My best friend Jim (who passed away from a heart attack 3 years ago) went with my to the 2nd (and last) "Marvel-Con" in NYC back in '76. He saw John Byrne up there (I missed him somehow, spending time at Marie Severin's table-- what a NICE and really FUN lady!). Jim always liked to say how, while Marie, a "famous pro" was doing sketches for FREE, Byrne, an "unknown newbie", was CHARGING for his. Maybe a silly complaint, but it stuck in HIS mind...

I forgot to mention CAPTAIN AMERICA! What a STELLAR run by Stern, Byrne & Rubinstein! They hit the ground running, cleaning up a MESS Roy Thomas had started 2 years earlier in only 4 PAGES-- then went on to tackle an even bigger mess left hanging since the Jim Steranko & Neal Adams X-MEN runs. And THEN it got better. UNTIL...!!! (as Bill Cosby once said) I mean really-- 8 issues in, and ALL 3 GUYS quit over some minor disagreement with the editor??? In the words of so many Message Board posters-- "WTF???!!!"

And of course, the same thing goes for his initial run on SHE-HULK. And what about his run on THE INCREDIBLE HULK ? That book had been, in one form or another, the PITS since shortly after Jack Kirby stopped doing plots & layouts (let's be HONEST, people-- 15 YEARS of treading water with the same mindless downbeat depressing pointless plots, with only the occasional bright points to break it up). Along comes Byrne with some radical thinking-- probably just what it needed... and he QUITS after only 6 ISSUES over some minor disagreement with his editor!!! (Hey, where have I heard this before???) And then, the issue he did that was rejected was PUBLISHED ANYWAY, 6 months later, in MARVEL FANFARE. Geez.

O M A C, after-the-fact, turned out to be my favorite of Kirby's 70's DC books. One more inspired project cut off in mid-stream, far too early. Ressurected in a completely ill-conceived and obscene (yet technically impressive) rethink by Starlin, who dropped off too soon because of the "DC Implosion". Continued to no avail by Mishkin, Cohn & LaRocque, whose attempt to back-peddle back to Kirby's intent felt awkward when compared to both Kirby AND Starlin. And then Byrne came along, and like HULK, did something UTTERLY bizzare... It was VERY interesting. I loved the part where OMAC killed Adolph Hitler! the discovery that "The World That's Coming" had always been an alternate-reality, NOT part of the "normal" DCU, created by time-travel, seemed inspired. But somehow, in the last half of part 4, I think he went to far-- OVER-COMPLICATING it to the point where, after reading the entire mini TWICE, I STILL couldn't make heads or tails of it. I see this as the real beginning of his downward slide-- and the start of the kind of things he's been doing in MARVEL: THE LOST GENERATION and GENERATIONS. (What's "wrong" with "simple" stories???)

Incidentally-- I believe it was Dan Green, who'd been slipping for ages, who did a really SUPERIOR job inking Byrne on some issues of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. But it was John Romita (the "real" one) who inked ONE issue of that book over Byrne, who REALLY did the best-looking Byrne art I've seen in ages, even above the work Tom Palmer did on X-MEN: THE HIDDEN YEARS. I do wish John would find an inker or three who knows what they're doing.