John Byrne revisits the good ol’ days:
See, thing was, altho Chris and I worked pretty well together, we were often at odds on who the characters were. As noted, until just a short time before I left the book, he had read no issues of X-MEN other than those produced during the Thomas/Adams run, and so, while I kept trying to maintain the characters as they had been for 60+ issues, he kept trying to turn them into other people. People I largely didn’t like.
And the problem was, no matter what I drew or scribbled in my margin notes, Chris would write the characters and the scenes as he felt moved to do when the pages where in front of him — often completely changing my or even our original intent for a scene — and THAT was what was seeing print. So, if the fans were loving the X-Men — and it seemed they were! — it was Chris’ X-Men they were loving, not mine. I Chris had left instead of me, I very much doubt the book would have proved as popular as it did in the long run.
Wait, was that humility…?
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:06 am
Testing
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:30 am
I think the sun just crashed into the Earth
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:33 am
I thought this was interesting too “Chris didn’t want to stop boosting her power, and I didn’t want to go on fighting against it, and one day Steve Grant said “Why not make her a villain?”
I didn’t know it was implied that Grant had influence on that development.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Steven Grant destroys comics. Film at 11.
I’d always thought that Jim Shooter was responsible for that particular turn.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:26 pm
No, I think Shooter was responsible for the suicide; IIRC, the original plan had been to just depower her.
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I see it less as humility and more as yet another example of Byrne saying that the audience is wrong.
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Despite the shocked reaction–which is well-earned by Mr. Byrne, who can get ferociously irritated by the most ludicrously small slights–one thing that I’ve seen Byrne do with consistency on his boards is give credit to Claremont for the success of X-Men. Even when the most sycophantic board denizens will heap praise on Byrne for the runaway success of X-Men, Byrne quickly corrects them (and often credits Paul Smith, as well). While he’ll be derisive about fan reactions in other contexts (usually in terms of modern comics), I’ve usually seen him state this as a simple fact, often using sale figures to back up his assertion that the book wasn’t especially popular while he was contributing to it.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:12 pm
and thank god you left Byrne, Thank GOD!
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Nice cheap shot on Byrne. Great job. Awesome.
May 4th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
“Nice cheap shot on Byrne. Great job. Awesome.”
He brings it on himself.