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Topic: "I’d Been Much Happier If She Stayed Dead." Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Jason Scott
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Posted: 20 May 2018 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Nope. Chris and I had no plans to kill Phoenix. We were going to lobotomize her, psychically, so she could come back as a recurring villain. No plans to split the story up in any way. 137 and 138 were fully penciled and scripted.

Then Shooter stepped in to demand we change the ending he'd previously approved, and send Phoenix "to a prison asteroid to be horribly tortured for all eternity." That sounded to me more like a misogynistic Legion of Superheroes story than anything that belonged in X-MEN, so I spoke the words that will live in infamy: "F**k that, I'd rather kill her!"

This is one of the instances in my career when I wish I'd been gifted with prescience. If we'd done as Shooter demanded, we would only have needed to wait a few months, until the Eye of Sauron moved on, and then we could have rescued Jean and gone on with what we originally intended.
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Fascinating. I don't think I'd ever heard the full behind the scenes story. Thank you for relating it, and setting the record straight. It's interesting to see how much came from these decisions, that couldn't have been forseen at the time.
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 20 May 2018 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

At the time as a 12-13 year old engrossed in these X-men comics I had no problem with Phoenix dying, I didn't know any better I suppose, but it also made a lot of sense. Also at the time I was definitely thinking, phoenixes rise from the ashes, and so who knows. What I really couldn't imagine was the letter-writer's who were outraged about her death or maybe just any death. This was before almost every super-heroine seemed to get killed and paraded around on their history-making covers. I think some have learned the hard way what a mistake it is to kill any of these major characters, they always come back, even those first couple of Legion characters practically made to be disposable. Thunderbird came back, Gwen Stacy, Mr. Terrific, they all seem to have to one way or another when there is anyone who will pay to see them again. So the whole 'death of whoever' thing, which was never more real than when it was Phoenix in 1980, became a lame gimmick fairly quickly.

What Mr. Claremont did was poor writing, maybe because he hesitated and really didn't want to commit to it. His Doctor doom certainly wasn't well written either, although neither was Marv Wolfman's. Avengers #263 + Fantastic Four #286 was one of the best things I'd read in ages at the time after all the secret wars crossovers and crisises at the other place (a saving grace though I still bailed out of the last super title I followed which was X-Factor #3). I could leave knowing at least Jean Grey wasn't thrown out in the trash. It made sense. The Maddy Pryor wearing the costume with Mastermind back, the Kitty basically in drag for one issue, plus that silly bedtime story issue, the What If Phoenix Had Lived issue, was all exploitation and nothing more. The future young Rachel Phoenix did have me interested for awhile again though, that was pretty good stuff (that seemed to go nowhere after awhile).

I think it was right to decide Phoenix should die rather than become a baddie however that was arrived at, because someone wrote that she'd destroyed the sun of a heavily inhabited planet and a ship full of witnesses for afters! People should really want Galactus dead for the same reason, and he as far as I know has always been amoral while with Phoenix someone good became twisted and inhuman.

I think Kurt Busiek and John Byrne did good retrieving Jean Grey from the trash can. It's too bad someone put her right back in the situation that was avoided, probably mostly for the sake of milking the fans.


Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 20 May 2018 at 8:00pm
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John Byrne
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Posted: 20 May 2018 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

I think Kurt Busiek and John Byrne did good retrieving Jean Grey from the trash can.

•••

Kurt suggested the mechanism by which Jean, separate from Phoenix, could be brought back, but he was not involved in the execution.

Go down that path and we're back to me creating Venom.

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Michael Sommerville
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Posted: 20 May 2018 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Bringing back Jean was not the problem, not letting go of the Phoenix was the mistake. That was all Chris Claremont going to that well and others drinking the water. 
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Jeff Scott
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Posted: 20 May 2018 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

I wonder...has Jean died and been resurrected as many times as Marlena has been kidnapped by Stefano DiMera on Days of Our Lives?  Surely it must be close.
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 20 May 2018 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Hidden Years also expanded on the Phoenix entity, and how it had been attracted to Jean. That must've been not so long after when they had the two actually merge in the late '90s X-Men titles (I'm trying to catch up on that period of X-Men comics and liking the Alan Davis parts).


Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 20 May 2018 at 7:55pm
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Samuel P. Barden
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Posted: 20 May 2018 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

I never understood why Chris Claremont is allowed to complain about Jean's resurrection when he was involved in it.  He didn't come up with the idea, but he was party to her return, rewriting the flashback in FF 286. Also he expanded on it in Classic X-Men #8. 


There is a strange phenomenon when it come to Claremont's X-Men.  A lot of fans believe that Classic X-Men #8 came out first and then JB did FF#286, so Claremont had to fix it.  It doesn't matter that FF 286 came out in '86 and Classic X-Men came out in '89.  There is that and the myth of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and the Hellfire club were supposed to be introduced in Ms. Marvel. 
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 20 May 2018 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

"the myth of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and the Hellfire club were supposed to be introduced in Ms. Marvel"

Was that because of the supposed Ms. Marvel Vol1. #25 that was concocted for the giant-size comic? I realized the #24 with Sabertooth might mostly have been done back at the time, but figured almost nothing of #25 was. It would be nice to have that straight.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 21 May 2018 at 6:23am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

There is a strange phenomenon when it come to Claremont's X-Men. A lot of fans believe that Classic X-Men #8 came out first and then JB did FF#286, so Claremont had to fix it. It doesn't matter that FF 286 came out in '86 and Classic X-Men came out in '89. There is that and the myth of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and the Hellfire club were supposed to be introduced in Ms. Marvel.

•••

Basic problem is that comicbook writers have spent generations teaching readers that things are not always as they seem, and some of those readers apply this to the people producing the stories as much as to the stories themselves. Thus we end up with industry myths and legends that have little or nothing to do with what really happened.

My response to such things is usually to say "Remind me -- where was your office up at Marvel?"

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John Byrne
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Posted: 21 May 2018 at 6:38am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

"...I never cared for Madelyne either (it annoyed me that every X-Man reacted like she looked exactly like Jean, when she clearly didn't)..."

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Thank you Mario! Even as a teen this confused me. Paul's Smith's Madelyne Pryor looks nothing like JB's Jean Grey! It's always seemed like I was the only person to have that issue.

•••

I'd stopped reading X-MEN by that point, but I saw that issue and asked the manager of my LCS what was going on in that last panel. He shrugged. "I think she's supposed to look like Jean."

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Andrew Bitner
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Posted: 21 May 2018 at 7:15am | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Yeah, I tend to agree... Smith is a really good artist but his Madeline wasn't a dead ringer for anyone's Jean.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 21 May 2018 at 8:04am | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Smith is a really good artist but his Madeline wasn't a dead ringer for anyone's Jean.

••

Smitty was one of those who takes the "Yes, but this is how I draw them" approach. The degree to which that works depends on the skill of the artist.

(I've told before the story of looking at some of Smith's pages with Dave Cockrum. Noting the pronounced Negroid features Smitty gave Storm, Dave said "I guess we were drawing her wrong.")

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