J Michael Straczynski's "Becoming Superman": a memoir of horrific abuse, war crimes, perseverance, trauma, triumph and doing what's right

J Michael Straczynski (previously) is known for many things: creating Babylon 5, spectacular runs on flagship comics from Spiderman to Superman, incredibly innovative and weird kids' TV shows like The Real Ghostbusters, and megahits like Sense8; in the industry he's known as a writing machine, the kind of guy who can write and produce 22 hours of TV in a single season, and he's also known as a mensch, whose online outreach to fans during the Babylon 5 years set the bar for how creators and audiences can work together to convince studios to take real chances. But in JMS's new memoir, Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty to Hollywood, we get a look at a real-life history that is by turns horrific and terrifying, and a first-person account of superhuman perseverance and commitment to the right thing that, incredibly, leads to triumph

Straczynski's life story begins with a family story that's pure grifter American gothic. His grandfather, a Russian emigre and con artist, goes back to Europe to try to bilk his relatives out of whatever money they've snuck out of revolutionary Russia and into Germany. While there, he begins a sexual affair with his underage niece, luring her into bed by promising to send for her when he gets to America, which, of course, he never does, so she books her own passage and tracks him down.

Their predictably tumultuous relationship is marked by infidelity and dishonesty, but then things get weird when she takes their son and daughter to Poland, only to take up with a Nazi-sympathizing police officer who takes them in when the Nazis invade, and there they are stuck. Read the rest