Murphy Anderson, yes. I'm conflating the memories of him and Curt Swan. But you mention why.

Kirby never got Spider-Man right either. I agree with MightQuin in that the mismatch of styles is glaring.

The new issue of NEXT MEN: AFTERMATH #40 (the first issue, but continuing the numbering from the old series) is out, and I liked it pretty well, actually.

********** SPOILERS ***********






********** SPOILERS **************





The focus of the issue is on Jasmine, and the messed-up future timeline that she finds herself in after the reckless time travel shenanigans of the previous few issues. The world seems to be a wasteland of classic Byrne rubble, populated by refugees from many time periods, none of whom can remember how they got there. This is the kind of goofy, over-the-top wackiness that can make a comic book story fun, and it doesn't get bogged down with trying to be logical.

There's also some implication that it may all be a dream or an illusion of some kind. Byrne strongly hints that he may be bringing back a super-powerful psychic character from the old 1990's NEXT MEN series, who might have died, but it was left vague enough that it could have gone in any direction. That character, Sandy, specialized in bringing comic book characters into the "real world," which made for a fun storyline back then.

Also, Byrne gets some payoff from one of the throwaway subplots from his life-of-Gil-through-the-centuries issue. A rocket that left Earth in that issue finally returns from deep space, bringing along a cool, non-humanoid alien of the sort that Byrne used to enjoy designing, but which we haven't seen much of since his FF days.

We also get a peek at some kind of secret project going on in the year 1975, which is nicely mysterious at this point. It opens with a few panels of photo backgrounds from that period, neatly integrated into the art. This also seems reminiscent of Byrne's FF technique.

So, plenty of the stuff that Byrne is good at in this issue, and very little of the stuff that I find annoying about him. We'll see how I feel once he gets into techno-babble explanations in the next few issues. Or maybe he'll just skip those entirely, dare I hope?

Dare! Dare!

Quite a few locked down threads over there these days:

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=41051

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=41054

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=41053

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=41050

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=41015&PN=1&totPosts=1

My theory:
The mods and j.b. are such a tight crew that they're all getting their periods at the same time. I'll continue to audit this and let you know if they turn less cranky over the next week

The one where the guy starts a second thread, and asks the same question again was hilarious. But what did JB mean by "How can I work for Marvel? Marvel no longer exists?"

And wasn't he lying when he answered "Nope" to the question regarding whether he keep a running total of how many commissions he's done. I'm sure he trying to avoid some fanboy somewhere from adding up what a Byrne lawsuit would add up to, in light of the $17,000 estimated amount in the Gary Friedrich case. But still. No records? It's an obvious lie. Seriously, there must be records for tax purposes at the very least. He can't sell these things without there being some record somewhere.

Maybe these records don't include the content of the commissions? That would make it difficult and costly to estimate any amounts owed to Marvel. But going back to the original question, it would still be a record of quantity, wouldn't it?

Marvel is just a subsidiary of Disney now, I think is his point. Although I doubt he had a problem when Marvel was a subsidiary of Carolco.

That never occurred to me.

But you're probably right.

I was thinking it was something more metaphysical or crotchety-old-man-ish like, the Marvel of today is not the same as the old Marvel, so Marvel as it once was no longer exists. Marvel is Dead to me.

No. I believe your initial hunch is correct, Joe.

After all, after the fiasco that caused JB to quit working for Marvel, he started calling them M****L (or something along those lines), indicating the company became something other than what he determined them to be.

As usual, JB is sticking to his guns & considering what Marvel has apparently become these days, I don't believe JB was too far off the mark.

I'm sure he has various records of his commissions, and from time to time he posts a chart showing exactly how many commissions of each character he has done. But maybe he just means that he doesn't keep track of the total number of commissions since he started doing them. Which is probably also a lie, knowing Byrne's fondness for statistics of all kinds. But, whatever, if he wants to deny it for some reason (such as not wanting to tell anyone else what that number is), then no real reason why he should give it out.

In that second attempt at a Marvel Silver Age thread, I didn't get the sense that the guy was really asking the question again. More like, expressing bewilderment that it wasn't really answered, and apologizing for giving offense, and then dropping the topic. Which is more human interaction than they usually allow over there, admittedly, as he should have known.