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Post by spoon on Sept 6, 2017 19:49:43 GMT -5
I don't want to get to personal here (particularly since I'm a Byrne fan...at least Byrne circa 1975-1990) but the subject of Byrne's "mean-spirit" got me thinking about his work and my interactions with him over the years. I was at one time a member of the Byrne forum (actually, I was a member of the older forum that predated this) dating from its inception in 2004. For the most part I felt Byrne was usually on point with his opinions when it came to comics, but his increasingly bizarre and contrarian views on creators rights and politics gradually lead to me voicing my disagreement and getting banned. The final straw was his strange irritation at the fact that Kirby's family and Marvel had finally come to an amicable financial agreement. By taking a hard-line "it was work for hire" stance, Byrne seemed to think that he deserved some sort of praise for being objective and pragmatic in the face of overwhelming sentiment, even taking into account the decades long injustice of the Kirby/Marvel situation. The fact that he benefited from a royalty deal that found its roots in the examples of the mistreatment of Siegel/Shuster and Kirby seemed either lost on him or beside the point. I made a comment that it was almost as if Byrne (and a few others on that forum) where suffering from a collective Stockholm Syndrome when it came to the business side of Marvel and DC. Sure, they despised the creative direction of the Quesada era (a sentiment I generally agree with) but that's where it began and ended for them. That "older forum" wouldn't happen to be the Unofficial John Byrne Fan Site, would it? It was run by some Swedish guy. I think his first name was Magnus. Or maybe his last name was Magnusson. Anyway, I was a member of that forum, too. It was the first message board about comics (and maybe even the first message board on any topic) that I regularly frequented. At first, the posters were just fans and it was lot of fun. Then Byrne showed up, and ironically a lot of the fun got drained out. I didn't know about Byrne's reputation for being a difficult person at that point. He seemed to be look to pick fights all over the place. To be fair, a certain portion of the members seemed to be trolls. I get the feeling that some were people who had met him at conventions or elsewhere and now bore a grudge against him. But Byrne couldn't stop himself from taking the bait. Also, Byrne's fire was directed at anyone who disagreed with him on anything. In a thread, I once made the mistake of saying that I preferred Byrne's art on Uncanny X-Men to his art on X-Men: The Hidden Years (which was being published at that time). Byrne joined the thread to tell me that I didn't know how to read comics and his art on Hidden Years obviously reflected improvement. Over time, there were different camps. Some members felt it was okay to voice various opinions. Others became sycophantic regarding their idol. They delivered North Korean style praise of Byrne and apologized profusely about anything Byrne disliked or disagreed with. In spite of that, I still like a lot of Byrne's work. I feel like sometimes distaste for Byrne the person bleeds over into evaluation in Byrne's work as an artist/writer. But it was tiring reading his posts, because he seemed to have a constant desire to get into fights. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2017 21:15:45 GMT -5
I've spent most of this day talking to friends that I know at my Local Comic Book Store and most of them attends Comic Cons across the USA and they all have in some degree having a hard time dealing with John Byrne and they end up not liking the guy after talking to him because he is too opinionated of a lot of things in Comics.
Most of them, were fan of his work and after spending time with him ... they changed their minds about him. One member told me that Erik Larsen had problems with him and he's had great difficulty with John.
Marvel's Editor in Chief Roy Thomas according to a friend of mine had a hard time dealing with John and I don't know the nature of it but it was a conflict over issues of writing and drawing that Thomas felt it should be changed and Byrne did not want to do it because he doesn't want to do the extra work.
That's another reason why people in the Comics Industry are a bit afraid of him.
Having listening on and off again of these people and spending time with them over an early dinner with about 7 friends that wanted to talk to me about John Byrne that right now that this man is very difficult to deal with. This is their opinion of him when my friends that attends Comic Cons across the United States and they enjoy attending them and that's why I learned that John Byrne is a hard man to deal with.
I spent about 3 hours of my time off and on learning about John and more I hear from my friends - I've learned that he not the man that you want to get riled. Right now, I care less about John even more.
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Post by berkley on Sept 6, 2017 21:34:19 GMT -5
Legend has it that the Barda Superman issue was Byrne taking a shot at Kirby, rather personally, seeing as how Jack modeled Barda in part after his wife. My theory is that Byrne did this as retaliation for the Destroyer Duck parody that Jack was involved in. Say what you will about Byrne, but he's always been a huge Kirby fan, so I could easily see how such a personal attack by one of his heroes would injure his fanboy pride. I remember liking Byrne's Superman the first time I read it, but this was long before I grew to appreciate, and even prefer, most aspects of the Pre-Crisis DC Universe. Why DC or anyone would ask him to be write a New Gods series or take part in any kind of Kirby tribute after he did something so petty and vindictive is beyond me. |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,222 
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Post by Confessor on Sept 7, 2017 3:27:37 GMT -5
Yikes! : -/ I agree shax, wtf was the comic code on those two issues? Wow. I mean I have no problem with people writing what they want but if pre-code horror comics were going to turn kids into killers, what's this issue NOT going to do that to kids/young people that warranted getting a stamp of approval? Yet a year later the comic code wont stamp The Killing Joke for approval? Weird. The Killing Joke is way more graphic and adult-themed than the Big Barda/Superman porno issues though. Everything in the Supes issues happens off panel, pretty much; the worst we see is Superman kissing Barda and Mr. Sleeze standing by with his video camera. I have to say that, as someone who was a fan of the early part of Byrne's run and who read those Superman porn issues at the time, I remember liking them a lot, and thinking that it was an interesting and edgy direction in which to take the character. As an adult, I do tend to think "what the Hell was Byrne thinking", but at the time I didn't think that these porno issues were really all that shocking. We should also remember that the proliferation of VHS pornography in the mid-to-late '80s was a "hot" topic in the press and among the moral Guardians of the age. Byrne was definitely tapping into some of that controversy on some level with this Barda/Superman/Mr. Sleeze story. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 7, 2017 7:06:48 GMT -5
Marvel's Editor in Chief Roy Thomas according to a friend of mine had a hard time dealing with John and I don't know the nature of it but it was a conflict over issues of writing and drawing that Thomas felt it should be changed and Byrne did not want to do it because he doesn't want to do the extra work. I think your friend has Roy confused with someone else, CC. Roy Thomas was Editor in chief in 1972-1974, and the earliest Marvel comic by Byrne I can think of is The Champions (January 1978 issue). |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2017 8:00:11 GMT -5
Marvel's Editor in Chief Roy Thomas according to a friend of mine had a hard time dealing with John and I don't know the nature of it but it was a conflict over issues of writing and drawing that Thomas felt it should be changed and Byrne did not want to do it because he doesn't want to do the extra work. I think your friend has Roy confused with someone else, CC. Roy Thomas was Editor in chief in 1972-1974, and the earliest Marvel comic by Byrne I can think of is The Champions (January 1978 issue). Yeah, I did not catch that ... Sorry. |
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Post by Cei-U! on Sept 7, 2017 8:06:40 GMT -5
Marvel's Editor in Chief Roy Thomas according to a friend of mine had a hard time dealing with John and I don't know the nature of it but it was a conflict over issues of writing and drawing that Thomas felt it should be changed and Byrne did not want to do it because he doesn't want to do the extra work. I think your friend has Roy confused with someone else, CC. Roy Thomas was Editor in chief in 1972-1974, and the earliest Marvel comic by Byrne I can think of is The Champions (January 1978 issue). Byrne's first Iron Fist story was in Marvel Premiere #25 (October 1975). I dunno if that was his first Marvel credit but regardless it's still after Roy stepped down as EIC. Cei-U! I summon the early promise! |
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Sept 7, 2017 8:29:41 GMT -5
Yikes! : -/ I agree shax, wtf was the comic code on those two issues? Wow. I mean I have no problem with people writing what they want but if pre-code horror comics were going to turn kids into killers, what's this issue NOT going to do that to kids/young people that warranted getting a stamp of approval? Yet a year later the comic code wont stamp The Killing Joke for approval? Weird. The Killing Joke is way more graphic and adult-themed than the Big Barda/Superman porno issues though. Everything in the Supes issues happens off panel, pretty much; the worst we see is Superman kissing Barda and Mr. Sleeze standing by with his video camera. I have to say that, as someone who was a fan of the early part of Byrne's run and who read those Superman porn issues at the time, I remember liking them a lot, and thinking that it was an interesting and edgy direction in which to take the character. As an adult, I do tend to think "what the Hell was Byrne thinking", but at the time I didn't think that these porno issues were really all that shocking. We should also remember that the proliferation of VHS pornography in the mid-to-late '80s was a "hot" topic in the press and among the moral Guardians of the age. Byrne was definitely tapping into some of that controversy on some level with this Barda/Superman/Mr. Sleeze story. In that case it might be more understandable. I was going off shaxper's reviews since I have not read the actual issues, so I wasn't sure what all he was telling about the story was a visible part of the art. But yeah, if it wasn't shown then there was probably more leeway. Still, if you at a younger age got what Byrne was saying then he certainly wasn't beating around the bush with what he wanted to get across. Maybe now my morbid curiosity spurred by this conversation, I shall read these two issues. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 7, 2017 8:58:57 GMT -5
I think your friend has Roy confused with someone else, CC. Roy Thomas was Editor in chief in 1972-1974, and the earliest Marvel comic by Byrne I can think of is The Champions (January 1978 issue). Byrne's first Iron Fist story was in Marvel Premiere #25 (October 1975). I dunno if that was his first Marvel credit but regardless it's still after Roy stepped down as EIC. Cei-U! I summon the early promise! How can I have forgotten those Iron Fist stories? I loved them!!!  |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Sept 7, 2017 17:18:34 GMT -5
I don't want to get to personal here (particularly since I'm a Byrne fan...at least Byrne circa 1975-1990) but the subject of Byrne's "mean-spirit" got me thinking about his work and my interactions with him over the years. I was at one time a member of the Byrne forum (actually, I was a member of the older forum that predated this) dating from its inception in 2004. For the most part I felt Byrne was usually on point with his opinions when it came to comics, but his increasingly bizarre and contrarian views on creators rights and politics gradually lead to me voicing my disagreement and getting banned. The final straw was his strange irritation at the fact that Kirby's family and Marvel had finally come to an amicable financial agreement. By taking a hard-line "it was work for hire" stance, Byrne seemed to think that he deserved some sort of praise for being objective and pragmatic in the face of overwhelming sentiment, even taking into account the decades long injustice of the Kirby/Marvel situation. The fact that he benefited from a royalty deal that found its roots in the examples of the mistreatment of Siegel/Shuster and Kirby seemed either lost on him or beside the point. I made a comment that it was almost as if Byrne (and a few others on that forum) where suffering from a collective Stockholm Syndrome when it came to the business side of Marvel and DC. Sure, they despised the creative direction of the Quesada era (a sentiment I generally agree with) but that's where it began and ended for them. That "older forum" wouldn't happen to be the Unofficial John Byrne Fan Site, would it? It was run by some Swedish guy. I think his first name was Magnus. Or maybe his last name was Magnusson. Anyway, I was a member of that forum, too. It was the first message board about comics (and maybe even the first message board on any topic) that I regularly frequented. At first, the posters were just fans and it was lot of fun. Then Byrne showed up, and ironically a lot of the fun got drained out. I didn't know about Byrne's reputation for being a difficult person at that point. He seemed to be look to pick fights all over the place. To be fair, a certain portion of the members seemed to be trolls. I get the feeling that some were people who had met him at conventions or elsewhere and now bore a grudge against him. But Byrne couldn't stop himself from taking the bait. Also, Byrne's fire was directed at anyone who disagreed with him on anything. In a thread, I once made the mistake of saying that I preferred Byrne's art on Uncanny X-Men to his art on X-Men: The Hidden Years (which was being published at that time). Byrne joined the thread to tell me that I didn't know how to read comics and his art on Hidden Years obviously reflected improvement. Over time, there were different camps. Some members felt it was okay to voice various opinions. Others became sycophantic regarding their idol. They delivered North Korean style praise of Byrne and apologized profusely about anything Byrne disliked or disagreed with. In spite of that, I still like a lot of Byrne's work. I feel like sometimes distaste for Byrne the person bleeds over into evaluation in Byrne's work as an artist/writer. But it was tiring reading his posts, because he seemed to have a constant desire to get into fights. Yep, that's the one. I remember his touchiness when people dared say that they preferred his art during his original X-Men run. In no way was his figure work and detail an improvement, so I think you were spot on. I do think that he's improved a bit in terms of layout, but it boggles my mind that he can look at his art during, say, that original Savage Land arc and think that it's inferior to his Hidden Years stuff. |
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Post by cellardweller on Sept 7, 2017 17:53:19 GMT -5
I hate changing continuity. I feel like the stories I read as a kid are totally invalidated now.
I hate crossovers/multiple story arcs that force me to buy comics I don't read, just to follow the story.
Whoever had the idea to take away Jubilee's powers and turn her into a vampire needs a good hard slap.
Maybe this is the result of too much cartoons in the 70s/early 80s, but I hate all these angry, dark heroes. Yes, heroes can have a dark side, but Jesus, people get happy on occasion too! I'm not saying that heroes have to be "campy" or funny all the time, but how about a few good days every once and a while?!
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Post by Nowhere Man on Sept 8, 2017 7:16:46 GMT -5
I hate changing continuity. I feel like the stories I read as a kid are totally invalidated now. Don't feel this way. Frank Miller once commented that fans have every right to have their own personal continuity separate from whatever the publishers are doing at the time. Let's face it, it can be argued that the original Marvel Universe ended around 1991 (after Claremont was ousted and Image was founded, things were never the same again). Certainly modern Marvel has little grasp on any kind of coherent continuity. I like to think that 1994-1997 didn't happen, at least at Marvel, picks up again during the Heroes Return era (1998-2001) and ends once Quesada takes the reigns. The final nail for the Marvel Universe as an actual shared universe that used continuity as a beneficial tool was the end of the Busiek run on Avengers. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Sept 8, 2017 16:49:04 GMT -5
I hate changing continuity. I feel like the stories I read as a kid are totally invalidated now. Well, unless you're 80, the stories you read as a kid probably invalidated previous work.  |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 8, 2017 17:05:31 GMT -5
I hate changing continuity. I feel like the stories I read as a kid are totally invalidated now. Well, unless you're 80, the stories you read as a kid probably invalidated previous work. Why'd they have to go and make Superman fly? Leaping 1/8 of a mile isn't good enough for these whipper-snappers nowdays. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Sept 8, 2017 17:12:00 GMT -5
Well, unless you're 80, the stories you read as a kid probably invalidated previous work. Why'd they have to go and make Superman fly? Leaping 1/8 of a mile isn't good enough for these whipper-snappers nowdays. I un-ironically and completely agree with this. |
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