John Jos Miller, Wild Cards stalwart, passes away

[mormont]

https://www.facebook.com/dreamforgemagazine/photos/a.10153543828019397/10158760298739397

Posting this here because the general RIP thread is on Entertainment and that didn't feel like the right forum (despite JJM being a terrific film reviewer and the WC TV adaptation).

It's very sad news. John was a terrific guy and fundamental to the success of the WC books, creating and writing the characters of Yeoman, Wraith, Billy Ray (Carnifex), Chrysalis and Father Squid early on and adding Midnight Angel andJohn Nighthawk later. He had numerous other short story publications as well.

I met him in 2005 at the Glasgow WorldCon - we were going to dinner with GRRM and ran into John, his wife Gail and Gail's niece so naturally GRRM invited them to come. I sat next to John and Gail and spent two hours talking Wild Cards with them. I mentioned that I'd had trouble finding some of the Baen-published books and John offered to send some to me from the US. He then emailed me to say that he had some other rarities just collecting space in the garage - hardcovers, the GURPS sourcebooks he'd written - and sold me those for a song as well. But he didn't stop there - he then emailed me to say he was going to meet up with some of the other WC authors and would I like him to get them to sign the stuff before he mailed it to me? Just so generous.

 

[Ran]

Terrible news. Linda and I also met him at Glasgow and I think we saw him a time or two after, and he was always very pleasant and enthusiastic about chatting with fans. His contributions to Wild Cards are great, and include the solo novel Death Draws Five that was republished in November after years of having been hard to find because of the abrupt closure of the publisher following the death of its founder.

Rest in peace, John. 

[Peadar]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

 

I met him in 2005 at the Glasgow WorldCon - we were going to dinner with GRRM and ran into John, his wife Gail and Gail's niece so naturally GRRM invited them to come. I sat next to John and Gail and spent two hours talking Wild Cards with them. I mentioned that I'd had trouble finding some of the Baen-published books and John offered to send some to me from the US. He then emailed me to say that he had some other rarities just collecting space in the garage - hardcovers, the GURPS sourcebooks he'd written - and sold me those for a song as well. But he didn't stop there - he then emailed me to say he was going to meet up with some of the other WC authors and would I like him to get them to sign the stuff before he mailed it to me? Just so generous.

 

I never met him myself, but that sounds like a lovely guy, all right! Strangely, I was just reading some of his work as research for a Wild Cards blog post  I really like his Yeoman character.

[williamjm]

That's sad news. I remember an interesting discussion with him at EasterCon about superhero movie adaptations, I agree that he seemed very approachable and happy to talk with anyone.

[mormont]

5 hours ago, Peadar said:

 I really like his Yeoman character.

Yeoman's interesting (what if the Punisher was also Green Arrow?) but Billy Ray/Carnifex is John's masterpiece IMHO. The basic idea is, what if Wolverine (or any of those other bad boy antiheroes folks love) was a dick? Like, actually a real asshole who doesn't play well with others? And the thing is, I hated Billy Ray on a personal level but John made me root for him over the course of multiple books until he gets his redemption arc in the aforementioned Death Draws Five (which resolves an amazing amount of plotlines built up over a decade in some cases). And the thing is, even after he's redeemed, Billy Ray's still kind of an asshole! I love it.

[Xray the Enforcer]

Just incredibly sad news.