Julian Darius (he/him) is a creative writer, a scholar who focuses on comics and popular culture, and a teacher of both English and French.
After graduating magna cum laude from Lawrence University (Appleton, Wisconsin), Julian obtained his M.A. in English, authoring a thesis on John Milton and utopianism (published as Early America in Milton). In 2002, he moved to Hawai’i, teaching college while obtaining an M.A. in French (high honors) and a Ph.D. in English. He has taught at five universities and currently teaches at Hawai’i Pacific University.
In 1996, while still an undergraduate, Julian rebelled against professors who didn’t take comics seriously by writing online about comics, in addition to his coursework. Besides authoring articles, Julian created the Continuity Pages, a vast project that organized diverse titles and issues set in the same universe according to continuity or reading order, with notes on each issue or story. After adding additional writers, this growing online effort became Sequart Organization, which would help launch the careers of several comics scholars and contributed to the growing respect afforded comics. In 2005, Sequart moved into books, starting with the first book ever published on Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, written by Julian himself, and followed in 2007 by the first book ever published on Grant Morrison. Sequart has since published dozens of acclaimed books on comics and popular culture. In 2010, Sequart expanded into documentary films, ultimately producing seven feature-length efforts, for which Julian served as producer. In 2015, Julian published Classics on Infinite Earths, a massive study of the Justice League and DC’s shared universe. He has also published books on (among other subjects) Batman: The Killing Joke (which elaborated a theory on the book’s plot that was praised by Kevin Smith, among others), Jack Kirby’s comic-book continuation of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Mai, the Psychic Girl.
Since 2019, Julian has co-hosted, with Scott Weatherly, the Stories out of Time and Space podcast on sci-fi movies and television. The podcast, currently in season five, is approaching 200 episodes.
A lifelong creative writer, Julian wrote several unpublished novels, screenplays, and comic books as a teenager and took creative writing classes in college. Although he never stopped writing fiction, he published little fictional work for years, focusing instead on other projects. In mid-2007, Julian founded Literary Escort Services, an avant-garde online literary magazine that provided a home for fellow Hawai’i writers and artists. Julian wrote copiously for the site, but managing it (and its goal of nearly daily content) took a great toll, and it ceased publishing new material in late 2009. In 2011, Julian founded Martian Lit to publish creative work from around the world on a less ambitious, weekly schedule. It also published books, including Julian’s first published novel, Nira/Sussa (2012). By 2014, it ceased regular online magazine content and began publishing comics, including several titles written by Julian. Most of these titles are set in in his Martian Universe, which tells the story of a Martian civilization that spans roughly 20,000 years.
In grade school, Julian first programmed on an Apple IIe (using Applesoft BASIC and Apple Logo). As an undergraduate, Julian recognized the historic possibilities of the internet revolution, learning HTML to create websites in 1996. In 1999, he used Flash (in its early days) to create animations for his personal website (prior to this current incarnation), for which he blogged (before blogging was hip) by creating pages himself in HTML. As Sequart grew, he continued putting all contributors’ work into HTML and uploading it himself. In summer 2003, he taught himself PHP and MySQL in order to code Sequart’s website and help the organization grow, creating a customized content management system from the ground up that integrated with an ever-expanding list of website features. In 2007, he repeated this task for Literary Escort Services, adding a system that let authors upload recordings of themselves reading their work to accompany their posts and encouraging authors to do so. He also co-hosted a podcast (something also in its early years) for the site. After a crash required a new Sequart website, Julian coded a new set of PHP features making the site flexible in new ways. In launching Martian Lit, then primarily an online magazine, Julian insisted that unique artwork accompany each post, synthesizing different media and helping online creative writing compete in a visual age. When Martian Lit moved into comics publishing, Julian handled editing and processing of all material in Photoshop. For all of these projects, Julian also handled logo and site design.
Throughout his life, Julian has been open about his struggles with depression and strongly believes in destigmatizing mental illness. He is a vegan who loves animals, especially dogs, turtles, koi, and kiwis. He enjoys walking and completed a 30K in 2023. He adores Hawai’i and can usually measure his happiness by feet to the ocean. He lives in Waikiki.