Here’s my thesis: J Michael Straczynski has the power of hypnosis. I can’t imagine how else people think he’s such hot shit, frankly. The guy’s not awful, but he’s not great. I mean, his Amazing Spider-Man comics are being treated like they came down from the mountain with Moses, yet they’re almost all terrible. The current storyline has Spidey tussling with the kids of Gwen Stacey and Norman Osborne – it gets worse – who are actually age 8 but have adult bodies because of daddy’s Green Goblin serum. Please note that Straczynski wrote a comic where we SEE Osborne giving Gwen his "Oh" face.And his Supreme Power, while better, is the most aimless book out there. People complain a lot about decompressed storytelling in comics these days, but this series took 12 issues to even get to something resembling an actual plot point. That book was instrumental in me making the decision to just stop buying comics by the issue – for two fifty a month I was treated to a minute and a half of reading with no story advancement.
But it’s Babylon 5 I really don’t get, and this is going to earn me letters. It’s silly, and it seems to me the kind of show that just proves there are a lot of sci-fi fans who will watch anything with a genre bent to it. Before you write me that letter about this, ask yourself if you watched Mutant X, Sliders or Stargate: SG1. If so, you’ve proven me right. And for whatever it’s worth, B5 is better than the unwatchable Muppet-fi goofiness of Farscape.
But B5 does have its cadres of fans, and this is good news for you. After the show got cancelled it found new life as a miniseries or some such business, and I guess things went well enough that it’s being revived as a movie – in actual theaters. Joss Whedon won’t be the only superstar creator with a failed sci-fi show becoming a probably failed sci-fi movie soon!
I don’t know what any of this means, but Production Weekly says the film, Babylon 5: Memory of Shadows will be about:
[T]he technology of the ancient and extinct Shadow race is being unleashed upon the galaxy by an unknown force, and Earthforce intelligence officer Diane Baker, whose brother was recently killed in a mysterious explosion, it out to find out who is behind the intergalactic conspiracy.
Joining her is Galen, a techno-mage who has been charged with keeping the technology out of the hands of those who would abuse it.
The movie, written by Straczynski, films in April in the UK.