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Topic: John Byrne - Threat or Menace? Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Koroush Ghazi
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Joined: 25 October 2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 1701
Posted: 02 September 2025 at 7:52am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

I patiently read through the entire thread, and oh boy did it take a long time for you to apologise for ruining our childhoods JB. The important thing now is that, as fans, we accept the apology, and move on with having JB repay his debt to us.

How about some sort of time-share arrangement whereby each fan can stay for a week at stately Byrne manor, all expenses paid, with personal daily tours and appropriately witty anecdotes as required?

Also, would it be too much of a strain to have you sign three long boxes' worth of comics on every page?

Looking forward to your enthusiastically positive reply.

Your pal,
Koroush


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Trevor Smith
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Joined: 21 September 2006
Location: Canada
Posts: 3617
Posted: 02 September 2025 at 11:52am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Out of curiosity, I went and started reading the Lost Girls
thread mentioned in this thread. At one point early in the
thread, JB called out someone for being an a-hole for
having it on pre-order and looking forward to it more that
any other book in quite some time. The first line of that
posters response, after quoting JB:

"'Then you are a complete asshole.'

Me an' Neil Gaiman, two peas in a pod..."

Well, that aged well for him, didn't it?
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Michael Penn
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Joined: 12 April 2006
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Posts: 13048
Posted: 02 September 2025 at 12:09pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

When JB began this thread on "30 June 2006," that was a year before the iphone was released and -- I looked this up -- in mid-2006 only 2% of the American population owned a smartphone of any kind, back then usually a BlackBerry or Palm Treo, and mostly confined to business professionals. I bring this up because in JB's opening post, he wonders about how much "courtesy of the InterNet" the loud voices of the most stupid fans were magnified. They were, even back then, and yet you could still wonder about that. But compare then to now, when everybody and his grandmother has a handheld supercomputer and the sheer universe open at every millisecond to even the most little tiny (evil!) thing that can go viral... whew!

(And, also "whew," JB in 6/06, not quite yet 56, just a babe...!)



Edited by Michael Penn on 02 September 2025 at 12:09pm
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John Byrne
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Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 02 September 2025 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

My bones weren’t even hard yet!
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John Byrne
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Posted: 02 September 2025 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Well, that aged well for him, didn't it?

•••

Sarcasm rarely ages well. It depends too much on time and place.

Let a few years go by, and there are people who will start to take seriously what was intended sarcastically.

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Mark Haslett
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Joined: 19 April 2004
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Posted: 03 September 2025 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Being opinionated gets one into trouble and being different than people
expect you to be is another route to trouble. The “threat” of John Byrne is
(in my observation) often rooted in some offended party being aghast that
John has his own opinions and that he doesn’t shift toward the norm when
it is pointed out to him. Trouble follows.

I am probably making a leap here, but I felt I understood why this happens
to John more than to, say, Alan Moore, is that John is mistaken for someone
who is primarily a draw-er when he is actually a writer first and draw-er
second. I’ve been led to conclude that people think the picture-draw-ers
should be quiet observers while writer-types are given lots of room to hold
forth. I sense some form of this bias is often at work in people who come
here to be offended.
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Michael Penn
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Posted: 03 September 2025 at 12:39pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

I think JB will never be forgiven for the original sin of leaving the "X-Men," even by those not born when he did.
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John Byrne
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Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 03 September 2025 at 1:05pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

True dat!

Even though I went on to hugely successful runs on FANTASTIC FOUR and ALPHA FLIGHT, there were fans who took my departure from UNCANNY X-MEN as a personal betrayal.

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Dave Kopperman
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Posted: 03 September 2025 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

My perspective is skewed because I came to the party late; I read your FF and Alpha Flight runs in real time but didn't get to read the X-Men run until much later - those Essentials paperbacks from about 15-20 years ago. They're objectively great, but I found I enjoyed both the FF and Alpha Flight more. No doubt because I was at the right age to have those be the default imprinted on me, true, but they just held stronger narrative clarity and more interesting core team dynamics, to me.

Art is likely a dead heat, for me. The energy of your inks from the era is perfect but Terry delivered some beautifully polished chiaroscuro pages.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 03 September 2025 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

I do not think that word means what you think it means. :-)

Chiaroscuro is a technique that employs strong contrasts between light and dark, and anything of that you see in X-MEN came from my pencil, not Terry’s pen.

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Brian Miller
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Posted: 03 September 2025 at 2:09pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

there were fans who took my departure from UNCANNY X-MEN as a
personal betrayal.

****

Let’s see if they show up for your return.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 03 September 2025 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Doubtful, really. That mentality wants all or nothing. So if it isn’t Chris and Terry and Glynis and Tom and me they will stay away in protest.

It was part of the problem that beset XHY.

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