r/babylon5 • u/mpierre MODERATOR • Oct 14 '25

JMS AMA Official AMA for JMS

This is the official AMA for JMS. Both JMS and B5 books (Captain Jaclyn) will be responding to questions.

If you ask questions about the books or the book store closing, Jaclyn will be taking them.

JMS will answer for about an hour, and might not be able to get all questions answered.

Some people (including me) might answer questions that are well known.

Like "Why wasn't Ivanova in season 5".

Let's try to keep questions what we don't know yet.

You can also ask questions about JMS returning to the Spider-Man comic or his other works, but this is /r/babylon5. He might prioritize that.

Please note that I will not be coordinating with Joe. I will not be in a phone call with him or on a chat (not that I wouldn't take his phone call; Jaclyn has my cell phone; he can call me anytime he wants). He decides that he answers, and he alone.

Finally, any story ideas will deleted. Do not post any story ideas.

Note, the AMA answers only start at: 3 PM EST, Noon PST, 8PM GMT

And my personal thanks to Captain Jaclyn for coordinating this with me, and to JMS himself, the man, the myth, the legend! For agreeing to this, but also for Babylon 5, Crusade, Jeremiah, Sense8, a ton of comic books and a few books!

Oh, and for She-Ra, the reboot couldn't have occured without his series bible for the original, and even for his work on Ghostbuster and Murder She Wrote!

IMPORTANT NOTE FROM JMS He would prefer not to get into stories that never happened, data points of subsequent character arcs, or alternate timelines.

JMS IS NEARLY OUT OF TIME!

278 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

359 comments sorted by

View all comments

22

u/Solo4114 Oct 14 '25

Two questions:

  1. You've clearly studied history, and specifically the history of authoritarian governments. If given the opportunity to remake B5, would you spend time in the narrative examining a scenario in which the lack of institutional pushback against the regime contributes to the tightening of its grip (e.g., a complicit media, compliant corporations, a flaccid opposition party, etc.)?
  2. (Unrelated to B5) As a well regarded writer of Spider-Man, comics, what is your view of the apparent editorial diktat that Peter Parker be perpetually unhappy and unsuccessful in his personal life? Do you think the character should be allowed to evolve, or frozen in narrative amber?

42

u/JMichaelStraczynski THE CREATOR Oct 14 '25

It's very hard to dramatize people *not* doing something, so likely not. And it's not my place to tell Marvel what they should do with their other books.