RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books John Byrne: The good years, the bad years, and what the heck went wrong?

I know you are but what am I?

This is why I have the Rexist on ignore.

Hell, I'm surprised David doesn't have Brian on Ignore, and vice versa...

Indeed!

I wish someone would do a collected book of every 70's Byrne Rog 2000 story and illustration.

Byrne did a 1-page Hostess Twinkies parody ad in the 1983 new E-MAN issue 1 for First Comics. Which except for the unpublished SHE HULK cameo, is to my knowledge the last work on the character Byrne did.

Though ROG 2000 hasn't seen print in 30 years, I think the character is worthy of a collected edition. He has remarkable personality for a robot. A defining early character for Byrne, that displayed many of his strengths as an artist.

Got this link from Bleeding cool:

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=40360&PN=1&totPosts=136

Looks pretty good.

To me it looks like Don Heck inked by John Byrne.

I like the concept of doing the new X-Men in the original X-Men costumes, and I grudgingly admit it does show some talent in design by Byrne.
But it's still a pale shadow of his former work.

Yeah, I prefer the "original" version of the sketch from nearly thirty years ago. Among other things, the original captures (with them just standing there) the individual personalities of the team members (regal Storm, defiant Wolverine, relaxed Banshee, solid Peter, alert Nightcrawler and leader Cyclops) much better than the grinning idiots in the new version.

This looks to be a late 1970's pin-up by Byrne. I never thought of Captain America and Bucky as being virtually identical to Batman and Robin, until I saw this page by Byrne, emphasizing the similarities.

Used as the cover for COMIC READER 167:







There was also a nice Marvel house-ad at the time of the Claremont/Byrne X-men run, that showed the old X-men and new X-men together.
A run that presented Byrne at the peak of his talent, to be sure. A beautiful house ad By Cockrum, that oddly was used to promote the Claremont/Byrne/Austin run, after Cockrum had left the series.



And odd also that Byrne never did a similar house ad for his own run.
In interviews at the time Byrne similarly expressed annoyance that there were Cockrum X-Men character heads in the upper left of covers for most of his run, as if it was still Cockrum's book and Byrne was just the fill-in guest artist for 4 years from 1977-1981.

Another Byrne cover offering, from COMIC READER 143 (May 1977), this one drawing Powerman/Ironfist in a Don Martin style!

This would have been right about the time Byrne drew the first three issues of the two teamed together (POWER MAN/IRON FIST 48-50).

I'm sure this is how Byrne sees himself.

I was looking through my SUPERMAN 400 issue (Oct 1984) that among a ton of other great work has a nice Superman pin-up page by Byrne.





It actually resembles the photo-collage work Grell was doing at the time in JON SABLE FREELANCE, that added to the realism of that series.
But more importantly, relative to the MAN OF STEEL, SUPERMAN and ACTION series Byrne was doing 2 years later, while still a nice pin-up page, it portrays a more slender Superman, and actually looks more like Reed Richards in a Superman costume. Byrne did FANTASTIC FOUR from 232-293 (1981-1986), and this pin-up was concurrent with his run on that series, out the same month as FF 271.

This was at the tail end of the period where Byrne was still doing good work. It was two years later, at the point Byrne began his SUPERMAN run in 1986 that I thought the quality of his work made a bad and sudden decline. Hit and miss after that, but the point where I largely lost interest in Byrne's work. I think his writing was still often good, but his art became a pale shadow of the greatness of his 1975-1982 period.

One of my favorite Byrne pages, from a Bullpen Bulletins page he did that ran in all the September 1983 Marvel titles. I think it showed how much Byrne loved working for Marvel and trying his hand and talents and particular style to all their characters. Byrne from 1976-1985 was the quintessential Marvel staff artist, and he was clearly in his element. He described in a FANTASTIC FOUR CHRONICLES fanzine that he was glad to be a cog in the Marvel machine.

Until suddenly he wasn't. And when Byrne resigned to do Superman for DC, in what he intended as a friendly and temporary separation to do his take on Superman for a few years, in his closing months faced editorial harassment at Marvel, to the point that he left abruptly and prematurely.

What a contrast in 2 years, from 1983-1985, to go from being the heart of Marvel to persona non grata there.

I think Rog 2000 remains my favorite Byrne creation.

From the 1983 revival of E-MAN by First Comics, issue 1.
A fun parody of the Hostess cakes ads of the 1970's.

A Neal Adams poster done of Byrne's DOOMSDAY PLUS ONE characters.
In THE ART OF JOHN BYRNE book published in 1980, Byrne passed on a story told to him by an editor at Charleton, where Neal Adams visited the Charleton offices, and the editor showed Adams some of Byrne's pages for DOOMSDAY PLUS ONE.
After looking at them Adams responded: "They're very good. What can he do?"

Observing the obvious amount of Neal Adams influence in Byrne's art.

It reminds me of a COMICS JOURNAL cartoon of Neal Adams at the IRS office, with the IRS agent telling Adams he would be fully justified claiming Rich Buckler as a dependent.

The above Adams pin-up was later used as a cover for an issue of Fantagraphics' 1986 reprint of DOOMSDAY PLUS ONE, reprinted as DOOMSDAY SQUAD.

I’d guess it’s closer to 96 when the team up book came out