"Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery - courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things.""There are pastors who won't go to people's sick beds. How can people of God turn their back on the sick, poor and hungry?"
Comics writing
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 British anthology A1. The story for which he has arguably been 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 title 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 famous for his comic The Golden Age, which, despite being an Elseworlds story, still established much of the backstory he would later use in Starman. He has also written the Batman book Legends of the Dark Knight, and served as a consultant and co-writer in the first year of JSA and its subsequent spin-off Hawkman. Also at DC, he did a miniseries involving the company's original Vigilante character as well as producing the Sandman spin-off mini-series Witchcraft for Vertigo. Robinson also wrote a brief but very well remembered run of Wildcats, teamed up 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 transition writer on the Marvel Comics title, Cable. He also had a short stint on Heroes Reborn: Captain America during that time.
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 took over the writing duties on Batman and Detective Comics, penning the eight-issue "Face The Face" storyline, as part of the One Year Later project announced by DC. Robinson has previously written the Batman story "Blades" as one of his several stints at writing stories for the anthology title Legends of the Dark Knight.
On February 8, 2008, Robinson was appointed the new writer of the DC flagship title, Superman; this run included the storyline "The Coming of Atlas". He wrote the 2009-2010 mini-series Cry for Justice and took over writing duties on Justice League of America in October 2009 with art by Mark Bagley. In 2010 James Robinson with artist Eddy Barrows will write a Superman based event called "War of the Supermen", a Superman-based event that is the culmination of the past two years of story starting from New Krypton. Robinson said in 2010 he will write a series starring The Shade a character closely identified with his Starman series.
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). In film terms, however, his best known endeavour has been the screenplay 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. Indeed, 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. Archived early review of the "LXG" script by Coming Attractions' Patrick Sauriol, October 6, 2000. Retrieved March 23, 2006.
Robinson lives in Los Angeles, where he is 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.
