As to the charge of being sexist, all I can say is that I was genuinely surprised by the genuine anger John had about the treatment of female characters in comics on a level of basic fairness. I hear lip service about this from male creators all the time, but as I say, John was willing to put his work where his mouth is, so to speak, and make comics to fix it.

Gail

Opinions are like nipples.

Everybody's got one.

What?

Oh sure like you have MORE than one. Riiiiighghttt....

you know guys....this does get sad after awhile......these people that say these things have nothing better to do than to sit in there sewing circles and spin yarns

of people they wish they were. charges smarges. if he was such a #$% he sure would not be here everyday with 22000 post talking with us.

all the things that make mankind pathetic....jealousy,envy,selfhatred,want,greed

these are what modivates these rumors....kind of sad.

by the way gail.....i love your work ....and have a crush on you

But Kurt is always the classy one!

*********************

He's not the only one, Gail. Thanks for the 2 cents.

I will never, never, ever understand the scorn and hateful resent of JB out in comic book land.  I really, really don't understand it.  Anybody with a functioning brain cell can see that all of the Bad Byrne stories are completely without merit and are LIES.

Right after JB had posted some pencils of pages at the start of his JLA run, I was on the phone with a minor-comic Pro and he mentioned to me that a friend of his had seen the JB JLA pages and that they were awful.  JB was "phoning it in"...no backgrounds, stock poses, stupid panel layout and that he was just doing it for the money.  I retorted that I had seen about a dozen or so pages that JB had posted to the board and NONE of those charges were true.  He then came back with, well, he only showed you guys the GOOD pages.  I got tired of dealing with him, cancelled the commission I had just ordered, and hung up the phone. (and that bastard still owes me $200 worth of commissioned art--guess I'll write it off since I ordered it in 2001!!!!)

I've spoken with Denny O'Neil, Mike Carlin, Roger Stern and others about working with JB and all of them had nothing but NICE THINGS to say about JB.  These are people who I look up to, and who's opinions I respect.

And...of course, all my experiences on the several JB Message Boards have been NOTHING BUT positive experiences and I truly look forward to interacting with JB everyday.

Eventually, hopefully!, these rumors, stories and lies will be put to bed and JB will be honored for the truly wonderful work which he has produced.  I sincerely hope that JB lives a long full enough life to see this.

But what do I know...I'm a mindless drone.

MPH

From time to time, as a kind of balance to this, I have tossed out what have been dubbed (not by me) "Byrne Challenges". This is when I ask anyone who has a "Bad Byrne" story to come forth an repeat it on whatever message board I happen to be frequenting. I make only two stipulations: the story must be first hand, and the story must be true. The last time I did this a "fellow professional" leapt into the fray with no less than two stories -- neither of which were first hand, both of which were false. When I called in someone who happened to have witnessed the reality of the reported events, to inform the poster that his story was in error, that poster said he didn't care, and that he intended to keep telling the stories anyway.