Get M.A.D. With Chris Graves episode 39 - Jonathan Vankin

Special thanks to Mr. Jason Barker for helping restore these lost episodes!

Get M.A.D. With Chris Graves episode 39 - Jonathan Vankin

On this episode of "Get M.A.D." I had the great opportunity to talk with Mr. Jonathan Vankin!

JONATHAN VANKIN is a journalist, author, comic book writer and screenwriter. His work has received numerous awards and honors, while his books have been translated into nearly 20 languages.

He has won three New England Press Association awards. His screenplay Stay Forever, was twice picked as a finalist in the Sundance Writers Lab selections. The Big Book of Bad was nominated for the comic book Eisner Award and his superhero comics debut, The Search For Swamp Thing, became one of DC Comics' bestselling titles.

Vankin's first book, Conspiracies, Cover-Ups and Crimes, was the first comprehensive, journalistic investigation of America's conspiracy-theory underground, foreshadowing the current state of sociopolitical affairs by two decades. That book and its follow-up, the Greatest Conspiracies series co-authored with John Whalen, went on to become the most influential books on the subject and led to Vankin's numerous media appearances on such networks as CNN, CNBC, FOX, the BBC and the CBC as well as hundreds of radio stations.

In 2005, he published The World's Greatest Conspiracies, the fifth installment in the Greatest Conspiracies franchise. He also wrote the graphic novels Tokyo Days, Bangkok Nights and (with Arnold Pander) Tasty Bullet. His other books include, Based on a True Story (But With More Car Crashes) and The Big Book of Scandal. He wrote the DC/Vertigo Comics series The Witching, and an episode of the TV series The Crow: Stairway to Heaven.

He co-wrote the book to the musical FOREVER DUSTY, based on the life story of legendary British pop star Dusty Springfield, which ran in 2012-2013 Off Broadway at New World Stages.

As a Senior Editor at DC/Vertigo Comics from 2004 to 2011, he was behind such series as The Exterminators (optioned by Showtime), Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and Testament (by controversial media critic Douglas Rushkoff), as well as the graphic novels The Quitter written by Harvey Pekar, The Alcoholic written by Jonathan Ames and How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less by writer/artist Sarah Glidden, among many others.

He was news editor of Metro, Silicon Valley's alternative weekly newspaper where he won a Bay Area Project Censored award. Subsequently, he spent time as a sportswriter/editor at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan. His writing has appeared in the The New York Times Magazine, Wired, Salon, L.A. Weekly and numerous others.

​He was commissioned by French production company Des Films to pen the screenplay Dragon’s Fin Soup, which he completed with Takashi Miike (Audition, 13 Assassins) attached to direct. He has also taught creative writing to incarcerated youth in the Los Angeles area as part of the Spoken Interludes Next program, which he counts as perhaps the most memorable experience of his career.

Mr. Vankin's social media & websites:

https://twitter.com/jonvankin
https://www.facebook.com/jvankin

http://www.jonathanvankin.net/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Vankin

http://www.foreverdusty.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Splendor

https://web.archive.org/web/20050303171340/http://www.conspire.com/

https://web.archive.org/web/20170708184136/http://comicbookdb.com/creator.php?ID=401

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jonathan-Vankin/author/B000AP862E?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracies-Cover-Ups-Crimes-Jonathan-Vankin/dp/1881532097/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=kqRrz&content-id=amzn1.sym.22f5776b-4878-4918-9222-7bb79ff649f4&pf_rd_p=22f5776b-4878-4918-9222-7bb79ff649f4&pf_rd_r=133-0171567-7502653&pd_rd_wg=YUv3z&pd_rd_r=d0461810-5bdc-4d2e-ac27-072ac1bedc7c&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk

https://www.amazon.com/Brightest-Day-Aftermath-Search-Swamp/dp/B00586L2YY

Harvey Pekar Collection on Letterman, 1986-1994
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biOodnioY8c

Chris' links can be found here: https://linktr.ee/cgravesmassguy