He Passed Up a Badge in Favor of a Writers Guild Card

A funny thing happened to David S. Goyer on the way to becoming a homicide detective. He became a screenwriter.

And a busy one at that. Goyer wrote “Blade,” the new vampire movie starring Wesley Snipes, participated in a round-robin screenwriting contest hosted by the Turner-produced Web site Rough Cut and has a slew of other projects in the works. Among them are penning a script for Eddie Murphy, producing TV shows and collaborating on a comic book series for DC Comics.

Goyer’s is a career that many superhero-loving, sci-fi obsessed young people dream of having. But when he was a youth himself, growing up in Ann Arbor, Mich., he had an entirely different career mapped out. What he really wanted to do was . . . detect.

Instead of spending his days and nights crafting filmworthy stories about good guys, bad guys and otherworldly mayhem as he does now, Goyer imagined he’d use his energies solving very earthly mysteries as a homicide detective.

“I was in fourth or fifth grade,” Goyer, 32, recalls over a morning muffin at Mel’s Drive-In on West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, “and I read an article in Time magazine about the rising crime rate in America. I became outraged and vowed that I would do something to fight for justice. I knew it was incumbent on a certain number of people to stem the tide of horror that I imagined was sweeping the country.”

This realization, coupled with his appreciation of the vigilante ethics of his favorite comic-book heroes like the Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man, pointed Goyer toward a crime-fighting career.

His high school teachers, however, had a different path in mind for this young man, who had already won national awards for his short fiction. Their hopes were heightened after Goyer was accepted to film school at USC.

“I applied on a lark,” he recalls, “but I still couldn’t go because my family didn’t have the money. So my high school teachers got together and raised the money for my first year’s tuition.”

The psychological challenges of homicide work still fascinated Goyer (“Trying to figure out how the perpetrator would think, that puzzle aspect of it all, intrigued me,” he says), but film school won out.

Now, 14 years later, Goyer explores many of the same themes that inspired his crime-fighting ambitions, except that he writes outlines with his laptop rather than body chalk. In fact, after cutting his screenwriting teeth on action fare for Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal, Goyer has made his mark as a writer of intelligent science-fiction and comic-book-inspired film scripts, usually featuring a troubled hero who must overcome an inner struggle before conquering darker outside forces.

Not surprisingly, the comic-book film genre has been good to the former superhero junkie.

“Comic-book superheroes were the Greek heroes of my generation,” says Goyer, who, in addition to writing the scripts for “Blade” and “The Crow: City of Angels,” has penned a film version of “Venom” (based on the Marvel Comics character) and Marvel’s “Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” which was produced in May as a two-hour TV movie for Fox Television.

“Comics helped to fill a void, teaching me about right and wrong, courage and justice,” he says. “I also like that superheroes tend to be working outside the system and are often pretty flawed. That’s what makes them attractive.”

The title character of Blade reads as the ultimate outsider. Played by Snipes, Blade is half-human, half-vampire, and is caught up in an aggressive struggle between the two species for world rule. “He’s similar to the Clint Eastwood character in ‘Unforgiven,’ ” says Goyer. “Blade’s struggling against his own fear and his own confused sense of his identity. He doesn’t belong in either world, but when he’s faced with killing vampires, he’s faced with killing himself.”

Goyer also cultivates an image of the outsider for himself, even while working within the higher echelons of the film biz. Looking more like a renegade lawman than a top-dollar movie scribe, both of Goyer’s arms are covered in boldly evocative tattoos. Whenever possible, he and his wife leave L.A. for such exotic ports-of-call as Botswana, Myanmar and, most recently, Tibet.

“I’m constantly trying to cleanse myself of Hollywood’s poisons,” he laughingly admits. “I try to replenish that ephemeral source where my ideas come from and have as many experiences as I can and hope that it all some way helps.”

Other untraditional distractions, like participating in the online screenwriting contest at Rough Cut, provide relief from the reclusive task of writing.

“I thought the contest sounded like a lot of fun,” Goyer says of why he chose to contribute the beginning of the sci-fi script that the online contest’s participants add to in weekly installments. “Besides, I just got to throw out as much texture and as many ideas and themes as I could, without the responsibility of following up on it. It’s sort of like being a studio executive.”

As cavalier as he may be about it, Goyer’s noirish intro must have struck a chord. More than 50 contest submissions were received within the first two days.

“We’re very impressed with the response that David’s work has inspired,” says Rough Cut editor in chief Andy Jones. “We’re not just asking people to submit a page; this is a larger commitment. But David creates worlds that you can really get your mind around, that you want to visit. So we’re thrilled he was able to do this for us.”

With all of his extracurricular activities, Goyer’s work slate remains full. Current film projects include “Evermere,” the first of a trilogy of fantasy epics. “It’s kind of like ‘The Wizard of Oz’ for grown-ups,” quips Goyer, who wrote the script and plans to serve as executive producer on the film that marks the first project for the new company founded by former Carolco chiefs Andy Vajna and Mario Kassar. He’s also co-producing a fact-based sci-fi project about the first manned mission to Mars for Hollywood Pictures titled, appropriately enough, “Mission to Mars.”

And what about any second thoughts on a career as a homicide detective? Does Goyer ever feel any pangs of regret while witnessing the results of other guys’ work on the 11 p.m. news?

“Sure, all the time,” he admits. “But what’s frustrating about that work is that you can do the best job in the world at catching people, but that doesn’t mean they’ll go to jail. For a lot of police detectives, that’s what becomes too heartbreaking for them. If I had gone that route, I’m sure by now I would have quit and gone into political activism.”