erm…
having read the entire article, I disagree with him on a whole raft of things.
But he’s still absoutely correct about Byrne’s West Coast Avengers run.
John Byrne has always had a knack for finding startling twists and unexpected hooks to base his stories around. However, many of these story ideas seem to be necessary or appropriate only in the mind of John Byrne. Probably the most egregious example was his decision to have Superman kill people in-continuity. I remember picking up that issue, seeing Superman holding that box of Kryptonite out and declaring solemnly, “You’re responsible for the deaths of a billion people…and for that you must die!” I’ve always sort of suspected that this was Byrne’s nasty response to all the whimsically misleading Superman covers of the Silver age; You know the ones, where Superman is shown blowing up the Earth or turning Jimmy Olsen into a cactus or something, and in the story it turns out it was all a ruse to fool Lois. Here, Superman is shown as an executioner on the cover, and lo and behold, he actually, seriously kills people in the book. I have to say I never saw that one coming; one has to admit, it’s one hell of a plot twist.
Later Byrne reboots just got weirder, as best exemplified in his Chapter One contributions to Marvel. In addition to the whole Igor/Skrull deal from Hulk noted above, Byrne also felt it necessary to amend the concept of the “Gamma Bomb,” which in the Byrniverse is actually a laser of some kind. the Spider-man update was just as odd, as Byrne seemed to think that the notion of the robber traveling all the way across town to kill Uncle Ben after Peter let him escape was just way too improbable, so he created this elaborate backstory to justify the event. I’d tell you what it was, but while reading the comic I suffered a mild cerebral accident which erased the memory.
Ooh! OOH! I didn’t! I remember!
Byrne had Uncle Ben (who was poor, remember*) buying Peter a computer ('cause no-one uses a microsope anymore: microscopes are for LuSeR-FaNbOy-GeEkz!) so that Peter could surf the internet* with all his 311+ haXXXor d00dz. As he was coming out of the store, the thief bumped into Ben intentionally to see the address on the computer box so that he could later go rob the place. Later the thief met the proto-Spider-Man and, while on the lam from his robbery of the wrestling folks, the thief decided to go rob Ben’s house. This was because Byrne thought two coincidences (peter meets the theif, the thief stumbles into Peter’s house) was too stupid. So he changed it so there were only two coincidences (Ben meets the thief, the thief bumps into Peter as he’s robbing the wrestlers), so you can see how he vastly improved the story flow.
And his fix of Spider-Man’s origin was good too: He changed it from a small, unobtrusive bite from a radioactive spider to the spiderbite augmented by a thermonuclear explosion in downtown Manhattan and Peter being the only survior (except Doc Ock) out of thousands of people there for the demonstration.
Much improved again.
Fenris
*Remember Marvel’s/Byrne’s “10 year” rule. Every origin happend 10 years ago from whatever issue is current at the time. So when Byrne’s “Year One” came out, 10 years ago was, say, 1988. Um…Yeah, I know the internet existed back then, but it was much more BBSs and stuff and a computer was expensive: we’re talking 3-4K for a good one.
Those examples do suck. I just want to clarify that I’m not intending to slam continuity – I think it’s essential, and I’m basically in agreement with you about what sort of stuff should be paid attention to and what sort of stuff can slide. (These days, I’m most familiar with continuity issues on Buffy, and boy can those arguments get heated…)
And I just got this from the library last night. (I’m grateful to the Seattle Public Library these days for starting to stock up on comic collections – I also picked up the “Tower of Babel” JLA collection, which I’m halfway through.) Anyway, just issue #1 of Supreme is brilliant. I’m looking forward to the rest of it.
Just to clarify again – I haven’t read (much) Superman, so I have no opinion about the reboot’s quality.
Anyway, I do realize that it’s the extent and suddenness of Byrne’s changes that seem to be the real problem. And again, it seems like he used to be better – Frankie Raye’s decision to become Nova, for example, was well foreshadowed. And Alicia and Johnny’s relationship developed nicely, as well.
Ah, well. Was Puck’s bizarre origin story a Byrne thing, or was that whoever came after him on Alpha Flight?
Boy, it shows how long it’s been since I followed comics: 23 posts discussing John Byrne, and not one single mention of his run on X-Men?! One of the high points of modern superhero comics, for gosh’s sake! (this was back when Marvel put out only one or two mutant comics a month - later to balloon to roughly 75 different mutant titles…).
I also loved his run on FF, and his brief stint on Captain America. In those days Byrne was pretty much the comic god. I had pretty much drifted away from comic-dom by the time he was re-vamping Superman.
Eric
**
It just gets better and better after the first issue! This is the first half of Moore’s Supreme series, the other half is in a TP to be released in a few months. That’ll just leave one miniseries that ties in that apparently won’t be reprinted. If you care, the titles (each issue has a different title :rolleyes: )
Judgment Day: Alpha
Judgment Day: Omega
Judgment Day: Final Judgment
Judgment Day: Aftermath
It’s Alan Moore showing DC how to do The Crisis correctly using the hopelessly screwed up Leifieldverse (Supreme, Youngblood, etc) as an object lesson. Waaaaay cool stuff!
**
I’m pretty sure it was post-Byrne.
Fenris
I also disagreed with the author’s characterization of Wolverine as a murderous butcher and his dislike of the story in Kingdom Come.
Hmmm–I also really like the author’s commentary on the Vision/Scarlet Witch stuff. It brings to mind the fact that Byrne is what I’d best describe as an evangelical athiest–I’ve seen him publically insult religious believers in AOL chats. His effort to make the Vision “soulless,” I suspect, wasn’t just to overturn continuity, but also to push his athiest agenda.
(Although note here that I don’t intend to pick on athiests. It’s been my experience, though, that Byrne suffers from the same problems as Jehovah’s Witnesses who refuse to leave one’s doorstep.)
I hate to nitpick spelling, but the word is “atheist.”
Did’t he start a comic of his own creation NEXT MEN which ended up going nowhere?
Not to hijack, but please, allow me to hijack. Who was the writer on Batman and the Outsiders who, when confronted with an issue of Brave and Bold which proved that Metamorpho knew Batman’s secret identity, declared the issue to be non-continuity and triggered a firestorm? Sounds like (to drag this kicking and screaming back on topic) he and Byrne have a lot in common.
Otto:
I don’t remember the specific issue, but the only writer I ever remember working on Batman and the Outsiders is Mike W. Barr.
To say something nice about John Byrne, The Ego Who Draws, I believe he’s a staunch arch-foe of Rob Liefeld.
There’s a funny part in the Savage Dragon/Megaton Man crossover from the early days of Image where they team up to fight Johnny Redbeard’s Nixed Men. All the members give little recaps of their origins. Fun issue.
Reminds me of Byrne’s DC series from last year–“Lab Rats.” Yeesh, I could barely remember the name.
Which illustrates another problem: Byrne’s lost all sense of how to portray young people. His modern-age Wonder Girl was particularly horrendous–I was still in high school when that run started, and I can say with all certainty that no teenage girl I knew acted like that.
Not even the ones with super powers?
Two comments:
- The “Metamorpho doesn’t know Batman’s ID” thing IIRC was Barr and he was probably right. (I’m not positive it was Metamorpho…but someone didn’t know Bat’s ID). There was one issue of Brave and Bold that was waaaaaaaaaaay out of continuity and the author tossed that one issue out. I don’t remember the details but trust me: that Brave and Bold issue had to take place on Earth B.
Denny O’Neil’s later edict that no-one knew Dick Grayon was Robin (including any of the Titans), however, was fucktarded.
- Next Men was actually pretty damned good when read as a lump.
Fenris
Perhaps it’s because he’s a revionist who likes to screw around with other people’s characters and frankly does a bad job of it.
Am I the only one thinking that her actually being a statue is incredibly stupid?
Her creator, William Marston didn’t, since that’s the only origin she’s had* since she first appeared in the '40s.
Fenris
*With one exception, which is in the “Mopee” category of retcon (it was agreed that everyone would ignore it and pretend it never happened right after it came out). Wonder Woman #105 had Mommy Hippolyta and Daddy Someone or other have L’il Diana as a baby. For unexplained reasons, all the gods and goddessess showed up and gave baby Diana powers. Then Daddy and all the Amazon men in the kingdom were wiped out in some wars and the Amazon women leave to go to Paradise Island with L’il Diana. :yuk: