JMS SPEAKS

[Lyta Alexander]

Subject: Re: jms update 12/07
From: [email protected] (Jms at B5)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated

<font color=yellow>Now, damn you, I have to start making monthly trips to the comic book store again. I though I left that behind with high school and persistent acne.</font>

While you're there, you may also want to check out my other book, MIDNIGHT NATION, which is actually my favorite of the two titles right now. There have been 3 issues out so far, and it's a very different kind of story.

It's all just for fun...the amazing thing is, if you do something for fun, doggone if after a while you don't start actually making a living at it.

jms

([email protected])

[Lyta Alexander]

Subject: Re: Attn: JMS -- B5 Saboteur :-) at Las Vegas STAR TREK Attraction
From: [email protected] (Jms at B5)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated

<font color=RED>While in the waiting area, we noticed "evacuation instructions" painted on the wall. Step 2 of the instructions reads:

"ACTIVATE PROGRAM B-5."</font>

We've known about it for a while; one of the guys in the art department who did this added it as an inside joke.

jms

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[Lyta Alexander]

Subject: Re: JMS: Old and new
From: [email protected] (Jms at B5)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated

<font color=red>I haven't noticed a title on any of the first three issues of Midnight
Nation. Do they have titles?</font>

Yeah, they have a tendency to forget to put on the real titles, and make up just some *awful* ones for early solicitations.

1 was "Living in the Material World"
2 was "Falling Through the Cracks"
3 was "Wait For Me"


jms

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[Lyta Alexander]

Subject: Re: JMS: Old and new
From: [email protected] (Jms at B5)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated

<font color=red>I can't help but notice that you're still the authority on everything that
happens to B5 even this long after production. One couldn't really blame you
if you'd told everybody to just go bug WB or Sci-Fi over the letterbox thing-you've done your part long ago. It was great of you to step in the way you did to communicate on the fan's behalf.</font>

The thing I've had to learn the hard way is that nobody else will ever care as much about something you've worked on as you do. To everybody else, it's the Product, the bits of meat that come through the sausage maker and out, there to make money. If it ain't 100%, well, as long as it's okay, that's what matters. But we worked too hard on this show to ever let it be less than that.

<font color=red>I hope that constantly having to go back to straighten out snafus with the
'old' stories won't infringe too much on the new work you're doing.</font>


It's a time sink, to be sure, but not massively so.

<font color=red>So how are things going with Jeremiah, Spider Man, City of Dreams, Psycomics and anything else I'm forgetting or not aware of? </font>

Very, very busy right now. I kind of let things go by the boards a bit while I
was working on the main two projects, the Jeremiah 2-hour pilot for Showtime, and the Rising Stars feature for MGM. The former is now in, and we hope to have some kind of response by mid-December. I'm about 2/3rds done with the Rising Stars screenplay, and hope to have that in by the same time,
mid-December.

One of the things that kinda fell by the wayside was The City of Dreams, and now that Jeremiah is in, taking away half of my biggest worries for the moment, I'm working to catch up. I've now turned in episodes 8 and 9, and hope to have the remaining 4 in by the end of the year.

I just last week turned in Midnight Nation 5, "Past Present, Present Tense," and my intent is to turn in the next issue of Rising Stars, #13, probably next week.

Moments before coming here, I turned in next week's psycomic column, this one on writing and characterization.

My first issue of Spider-Man will go in to Marvel around mid-December. It will come out around May/June of next year.

There's more stuff beyond that, but I can't talk about it yet. Probably in the next week or so. A couple of them should be of particular interest to B5 fans.

<font color=red> Oh, and have you decided
when the keyboard will go to the winner (hoping for it myself)?</font>

Last I heard, the plans are to award the keyboard (the one on which I wrote nearly all of B5, Crusade and other stuff) during the coming World Horror Con in Seattle. They also (happily) knocked down the price a bit for the book, since it was a bit high for a trade paperback (albeit a spiffy one). More
details at www.darktales.com


jms

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[Lyta Alexander]

Subject: Talia/Lyta Question
From: [email protected] (Jms at B5)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated

<font color=red>Why was Talia replaced by Lyta in season 3? Was that part of the
original story or was it a cast change like Ivanova and Lockley?</font>

Andrea Thompson felt her character wasn't getting enough screen time, and asked
to be let out of her contract.

jms

([email protected])

[Lyta Alexander]

Subject: Re: Netter Digital Sale
From: [email protected] (Jms at B5)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated

<font color=red>Given the above, do you have any plans to authorize the sale of further B5 scripts through another venue?</font>.


No, not at this time. Be advised, btw, that anyone selling copies of scripts other than the actual ones used during production, which are multicolored, is ripping you (and the writers) off. It's patently illegal and constitutes copyright infringement.

jms

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[sindatur]

Ah, but, Lyta,

The question is why was Lyta replaced by Talia?????

------------------
Sindatur - The Grey owl Wizzard

[ProfCrash]

JMS's comoc books are really very good. They tend to not come out as regularly as I would like but they are worth the wait. I read both Rising Stars and Midnight Nation, good solid stuff all around.

[Nommy]

I have yet to read a single comic strip by JMS. Guess I really should check them out.

[Lyta Alexander]

Sindatur,

It's not my question...I copy the origninal question, word for word, typo for typo etc. from the b5 moderated board, and post the response from JMS word for word etc.. I do not adlib at all.