john byrnes forums

[varo]

didn't even realize he had his won forums.

anywho, i found a topic about af, so i decided to ask him about it.

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/f...338&PN=1&TPN=1

[Ben]

Sounds like typical Byrne. That forum infuriates me actually. The whole lot of them are Byrne worshipers, and anything that has been done to alter any of his creation or work is automatic trash to many of them. I don't know why he felt the need to bash the Diamond Lil story in there, I actually thought it was very well done. Oh well, this is why I respect the man's writing, and art, and lost respect for him as an individual some years ago. too bad really.

Ben

[varo]

his reply:

I didn't have much fun doing ALPHA FLIGHT, and don't consider that series among my best work. (Which is why I am fretted not at all by this latest development.) I have no desire to go back, whatever stars might shine upon me.

odd that he views it as not his best work, i can't think of any series that he wrote that was better.

next men stunk, so does doom patrol, and that recent jla arc with claremont was horrible.

[Ben]

I actually really like Next Men, but the revelation that they whole first year or so of issues were a dream kinda ticked me off. Tried his Doom Patrol...it did nothing for me. Many fans of his work though, find AF to be among his best work, but he has said for years that he didn't like it. Go figgure.

Ben

[PWalk]

I agree. The guy hasn't done anything nearly as good as those first 12 issues of AF since he left the series. AF #1 is my all time favorite comic to read and for that I'm grateful to him for. But his smugness and idiocy shines through time and time again to the point where he can drop dead.

[Northcott]

After his comments about Latino women, Christopher Reeves (shortly after the man's death), and trash-talking various other creators (apparently including Jack "the King" Kirby), I find that I have trouble buying anything with his name on it. The way he treats people is abysmal. It helps that his work has been below par for years.

[varo]

some interesting tid bits:

ALPHA FLIGHT 1 sold about 500,000, at $1 per copy (at a time when comics were still 60¢). That was the highest selling comic of the 80s (and quite a bit before that) until MAN OF STEEL 1 almost doubled those numbers (not coincidentally, with 2 covers) about three years later.

The one to beat that record, in 1990, was SPIDER-MAN 1, with about 3 million (with six variant covers.)

If you're doing the math, you may notice each of those books sold about 500,000 per cover. Not hard to see the Speculator Boom building steam, is it?

So from the last 25 years the top selling comics are:

Alpha Flight #1
Man of Steel #1
Spider-Man #1
X-Men #1

The original run of not-yet-Uncanny X-MEN was canceled with "average" sales in excess of 200,000.

[Northcott]

Very interesting indeed. Don't get me started on my usual rant about what catering to the speculators and the direct market have done to the industry.

[varo]

i am still amazed by those numbers. wow!

i wonder what alphas numbers were towards the end of series 1's run. i bet they were still strong, possibly why this book is always considered for a relaunch.

[Northcott]

BTW, where did you snag those numbers from?

[varo]

byrnes forums.

[kozzi24]

Maybe Byrne was just too successful for his own good? I like most of what I've ever read by him, but to hear him post or interview places...he comes off as such an embittered former child actor!

[PWalk]

AF #1 sold 500,000 copies? That is awesome and something I had no clue about. I went and read the first 14 issues again last night. What a great bunch of books.

[Northcott]

...he comes off as such an embittered former child actor!

Man... that's comedy gold!

From what I've heard Byrne's behaviour was always atrocious in regards to the people he worked with, and only grew as he became more influential. Jim Shooter once related a tale about how Byrne had berated one of the female editorial staff so thoroughly that she burst into tears. Bobby Chase or Ann Nocenti, can't remember which... I think it was Chase; she had such a wide rep for being a nice person that I'm left thinking it was her, because the incident sticks out so clearly in my mind.

Then there were little things like his one-upmanship game with Claremont. After leaving the X-Men on bitter terms, Byrne ended up doing his run on FF. During that run, Claremont wrote Doctor Doom into the X-Men, and there was a scene where Arcade struck at match off of Doom's armour in a very irreverent moment.

This apparently ticked Byrne off, who perceived Doom as too lofty to every allow such a moment to pass without striking down Arcade. So he writes a retcon into an FF story, where Doom notices a small flaw on one of his inconsequential "Doom-bots", the place where Arcade struck the match, and then blows the thing up because it's not perfect anymore.

According to Shooter the tension between Claremont and Byrne was so great by this point that the incident sent Claremont off. It took years for the two to finally get along again.

[Somebody]

This apparently ticked Byrne off, who perceived Doom as too lofty to every allow such a moment to pass without striking down Arcade. So he writes a retcon into an FF story, where Doom notices a small flaw on one of his inconsequential "Doom-bots", the place where Arcade struck the match, and then blows the thing up because it's not perfect anymore.

According to Shooter the tension between Claremont and Byrne was so great by this point that the incident sent Claremont off. It took years for the two to finally get along again.

Funny thing is, when Byrne went to do Man of Steel, Marvel fired him from F4, and had the Phoenix flashback from one of his final issues redone by another writer and artist (which ticked Byrne so much that he's credited only as "you-know-who", which seems even funnier post-Potter )

Guess who Marvel went to to rewrite the flashback