M O D E R N M A S T E R S V O L U M E S E V E N :

JOHN BYRNEJOHN BYRNE

By Jon B. Cooke and Eric Nolen-WeathingtonBy Jon B. Cooke and Eric Nolen-Weathington

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Table of Contents

Introduction by Walter Simonson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Part One: Drawing with a Ballpoint Pen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Part Two: The Fantastic Climb up the Marvel Ladder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Part Three: Up, up, and Away from Marvel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Part Four: A Legend is Made . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Part Five: Storytelling and the Creative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Part Six: John Byrne Takes On... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Modern Masters Volume Seven:

JOHN BYRNE

JON B. COOKE: Where are you originally from?

JOHN BYRNE: Well, I was born in England and I livedthere for about the first eight years of my life. Then weimmigrated to Canada, and I lived there until I wasabout 30. Then I came to the States.

JBC: Do you have any brothers and sisters?

JOHN: No, only child.

JBC: What did your parents do?

JOHN: My father is a town planner—zoning, architec-ture, that kind of stuff—and my mother is a housewife.

JBC: What got you guys to make the move to Canada?

JOHN: Land of opportunity. They wanted me to havea better chance than they’d had, and they thought theycould find it there.

JBC: Was it pretty much a middle-class life style?

JOHN: Mostly, yeah. Maybe nudgingtoward upper-middle-class. But myfather was, by the end of his career,fairly highly-placed in the city gov-ernment in Calgary. He was theCity Clerk, which is a lowly-sounding term for what is thehighest non-elective office. Sohe was powerful. I didn’t realizehow powerful when I was akid, but... we lived all right.

JBC: Where you were born?

JOHN: I was only born where Iwas born. We lived in a town calledWest Bromwich, which is just northof Birmingham.

JBC: Is that pretty much in the cen-ter of the country?

JOHN: Yeah, the Midlands, in fact,it’s called.

JBC: Do you have much memory of it?

JOHN: Quite a bit, yeah. In fact, I said to Mike Carlin awhile back—this was when I was doing the John CleeseSuperman project [True Brit], and so I’m calling up all myold memories of England, because the gag is what ifSuperman landed in England rather than the UnitedStates. And I said, “Y’know, people are going to discovermy secret, here.” Because I have this reputation for beingable to draw the ’30s and the ’40s so very well, and all I’mreally doing when I do that is drawing the England that Iremember. So now I’m drawing the England that Iremember as England. So people will know my dark secret.

JBC: What year were you born?

JOHN: 1950.

JBC: So England was still in a post-war kind of semi-Depression...?

JOHN: Pretty much. I have false memories ofWorld War II because all my relatives talked aboutit so much when I was a kid. It took me a longtime to realize that I had not actually livedthrough World War II, because I have such.... A

few years ago, when people started talkingabout false memory syndrome,I went, “I know what that is! Iknow exactly what that is!”

JBC: Did Birmingham suffermuch damage?

JOHN: Quite a bit, yeah. Thestreet that I lived on in West Bromwich

until I was about eight, I would go down thestreet around the corner to walk to school,

and two houses in, there was a vacant lotwhich was a bomb site. It was a house

that had been completely taken outby a German bomb in World WarII. It was just around the corner

from where my grandparents lived.

JBC: So the Blitz really went that far in—?

JOHN: Yeah. And in fact, when I wasabout nine years old, we had a funny experi-ence. Late at night a truck drove by andbackfired, and I heard this tremendous

Part 1: Drawing with aBallpoint Pen

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thump in the next room, my parents’ room.My mother had actually, in her sleep,jumped out of bed and rolled under the bed.

JBC: Something she had done before?

JOHN: Yeah, an instinctive movement,and now we’re talking close to ten, 15 yearsafter the war.

JBC: Was there any rationing in the ’50s?

JOHN: A little bit. I didn’t feel it much.

JBC: Socialism was kind of coming—

JOHN: Working its way in, and we weresort of aware of changes. That was probablyone of the key reasons that we moved toCanada.

JBC: Was your father a Tory?

JOHN: Weeelll... yeah, I suppose so. He’ssort of apolitical, but he would lean con-servative.

JBC: Obviously the climate of Calgarymust have been worlds different.

JOHN: Well, yeah. Calgary’s better thanEdmonton, which is where we first landed.I mean, Edmonton is that Canadian winterthat people think about, where it starts inSeptember and ends in May. [laughs] Andthe skies are gray the whole time. Andthen we moved to Calgary when I was 16.Calgary is in the foothills of the Rockies,and it gets these warm winds that arecalled Chinooks, and they come downover the Rockies and the temperature willliterally go from 40º below to 40º aboveovernight. And that will last for a week orso, just like spring, and then the wintercomes back. I was there from age 16 to 30.

JBC: Isn’t Calgary out west?

JOHN: That’s the good image for it.They think they’re cowboys.

JBC: But they’re certainly more“American” than the rest of Canada.

JOHN: Yes. Very much. In fact, the firsttime I visited Dallas, I thought, “Wow! Thisis Calgary, but bigger!” And then I thought,“Well, of course. It’s the other end of thepipeline, isn’t it?” It’s the same people, it’s

the same cos-tumes—costumesbeing the keyword—the samearchitecture. It’s avery differenturban environ-ment from whatEdmonton was,becauseEdmonton ismuch furthernorth, like 120miles north.You’re startingto get into thecold parts.Calgary, yeah,is much moreopen. Theythink they’recowboy.They’re not,but theythink theyare. [laughs]

JBC: How didyou come across the Pond? Did you fly?

JOHN: No. We took the big boat. In fact,we came over, we went back, we cameover again.

JBC: Why?

JOHN: My mother decided she didn’t likeit, possibly because when we came over thefirst time she had appendicitis and Dadcouldn’t find work and I had a bone diseaseand she sort of said, “I don’t like this!” Sowe went back. And then we decided that,all things considered, Canada was better. Sowe returned.

JBC: How long was the return toEngland?

JOHN: Two years in Canada, two yearsback in England, and then we returned toCanada when I was eight. So I usually skipthe part where we went back and forth andjust say I’ve been in Canada since I was eight.

JBC: What was the experience of beingon a boat ride for that long? What was, it,five days?

Previous Page: Paneldetail in pencil form fromTrue Brit.Above: John’s old memories of Englandprovided nice details inthese pencils for page 47of True Brit.

Superman ™ and ©2006 DCComics.

Below: Jack Kirby, AlexToth, Steve Ditko, RossAndru, Frank Bellamy, andNeal Adams are but afew of the legendarycomic-book artistswhose stellar workcrowds the walls of theByrne sanctuary (not tomention spectacular artby some spectacularcomic-strip masters aswell, including CharlesSchulz and Roy Crane).The proud owner posesbefore a mere portion ofthe breath-taking collection at his formerhome in Fairfield, Conn.Next Page: Preliminarysketches and ideas forthe Generations mini-series. As with John’s lovefor comics, it started with Supermanand Batman.

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JOHN: Five days. It was wonderful. It’s theonly way to travel. I was a tiny little kid; it’sa hell of an adventure. I was four or five thefirst trip and then seven, six-and-a-half orwhatever it works out to, and eight. We hadto cross without my father, and my motherwas hideously seasick the whole trip. I hadfree run of the boat, and it was wonderful.All the stewards and whatnot took care ofme, and I was eating in the dining room allby myself, because everybody was seasick. Itwas like an Atlantic crossing worse thananybody—this was on the Queen Elizabeth.

JBC: It was rocky water?

JOHN: Oh, yeah, boy. And I have onevivid memory, which is that I was going tothe dining room. I’m four years old and I’mout there wandering around this boat bymyself, pretty much, because everybody’sback in their cabins throwing up. I ziggedwhen I should have zagged, and I steppedthrough these doors and I was out on thedeck. I can still see it: the sky was gunmetal,and the sea was actually crashing over the

side of the boat. And I don’t know how mylittle four-year-old brain worked that fast,but I just stepped straight back in thedirection I’d come. I didn’t even turnaround, and the door was, of course,closed. But I can still see that.

We crossed on the Queen Elizabeth, theQueen Mary, and a little boat that nobody’sever heard of called the RMS Ivernia—thatwas the three trips. It was five days each way.And then, of course, a long way by train get-ting out to western Canada. Although that’sone of my favorite little memories, too, isthat when I was four years old, we came inthrough New York. And I have a vivid mem-ory of Grand Central Station from when Iwas four years old. And I’ve often said GrandCentral Station is the only thing that hasn’tgotten smaller. I stand in the middle ofGrand Central Station sometimes and I go,“It’s still big! It’s every bit as big as it waswhen I was four years old!”

JBC: Did you get to know other people?Were you social at all as a kid?

JOHN: No, I was very much a loner as achild. It was sort of forced upon me. Myparents had major wanderlust, so we movedall the time. I don’t think the police wereactually chasing us, but we moved all thetime, with the result that I went to nine

schools in eleven years.And I did not live in thesame house twoChristmases in a rowuntil I was 16. So I pret-ty much had to learn tolive inside my head,which I did. I had thesecomic books whichhelped me a lot. Theywere my friends. Whichis pretty sick and twist-ed, I suppose, but....

I’m an only child anddid not really have a lotof friends growing up,because I was alwaysthe new kid in school.We always moved inNovember, for somereason, too. I wouldstart at the beginning ofthe year in one school,

but then two months later I would move. SoI was very much introverted, and very, very,very shy. It probably would have helped if I’dhad—I’ve often said that if I’d had a brotheror a sister, I’d probably only have half theneuroses. Although perhaps I’d have twice as

Batman, Superman ™ and©2006 DC Comics.

many, who knows? But, yeah... the num-ber of people I’ve called “real friends” overmy life I can still count on one hand.

JBC: Were you unhappy?

JOHN: I don’t think I was smart enough tobe unhappy. I know I hated it that we moved,because I was always trying to catch up.Somehow, they always managed to be aheadof wherever I was in school. I always did very badlyin school; I always had bad grades. Years later, my moth-er read an article that said, gosh, you know, if youmove a lot, your children’s grades will suffer. And Ijust kind of sat there going, “Really? No! Honest?”

JBC: Did you ever tell your parents how you felt?

JOHN: Oh, yeah. “Do we have to move? Idon’t wanna.” They were always taking meaway from whichever girl I decided I wasin love with, too. [laughs] I think that waswhy they did it! So I kind of got used toliving in my own head and then livingthrough the comics and making my own comics and allthat kind of stuff, which I guess most of us emotionalcripples do.

JBC: Comics were your friends. When’s your firstmemory of seeing—?

JOHN: In 1956. I worked this out with my parents awhile ago. I was introduced via the Adventures of SupermanTV series with George Reeves, which turned up on theBBC when we were still in England. And then walkingdown the high street one day in West Bromwich I sawone of these black-and-white hardcover annuals that theyused to do in England, and it said “Superman.” I couldn’t

quite read yet, but I did rec-ognize the logo. So I thought,“Well, this must be like the

TV show.” So I got my mother to buy it, and I could sortof work my way through the stories. And that introducedme to Superman. Then several months later I saw whatDave Gibbons has since identified for me, it must havebeen this Australian reprint called Supercomics, which had aSuperboy story. That was why I got it, because I figuredSuperboy must be connected to Superman somehow. Ithad a Johnny Quick story and it had a Batman story, andthat was the first Batman story I ever read. Supermanintroduced me to comics, and Batman made me an addict.

JBC: And you were reading an Australian reprint?

JOHN: I was reading an Australian reprint. It was 1956then, so the story was at least four years old. I now havea copy of the original American publication, which I gotfrom Dick Sprang, from his personal collection. I havehis copy of that comic, but I still don’t have a copy ofSupercomics. [laughs]

JBC: So Dick drew the first story?

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JBC: What happened once you said, “Okay, I’m goingto be a comic artist now”?

JOHN: It took me about three years to become anovernight success. I was pounding the pavement. I actuallygot a job at an outdoor advertising company in Calgarycalled Hook Signs as their art department, basically. I wasdesigning all these billboards. And I cringe every time Isay “billboard,” because that’s not what they’re called in thebusiness, but that’s what civilians call them.

JBC: What dothey call them?

JOHN: They’recalled “super-boards.” [Jonlaughs] That’s right.Everything isone step down.A show card isa poster and aposter is a bill-board and a bill-board is a super-board, and all thatwas drilled into me.So every time I saythat I used to designbillboards, I go [whis-pers] “No, I didn’t!” Twitch,twitch! And I workedthere for about a year.

JBC: Did you do calligraphy?

JOHN: No, I didn’t do that, that was theother department, but I would indicate it. Andthen I started to get stuff through the fanzines, CPL andall that stuff that Roger Stern and Bob Layton weredoing back then.

JBC: How did you hook into that?

JOHN: This was again this guy in Calgary, JohnMansfield, who was Canadian Army. He was able to travelall over the world and he was a big comic fan. And he wasthe one who introduced my stuff to various people and

showed it to various fanzines and they started running it.And out of that, Nick Cuti at Charlton saw it, saw “Rog2000,” and asked me if I would like to do “Rog 2000” as aback-up in E-Man. And that was really my first ongoingseries. My first sale, my first professional sale—not count-ing the Monster Times—was to Marvel, but the first stuff thatwas published on a regular basis was with Charlton.

JBC: You did go downto New York and showyour work, right?

JOHN: Oh, yeah. Ivisited all the offices. In’71 my parents boughtme a trip to New Yorkfor my 21st birthday. Iwent to Marvel and Iwent to DC and I went toWarren. And they allsaid, “Go away. Comeback when you’re good.”

JBC: Were yougood?

JOHN: No.[laughs] I thought I

was! [laughs] When I lookat people’s work now,

when people at con-ventions show

me theirwork andwhatnot, Irealized that

there are twoways of being

bad. There is the “A” way and the “B” way, as I call them.And I was bad in the “A” way. And everybody I know,Jerry Ordway, George Pérez... I’ve never seen Walt’s stufffrom that early, but I bet he was bad in the “A” way.

JBC: Which is...?

JOHN: I can’t really describe it, unfortunately.

JBC: It’s got something, you mean?

Part 2: The Fantastic Climb up the Marvel Ladder

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JOHN: You can tell that there’s some-thing there. And then the people who arebad in the “B” way, there’s a softness to it.It’s like they don’t have bones in their fig-ures and they all sort of look inflated andthere’s a weird mushiness to it. And I don’tknow anybody who was bad in the “B” waywho ever got to be good enough tobecome a professional.

JBC: There’s a foundation in the drawing?

JOHN: Something. There’s some under-standing, some basic thing that’s missing.One of the funny things I’ve noticed is thatin the “B” way they always seem to havestrangely inflated feet, these big puffy feet.And it always looks like they’re wearingbell-bottoms. It’s very weird. But I remem-ber some very early Jerry Ordway stuff thathe showed me one time and I went, “Yeah,this is bad like I used to be bad.” And I lookat my old stuff now and I say, “Yeah, I cansee that this is bad in this particular way. Iunderstand the structure, I’m just not exe-cuting it yet.” And the people who are badin the other way, they just don’t under-

stand, they don’t get it. I mean, that’s thesimplest way to express it. They just don’tget it. And unfortunately I’ve said this in acouple of interviews, so now people willshow me their stuff and they’ll say, “Am Ibad in the ‘A’ way or the ‘B’ way?” And I go,“Oh, geez, the ‘A’ way, you’re bad in the ‘A’way. No, you’re bad in the ‘Q’ way, man.You’ve made up your own....” Geez.

JBC: Did it deter you at all that they saidto come back?

JOHN: No. Well, I did go back toCalgary and get a job at Hook Signs—thatwas sort of, “Oh, this’ll just be my hobby.”

JBC: But you were going to go back?

JOHN: Well, it was.... There’s a psycholo-gy book I have on the shelf, the title ofwhich is If I’m So Successful, Why Do I Feel Likea Fake? And I bought it simply for that title,because that’s sort of my mantra. Becauseeverything that happened at the early partof my career just seemed to happen bydumb luck. The right people saw the rightthing at the right time. Like, Nick Cuti saw

“Rog 2000” at just the momentSteve Ditko said, “I don’t

want to do the back-up inE-Man anymore.” SoNick said, “Do youwant to do this?” Andthen Chris Claremontsaw some of my stuffat just the moment

that Pat Broderick’s cathad thrown up on the

latest issue of Iron Fist orsomething, and persuaded

John Verpoorten to call me.“See if this guy wants to do....”It was all these dominoes falling

over, which I guess kind of scared meabout my career sometimes, because I feellike I’ve had no direct control over any-thing that’s ever happened in my career.Like, where the industry is now, I really feellike I have to grab the tiller and do some-thing about my life and my job. But if I dothat, I’ll hit the rocks, because I’ve neverbeen able to control the stuff that hap-pens—it just happens. And that’s reallywhat happened at the beginning, just aseries of very fortuitous dominoes toppling.

Below: A 1975 Iron Fistconvention sketch.Next Page Top: Ahumorous look back atRog-2000’s family tree.Next Page Bottom: Atone time John thoughtpenciling Iron Man mightbe the most he couldaspire for, and in 1979 hefinally made it there—although, two years afterbecoming a success onX-Men. Page 2 of IronMan #118. Inks by BobLayton.

Iron Fist, Iron Man ™ and©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.Rog-2000 ™ and ©2006 respective owner.

JBC: What Nick was doing was just fun; there was a lot ofenthusiasm that was going on. A lot of it was really trashy, butthere was just an enthusiasm to it that was just fun. So I thinkmy brother and I saw you right at the start. We still have backissues of Wheelie and Chopper Bunch, and we didn’t buy any of theHanna-Barbera stuff.

JOHN: Well, that was my first whole book. And I thought,“Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch?” I'd never even seen the show; itwasn’t running in Canada. And I just said, “Okay, if this is goingto be it, then I’m going to be the Carl Barks of Wheelie and theChopper Bunch.” And I put all my energy into that first issue. ThenHanna-Barbera saw it and they said, “This is too scary. Tell him todumb it down.” So I dumbed it down for the second issue and itjust sucked the life right out of me, which is why I only did twoissues of the thing. It was so simple, the stuff that I had to do tomeet what Hanna-Barbera wanted, that I felt—this is going tosound weird—but I felt wrong taking the money. It was 50 bucksa page for pencils, inks, and lettering, right? But I just felt wrongtaking—and that’s what I said to George Wildman when I calledhim. I said, “Well, I can’t do this.” And he said, “Why?” And I said,“I just feel bad taking the money. Give me something real to do.”

JBC: And that’s when Doomsday came?

JOHN: Doomsday, and later Space: 1999.

JBC: Didyou feelthis was a project that fit in with your sensiblities?

JOHN: I really liked Doomsday +1. My expectations of where Iwas going to end up in funnybooks was much lower thanwhere I actually ended up. I used to think that if I was reallylucky I would end up as the #1 guy of the second tier. And theway I saw that in my mind was I’d be penciling Iron Man.Somehow I figured that was as high as I would ever get—Iwould be penciling Iron Man. And in fact when HowardMackie got me to write a few issues of Iron Man a few yearsago, I said, “Well, I finally made it!” It was one of those weirdthings where, “That’s as high as I’m ever gonna get. So overhere at Charlton, they’re letting me do all kinds of stuff.Wow, that’s really cool! And they’re not really watching meall that closely.” And Joe Gill, who was the writer onDoomsday, I asked him if I could rewrite a couple of littlethings along the way, because I was lettering it as well.And he said, “Oh, rewrite whatever you like.” Okay! Sofrom that point on I was rewriting the whole thing. Imean, I wrote most of those issues after the second one.

JBC: Yeah, I was very surprised to realize re-readingthem later on, it felt like all you.

JOHN: Yeah, well, it pretty much was after the firstissue. And Joe sort of gave me permission. I would takethe framework of his story and just try to turn it into aMarvel book, basically.

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“Is this why people think my stuff doesn’t sell anymore?”

JBC: It was bi-monthly when you started!

JOHN: When I started, it was bi-monthly. It was aboutsix issues, maybe less, maybe four issues in, that it wentmonthly. Dave Cockrum just couldn’t do it on a monthlybasis.

JBC: Why not?

JOHN: Jim Shooter once said that Dave is one of those

artists who, if you give him Xamount of time to do X amountof pages, he will get two thirdsof the job done. So if you givehim a year to do three pages,he’ll do two pages, and if yougive him a month to do 90pages, he’ll do 60. [laughs]

JBC: He’s probably not uniquein that. There’s a lot of artistslike that, right?

JOHN: It’s just the way thatseems to work. And Dave justcouldn’t quite get there to do amonthly book. And that was oneof the reasons he was sort of...“invited to leave” is a subtle wayto say it, I suppose.

JBC: Did you see team books asyour specialty? I mean, X-Men isa team book and it’s crowded.You and George Pérez werecoming out at the same time, andyou actually were two guys whoseemed to like the team books.

JOHN: I love team books. I’vealways said that George and Iare at about the same level, artis-tically. We have differentstrengths, but we obviously bothhit the page with the same kindof enthusiasm, the same kind ofmentality. George was off doingAvengers and Teen Titans and allthat stuff, and of course I did theFF and the Avengers and the X-Men all at the same time at onepoint. Which led to the famouspanel, which I caught before Isent it in, but I did a shot of theX-Men flying in the quinjet and

I had the Scarlet Witch instead of Storm. [laughter]

JBC: Really?

JOHN: Yeah. “Whoops! I’ll have to erase that!” That waswhen I used to have my drawing board in one of the bed-rooms of my two-bedroom apartment, and I had a closet—one of those louvered-door closets. I would tape the pagesto the closet as they were done, so I could look up at them.The closet would just take a book except for the last page.And of course the last page didn’t need to be taped up,

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because it was the last page. I had done that issue of the X-Men and I was sitting there doing the next-to-last page andI kind of looked up and literally did a double-take. “Whatthe hell is that?” I walked over and looked and there wasthe Scarlet Witch sitting in the back seat instead of Storm.But yeah, the X-Men was always one of my favorite bookswhen I was a kid. Actually, whatever book I was reading atthat precise instant was my favorite book when I was a kid.We know how thatworks. But the X-Menalways spoke to me.

JBC: Really?

JOHN: Yeah.

JBC: I was born in1959, so we’re a bitseparated in age. But itbecame a dry bookafter a while.

JOHN: Oh, yeah.Well, I didn’t last long.I only lasted for thefirst six issues. That’sthe timing.

JBC: Oh, right, andthen you were out ofcomics.

JOHN: Then I wasout of comics. In fact, Ithink the last issue Iread was the onewhere they graduated.I would always yell atShooter when he’d say,“It’s about a school.” I’dsay, “They graduatedin, like, issue eight!C’mon! Give me abreak!” I loved that.

At some point Ifound out about the new X-Men book being in theworks, and I sent in a bunch of X-Men drawings to tryand get the job, because I didn’t know it was going to benew new X-Men. Then Cockrum ended up doing it, andI was reading it and enjoying it, and Chris was doingsome interesting stuff. And I basically made it knownthat if Dave ever left and I didn’t get the assignment,people would be hurt. There would be blood. Thestreets would run with blood.

JBC: I guess one of the things that made X-Men coolwas that it was so un-cool for a while. And then all of a

sudden—it’s like Springsteen’s appeal. It started like “he'sours,” and when Born in the USA comes out, “Yahh! Youdon’t get it!”

JOHN: The funny thing is that the X-Men seems to havecrossed that line without ever crossing that line, becauseI would bet money that if you grabbed the average X-fan, who is fully aware that there are 500 X-titles and

that they each used tosell a billion a month,they would still tellyou it was “a specialbook that only I amreading.” Because that’sthe mentality that thatbook generates. It’slike, “This is my bookover in my corner.”

Again, going backto what Roger said,that’s what the charac-ters are. They are theoutsiders, they are offto one side. They aren’tthe Fantastic Four; theyaren’t the Avengers.There was some appeal.I mean, I was the lonerguy, obviously, so....

JBC: What was thatbig issue with youbehind the DarkPhoenix story? Wasthat emotionally a bigissue for you?

JOHN: Oh, yeah. Atthe time it was huge.Number one, it was abig, big story that we’dbeen building to for thebetter part of a year.And then right at the

end—even after the end, really, as far as Chris and I wereconcerned—Shooter had to come in and, as I so discreetlyphrase it, piss on it and make it his. There we were, withthis thing that had been worked out, plotted out, he knewabout it, everything had been detailed. And then all of asudden it had to be a different story. And, just to reallyfrost me all that much more, what came out of all that wasa better story. [laughs] Chris has never been able to acceptthat, that yes, the death of Phoenix, that whole thing, wasbetter than what we originally had planned. When theemotional thing settled and it finally came out and I readthe printed book, I said, “Yeah. This is better.”

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36

“Warlock” about diamondsin the garbage? Diamondsmixed in the garbage. And

there was so muchcrap at Marvel backthen. The X-Men,just from the sheer

energy of it, justshined.

JBC: I guess it was theenthusiasm of you tworeally coming out.

JOHN: Well, we wereboth a couple of reallysick guys, too, at thetime.

JBC: What did youthink of Terry’sinks?

JOHN: Well,the funny thingis, Terry and I,artistically, aretotally differ-ent. Mystuff is very

organic and Terry’s is very mechani-cal. And I would never in a millionyears have picked Terry. I mean, Iwanted Sam Grainger to continueon X-Men, because he was inkingCockrum. In part, I wanted to makeit as easy a transition as possible forthe fans. And they said, “No we’regoing to give you Terry.” And I go,“Oh, this isn’t gonna work.” Thereis not a single page of the X-Menthat Terry inked that looks theway it looked in my head, but itsure looks sweet, doesn’t it? Idon’t know how it worked, but itreally worked. And yet we wereon opposite ends of the spec-trum as far as our styles.

JBC: That’s some incredibleenergy, really—and even Tom’slettering with Chris’ writing, itall came together—

JOHN: And Glynis’ color-ing. I mean, Glynis’ coloring

was extraordinary. Glynis won me overwith a single panel. I’d always liked Glynis’stuff, but the one that really made me go“wow” was where the Beast and Phoenixhave escaped from where the X-Men fellinto the Savage Land and they’re up on theice cap—it was the last page, I think—andthe Beast is holding Jean. So it was hisface, her hair, her face, and I think hishand. As I was penciling it, I was thinking,“Y’know, I’m going to get a coloring job onthis and there’s going to be 15 shades ofblue and 25 shades of red.” And Glyniscolored it blue, red, flesh, boom. Justboom, boom, boom. And it was just per-fect. That’s exactly right. That shot wouldhave been ruined by modeling. And I thinkshe’d maybe not colored me much beforethat, but I just said, “Yes! This is what Iwant.”

JBC: Was your star rising while you weredoing X-Men? Did your page rate rise?

Above: Cyclops and asultry Dark Phoenix. Inksby Terry Austin.Right: For the cover ofFantastic Four #250, Johnincluded all the majorcharacters of his youngcareer, includingSuperm—er, Gladiator.Inks by Terry Austin.Next Page: John recreated the famous“Wolverine in the sewer”panel for a Spanish X-Men portfolio.

Captain America, Cyclops, DarkPhoenix, Fantastic Four,Gladiator, Spider-Man, Wolverine,X-Men ™ and ©2006 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

JOHN: Yeah, somewhat. Eventually, my star rose. Theinitial reaction was, “Oh God, get rid of this guy, bringCockrum back.” And that lasted for the first four or fiveissues, really. And then what really seemed to win thefans, the fans really came over with the circus issue thatended with the splash of Magneto going “Hello dere.”And from that moment on, people went, “Okay, this guydoesn’t suck. I think this guy will be okay.” And then, ofcourse, we went off and did all the crazy stuff.Wolverine in the sewer, which I will spend the rest ofmy life living down, because it’s “the greatest panel inthe history of comics, ever” to hearsome people talk.

JBC: My brother was always an X-Men fan, and if he was into some-thing, I would have to be into some-thing else. He was into Kamandi, I wasinto the Demon. He was into Spider-Man, I was into Fantastic Four. So Iwasn’t into X-Men. But I distinctlyrecall the “Wolverine in the sewer”shot.

JOHN: Yeah. That was really theshot.

JBC: You could tell Terry laboredover that one so long.

JOHN: I labored on it, too! [laughs]

JBC: There was just this layer uponlayer and it all worked, the characteri-zation, too.

JOHN: Supposedly—I haven’t seenit, but I’ve heard that somebody’sdoing one of those little model thingsthey do of that shot. One of those lit-tle dioramas. When I first heard aboutit, all I thought was, “But it onlyworks from one angle!” [laughs] If youturn it, it won’t work! “You can look atthis model, but only from over here.”

JBC: Was Tom [Orzechowski] usedas the letterer because he could letterreally small?

JOHN: Well... Tom lettered “Star-Lord”—I think that was the first timewe worked together—and there was aline in “Star-Lord” where one of thecharacters says, "Star-Lord, you talktoo much.” And in the margin, Tomhad lettered “Letterers’ Lament.”

[laughter] That was funny. So, yeah, Chris is verbose,that’s his style. And sometimes it works. Chris is theonly writer I’ve ever worked with that managed to makeme cry reading a page that I had drawn.

JBC: Really?

JOHN: That was a page in Iron Fist. When I got to thatpage and read what he had written, I actually teared up.It was beautiful. So give the guy his props. ChrisClaremont is the best damned Chris Claremont outthere. No doubt about it.

37

JBC: How did the Supermandeal come about?

JOHN: Basically from meshooting off my mouth forten years. After the firstSuperman movie withChristopher Reeve, I justwent around saying,“See? They knew how todo it right. DC doesn’tknow how to do it right.”

JBC: But you hadalready done Legends of theBatman at that point, right?

JOHN: Yeah, but onthat I was only the artrobot. And I only pen-ciled the first issue.

JBC: Just quickly, howdid you....

JOHN: How did I getthat? I was at a conventionin Chicago, I heard theywere doing it, and Iwent to Jack Harris,who was the editor, andI said, “I hear you’re doing aBatman thing. I’ve got a holein my schedule. I’d like todo that.” And they said,“Great.” Unfortunately, itwas a three-month hole in my schedule, and it endedup taking Len something like nine months to write it,so I was only able to do the first issue.

With Superman, I kept saying they don’t knowhow to do it, they don’t know how to do it. I wasunder exclusive contract to Marvel and I went offcontract.... I don’t know why. I think Imaybe sensed that I wasgoing to have to jump.And almost the instant Idecided to go off con-tract, the phone rang. It

45

Part 3: Up, up, and Away from Marvel

Left: Pencils for the finalpage of the Man of Steelmini-series.

Superman ™ and ©2006 DCComics.

46

was Dick Giordano, and he said, “Okay, wise guy. Put yourmoney where your mouth is. We are, in fact, going to rebootSuperman. Tell us what you want to do.” So I put togetherwhat I called my “List of Unreasonable Demands,”which was like 20 things, as I recall. I turned itin, and they liked 19 of them. So, [laughs] 19 ofthem were not unreasonable, as it turns out.

The one thing they didn’t like—and I ulti-mately agree—I said if we’re starting fromscratch, if we’re starting from the bottomline, here’s our problem. It was a prob-lem all along, really, if you thoughtabout it, but... Superman is thesole survivor of the doomedplanet Krypton. That was oneof my main things: he’s the onlyone. How do we knowKryptonite can kill him? I mean,that’s kind of a test todestruction, isn’t it? If we’vegot this green, glowing rockhere, this will killSuperman. But we don’t know that anymore, do we, if this

is a brand new scenario?So we need a way toshow that Kryptonitewill kill Superman, withoutkilling Superman. So what Ihad come up with was, it isnot the baby Kal-El who islaunched away, it is the pregnantLara. She arrives on Earth pregnant.She gives birth to Superman on Earth. She’sfound by the Kents, she’s taken in by theKents. She gives birth. And then she finds that piece ofKryptonite that came along, and she dies. And that’s howwe know.

JBC: That’s mean! [laughs]

JOHN: Yeah! Then Jenette [Kahn] said—and I thoughtthis was good; she was smart to say this—she thought thattook it a little too far away from what we knew. And thenshe demonstrated a surprising knowledge of the charactersthat I didn’t realize that she had. She said, “If the explosionwas caused by all these pressures inside Krypton, and if itwas those pressures that fused the native elements ofKrypton into Kryptonite—which is the story—perhaps itwas already happening before the planet blew up. Perhapsthere was already Kryptonite in the core, and that radia-tion was already killing people on Krypton beforeSuperman is launched away. And I said, “That’s brilliant!”And in my opening, that’s what Jor-El discovers is that themysterious plague that’s killing everybody is Kryptoniteradiation from the pressures in the core.

Right: Early Supermansketches from John’ssketchbook. Below: Once the kryptonite conundrumwas solved by JenetteKahn, John proceeded tokill off Krypton in amore traditional mannerthan he had originallyintended. Pencils for page7 of Man of Steel #1.Next Page Top: Johnfurther explored the history of Krypton in the1987 mini-series, TheWorld of Krypton.Next Page Bottom: Aghost from the past. Apanel from page 17 ofMan of Steel #6.

Jor-El, Lara, Superman ™ and©2006 DC Comics.

47

JBC: Did the Supermandeal launch you into adifferent stratosphere,financially?

JOHN: No, no, notat all.

JBC: Were youalready there?

JOHN: I did makea nice piece ofchange of the firstMan of Steel, becauseit was the firstcomic in like ahundred years tohave sold a mil-lion. Not since the’40s had we seenthose kinds ofnumbers. But, no,I got my regularpage rate. And infact I wasn’t ink-ing the book.

A funny littlesidebar story: The fans, even back then without theInternet, were saying, “Well, Byrne’s leaving to do theSuperman bit for the money.” So I said in an interviewsomewhere, “Actually, I expect to make less doingSuperman, because I won’t be inking it.” I hadno idea what the royalties would be like, but Iknew that DC books generally sold a lot lessthan Marvel books. Superman at that time wasselling half of what the Fantastic Four sold.

I was Ralph Macchio’s office one day, and hesaid, “You know, John Buscema was in here theother day.” I said, “Oh, yeah?” And Ralph said,“He said, ‘I heard Byrne’s gonna do Superman andhe’s gonna make less money.’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ AndBuscema said, ‘Schmuck.’” [laughs] And I thought,“Well, at least he knows my name.” [laughter]

JBC: So there’s royalties on the books that...?

JOHN: Well, most of my money has alwayscome from the actual doing of the job, because ofthe amount of pages that I do. I mean, my pagerate got to a certain level. There was a whilethere, around ’92-’93, where the royalties, becauseof the direct sales and the speculation and every-thing else, they really took off. But for the bulk ofmy career, about a third of my income has comefrom royalties. Which is why—

JBC: That’s not bad.

JOHN: Yeah. But itmeans I can still live inthis house even thoughthe royalties are usuallynon-existent these days.

JBC: You obviouslygrew up on Superman.

JOHN: I had a bookcalled Superman: Serial toCereal, and they coveredevery single manifestationof Superman. It had a veryspooky picture in it, too: aKelloggs Cornflakes orsomething ad from the ’40sthat had a painting ofSuperman with some kids,and it looked exactly likeChristopher Reeve. Exactly.

JBC: Did you ever meetReeve?

JOHN: Twice. That was fun,too. Well, I met him at DCand we talked about the fourth

movie. And then for the 50th anniversary, there was thisbig show at the Smithsonian. I went down for that

This Page: John’s LoisLane was both glamorous and one toughcookie—much as MargotKidder portrayed her tobe in the Supermanmovies. Pencils from Manof Steel #4 and an earlydesign drawing of Lois.Next Page: A brilliantpage from Superman #1.You can almost feelSuperman’s pain throughJohn’s pencils.

Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Metallo,Superman ™ and ©2006 DCComics.

because they invited me. He came over and intro-duced himself to me. “Hi, I’m Christopher Reeve, wemet up at the DC offices.” “Really? Let me justthink....” [laughter] And I chatted with Margot for awhile because we were bonding on being Canadians.And... three years ago? I went to the Sundance FilmFestival with a couple of friends.

JBC: Just for the heck out it?

JOHN: Just for the heck of it. These friends goevery year and I decided to go with them. And wewere walking out, having seen this movie withMargot Kidder in it, and Margot Kidder walked pastme going down the aisle. We went on a couple ofpaces and I turned to my friends and I said, “Seethat? These Hollywood people, they just walk rightpast me like we’ve never even met.” [laughs] Ofcourse, how long ago was it, 15 years? It was fun.

JBC: So basically you didtwo titles, you did ActionComics, which was ateam-up book, andyou had theSuperman title....

JOHN: And Iended up writingAdventures ofSuperman whenMarv... departed.

JBC: Were you ostensibly the Superman editor at that time?

JOHN: Well, not really, no. Ostensibly, that was Andy Helfer. Andthat turned out to be another situation where I didn’t get alongwith the editor. Helfer is at that end of the spectrum whereeverything has to be changed. Mike Gold made a commentone time, he said Helfer would change the spelling of hisown name in the credits if he could think of a way to do it. I used to

48

56

JBC: From Superman, did you just go right back toMarvel?

JOHN: Um... yeah, I think I did.

JBC: The next thing you did was WestCoast Avengers, right?

JOHN: Yes, West Coast Avengers, but Iactually pitched Hidden Years before that.

JBC: You pitched an X-Men book in the ’80s?

JOHN: Yeah, I pitched HiddenYears. I didn’t have that titlethen. And it was actual-ly killed because ofX-Factor. Becausethey said it wouldbe the same teamas X-Factor and itwould be confus-ing. TomDeFalco hadthis great line,“Another bookcalled X-Menwould be tooconfusing.” Iwish I had thatin writing.

ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON:Over the past 30years or so, with afew rare excep-tions, humorbooks don’t tend todo very well. Howwere you able to sellMarvel on the ideaof Sensational She-Hulk?

JOHN: It started withMark Gruenwald—hewas second-in-command back

then. He asked me to do a new She-Hulk book, but heasked me to come up with something that hadn’t beendone with the character before—something new and dif-ferent. I thought about it for a while, and then I thought,“Well, how about she knows that she’s in a comic book.

We’ll break the fourth wall.” And Mark loved it. Markwas one of those guys who, number one, loved to

take risks, and, number two, was a very funny guyhimself, so he could immediately see the poten-

tial. So it was really not a hard sell at all.

ENW: Most writ-ers I’ ve talked tofind humor hard-er to write than astraight-aheadaction/drama.

Did you find thatto be the case as well?

JOHN: I didn’t really thinkof it as a humor book.That was part of thetrick, I think. I didn’tset out to be funny

ha-ha; I set out to be weirdand strange and wonky, and to try to

keep it light-hearted. And that, ofcourse, manifested itself as my owntwisted sense of humor. So, no, I did-n’t find it particularly hard to write,and now people will tell me that’s whyit wasn’t particularly funny. [laughter]

ENW: How well do you think itfit in with the overall Marvelscheme of things at the time?

JOHN: Well, it fit infairly well, I think,except for those few

occasions when otherwriters would use the character

and they’d try to carry the “breaking thefourth wall” thing into other books. And

we’d just have to say, “Well, no, don’t do that,because that destroys the only thing this

Part 4: A Legendis Made

book has that makes it different.” She doesn’t breakthe fourth wall when she’s in the Fantastic Four; shedoesn’t break when she’s in the Avengers.

But for the most part I think it fit in quite well.In fact, the only time I had Marvel fans rolling inthe aisles convulsed with apathy was when I hadSanta Claus appear. They always hate it when I haveSanta Claus appear, which is why I do it as often as Ican. [laughter]

ENW: It’s not like Santa Claus doesn’t appear inother books, though.

JOHN: I've always found it really amusing. They’reokay with Satan, but they can’t deal with Santa Clausbeing real. [laughter]

JBC: I want to talk to you about Legend, how thatcame about.

JOHN: It came about because of Image having startedthis imprint, which seemed like a good idea. Frankcalled me up and said, “A bunch of us are doing this andwe thought we’d feel bad if we didn’t invite you to be

part of it.” Originally it wascalled Dinosaur, and therewere a whole bunch of peo-ple, including Chris. Andthen one day Frank sort ofsaid “It should be just artistswho write.” Our phrasebecame “death to those whocannot draw.”

Somewhere along the way,Frank and I almost simultane-ously said, “We’re going toshoot ourselves in the foot ifwe call ourselves Dinosaur.”[Jon laughs] And then we said,“Let’s call it Legend! Becausethat’s what these things are,they’re legends!” And that ofcourse became “a bunch of self-declared legends are forming animprint,” and the imprint diedin about six minutes.

Previous Page: Unusedand unfinished pencilsintended for X-Men: TheHidden Years.Left:The Ringmasterconveniently (for thereader) quizzes She-Hulk on her origin inShe-Hulk #1.Above: She-Hulk breaksthe fourth wall—alongwith the panel borders!Pencils for page 7 of She-Hulk #4.

Blonde Phantom, She-Hulk, X-Men ™ and ©2006 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

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Right: Opening splashpage of Next Men #3.Included in the margin areJohn’s notes to Legend’sgroup editor, BarbaraKesel.Below: Next Men #14,page 10.Next Page: Bethany, akaHardbody, in a commis-sion drawing and in thepages of Next Men #7.

Next Men ™ and ©2006 JohnByrne.

JBC: You weren’t therethat long?

JOHN: I was there longerthan anybody, actually. Butthat was the problem. Igot pissed off when Inoticed that I was the onlymonthly presence. “Whereare the rest of you guys?”Frank was doing stuffevery once in a while, butthen a bunch of peoplewere coming in who hadn’tdone anything yet. Like,Walt Simonson had justjoined, but he hadn’t doneanything yet.

There was talk aboutdoing a card set, and that we shouldhave Walter in the card set, and I said,“Well, no, remember we said wewouldn’t solicit anything that hadn’tappeared yet? So Walt’s book shouldcome out before he’s part of theLegend card set.” And it just went

backandforthand upand down and then finally the industry crashed. And I said,“Okay, I need a real job.”

JBC: What was the thinking behind Next Men?

JOHN: I wanted to do an independent thing. I think DarkHorse was doing three. I wanted to be safe; I wanted it to sortof smell like a super-hero book even though it wasn’t going tobe a super-hero book—it was going to be science fiction. So Igave them super-powers and I gave them a name that sort ofsounded like “X-Men” as sort of a signal to everybody. It didvery well. Actually, it was funny, because the first issue was thebest-selling direct sales market book ever to that point. Andthis is where I go wrong, this is where I make mistakes. Thefirst issue’s initial orders were 109,000. And there were someorders here and some orders there, and by the time all wassaid and done, I think it got up to about 150, 175.

JBC: Wow!

JOHN: Yeah. And that was huge back then. The best any-thing had done was, like, 30,000. Dark Horse wanted to pro-mote that. I said, “No, don’t promote that. Because then thespeculators will think it’s a big seller, and they won’t buy it.”Because I was stupid, and I thought speculators actuallythought like people who were logical. [Jon laughs]

58

JBC: How long did you work at that sign company again?

JOHN: About a year.

JBC: Did you get a good, solid feel for professionalism,for being on time, getting the job done?

JOHN: I think so. Most of that I think actually comesfrom self-application, because I was working at Charlton atthe same time I was working at Hook Signs. And when Iquit Hook Signs, my first reaction was, “Great! I can sleepuntil noon and I can do what I want!” And it only took acouple of three o’clock in the morning hitting the deadlinesfor me to kind of go, “You know, this is a job isn’t it? Ishould treat this like a job.” And I have ever since. It’s getup in the morning, get tothe drawing board....”

JBC: When do you stop?Is it a nine-to-five thing?

JOHN: It’s seven-to-four,actually, with maybe ahalf an hour off forlunch.

JBC: And do you stayup late watching moviesor something?

JOHN: No, I go tobed at nine o’clock.

JBC: Really?

JOHN: And I get up at,like, five.

JBC: You have a dog?

JOHN: I have a dog. Anda cat, somewhere. I let the dog out and I stagger aroundlike a zombie for a while.

JBC: How many pages can you do in a day?

JOHN: It varies. Two to three pages a day.

ENW: You don’t do thumbnails at all, right?

JOHN: Oh, no. I haven’t for 30 years.

ENW: Do you plan it out in your head beforehand, ordo you just sit down and draw?

JOHN: The way I try to describe it to people, when I wasa kid teaching myself to draw, and I didn’t know aboutdrawing it in pencil first so you could erase, I used to draweverything straight with pen. Which meant that every linehad to be the right line the first time. I developed thathabit of drawing very, very tightly, very, very carefully.

And the way I describe it is I’d geta snapshot in my mind of theimage, and I’d sort of projectthat onto the page and trace it.And that’s what I still do, evenwith a pencil. This has served

me well over the years. When I first started out,

when I was still in my fandays—because I stoppeddoing thumbnails even

before I turned pro—thethumbnails were kind ofbinding, because havingput that onto paper, thatwas what I was requiredto draw. Whereas withthe snapshot in mymind, I can mess with it

a bit. I can move thingsaround; I can change

things. So it keeps it much morespontaneous; it keeps the energylevel higher. And that’s the main

thing I’ve always been con-cerned about is keeping theenergy level high.

ENW: Is there any extra thinking involvedwhen you’re working with another writer?

Do you read the entire script before sitting down at theboard, or do you take it a page at a time?

JOHN: Generally speaking I will flip through the script—or the plot, if it’s broken down page by page—just to see ifthere’s anything there that’s going to surprise me. But thenI’ll just start drawing on page one. There’s a funny quirkthat I have, if I have a picture or a panel or a page in my

Part 5: Storytelling and theCreative Process

70

71

Previous Page: Self-illustration from 1985. Left: John’s page break-downs for X-Men #137. Below: Partially finishedJustice League piece thatwas never used—but itdoes provide someinsight into John’s inkingprocess.

Batman, Flash, Hawkman,Superman, Wonder Woman ™and ©2006 DC Comics.

head, it will fester if I don’t get to it. So I reallydon’t like to know for sure what’s on page 18when I’m starting on page one, because by thetime I get to page 18 it will have turned intosomething disgusting in my head and I won’t beable to draw it. I prefer to just start on page one,though sometimes on my own stuff I frequentlydraw the pages out of order. I’ll sometimes dothat with

a full script, too—just open it to a random page anddraw, and just keep doing that until the pages are done.

ENW: How do you work when you’re inking your-self? Do you ink a page as soon as you finish the pen-ciling, or do you work in batches?

JOHN: I usually finish a page in pencil and then inkit. There are several layers to it, because I’ll do thepen work, then I’ll do the brush work, and then I’llfill in the blacks.

JBC: Do you have any current favorite artists?

JOHN: Who counts as current? I love... I call themthe Dodson twins [Terry and Rachel], although Iknow they are husband and wife. Nobody else isdoing Adam Hughes right now, so they might aswell. So them—

JBC: Did you see CBA #21 [featuring AdamHughes]?

JOHN: Yes, I thought it was a terrific issue. Infact, it was that issue that finally pushed me overthe edge to say, “I’ve got to fatten my line.” I’vebeen thinking about fattening my line, and lookingat the way Adam does it. I thought, “Why not?”

JBC: Do you use the computer as an artistic tool?

JOHN: I’ve been using the computer to do a lotof 3-D modeling, and I’ve found a way—

JBC: Does it look like Byrne drew it?

JOHN: Oh, sure. I found a way to do modelsthat look like line drawings, so I’ve been doing

77

JBC: There’s a British reserve. Did your parents have that?

JOHN: I’ve often said that when a British baby boy isborn, they take this expanding steel rod and they shoveit up his rear end and it just gets longer as he grows up.And I’ve struggled to get rid of that. I’m not sure I’vebeen entirely successful.

JBC: You find it hard to loosen up, so to speak?

JOHN: Somewhat. I’m not nearly as stuffy as I used tobe.

JBC: Did you have any children?

JOHN: No. Not of my own, no. Myex had two step-kids. Kieron Dwyerused to be my stepson. I think that’show it works. He used to bemy stepson; I don’t thinkhe is anymore. [laughs]

JBC: I first met youwhen I was proba-bly 13 years old,and this wasjust in yourfirst brushwith theCharlton stuff. Youwere just incred-ibly enthusias-tic. My littlebrother, hemust havebeen elevenyears old, andhe talked withyou. You askedhim to get you some coffee or some-thing and you’d draw a few sketches forhim, something like that.

JOHN: I don’t know how the reputationof “John Byrne, the ogre” has grown up over the years—

JBC: You know, that actually surprised me. But I didhave some encounters with you online which were verysharp and—

JOHN: Yeah, there are so many idiots online that mythreshold is, like, zero. And of course, you can’t readtone of voice into that stuff. And I will slice people uponline and then kind of go, “Hmmm, maybe I read thatwrong.” [laughs] But by then it’s too late. But, no, for themost part, as the people who have figured me out havesaid, I just don’t suffer fools gladly.

JBC: But you’ve got to get into it, right?

JOHN: A little bit. I enjoy the interface with intelli-gent people and those who are there for the correctreason, which is to talk about funnybooks. I don’t likethe people who try to bring my personal life into it, I

don’t like the people who imaginethemselves to be telepathic. “Oh,

you’re doing this becauseblah.” No, I’m not! And the

people who... as I’ve saidon a couple of occa-

sions, I’venever heard arumor aboutmyself that

was true. Noteven thegood ones.And these

people whocome in

armed tothe ninesbecause

they “alreadyknow what an

ogre John Byrne is,”well, yeah, they’re prob-ably going to meet an

ogre. I play the cards I’m dealt.

JBC: I have to admit, I’d gotinto... we were talking about

Kirby and I was relatively fanaticalabout it at the time, “Oh, Kirby is God!”—

JOHN: Well, he is. But it’s a pantheon. [laughter]

JBC: Stan certainly played a role.

Part 6: John Byrne Takes On...

79

JOHN: Yeah, yeah.

JBC: I’ve gotten much more pragmaticand I think more realistic about it. I wentto the message boards for a while, butI’ve never gone to that message boardagain, because of that ambiguoustone—it turns into a monstrous explo-sion. And people are such asses.

JOHN: You betcha. It’s the anonymi-ty. They’re all behind their little secretidentities, because “FuzzyBunny” cansay something that Joe Smith wouldnever dare.

JBC: You’re obviously not anony-mous, though. Is the Internet anattraction for you?

JOHN: It’s human contact in oneway, of which of course I don’t getmuch. It’s a way of reading the audi-ence, and we need that. I don’t doas many conventions as I used to,so this has replaced the conventionas a way of getting vibes from the audience.And you kind of have to filter through alot—it’s kind of like panning for gold.Because obviously people will do things andsay things online that they would never in amillion years do. The worst conventionexperience I’ve ever had doesn’t come with-in light years of these bozos online. It’s theanonymity. You get these clowns tearing astrip off me and saying, “Well, the next con-vention, boy, you’re gonna get a piece ofmy mind.” They never turn up. Yeah, it’seasy to pretend you’re Batman lurking in theshadows, but when you actually have toface somebody, it just doesn’t happen.

JBC: Did you ever just say, “I don’t likethis anymore.”

JOHN: Oh, yeah.

JBC: Do you periodically stop?

JOHN: Oh, yeah. I’ve gone cold turkey acouple times, but I always find myselfcreeping back.

JBC: I was amazed, I did some onlinechats with you—you were actually instan-taneous in your response. I think we did a5000-word interchange in a half an hour.

Previous Page:An unfinished piece whichwas intended for JackKirby’s Fourth World.Above: In X-Men: HiddenYears #8, Joe Sinnott—FFinker for most of Jack andStan’s classic run—inkedthe FF throughout theissue (Tom Palmer inkedthe rest).

New Gods ™ and ©2006 DCComics. Fantastic Four, X-Men ™and ©2006 Marvel Characters,Inc.

John Byrne

Art Gallery

Aurora, Invisible Woman, Marrina, Snowbird™ and ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

99

Solomon Grundy ™ and ©2006 DC Comics. Wendigo ™ and ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Darkseid, Superman ™ and ©2006 DC Comics.

Modern Masters:

JOHN BYRNEFrom the death of Phoenix to the rebirth of Superman, Byrne is one ofthe most influential comic bookartists working in the business. Onthe X-Men, he penciled the greateststories in the history of the title andhelped propel the X-Men to theircurrent household-name status. His work as writer and artist of Fantastic Four returned the group to prominence within the MarvelUniverse. And his reboot of the Superman mythology brought national attention to the comic bookindustry. Modern Masters Volume 7:John Byrne features an extensive, career-spanning interview lavishly illustrated withrare and unpublished art, as well as a large sketchbook section. Experience this look athis incredible body of work on such titles as Captain America, Alpha Flight, She-Hulk,Superman/Batman: Generations, and his creator-owned Next Men, and it’s easy tosee that John Byrne deserves the title Modern Master intimate portrait of one ofcomics’ most inimitable talents!

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