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Topic: An awkward compliment for JB’s WCA Post Reply | Post New Topic
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Jim Petersman
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 26 June 2012
Location: United States
Posts: 624
Posted: 05 August 2020 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

I just read this comment on Reddit: “The John Byrne run on West Coast Avengers is very underrated. Without it, we'd never have got Avengers Disassembled, House of M and The New Avengers.”

That’s the kind of compliment that could keep a guy up at night ;-)

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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132129
Posted: 05 August 2020 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

uuuhhhgh
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Jim Petersman
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 26 June 2012
Location: United States
Posts: 624
Posted: 05 August 2020 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

uuuhhhgh
______________________

Pretty much my reaction as well! Must be weird to see the "inspiration" some people draw from your work.

I was a huge fan of your Avengers: West Coast run, but I need to also offer a public apology for it. It was your abrupt end on that run that had me grow tired of your "flaky bullish!t." I could excuse your failure to cross the #300 finish line with FF and your rapid abandonment of HULK because (I assumed at that age that) you couldn't work for Marvel and DC at the same time. SUPERMAN started out amazing, but then you seemed to lose steam and that was fine because you returned to the characters and universe that I liked more anyway. But then you just dropped AWC in the middle of a great storyline to go do some other Marvel project and that pissed young(er) me off! "Why couldn't he just wrap this up first?!"

I was such a JB fan that I assumed that every move you made was your call. I truly couldn't imagine you as an employee, let alone an employee that might work for... difficult... editors. It wasn't until I joined the forum some 8 years ago that I could start reframing your work as part of a career in what was/is a corporate business culture. Comics may have been fun on my end, but the best experience the talent could hope for was a fun JOB.

Mea Culpa!

(but I really wanted to know if Vision would ever get fully restored)
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Peter Hicks
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 30 April 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 1878
Posted: 05 August 2020 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

I love when a new writer takes over a team book, and the team lineup goes into flux.  New characters join, old ones leave, and truly great writers bring in a character and throw a curve ball by having them join, and change their mind and leave after two issues.  As a reader, that’s when I feel a book is going somewhere, and has a direction in mind.  JB’s time on WCA was one of those great runs.  
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Shawn Kane
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 04 November 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 3239
Posted: 06 August 2020 at 5:12am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Having just completed my West Coast Avengers/Avengers West Coast run, I've been re-reading JB's run (I dropped the book when he left). As I was re-reading those issues I thought, "This was Bendis' inspiration". But when your mission statement is How Can I Destroy The Team So I Can Write The Book I Want To Write?, he would have found a way no matter what inspired him.


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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132129
Posted: 06 August 2020 at 7:29am | IP Logged | 6 post reply

It was somewhat amusing to see the plotlines that had been rejected by the EiC (and which led to my leaving the book) turning up under a different EiC as another writer’s ideas.

Coincidence, of course.

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Shawn Kane
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 04 November 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 3239
Posted: 06 August 2020 at 9:39am | IP Logged | 7 post reply

I had three favorites leave books in the late 80's/early 90's due to editorial interference: Roger Stern on the Avengers, JB on Avengers West Coast, and Chris Claremont on X-Men. Popular creators with fans but still editors let them leave. I don't see that happening a whole lot in this era where editors are basically fans (JMS on Spider-Man being the exception but that was due to the Editor-in-Chief). It seemed during that period, I became aware that a popular creator doesn't get the final word about the book they're working on. 

Edited by Shawn Kane on 07 August 2020 at 7:15am
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132129
Posted: 06 August 2020 at 10:42am | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Don’t know how it is now, but in my day Marvel maintained the characters were more important than the talent. Talent was expendable.

This was at the same time they fostered the notion of how LUCKY we all were to be working there.

These parallel attitudes kept royalties out of play for years.

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Jim Burdo
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 19 April 2020
Location: United States
Posts: 335
Posted: 07 August 2020 at 11:25am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Unfortunately, Wanda continues to get trashed even into this month, where in Empyre: X-Men, she tries to make up for M-Day by resurrecting the dead of Genosha and brings them back as zombies. The character seems irrevocably linked with mental breakdowns and causing catastrophe, even with the new tv series. Do you think this would have happened if you'd been able to finish your plotline in WCA?
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Shawn Kane
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 04 November 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 3239
Posted: 07 August 2020 at 11:36am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Hank Pym is viewed as an unstable wife beater still today even thoughRoger Stern, Steve Englehart, JB, Bob Harras, and Kurt Busiek did much to rehabilitate his image over a number of years after one story tainted his character. Unfortunately, the combined efforts of Mark Millar in the Ultimates and Chuck Austen in the Avengers brought that "trait" to the forefront and Bendis picked up the baton and all that rehab was washed away. 
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132129
Posted: 07 August 2020 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

It takes so little to start a character on the road to ruin—see Cyclops, for instance—but one has to wonder what’s going on when so many writers (and readers) keep forcing them back onto that road.
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Brian Miller
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 28 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 30832
Posted: 07 August 2020 at 1:01pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

I just pulled this run out of my longbox last night for a long overdue
reread. I also grabbed the annual and the X-FACTOR Annual from that
storyline with Walt inking JB. I couldn't wait until I got to that point in the
run, so I looked thru it. Holy lord, what a matchup. Even though it's only
happened the one time (as far as I know) on interiors, Walt's one of my
favorite JB inkers. He's still my pick for inking Elsewhen.

I don't if it's ever happened, but now I'm wondering what JB inking Walt
would look like.
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