Comic-Con.

Mr. Straczynski had just returned from a Marvel retreat where they planned out the next year. Ominously, he told the crowd that "terrible things" are coming for poor, put-upon, Peter Parker. He also has a new book from Marvel in November. Which re-establishes a major "mis-handled" character.

He also jokingly mentioned how he wanted to "kick the crap" out of fellow comic scribe and Marvel Civil War architect Mark Millar for not knowing who won the American Civil War.

After it was decided to do the Spider-Man unmasking in Civil War #2 and not the main Spider-Man book, he focused on just telling the story so that the unmasking would happen in the best way possible. The winning argument that decided where the unmasking would take place, the infamous "Super Girl and Flash didn't die in their own titles, they died in Crisis on Infinite Earths", turned out to be specious, as Straczynski realized later that neither character actually had their own title at the time. He decided to write everything that led up to the moment, let them have that one page, then continue right after that. As he views Civil War as all action, in Amazing Spider-Man he wanted to cover the personal and political consequences of Peter's decision. For example, The Daily Bugle can now sue Peter for fraud over the photos he sold them.

As a comic writer, Straczynski tries to find the edges. He believes that if you don't fail sometimes, you're not doing it right. Taking a character to the point of no return and either pulling them back or pushing them over is one of his jobs as a writer. In line with that writing on the edge, he addressed the controversial Sins Remembered storyline, where we found out Gwen Stacy once had children by way of Norman Osborn. The point of Sins Remembered, Straczynski said, was to give Gwen Stacy a spine. She made a mistake, had to confront the mistake, and tell Norman she was going to marry Peter and raise the kids.

He doesn't mind that fans get upset. Joe Quesada once told him people always hate the current Spider-writer. The reason being people identify so strongly with Peter, that they take it personally. And if the writer doesn't "get" Peter in their mind, then the writer doesn't "get" the reader. He said another controversial storyline, The Other, suffered from too many editorial fingerprints. That and each author went off and wrote what they wanted and not what necessarily needed to be written to keep the overall story coherent. The upcoming Ultimate universe/Supreme Power crossover he is involved in is much more tightly plotted.

Straczynski likes writing Peter and MJ as a married couple and feels May, Peter, and MJ form a strong pyramid. But, if told to turn MJ into a cockroach for a year, he'd find a way to write it. He said Joe Quesada has proposed something cool to handle the Spider-Marriage. He also wants to address Spider-Man's supporting cast more now. Particularly in reference to the unmasking. And he intends to use more of the "classic" rogues gallery.

By end of year, Straczynski says they hope to bring Spider-Man "back" to more what Lee, Kirby, and Ditko intended.