John Byrne (1) (1950–)

A nostalgia-fest for aging Marvel zombies (or MMMS or FOOM members, if you prefer) has John Byrne doing an X-Men "What If?" series that picks up at the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga, using the original, aborted ending to that storyline that left Jean Grey alive and free of the Phoenix Force but psychically lobotomized. The X-Men are concerned about her, of course, but are immediately distracted by mutant activity detected by Cerebro and a growing number of attacks by a newer, deadlier show more iteration of the Sentinel robots.

I was a long-time member of Byrne's Faithful Fifty Thousand, following him from title to title from the 1970s through the early 2000s, but I drifted away from him as I transitioned from buying comics monthly to just checking out the trade paperbacks I could find in local libraries. So it's a real kick to get to see his art again and remember why I enjoyed it so much.

While my inner-teen is fanboying, though, the older me starts to get a little bored by the action-driven story that jumps quickly from scene to scene and character to character to character to character (SO MANY CHARACTERS!!!) as it tries for "epic" but fizzles into fragmented and shallow. Character development is limited to some momentary fretting between explosions.

It doesn't help that I find the Sentinels to be the X-Men's least interesting foes. I mean, they're just robots, so who cares?

Still, it was fun to visit with all these characters without all the baggage that subsequent decades have heaped upon them. (So many deaths and betrayals!) I'm not sure I'll come back for the next two volumes of this series, but I'm grateful for this chance to see what might have been.

Disclosure: I received access to a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.com. show less

I gotta say, as I go through these issues, I'm impressed with the changes that Byrne was willing to make, from boosting Sue's powers, pulling Thing out of the team and swapping in She-Hulk, moving the Richards to Connecticut, wiping out the Baxter Building, and hooking up Johnny and Alicia.

And there's the stories too. I doubt you'd ever see the word "nigger" in a mainstream Marvel comic today, but Byrne was going for the stupidity of hate in all its forms.

Did he land every story? Hell no. show more But did he try some very different things? Hell yes, he did, and this collection just carries that on.

Good stuff, this. show less

This is a weird one. Yes, it's got great John Byrne art all through it, from finished, polished work right through to quick doodles. It's got commentary by Roger Stern, Terry Austin, and Chris Claremont. It has a long interview with Byrne, all of which is interesting.

However, it is shockingly full of ridiculous spelling errors (half of which seem to be other artist and author names, which is simply unforgivable), and all those people who write about Byrne seem to be doing their best to say show more nice things about him, but you can almost see the strain beneath the smile. Claremont's the only one who seems mostly comfortable, but it wouldn't be long before he and Byrne would have their falling out.

The interview is most illuminating in how Byrne casually bashes others...Bob Layton, Jim Shooter, hell, even the guy who made Byrne look good, Terry Austin...though it's interesting to feel the dislike toward Shooter while also seeing Byrne grudgingly admit that Shooter pushed him to be a better storyteller.

You can also clearly see that Byrne is, sadly, starting to not just believe in his own press, but getting ready to wallow in it. It's too bad because, while Byrne still had some decent years and ideas ahead of him, he was also about to quietly flame out from all that hubris and not playing well with others.

Which is too bad. While he's still secured his place among the top comic artists, he literally could have been right up at the top. show less

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

I get a weird little frisson out of comic book titles that use the character name in them, as opposed to a series prefix, like this or World Without a Superman. I don't know why; it's just neat. Anyway, this book adds support to my Jim-Starlin-and-Jim-Aparo-are-better-apart-than-together theory by pairing Aparo with John Byrne. This short book begins with a silent chapter where the Gotham City police find a dead Batman, the show more best efforts of a hospital can't save him, a nosy reporter's leak means the whole city quickly knows, and then a second Batman corpse turns up. John Byrne used to infuriate me with his excess verbosity on Alpha Flight, but like issue #13 of that series showed, he can do great stuff without them when he wants to. The chapter is a masterpiece of storytelling by Aparo, communicating a whole story with only a single, well-chosen word.

When the second issue begins, there's a ton of text and I got worried, but Byrne actually balances the word and image well throughout. The core of the story is that someone is dressing people as Batman and then killing them, often in grotesque fashion; it's actually kind of a dark 1980s take on a Silver Age story, and it works quite well, as Batman, Commissioner Gordon, and the rest of the police have to mobilize against this increasingly bizarre threat. Eventually the answers materialized and they're improbably convoluted, even for the kind of story this is imitating, but the ride up until the point was so enjoyable it was hard for me to care. This is a "typical Batman" story: no huge stakes, no deranged supervillains, and it works as a very solid example of that genre.

As a side note, I read this book where it takes place, between A Death in the Family and A Lonely Place of Dying. I didn't gain anything from the experience: the Batman here doesn't show any effects of the death of Jason Todd.

Batman "Year One" Stories: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence » show less