John Rogers is my kind of writer. He got a degree in physics but gave up working in that field to become a stand-up comedian. From there, he moved into TV, where he became a producer of Cosby. (I grew up listening to Bill Cosby albums. He’s the funniest man ever.) John also created the Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon and wrote the first draft of the Transformers movie. Today, he’s the showrunner for Leverage, a fantastic Robin-Hood-crooks-heist-a-week show on TNT.
But John’s an alpha geek at heart. Throughout all this success, he’s kept playing roleplaying games and reading comics. He wrote and co-produced an unaired pilot based on the Global Frequency comic written by Warren Ellis. He wrote comics for Boom! Studios and DC Comics, including the seminal run on the new Blue Beetle. He even chipped in a chapter of the latest edition of Manual of the Planes
I started reading John’s writing on his blog several years back, and he’s drive-you-to-tears funny. When he’s not peeling back the curtain on how Hollywood works, he writes the kinds of political rants that I wish I had the time to write and the energy to defend. Fortunately, he’s out there doing it, and probably better than I could manage. I met him at Comic-Con a bit after that, and he’s just as hilarious in person.
Still, throughout all the fun, John has a sharp sense of drama and can be serious when he wants or needs to be. When he read Amortals to give me a blurb, he was in the middle of ramping up for the production of the third season of Leverage, which makes me that much more thankful for his kind words:
“I plowed through Amortals in one sitting. Forbeck takes a smart sci-fi concept, examines its repercussions in society, and then weaves all that through a top-notch crime thriller.”
