Paul, your mentioning JB and the Sub-Mariner jogged something loose in my memory. If I recall correctly, Byrne inked some of those with a Japanese Bamboo pen. He was pretty enamored with it at the time and did several issues. It wasn't an instrument for superfine lines, but it certainly resulted in a lot of crude power in the artwork, and it was definitely different. Like I say, that's from memory, does any of it ring true?

Not with me. It may be true, but I don't recall reading anything about what artistic implements JB used during his run on Namor. Bottom line...for me...was that it was great stuff art-wise AND story-wise, too!

Looks like long time poster Jodi Moisan has left the board in a snit (again). Apparently this time she didn't appreciate having her grammer questioned.

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=41591&PN=1&TPN=3

There's no walking on egg shells over here when it comes to asking q's for jb. Come on over and give it a try!

Good for you, Jodi!

But honestly, we would tear her grammar apart if she came here, so this is not a safe alternative for her either. She seems really nice, I hope she does find a caring community somewhere, online or off.

I gotta say, I'm having a fantastic time reading this thread. The only thing funnier than watching the Byrne board complain about Alan Moore is watching them complain about Grant Morrison.

I'm not sure what my favorite part of the thread is yet. I like seeing Hague's reasonable attempt to explain the "gay" comments on page three get almost entirely ignored in a tidal wave of indignant huffery. Although I think for pure chuckles, Byrne's "Neal Adams" defense on page two wins out. To prove Batman's obvious heterosexuality, he only had to dig back forty years! And when he did, he found an image that looks like it's straight out of Sexy Batman.

Nice.

Here's the latest sales figures, from THE BEAT :




Stats and commentary by Mr. Paul Mellerick

This isn't meant to diminish the low sales numbers impact, but for an IDW book those numbers are rather high. It isn't that they are high for the market, but compare them to anything else IDW does?

Yeah, I don't know that it's really that bad. There are about a dozen IDW books that do sell better on that list, but I'm not personally reading any of them, so the comparison doesn't matter that much to me.

Despite my frequent criticisms of him, I really do want Byrne to do well. I certainly don't want him to be humiliated by low sales. I hope he can continue to do comics in one way or another.

I kind of spoke out of my ass there. The numbers I remember were way back when IDW was starting out. So I apologize.