Rich Johnston only covers comics pros -- y'know, guys who are working. He probably considers Byrne the answer to a Comics Trivial Pursuit question.

John Byrne
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Posted: 10 May 2010 at 7:15am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Send Ingrid Bergman away? No, Humphrey Bogart shot her husband at the airport, teamed up with the Nazis and kept running his casino in Casablanca.



John Byrne
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Posted: 10 May 2010 at 7:15am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Luke's father? No, Darth Vader was revealed to be C3PO's android cousin.



John Byrne
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Posted: 10 May 2010 at 7:15am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

His beloved childhood sled and the symbol of everything he can't get back? No, the word "Rosebud" never appears in "Citizen Kane."

Wow. Here we are seeing Byrne trolling his own board right before our eyes.

Embarrassingly, it's a move right out of Trolling 101. Say something outrageous that everyone will immediately disagree with you but not something so outrageous that it's too incredible for you to seriously believe it. The problem with Byrne pulling this on his own board is that his regulars are too afraid to contradict or challenge him. That Brian Joseph Mayer had better watch out. Poor Lars got called an "auto-contrarian" for less than this.

This "Patrick McMurphy" guy is an interesting situation. If anyone were going to challenge Byrne on this it would have to be a new guy... or poor Lars from a few posts back! This guy "Pat" has only ten posts to his name. Usually anyone with anything under fifty posts is out to goad Byrne and on borrowed time over there. This guy, however, registered in August of '09 and he seemingly has only ten posts. In spite of all these red flags, Byrne seems to be treating this guy with kid gloves ...at least by Byrne standards.

I really have to wonder if Pat is really Byrne himself just trying to fan the flames of his own troll bomb and encourage his regulars to take the bait.

Yeah. Byrne really earns every drop of his nasty, condescending reputation with this one. I don't know how he could've gotten all the way through typing those posts, proof-reading them, and hitting the "post" button without saying to himself, "Y'know... This just looks bad. Let me back off Lars here."

Does anyone know what is Byrne's problem with Fantagraphics?

Check out his post here:

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=35151&PN=1&totPosts=19

Weren't they the ones who published the Focus On John Byrne book about twenty-five years or so ago?

Fantagraphics publishes some interesting creator-owned comics, so maybe Byrne just hates them on principle.

He also hates Image for reasons I forget, and he's bitter about Marvel, and ... and ... and ...

Basically, JB is a steaming wad of angry soaked in bile and wrapped in resentment.

Yeah, those posts are already gone. Quick work, JB!



Might have something to do with the panel transcript The Comics Journal printed that resulted in Roy Thomas threatening to sue Byrne for libel.

Read here.

Ouch! I'd heard that "office of a parrot" quote before, but I never knew the details of that trouble with Roy Thomas. The entire incident re-enforces two points I've repeatedly observed about him...

1. Byrne's worst enemy seems to be any access he might have to any sort of public platform be it a convention panel, an interview, or his own message board. The man seems to lack the ability to censor his thoughts. He appears to operate under the belief that "If I believe it, I should be able to say it out loud!" He's certainly entitled to his own opinions, but he should learn that it's not always wise to say those opinions out loud!

2. You usually don't have to go much further than Byrne's own words to convict him of that reputation he's constantly trying to refute. That apology... Wow! That was bad...


Reading this incident did remind me that not very long ago, Erik Larsen did post for a little while at the JBF. I remember a bit of a dust-up between Larsen and Byrne over the creation of Image and its intent. I didn't know about Byrne accusing Larsen of using ghosts. Did Larsen leave because of this? I never see him post there anymore.

Byrne may have been too obvious in his trolling here. No one appears to be taking the bait. Unless things flare up soon, this thread might just fall off the radar.

If I remember right, Larsen stayed on the Byrne Forum for a while after the "background man" insanity, and the subsequent nonapology apology. There was no one big event that made him leave, I think he just eventually threw up his hands and said there's no point going there.