John Byrne reminisces about days gone by:
Now, me, I am a big fan of “author’s intent”, and I think that whenever possible writers coming to characters after the creator has departed should keep in their minds what that creator meant the characters to be. Likewise stories. Little is served by digging into some old story and turning it inside out. “Everything you know is a lie” is a solid approach, but only if used sparingly.
Anyway — where my mind ended up drifting as I looked at this particular commission piece was back to the days when Ms Marvel was only a glint in Stan Lee’s eye — and the character was intended to be Jean Grey! (Logical, right? Marvel Girl becomes Ms Marvel.) Thoughts about resurrecting the X-Men’s title put the kibosh on Jean getting her own book, but her presence in UNCANNY X-MEN leads to another divergance. Roger Stern has told the story of interviewing Chris Claremont back when he was the new kid on the block who had only just picked up the X-Men assignment. Roger remembers having to correct Chris from time to time, as he spoke of his plans for the characters and kept mixing up Jean and Lorna.
Elsewhere, Madrox, the Multiple Man was originally going to be called Xerox, until Marvel’s lawyers decided the name had not become quite that generic. Frank Miller, in BATMAN: YEAR ONE, was setting up a gag in which Jim Gordon waxed rhapsodic about his unborn “son”, the punchline being the birth of Barbara — until someone up at DC did the math, and noted this would mean Barbara was younger than Dick Grayson! This is how Barbara suddenly ended up being “adopted”.
It’s stories like this that make me chuckle when some fans get just a wee bit too intense about the “creator’s intent” — like the ones who wrote in to ask if MAN OF STEEL was “what Seigel and Shuster intended”. So much of what we “intend” never gets anywhere near the printed page.
I love that the anecdote starts with “I love author’s intent” and ends with “Fans who love author’s intent are dumb!” But at least I now have slightly better understanding of where Madrox’s name came from – That always bothered me when I was a kid.
March 30th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Byrne’s utter contradiction of his own basic point (amazing that he doesn’t know his own mind on one of his signature crank obsessions for decades) is only matched by all of the subsequent posters who fail to point it out. Byrne’s groupies are like Kate in Act 4 of Taming of the Shrew: “And be it moon, or sun, or what you please: And if you please to call it a rush-candle, henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.”
March 30th, 2007 at 11:17 am
I can’t believe I’m gonna defend John Byrne but – it doesn’t sound like he’s contradicting himself, just that he’s pointing out that while he is proponent of “author’s intent”, some fans get a little too fanatical about it, not realizing or truly knowing exactly what the author’s intent what, since that can change course several times before he or she actually begins to start writing.
At least that’s how it read to me…
March 30th, 2007 at 11:26 am
That’s how it read to me, too, Barry.
March 30th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Byrne almost never opens his mouth to make a “This Things I Believe” proclamation without hoisting himself on his own petard. Barry’s interpretation only works if one can honestly separate Byrne from the fanatical fans he complains about. I really, really don’t think you can do that.
(Take a look at Doom Patrol–Morrison’s run is likely one of the “everything you know is a lie” revisionist comics that Byrne has made very clear that he generally disdains. Yet Arnold Drake himself said that Morrison was one of the only people to get what he was trying to do with the original book.)
Honestly, it’s impossible for me to discern what Byrne’s point is supposed to be here, aside from his usual point that he’s right and most fans are wrong–even if they’re saying exactly the same thing as him–because Byrne has more information than them, and/or has purer motivations.
I mean really, how does Byrne know what Jack Kirby’s “intent” was with The Demon, that would justify his need to waste Wonder Woman pages dismissing most of the character’s post-Kirby development?
My best guess is that Kirby’s actual intent was to sell a bunch of comic books and get paid, and that he probably was too interested in his newest ideas to worry about what publishers were doing to properties he left years earlier. If you take Byrne’s last paragraph above as true, then he has *no justification whatsoever* to complain about Moore’s Swamp Thing, the rhyming Demon, organic web-shooters, etc. The entire idea of discussing superheroes in terms of “original intent”, like Stan Lee is one of the Framers of the Comic Book Constitution, and honorable cartoonists must be strict constructionists–an argument Byrne has made repeatedly, angrily and hypocritically for decades, whatever he says here–strikes me as very misplaced.
March 30th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
You have a point. Taken in the context of the fact that, well, Byrne’s an asshole, his comments do come off as self-serving. Perhaps if he was somewhat less of a dick, my interpretation might stand up. But in this case, yeah, not so much…
March 30th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
It still looks fine to me. I went into this thinking he was going to say something flame-worthy, found several places where I thought, “here it comes,” but in the end his statement makes sense.
Just take out the middle part and you have, “Now, me, I am a big fan of “author’s intent,” but it’s stories like this that make me chuckle when some fans get just a wee bit too intense about the “creator’s intent””. That’s a fair statement. He’s saying he likes something, but it doesn’t always work out that way.
March 30th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
This is far from the first time that Byrne has literally resorted to disagreeing with himself, just to be able to insult other people.
A much more striking case in point would be when some poor soul made the mistake of using “thought bubble” and “thought balloon” as interchangable terms on Byrne’s board, and no joke, Byrne literally declared that using the “wrong” term was tantamount to referring to black people as … a racial slur term that I’m not going to type here.
When even Byrne’s fans felt compelled to point out that there are a few light-years of difference, in terms of offensiveness, between such a racial slur and saying “thought bubble” instead of “thought balloon,” I seem to recall Byrne offered up an etymolgy of the slur in question, along with some examples of the ways in which it’s been used (and misused) by both black and white people, the concluding summary of which was, “It’s just a word.”
Granted, even I could concede that he’d made a not-entirely-inaccurate case for that slur being “just a word,” but in the context of the larger argument that he was trying to make – ie. that there is only one correct way to use the terms “thought bubble” and/or “thought balloon,” and any other way of using those words is unforgivably offensive – it made absolutely no sense whatsoever, unless he was actually trying to prove himself wrong, without ever acknowledging it.
March 30th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Whatever his past actions, this passage strikes me as patently inoffensive; I don’t understand the need to use it as an excuse to bring up horrible things he’s said in the past. Why not just enjoy the sheer resonableness of it as the rare treat it is?
March 31st, 2007 at 10:23 am
Rob S.
You’re right, in itself the text is harmless. You have to know and factor in, that Byrne frequently rails against later creators deviating from the intent of the original authors. In fact, given the sum of his statements on the matter, according to him he’s pretty much the only one able and allowed to make alterations, while everyone else better follow the original version as closely as possible.
He doesn’t say that here.
But he has at other times, and there he’s gone far beyond _asking_ if X was what Y intended. He has plainly and repeatedly started that Z was wrong to do W because it was not what original creator V intended.
There is no room for the uncertainty of original authors intent in those statements.
April 1st, 2007 at 8:27 pm
I would also not be too quick to accept any fact that Byrne puts forth, such as the origin of the name Madrox. I’d only believe it after much further research and confirmation from at least 3 other sources.
You know, like what should be required about any info found at wiked-pedia.
April 30th, 2011 at 10:03 pm
Is there any solutions to connect to your website with no opt-in on the RSS? I am not sure the reason why however I can’t have the RSS packed in my viewer while I can get this from the firefox.