Is The Flash faster than Superman?

JB: I will invoke the specialist rule, i.e., the guy who is only fast gets to be the fastest.

Novels:
Fearbook! (Warner Books)
Whipping Boy (Abyss/Dell)
Wonder Woman: Gods & Goddesses (Prima Publishing)

Short Stories available in Anthologies:
Hotter Blood: "Nocturne" by John Byrne (Pocket Books)
Shock Rock: "Hide in Plain Sight" by John Byrne (Pocket Books)

Do your recall who was the FIRST artist who "grabbed" you and got you going on drawing? Perhaps when you were a child?

JB: Your question has a much more literal answer than you might have guessed when you posed it. There have been many influences in my artistic career, but the one who I will always credit as having jumpstarted the whole thing was my paternal grandfather, Frederick Aurthur Byrne, who, when I was a baby, would hold me on his lap, hold a piece of chalk in my right hand, and draw on a small slate. I still have the slate, recovered from my grandmother's house when she died. On it is a choo-choo train which she preserved and which, given the damp English climate, has eaten into the board to the point that it cannot be erased. The oldest existing John Byrne original, vintage 1952!!

Yes, the "Surfing With The Alien" album cover featuring the Silver Surfer was drawn by John Byrne. However, the drawing was not an original piece, and JB did not give permission or receive payment for its use. The art is lifted from panel 1 of page 6 of SILVER SURFER #1 published in 1982.

JB: I have decided to take a sabbatical from the monthly grind, clean the pipes, and concentrate for a while on the commission pieces. (08/21/2006)

In addition to the commissions, JB is writing and drawing several Star Trek books for IDW, including ASSIGNMENT: EARTH, ROMULANS: THE HOLLOW CROWN and an upcoming book tentatively titled CREW. He is also the artist on the FX miniseries written by Wayne Osborne.

An announced JB project called CITIZEN ZERO has not yet been scheduled.

John Byrne has worked continuously in comics since 1975, following his first professional sale in late summer of 1974. Beginning humbly enough, with the likes of WHEELIE AND THE CHOPPER BUNCH and DOOMSDAY + 1 (for Charlton Comics), and IRON FIST and THE CHAMPIONS for Marvel, he eventually moved on to Marvel's number one cult book, X-MEN (not yet Uncanny) in 1977.

It was his work on X-MEN which truly ignited John's star, and from there he moved to CAPTAIN AMERICA, THE AVENGERS, and a five year run on Marvel's flagship title, FANTASTIC FOUR. Seeking new heights to conquer, in 1986 John accepted the daunting assignment of revamping the oldest and most famous of all superheroes, Superman. Beginning with the hugely successful MAN OF STEEL miniseries, John brought SUPERMAN back into the attention of the fans, and that success continues today. In 1990, John decided to venture into the unpredictable waters of creator owned works, launching NEXT MEN in 1991. Following that success he brought out DANGER UNLIMITED, followed by BABE in 1995. Since then, he has written and drawn such titles as WONDER WOMAN, X-MEN: THE HIDDEN YEARS, LAB RATS, DOOM PATROL, and BLOOD OF THE DEMON. In 2005, he returned to Superman performing art duties for ACTION COMICS.

I have read that JB was asked to do the original 80s CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS miniseries. Is this true?

Some time in the early 1980s -- I can't pinpoint the exact date, but I do recall that I was attending a convention in Atlanta -- DC's then-EiC Dick Giordano approached me about writing and drawing something that had the working title "The History of the DC Universe". This was proposed as a 12 issue "maxi-series" which would use the first 11 issues to lay out all the established DC lore, doing the best that could be done to shuffle all the conflicting details into some kind of cohesive whole, Then, in the 12th issue, everything would "blow up" due to some terrible cosmic catastrophe, and the next month all the DC books would "restart" with first issues.

As it happened, I was having dinner with Dick, Frank Miller and Frank's then-girlfriend Laurie Sutton, when Dick made the offer, and Frank was quick to say I would have to be crazy to accept such a project. I agreed -- but in any case, acceptance was unlikely since, as I told Dick, my knowledge of the history of the DCU was not as extensive as of the Marvel Universe. There were, in fact, huge tracts of DC lore (such as the Legion of Superheroes) about which I knew almost nothing.

So I passed on the project, and over the next couple of years it floated around, mutating as it went, until it became CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. (12/28/2004)

JB: The earliest use of the word "fanboy" of which I am aware was in the "Obligatory New Pages" of Jim Engle and Chuck Fiala's FANDOM CONFIDENTIAL collection (from the pages of "The Comic Reader".) In a scene in which Jim and Chuck collapse into paroxysms of mindless adoration because they have been in the room with me for more than five minutes, Jim had me refer to them as "a couple of fanboys in bondage". This was a reference to/play on a Monty Python skit in which an Elizabethan character is scene reading "Gayboys in Bondage" which she claims is by William Shakespeare. (4/18/2005)

JB: Born not far from the town of West Bromwich, in England, on July 6th 1950. Father Frank (now Lord Rushton), mother Nelsie. No sibs.

I've heard you say more than once that you disliked your ALPHA FLIGHT run. Was it the art or the writing that you thought fell down?

JB: Alpha Flight (the team) were never really meant to be anything more than a bunch of superheroes who could survive a fight with the X-Men. They had no real depth, and I resisted suggestions that they get their own book for a couple of years. Then, finally, realizing Marvel would probably get someone else to do it, if I didn't, I relented and agreed. (Sidebar: ALPHA FLIGHT #1 was the biggest selling comic of its day -- 500,000 copies!!)

Down through the years, a number of Gay fans have approached me to say "thanks" for ALPHA FLIGHT and NorthStar, so I suppose it justifies its existence in that way -- but as a whole, except for a couple of bright moments, the book just never gelled for me, art- or story-wise. (4/4/98)

If you had stayed on X-Men provided that Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio and possibly Bob Harras had been more professional in dealing with you, what story ideas would you have come up with?

JB: I generally prefer to avoid discussions of storylines that did not pan out. Too many prying eyes, too few ethics. And too many times seeing my ideas repackaged under another writer's byline.

JB: Too many fans today consider themselves far too hip and a-go-go to ever go along with the most basic conceit of serial fiction: that the main characters will survive, but we will pretend, for the sake of this story, that that is not a given.

When I was a lad, I worried every time Superman fell into a kryptonite death trap. Usually I only had to wait four or five pages to find out that he was going to be okay, but it never occurred to me to shrug and flip to the next story to see if he survived. Only when reading SUPERBOY was I ever aware that there was no "tension", since we knew Superboy would become Superman. (I refer to this as "Superboy Syndrome", and caution writers to be very careful about it when doing flashbacks or, more significantly, flash forwards.)

If you reach a point at which you "know" no real harm can ever befall the main characters, and you are unable to simply accept that (without commenting that there is "no real tension") then you have crossed an important line, and there is no point in you continuing to follow this kind of fiction. Accept it for what it is, or move on -- but don't find fault with the ocean because it is too wet. (5/10/2004)

JB: Start work around 7am. Break for an hour at noon. Afternoon is from 1 to 4, typically. 7 days a week, unless I have something else to do on the weekend.

Did a second issue of the "How To Draw Comics Comic"ever come out? I remember getting the first one ( very informative) but never seeing a second.

JB: Here we come to some of the Bad Things That Happen When You Trust People. I had nothing to do with the HOW TO DRAW COMICS COMIC aside from loaning the publisher a whole whack of my sketchbooks -- sketchbooks he never returned -- from which to lift any art he might feel was appropriate. I did not write a single word for the book, and I even had to stop him calling the dang thing "JOHN BYRNE'S HOW TO. . . " (11/12/97)

If I asked for a commissioned piece by JB that was a version of a classic X-Men cover, and paid JB for said work, Does this break copyright?

JB: Freelancers doing drawings for the fans, and getting paid for them, is a convention of the industry almost as old as the industry itself. Traditionally, it has been considered free advertising, and "fair use". Mostly, for the Companies to try to shut it down would simply be too much trouble. Can you imagine trying to maintain a watchful eye on every convention, in every state, every country? The mind boggles.

When the problem rises is in reproduction. A few years back Marvel shut me down when I printed up a few hundred copies of a Fantastic Four miniposter that I intended to sell at a convention, donating the proceeds (proceeds, not profits) to Breast Cancer Research. If you were to order up a recreation of a favorite cover, that would not be a problem. If, however, you (or I, or anyone) sold prints of that recreation, then copyright would be infringed.

It's my understanding that this is essentially what happened to Carl Barks. Disney was prepared to look the other way when he was doing duck paintings for paying customers. They clamped down when he started selling prints. (9/9/2006)

JB: Characters "cleaning up their act" as they become more popular, as with Mickey Mouse no longer feeding cats' tails into sausage grinders, or Superman and Batman no longer killing the bad guys. (11/02/04)

JB: New writers and/or editors thinking being assigned to a title or character is a mandate to blow everything up and start from scratch. (Applied facetiously, since this is usually done without a fraction of the time spent working out what was done in MoS.) (11/02/04)

JB: Adding unnecessary details which complicate a character's backstory. This comes, of course, from the bottled city of Kandor, which used to reside in Superman's Fortress of Solitude, making it necessary, every time Superman visited the Fortress, to spend a coupe of panels explaining what Kandor was. Finally, a story was done in which Superman succeeded in restoring Kandor to its normal size, and also placing it on an alien world that "phased" out of our reality, Brigadoon-like, for 100 years at a time. Problem solved -- until another story was done in which it was decided that Superman "missed" having Kandor in its special place in the Fortress, so he created a perfect scale model of it, which had to be explained every time he went to the Fortress. And then, another story was done in which an alien race who were naturally that small moved into the model, so every time. . . .   etc, etc. (11/02/04)

JB: Beta and Gamma teams appeared as single panel shots each in the first issue of ALPHA FLIGHT. I had no idea who those people were! As the series progressed, and I wanted to bring in more characters, I went back to those two panels and started thinking about who they were. (11/04/2005)

What name did you prefer most for Mac: Guardian/Vindicator/Weapon Alpha?

JB: As to Guardian -- Guardian! "Weapon Alpha" means nothing, and Canada has nothing to "vindicate". (Chris named him after a cool airplane, without thinking about the real meaning of the word.) Guardian is what the character was called when he was a fan creation (mine!). Canadian National Anthem, after all -- We stand on guard for thee... (11/04/2005)

Is Puck named after a hockey puck or is his name an homage to Jack Kirby's Oberon, another dwarf with a Shakespearean name?

JB: He's named after a hockey puck. (5/30/2006)

What real world color is Aurora and NorthStar's hair supposed to be?  Is it just shiny black?

JB: Yup.

I have always wondered about that issue of ALPHA FLIGHT with five pages of blank panels indicating Snowbird's battle in the snowstorm. Did you get paid your normal page rate for "drawing" those five snowstorm pages, or was it a lesser rate, or did they even pay you at all?

JB: I got paid my normal rate. Shooter said the blank pages were "an artistic decision". (2/17/2006)

JB: Bounced back and forth between Canada and England until I was 8. Settled in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1958. Moved to Calgary, Alberta in 1966. Moved to Chicago (when I got married) in 1980. Brooklyn Heights from 1983 to 85. Since then, Fairfield, Connecticut.

Did you intend for Heather to become leader, from issue one?

JB: It was a couple of issues into the run on ALPHA that I decided Jim Hudson was for the high jump, and that Heather would become team leader. I did NOT want her to get powers, or put on the suit. That was such a cliché, I thought.

How did "The Last Galactus Story" end?

JB: At the virtual End of the Universe, Galactus is confronted by a Watcher. This Watcher turns out to be the same one who witnessed the "birth" of Galactus in our universe. The Watcher (not Uatu) was eventually driven mad by the accumulated guilt he feels for the acts of Galactus. He has been trying to move galaxies to somewhere Galactus cannot find them, but has been destroying them in the process. Galactus and the Watcher battle -- a huge cosmic confrontation that stretches over centuries, as the universe falls into near total entropy. Finally, to defeat the Watcher, Galactus sucks all the remaining energy out of the Universe. Nothing is left but Galactus and his loyal herald, Nova. Realizing at last what his purpose is, Galactus cracks the seal on his suit, starts to remove his helmet, and in that instant all the energy he has absorbed explodes out of him. He becomes the "big bang" of the next universe, and when the smoke clears, we see Nova has been reborn, as that universe's Galactus.

Incidentally, back when I was first approached about Marvel's "The End" project, I was asked to think about "last issues" for the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. One of the things that occured to me was using this as a way to finally finish the Last Galactus Story. Goes like this:

One day, out of a clear blue sky, literally, Nova falls into the heart of Manahattan. The FF go to investigate. They find her, and after a bit of trouble deciphering what she is saying they realize she has come from billions of years in the future. Reed's "universal translator" was having problems with her speech because she was speaking English, but English distorted by billions of years. Anyway, she finally tells them what's going on with Galactus and the rogue Watcher, and the FF race off to use their captured version of Doctor Doom's time machine to speed to the future and try to help Galactus. (Reed, you see, being Reed, has already figured out what Galactus' purpose is in the scheme of things.)

Uh oh! Using Doom's time machine alerts the good Doctor to what they are up to, and he goes after them. Pretty quickly he figures out what is going on, and realizes this is a perfect opportunity to steal the power of Galactus for himself. The universe may die in the meanwhile? What cares he?

So, of course, the FF end up battling Doom, who is doing all kinds of things to try to get Galactus' power, while Galactus is busy himself dealing with the rogue Watcher. Finally the good guys -- which includes Galactus in this case -- win, But Ben and Nova both die heroically in the process. Galactus wonders what it was all about, what it was all for. Reed tells him. Galactus understands. The FF (what's left of them) start to head back to their time machine with Doom as their prisoner. Galactus calls after them. "Leave him!" Moment of tension, but Reed agrees. The FF return to the present, and just as they wink out they see Galactus open the seals on his armor and begin to release all his stored energy.

The three are back on Earth, in the present. They mourn Ben, but they resolve to continue to fight the good fight, in his honor. The Fantastic Four are no more, but the Three shall fight on! Sue wonders what Galactus wanted Doom for.

Cut to somewhere, somewhen else. Energies roil. A Universe is aborning, and at its heart we see a great cosmic "egg" akin to the one that once gave birth to Galactus. It opens, and Galactus rises from its midst -- but when he turns to us, we see he now has the face/mask of Doctor Doom. Like a certain other human we all know, Doom is about to learn that "with great power must come great responsibility'. (2/15/2005)

JB: You don't know about the Byrne Curse, do you?

Chris Claremont and I did a story about a blackout in NYC. The week it came out, there was a blackout in NYC.

We did a story about an earthquake in Japan. The week it came out. . .

Okay, so those are no big deal, as such things happen all the time. But on my own I. . . . . . blew up a Space Shuttle in the second issue of MAN OF STEEL (and hastily redrew it as a "space plane" before it came out.

. . . named an aircraft carrier after a former Canadian Prime Minister (against the tradition of only naming ships after dead folk). He was dead by the time the book came out.

. . . and killed Prince Diana (Wonder Woman) in a book (replete with fake newspaper cover) that shipped week before the Saturday that. . .

If only this power could be harnessed for good! (5/15/2003)