To be fair to DeZuniga, I don't think he was a superhero artist - Jonah Hex and Conan were much better fits for him.

I agree on DeZuniga.

He sucked on superhero comics, but I liked him on JONAH HEX.

Joe Hollon
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Posted: 02 August 2010 at 3:00pm | IP Logged | 18 post reply

You know what's sort of odd? In my experience, Byrne bashing seems to only exist on the Internet. I've never heard anyone bad mouth anything about JB or his work in real life.


Har!

As far as I know, John Byrne only exists on the Internet!

I've never heard anyone in real life say the dude's name -- ever. Surely nobody outside of the comic book industry has ever heard of him, and within the small world of comics, he hasn't been a player in years. I recently shared the story of the comics shop where the manager was convinced that Byrne died some time back, and when we asked customers to confirm or deny that, they either didn't know or hadn't heard of Byrne.

I've been told many Byrne stories from various creatives, and frankly, none were positive. On the other hand, due to the internet I was able to reassess my opinion of Byrne's work, and I find his work to be far better than I had thought. In a sense, his being bashed made me think about what I liked and didn't like, far more than I had prior to the internet.

I know lots of people who poop on the accomplishments of others, but I think you can argue that Byrne remains very skilled and able. But saying that, he himself is not as fun to listen to as his work is valuable to to look at and read.

I find it odd that people don't consider this real life or part thereof.

Maybe I'm being to generous here, but I do think Byrne is smart. I'd describe him more as a smart guy who isn't as smart as he'd like to be and is hindered by an extreme inflexibility. Once he's arrived at a conclusion, he'll never change his mind about it. I have to wonder if he's ever said, "Hey! You know... you've got a point. I guess I was wrong about that."

I'm reading his observations about Miller's Dark Knight in that Alan Moore thread and I'm reminded of the same sort of stunted logic that he used to explain why he hates the Empire Strikes Back. In both cases, he absorbs the opening chapter of the work. In Star Wars, it's Star Wars and in DK, it's the first two issues. Based on those chapters, he draws certain conclusions that he holds on to with a death grip. When the work continues and subsequent chapters or issues show that the conclusions he arrived at were wrong, he rejects those latter chapters. Hey! Star Wars told Byrne (somehow he arrived at this!) that the Empire fell at the end of that first movie. (What a flimsy Empire that must've been!) When ESB came along and showed that the Empire was still standing, Byrne doesn't say, "Ooh! The Empire is still around? I guess I was wrong." He says, "The Empire? The Empire's through. This movie's a piece of shit."

We see this same inflexibility in his objection to the Watchmen (on top of course of his personal and professional jealousy of Alan Moore.) To Byrne, super heroes must act in one specific way and must have one singular motivation. When Moore comes along and gives us more complex personalities like the Comedian, Rorschach, and Adrian Veidt, Byrne rejects the Watchmen. Those aren't super heroes. They don't act like the Batman comics he read when he was six.

Wow!

Joe Hollon clearly needs to widen his circles of conversation. He's clearly trying to imply that Byrne's rep is a fabrication of the Internet. Byrne was torching bridges long before the Internet came around.

I met Byrne and I've met many different people who've known him. The negative stories come from many directions. I posted this earlier in this thread but I'm reminded of it again where someone who knows Byrne pretty well said, "John is the nicest guy in the World so long as you never speak about anything that requires an opinion."

I probably mentioned it around the beginning of this thread, but DeZuniga inked one issue of Byrne's X-Men. In Sal Quartuccio's The Art of John Byrne, Byrne said that was the one instance where the inker produced a finished work that looked just the way he had envisioned it when he was doing the pencils. Why then DeZuniga has never inked Byrne again, I don't know. That's my Q4JB.

I'd put that down to Byrne being a contrarian. Most fans overwhelmingly would put Austin over Byrne ahead of DeZuniga over Byrne.

Eh ... I guess the Internet is part of real life, loosely, the same way television is part of real life. Real people are participating. But we're not necessarily playing the roles of our real selves, and we're not looking at each other as we communicate, and long after you and I are dead, remnants of this chat may be drifting through the digital ether.