"Ask people who know me if the tale as he relates it rings true."

I'm glad you isolated those two lines, JB.  Because to me, he contradicts himself right off the bat.  He says it never happened but then challenges the telling of the tale itself.  Which would mean there was a tale, but that it wasn't being recalled correctly in his opinion.

It's certainly a strange response from someone if they were never involved in a particular situation.

Too bad someone else who was there hasn't confirmed the story to support JB.  Larry Hama doubts it happened and posted as such and this whole thing has really illustrated to me just how much bickering and drama there must have been going on.

Wolfman, David, Shooter, etc., there are just so many heated stories and bad relationships from back in those days.  Trying to catch up on what happened back then is certainly disheartening for me.  As a fan, it's hard to break the image of the happy bullpen of artists and writers working together in the industry that we all love that letters pages and that sort of thing presented.  Innocence(ignorance?) of youth I guess.

I suppose art and ego are just too hard to separate.  Sometimes the conflict produces a great final product but it seems more often to just tear things apart.

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What is the "it" Larry doubts? With all the back and forth and overlap in this thread, I have lost track.

The Marvel bullpen applauding John Byrne?? I think not.
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 Why would they not applaud JB. By earning the company all that money JB benifited all Marvel employees. His work helped pay their salaries. No profits coming in means no paychecks going out.

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 cumulatively I'm in a "bracket" of about 30%.

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That's about 10 or 15% too much. Having 300 out of every 1000 dollars you earn taken away is far from fair. How dare you make a good living through your hard work.

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Why would they not applaud JB. By earning the company all that money JB benifited all Marvel employees. His work helped pay their salaries. No profits coming in means no paychecks going out.

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This was nothing to do with money.

Has any comic book series really seen that much of a boost in NEW comics sales (not back issue sales) due to a film since the first "Batman" in 1989? I can tell you, as a retailer, that as far as my shop is concerned, there's not much of a boost, if any, in sales of the new comics due to a movie coming out. You do get speculators going after the old stuff thinking each time that each new movie will propel the prices of the back issues into the stratosphere, despite the fact that never really occurs.

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Matt, I agree with you in regards to Marvel's BS excuse for why they fired Harras. His, IMO from someone looking from the outside, was unfair and unjust. It also led to the myth that Marvel (the publishing division) was doing financially and creatively terrible under Harras, which was not true.

You are also 100% right about comic book series not seeing an increase in new sales due to movies based off of said comic book series. Many retailers, as you know, will sometimes increase their pre order sales for an issue of a comic around the time of a movies release, but that is mainly due to Marvel relaunching a series over again with a brand new #1 with a rare variant cover which artificially boosts sales on said book and gives the short term illusion that sales have increased due to the movies. What many people don't realize is that an increase in pre order sales to retailers does not not necessarily mean an increase in actual in store sales to actual walk in paying customers.