James Robinson (writer)

Comics

James Robinson has been writing for over two decades, with an early comics work, "Grendel: The Devil's Whisper", appearing in the 1989 series of the British anthology A1. The series for which he is arguably most renowned is the DC Comics series Starman, where he took the aging Golden Age character of the same name and revitalized both the character and all those who had used the name over the decades, weaving them into an interconnected whole. In 1997, Robinson's work on the title garnered him an Eisner Award for "Best Serialized Story".

He is also known for his The Golden Age limited series, which, despite being an Elseworlds story, established much of the backstory he would later use in Starman. He has written the Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight series, and served as a consultant and co-writer in the first year of JSA and its subsequent spin-off Hawkman. Other work for DC includes a Vigilante miniseries and the Sandman spin-off Witchcraft for Vertigo. Robinson wrote a brief run of Wildcats, teamed with artist Travis Charest, that further developed the book's mythology, along with a spinoff mini-series called Team One.

Similarly, he served as a transitional writer on the Marvel Comics titles, Cable and Generation X in 1997–1998 including the "Operation: Zero Tolerance" crossover event. He wrote several issues of the "Heroes Reborn" version of Captain America

Leave It to Chance, created by Robinson with penciller Paul Smith, won Robinson two more Eisner Awards in 1997, for "Best New Series" and "Best Title for Younger Readers".

His other work includes Ectokid, one of the series created by horror/fantasy novelist Clive Barker for Marvel Comics' Razorline imprint, and Firearm for Malibu Comics' Ultraverse line.

In 2006, Robinson wrote Batman and Detective Comics, penning the eight-issue "Face The Face" storyline, as part of the "One Year Later" project. In 2008–2010, Robinson was the writer of Superman. This run included the storyline "The Coming of Atlas". He wrote the 2009–2010 mini-series Justice League: Cry for Justice and began writing Justice League of America in October 2009 with art by Mark Bagley. Robinson was joined by artist Brett Booth on Justice League of America in February 2011. In May 2010, Robinson and Sterling Gates co-wrote, with artist Eddy Barrows, War of the Supermen, a Superman-based event that was the culmination of two years of story starting from Superman: New Krypton. He concluded his work on Superman with issue #700 (Aug. 2010).

Robinson later wrote a twelve-issue series starring The Shade, a character closely identified with his Starman series and recreated Earth 2 in an eponymous ongoing series for DC's The New 52 initiative in 2011 and 2012. One of the revisions which Robinson introduced was making the Earth Two Green Lantern (Alan Scott) gay.

In May 2013, Robinson ended his long relationship with DC Comics. His last issue of Earth 2 was #16. Many observers found the departure abrupt, since Robinson had teased of long term plans for Earth 2. Despite the abrupt nature of Robinson's departure from DC, Robinson's relationship with the company remains amicable. Robinson took new assignments from Marvel Comics after then. His first announced project for Marvel was a collaboration with co-writer Mark Waid and illustrator Gabriele Dell'Otto on an original graphic novel titled Spider-Man: Family Business. A second announced project for Marvel was All-New Invaders, an ongoing monthly comic series with artist Steve Pugh. He and Leonard Kirk launched a new Fantastic Four series in February 2014.

The Saviors was released in December 2013 by Image Comics. This story described what happens when Tomas Ramirez, a man working at a gas station stumbles upon an extraterrestrial plot that could mean the end of the Earth.

Dynamite Entertainment will publish Grand Passion, a monthly series by Robinson. His description of the series is "Grand Passion is definitely a departure from what I've been doing in the last few years. This series is about two wayward characters Doc and Mabel – one a cop, the other a crook – who are fated to fall in love at first sight even as Mabel swears she'll kill Doc if it's the last thing she does. It marries elements of a Harlequin romance with hard-boiled crime and takes it off in a direction that's surprising, funny, violent, and sexy. I'm very excited to roll up my sleeves and immerse myself in writing this tale."

He wrote an ongoing Scarlet Witch series for Marvel which began in late 2015. Robinson explained that he has been influenced by the work of Matt Fraction and David Aja on the Hawkeye title stating "How they [Matt Fraction and David Aja] managed to stay true to the character in the Avengers while also taking it in a fresh direction, so it wasn't just that same Avengers character doing solo things, which I don't think ever really works for any sustained period of time for any of those second-tier characters."

Robinson returned to DC Comics in late 2017 to write Wonder Woman for a six-month long story arc.

Screenwriting

In addition to his work in comics, Robinson wrote the screenplay for the 1993 direct-to-video film Firearm, and wrote and directed the 2002 feature Comic Book Villains, starring Cary Elwes and Michael Rapaport, as well as producing the screenplay for the 1995 film Cyber Bandits with Martin Kemp, Alexandra Paul, Grace Jones and singer Adam Ant. His best known screenplay was for the 2003 movie version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

This last script caused some controversy among fans of the original work, many of whom were disappointed an established comics writer's take on Alan Moore's and Kevin O'Neill's series took so many liberties with and considerably changed the tone of the source material. Early drafts had reportedly relocated much of the action from England to America, allegedly in an attempt to make it more acceptable to an American audience.

Critical reception

Robinson's book London's Dark: A tale of love & war, life, death (& afterlife) (1989) has been named one of the 500 "essential" graphic novels, as it was "at the vanguard [...] of British graphic novels as a whole" although it was "a very raw work, full of experimentation".

Personal life

Robinson lived in Los Angeles, where he was good friends with fellow writers and collaborators Geoff Johns and Sterling Gates.

In 2009, he and Jann Jones, co-ordinating editor of the Johnny DC comics imprint, announced their engagement. They have since relocated to San Francisco and married.

Awards

James Robinson received an Inkpot Award in 2012.