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When a young John Byrne first visited New York to break into the comic book industry, he went to DC Comics and met legendary editor Joe Orlando.

• The Meeting: Orlando famously "dressed down" Byrne for walking into his office with artwork that was drawn at the wrong size.

• The Advice: Before Byrne left, Orlando handed him a Jerry Lewis comic book page and told him, "Here, at least do them the right size".

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None of this is true.

The Alberta College of Art (ACA) had hosted a traveling show of comic book art, and I saw there the standard size of the original art (by then, 10x15 inches).

And I didn’t actually meet Joe until years later, when I started working on Superman. He and I became friends after discovering we had the same claw-handed approach to holding our pencil, putting the “artist’s callouse” on our ring rather than middle fingers. This led to us greeting each other down the hall with a single raised finger. A lot of folk at DC misread which finger it was, leading to an assumption Joe and I “hated” each other.

When I spoke at his memorial, I told this story. There was a widespread “Oh-hhhh!” thru the audience. I closed with the appropriate upraised finger.

And, finally, tho it was policy at DC to hand out artwork, it was before my time. I have no JERRY LEWIS art in my collection.

It was fascinating to watch some inkers struggle with the size change.