Time & Perspective Quote by J. Michael Straczynski

You can hear the exasperation of a storyteller watching his narrative train kept idling on the platform. Straczynski is talking craft, not fandom: “firmly on the rails” evokes deliberate, episode-by-episode construction, the slow accrual of tension that makes a monthly comic feel like a novel in motion. The sting lands in the next beat: just when the engine is running smoothly, corporate gravity yanks it into “some big event book or crossover.” The phrasing is pointedly generic. He’s not naming a beloved saga; he’s naming a machine.

The intent is partly defensive, partly diagnostic. As a producer-turned-comics-writer, JMS understands scheduling, branding, and the realities of shared universes. He’s not shocked that events exist; he’s frustrated at what they do to pacing, structure, and momentum - the three invisible things readers feel even when they can’t articulate them. “Momentum” is the emotional velocity of a run: the sense that choices matter and consequences are being paid off. Events interrupt that velocity by demanding detours: tie-in issues, mandated appearances, plot beats that serve a marketing calendar rather than character logic.

The subtext is a critique of an industrial model that treats ongoing series as feeder roads to the crossover highway. “Pulled into” suggests loss of agency, and “cost” frames the damage as real, not abstract: stories spend trust like currency, and interruptions inflate the price. It’s also an insider’s lament about authorship in corporate IP - you can be the credited writer and still not fully control what your book is allowed to be.