When I got into this racket over six years ago, I did so as a fan. In fact, it was a passing text exchange with a friend about the movie A QUIET PLACE that ended with “Hey, do you want to write about movies for a website?” Flash forward, here I am, having interviewed over a hundred creatives in my time with this site and others. Typically, I’ll get an email from a PR firm asking if I want to screen a film and speak with attached talent or read a book and speak with the author. I rarely say no as I firmly believe that everyone is worth talking to and every person you come in contact with can teach you something that you might not learn in your own sphere of social contacts or experiences.
This interview is different. This subject I hunted down. I saw that he was going to be at New York Comic Con this year signing books in Artist Alley, and I’d already interacted with him briefly on Twitter (back when it was Twitter) so I felt I could swing over and say hello. I did, and of course he had some fans in front of him when I arrived so I decided to hang back and let them have their moment. Watching him interact with these fans confirmed everything I believed about this writer - he couldn’t be any nicer, any more accommodating, or any more grateful for the people who celebrate his art. When they were satisfied with their exchange they moved on, and I introduced myself and said “I would love to interview you in depth” and gave him my card. To my surprise he replied with “Here, take my email address and let’s set it up.” There was no reason for him to do this; I think you’ll all agree I’m nobody, but this man genuinely cares about his fans and responds to regular people who have an interest in his work.
We set it up, and when we spoke, we did so for an hour and a half. I had barely scratched the surface of the questions I had for him, but he was so gracious with his time and his answers that I couldn’t keep him any longer. I recorded the interview for another outlet which will be out in January, but with the holiday shopping season upon us and (hopefully) some time off of work for the holidays, I wanted to be sure to share some of our conversation to whet your appetite for the incredible work of comics- and screenwriter Tim Sheridan.
As I was doing my research prior to the interview I noted that I could find little about Tim Sheridan, personally. I couldn’t even find a birth year. He doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page; to put that in perspective, Jesse Camp has a Wikipedia page and he was on MTV for about thirty seconds in 1998. To Sheridan’s credit, this is by design. “When you start working in stuff that is semi-high profile, characters like Batman and Superman and DC Comics, there are people out there who have a lot of opinions and they get in your face. I’ve had my life threatened on the internet and social media for things that people didn’t like that happened in books that I worked on.”
Over the course of our conversation I learned that he’s about my age, as we have many of the same waypoints dotting our youths and driving us toward this industry of entertainment. “I look back with the benefit of hindsight now and see that I was always a storyteller. I didn’t quite know it when I was a kid, because like most kids had their Transformers or G.I. Joes and you’re playing out scenes, you’re writing stories with them, you’re putting words in their mouths and they’re having dialogue. They’re having adventures and in many ways that’s storytelling, the foundation or structure of what we do, and that was a thing that never went away for me. The eighties were an amazing time. The stuff that made me want to become a writer were things like the 1986 TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE and the subsequent series that came after that, which Marv Wolfman worked on. He’s someone who completely influenced my life and career path.”
(Alan Scott: Green Lantern #1, photographed in October 2023 w/an interested Bennie.)
When I asked if there was any particular piece of formative art that moved the needle for him, he echoed many of my favorites from youth. “Mr. Rogers was my best friend. Like, I grew up out in the woods. It wasn’t the suburbs. Though I did go to school with kids that were my friends, we didn’t hang out after school or on the weekends, and if you did you had to plan it weeks ahead and it was a whole process. So I was in my house and my siblings were older than me, so my best friend was Fred Rogers. And The Electric Company was huge for me, too.”
Sheridan continued to be influenced by cartoons, comic books, and action figures as he grew up, eventually starting to note that some of the same names were popping up throughout his fascinations. As time wore on and the influence of this catalogue pushed him towards his own creative endeavors, he eventually found himself working alongside some of the very people who informed his youth. “It’s the biggest, weirdest nerd fantasy in the world that the people whose names I actually was paying attention to and happened to have an impact on my life at that time (like Marv Wolfman, Mike Carlin, and Walt Simonson), I’ve gotten to have some kind of interaction with, which is pretty remarkable if you think about it.”
As we talked about the formative literature and television around us, we noted how we stretched past the moniker of “children’s programming” and sought more mature or subversive material, like “Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.” Though tame by our current standards, the late night material often had Tim Sheridan asking questions that he would have to answer in a library or newspaper. In the present as we all have computers in our pockets, Sheridan, who contributes to television shows like “DC Super Hero Girls,” “Teen Titans Go!,” and “Justice League Action,” believes that young people crave the opportunity to learn beyond their limitations. “Today there are fewer reasons than ever to dumb things down for kids. Make them look it up, they’re going to be better for it.”
His success writing for “Justice League Action” soon brought him to the attention of DC Animation executives, and in another ouroboros of creativity, he found himself brought once more to his youth. “The first Superman comics I bought were the “Reign of the Supermen” run, and then many years later I had the strange and bizarre circumstances where I was offered the job of adapting that story for an animated movie. I was like ‘Are you kidding me? The world can’t possibly work like that! That’s a bizarre coincidence,’ but I was there for it. It’s funny because they weren’t sure they were going to hire me right away - I’d written a couple of episodes of “Justice League: Action” and they really loved what I was doing and those same producers were working on a new Superman movie and they said ‘Hey we’re planning to do a Death of Superman Part II’ and I said ‘You mean Reign of the Supermen?’ and they were like ‘Yeah, you’re the guy.’”
“It’s only by sheer luck that the stuff that I’ve written to date, professionally, is all stuff that I grew up knowing and loving, all these essential parts of my DNA as a human being, let alone as a writer. Things like Batman, Superman, He-Man, and Transformers. These were foundational.”
When the topic of working alongside Kevin Smith came up, Sheridan was quick to gush. Having seen MALLRATS before CLERKS, Sheridan had the perfect introduction. “There’s so much for guys like us to identify with in MALLRATS than there is in CLERKS. CLERKS is great and anyone can identify with those characters, but MALLRATS had more pop culture, more nerd stuff, more comics. It had Stan Lee! The Batman references. There is catnip in there for guys like me.”
“He is one of the kindest, most generous men in Hollywood. Here’s a guy, and by the way this never happens - nobody does this, but we started working on this show and there was a He-Man convention down in Anaheim called PowerCon, and he said ‘Hey kids!’ to the four writers there, ‘kids, come over, pile in the SUV, I’m driving us down to the convention!’ So we all literally piled in his car and drove down to this convention, he jumped on stage and announced the show, then brought us out one at a time, announcing us by name, and sat us down and talked to us for the crowd. Nobody does that! The writers in a writers’ room, they often fade into the background - they don’t get prodded out to meet the masses. But he knew we were the backbone and he respects our contribution.”
When Sheridan made the transition from animation to comics, I was sure there was a steep learning curve. Contributing to such seminal series as “Teen Titans Academy,” “Flashpoint Beyond,” and his amazing run on “Alan Scott: The Green Lantern,” I asked about the insurmountable girth of the DC Bible one must ace before writing for the venerated label. Apparently, there isn’t one. “Oh you sweet summer child. The fact that you think there’s some kind of handbook or bible at DC… I got the gig because I had worked with DC characters in animation before and could navigate that world. If I’d come straight from, like “Boston Legal” or something I don’t think it would’ve been a conversation.”
While writing the screenplay for SUPERMAN: MAN OF TOMORROW, I asked about the burden of creating an original story in a sandbox so deep. “When you have a canon like Batman or Superman and you have all the shoulders of all these amazing writers and storytellers over the years, you’re already influenced by everything. You’re just sort of repackaging all of this stuff and hopefully adding something personal and something new that sort of makes it interesting. So it’s new but it’s hard to call it original.”
(Supeman: Man of Tomorrow from my personal collection.)
I thought for sure that adapting Jeph Loeb’s THE LONG HALLOWEEN would be somewhat more straightforward but was surprised to learn there’s almost always a curveball thrown your way, but if you’ve got your eye on it, you can crack it out of the park. “They wanted THE LONG HALLOWEEN to be one 85-minute film, but when I sat down to work on the script I realized there’s no way. This is a story based on the calendar and murders based on the holidays; I’d have to have a murder every 30 seconds in this movie, it’d be insane. This would be a snuff film. So I came back the next day and said it’d have to be two movies and they just said okay.”
Tim Sheridan has written some of the best dialogue in the DCAU, and I asked if approaching the responsibility of placing words in the mouths of characters as beloved as Batman and Superman restricted or liberated him. He replied that he takes the opportunity seriously and believes in the power of stories and storytellers. “Not to be lofty in saying that storytellers and writers are that important but I do think that art, stories, writing, movies, things like that, they have the ability to change people’s hearts and that, to me, is the first thing you have to do in an effort to change their minds.”
With the interview winding down, I knew I needed to ask about the “Alan Scott: The Green Lantern” trade paperback, out now and a perfect time to learn about this important story whether you’re new to the character or itching for a new chapter in his legacy. “Please check out that book, I’m really proud of it. That was a great gift to get to work on that story, I really had a wonderful time. Again, Geoff Johns called me up and said ‘You need to write this book’ and I said Okay!”
(My personal copy with Bennie for scale.)
If this is the first time you’re hearing the name of Tim Sheridan then it shouldn’t be the last. He is the screenwriter of SUPERMAN: MAN OF TOMORROW, REIGN OF THE SUPERMAN, BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN, Netflix’s “Masters of the Universe: Revelation” and “Revolution,” Netflix’s “Transformers: War of Cybertron” Trilogy, “Justice League Action,” and Netflix’s “Dragon Age: Absolution.” You can find trade paperbacks of his run on DC Comics’ “Alan Scott: Green Lantern,” “Teen Titans Academy” and several Dark Horse “Masters of the Universe: Revelation” and “Revolution” tie-ins. As he’s only been an active professional writer for the past seven years or so, Tim Sheridan is a name to learn now and a star to watch.
Until next time, take care of each other and elevate creative voices.
-McEric, aka Eric McClanahan-
