The Byrne Board wonders about those things that you just don’t get, even if everyone else does…
“Has anybody else ever had one of those Emperor has no Clothes moments where you finally try something that everybody says is great and you find it sorely lacking? Trying to keep it specific to comics I’m going to have to go with Watchmen. Everybody told me how great it was, how it changed the way they thought of the world and how I couldn’t consider myself a true comic fan if I didn’t read it. So I read it. I found it slow, dense, a lot of talking heads, not much movement, the panels are usually flat and static and the ending while innovative at the time doesn’t really spark for me after reading the Authority and other comics influenced by Watchmen…
“Are there good words and nice pictures? Yes. Are there well-written characters? Absolutely. Does that add up to a good comic? Yes. Does it make it the best comic ever written? Not to me. After I read it my friend asked me what I thought and I told him my opinion and he responded that I couldn’t really be a fan of comics because I didn’t understand the form. That amused me more than it annoyed me because it was such a perfect Emperor has no Clothes moment. ‘Everybody who knows anything loved it, so if you want me to believe you know ANYTHING you will like it too’ kind of attitude.”
“I can see no point whatsoever in crowing to much to any new comic fan about the Watchmen. It was a great book when it came out but it was of its time and has been plundered so many times by other writers that what was once new may well now seem old to someone who has only been reading comics for a while.”
“Apart from Watchmen, finally reading The Killing Joke is probably the biggest ‘Emperor has no clothes’ moment for me: Batman and the Joker act out of character, the story is flat and the origin given to the Joker is horrible. Alan Moore has supposedly denounced the story himself as well.”
” It’s the expectations game. If you have no idea what you’re getting into, you judge it by its own merits. When something is lauded or panned, you’re now bringing an external expectation to the work, and more likely in for a ‘worse than I expected / better than I thought it would be’ response. On the naked royalty side, ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier’ is my contribution to the mix. I’m officially off Alan Moore now. I really should have clued in after finding the second LoEG volume wanting…”
Don’t worry; it’s not all Moore-baiting:
“The day I realized a certain writer known for his long run on the Hulk was a class-A jerk was pretty disappointing.”
Also included: Boston Market, 2001 and the artist formerly known as Madonna…
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:26 pm
I agree with his comments on Watchmen. It’s good, but there’s nothing wrong with thinking it’s not the best thing ever.
The veiled swipe at Peter David is just Byrne insulting someone. Even if the two guys don’t get along, unsolicited name calling is still pretty sad.
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:20 pm
—-
“The day I realized a certain writer known for his long run on the Hulk was a class-A jerk was pretty disappointing.”
—–
Replace
“certain writer known for his long run on the Hulk”
with “John Byrne”,
and I’ll use that as my emperor moment.
January 23rd, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Right. My Emperor moment was when I realized my hands down favorite creator as a kid, John Byrne, turned out to be the biggest nimrod on the internet.
There’s is only one comic talent I’ve stopped buying on principle of wretched personality alone, and that would be Byrne.
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Was Byrne always like this, or was it a gradual process of embitterment, or was it one moment that turned him to the Dark Side?
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:58 pm
If you take the time to look, you’ll see that none of the quotes used in this item were made by John Byrne,but by members of his message board.
Hoy Murphy
January 24th, 2008 at 2:04 am
Ah, thank you Hoy. That is a very good point.
So I will redirect my ire towards the board members.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:28 am
What’s the point of this stupid blog then? If we don’t know for sure if it was Byrne himself or his worshippers that made those statements, what’s the point in having it here?
I’d at least preface it with “statements by people who worship John Byrne, and Byrne himself could possibly be one of them”.
January 24th, 2008 at 4:19 am
Saying something isn’t great because other people have ripped it off is probably the most misguided form of criticism ever. Nobody would say Shakespeare isn’t great because people have ripped off his ideas for 400 years.
January 24th, 2008 at 5:03 am
No, not Shakespeare.
On the other hand, you could look at it like the first talkies. They had very little sound other than the actors’ voices. At the time that was a huge improvement over silent movies, but compared to everything that came after (with more sophisticated sound effects and musical scores) they weren’t that great. So it wasn’t that they were the highest the art form could achieve, just that they were better than what came before.
If someone actually liked the things that came after Watchmen better than Watchmen itself, that’s valid. And if he didn’t like Watchmen as much as people said he would, partly because the stuff that came after did more for him, then it’s valid to disagree with the people who say he can’t possibly love comics just because he doesn’t love Watchmen.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:11 am
“What’s the point of this stupid blog then? If we don’t know for sure if it was Byrne himself or his worshippers that made those statements, what’s the point in having it here?”
Graeme is usually pretty clear when it is the creator themselves saying things. Notice in this case he prefaced it with “The Byrne Board wonders…” which would be an odd way to refer to John Byrne himself.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Mr. Byrne made comments critical of the writing in _Watchmen_ shortly after he joined the Compuserve comics forum 15 or so years ago. He was then asked if the same criticisms could be applied to his revamp of Superman.
He flamed briefly, then left the Compuserve comics forum, never to return.
February 29th, 2008 at 2:37 am
Names name Sasha Hi, I am a girl from moscow, I want to get acquainted with a foreigner for friendship, and sex;)
Come to my [b][url=http://social-dating.blogspot.com/]dating blog[/url][/b]