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Underground > Comic Books >

The madness of John Byrne

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I'm Rick Jones, bitch

11:25 / 13.10.04

So does mine, though

12:34 / 13.10.04

It's actually really sad if you look at it from a diffrent angle. He's just lost in a sea of sucky comics, racism, stubborn opiniated nonsense, and denial. Kind of like Pres. Bush - except G. W. Bush didn't make any comic books, sucky or otherwise.

But seriously, half me wants to hate Byrne and half of me pities his wacko deluded little self.

18:24 / 13.10.04

But seriously, half me wants to hate Byrne and half of me pities his wacko deluded little self.

i think i pity Byrne and hate his remaining cult of fans, or i hate Byrne and pity his cult. either way, you'd have to be a pathetic scumfuck to be one of the people who suck up to him online.

And as soon as you're all members of the JLA it will be fine for you to call your fellow members by cutesy poo knick-names, too. Until then, how about a little respect for these characters you supposedly love so much?

i hate to state the obvious, but is he aware that all past, present, and future members of the JLA are, how shall we say, not real?* that they can't be offended, and that neither Byrne nor any of his readers can actually become members of the JLA?

* at least not in the conventional sense, if you want to talk all that crazy George Morrison fictionmagick jive

19:17 / 13.10.04

Ironically, while Byrne sees no problem with his own comments, he shows little tolerance in another thread, in which several posters refer to Red Tornado as “Reddy”:

>> And as soon as you're all members of the JLA it will be fine for you to call your fellow members by cutesy poo knick-names, too. Until then, how about a little respect for these characters you supposedly love so much?

Well, I do tend to dislike superhero nicknames. "Spidey" makes me cringe and "Reddy" is a really dumb nickname. Although I will admit a fondness for the old 60s Avenger stories where everyone called Giant-Man "High-Pockets." He takes the cake for friggin' strange and cheesy superhero nicknames. Cracks me up.

I am perplexed at the idea that nicknaming translates into a lack of respect for an individual, fictional or otherwise, though. Don't his fans refer to Byrne as "JB"? Isn't that kind of a nickname as well, which would translate into a lack of respect for him?

"And as soon as you've written Fantastic Four and Superman it will be fine for you to call me by a cutesy poo knick-name, too. Until then, how about a little respect for this creator you supposedly love so much? They call me MISTER Byrne!"

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

22:30 / 14.10.04

Byrne on Green Arrow's new AIDS story thread. Not to be read under any circumstances.

23:02 / 14.10.04

...

You know...

First of all, because no one else has said it, I feel compelled to mention that there are Hispanic women who are NATURALLY BLONDE. I happen to know one. And if she weren't going to be in Spain, I would try to get her to accompany me to Mid-Ohio Con, so she could kick John Byrne in the ass.

Second of all, since crappy comics evidently don't do the trick, I sincerely hope someone at DC reads this spew, finds Byrne talking about the non-heroism of Christopher Reeve, and promptly fires this bloated sack of shit. I'm fucking appalled. The truth of the matter is -- as Byrne would know if he were at all interested in researching a subject (a subject that also happens to be a man who JUST DIED!) before running his mouth about it -- that Reeve at one point DID attempt suicide, and was brought back from the brink by his family. Suicide would have been as easy for him as not sucking an oxygen tube, which (despite his disabilities) was indeed an option, but he held on in spite of a challenge none of us (I presume) can even start to imagine. That's about as heroic as it gets, and fuck this idiot for suggesting otherwise.

Third...yeah. The major challenge of writing an AIDS-themed character really IS the whole time distortion aspect of mainstream comic books. Way to interface with reality over there, big guy.

Sweet baby Jesus.

XXII:X:II = XXX

07:43 / 15.10.04

Oh. Oh, my brain. Oh, my soul. Oh.

I think both John Byrne and the world at large would be far happier if we could discover some technique to transfer him onto the printed comic page and leave him there. The question is by what technique. No doubt Byrne would have it be by some device that replaces his blood with ink and removes the third dimension from his body. Me, I opt for the "throwing him into a thresher and dumping the pureed sludge into a vat of ink" route. It may well be the most valuable contribution he'd have made to comics in years.

Of course, then the ink ought to be used for nothing but hentai and Sovereign Seven reprints.

Really, just how far is it necessary to jam your casaba melon of a head up your own hairy ass to debate the merits of whether or not the progression of HIV ought to be portrayed in realtime or "comics time", or whether anyone ought to be allowed to be crippled or otherwise afflicted in a "reality" where there's magic and super science? Or whether someone struggling with a debilitating condition in the real world is a "hero" in the literary sense because he did not choose to have to live with that condition? Are these things truly important to anyone who's ever received oral sex? It doesn't even have to have been GOOD oral sex, though I suppose that helps.

God, now they're even whining about people who've raised themselves up from a low place being held up as examples. The sense of entitlement is astounding. These are the same dickcheeses who bitch about affirmative action being unfair because they, as members of groups who've never had to fight against systems designed to keep them down, never received help to compensate, as though that status wasn't leg up enough.

I wish it were possible to email vomit. Just a chunky spray that issues forth from their CD drive. I imagine the Byrne household would be submerged by now.

Please reference my comments in the thread about JB's intolerance of nicknaming superheros for further bile I wish upon his worthless hide.

/+,

11:54 / 15.10.04

Second of all, since crappy comics evidently don't do the trick, I sincerely hope someone at DC reads this spew, finds Byrne talking about the non-heroism of Christopher Reeve

where's the Chris Reeve rant? i didn't see it...

13:56 / 15.10.04

>> Byrne on Green Arrow's new AIDS story thread. Not to be read under any circumstances.

LOL!

One would think the sales and low quality of LAB RATS alone would be enough to drive Byrne to suicide...

17:15 / 15.10.04

Oh, it IS there, Diz. Just hold your nose and keep reading. I'm afraid I might hurt someone if I go back and see how the thread has grown since yesterday, but the insanely tasteless Christopher Reeve stuff -- in which Byrne mentions, more or less in passing, that Reeve might well have been begging for death but was kept alive by heartless family members or something (no...really) -- is on page 2 or 3, I think.

Ethan Van Sciver

19:21 / 15.10.04

Absolutely awesome. I'm going to read it now. I love these Byrnerisms.

21:06 / 15.10.04

well Johnny Burnt has made it no secret that he's always been colo(u)r Blind. Perhaps his vision has deteriated to seeing the world only in Black and white.

Perhaps with the crappy duo-tone patern of his OMAC comic...

21:34 / 15.10.04

You're all missing the real funny bit.

"Suppose Speedy takes three years, "real time", to die. Currently, in DOOM PATROL, I have Nudge, who is 15 years old. Would I be compelled to have her age to 18 while the Speedy story unfolds in another title, unconnected to DP?"

Haha. Dude, you're not gonna last on DOOM PATROL for three years...

XXII:X:II = XXX

09:22 / 16.10.04

He's not going to last on DOOM PATROL three more months. That's got to be some of the most tired shit I've ever seen in a comic.

/+,

21:23 / 03.12.04

I hate to beat a dead horse but this guy just can't open his mouth without sounding like a capital prick, can he?

In response to comments he made about Christopher Reeve on the internet, Byrne explained: “I’ve gotten tired of people calling Christopher Reeve a hero. A really terrible thing happened to him and our society can’t deal with it when terrible things happened so we try to make out that it isn’t a terrible thing - ‘It’s an uplifting thing. He’s a hero.’ He’s not a hero, he’s in hell.” Byrne went on to clarify that he was not attacking Reeve, but the misuse of the English language.

And this little gem makes me wonder how many Latinas and/or hookers Mr. Byrne has ever met:

"[Referring to Jessica Alba in Fantastic Four movie] Personal prejudice: Hispanic and Latino women with blond hair look like hookers to me, no matter how clean or "cute" they are. Somehow those skin tones that look so good with dark, dark hair just don't work for me with lighter shades. Like I said -- personal prejudice."

At least he's honest about it.

D Terminator XXXIII

21:25 / 03.12.04

Maybe he was talkin' about the Sin City movie where Alba plays a hooker?

D Terminator XXXIII

21:26 / 03.12.04

Y'know, reverentially.

21:39 / 03.12.04

>> ‘It’s an uplifting thing. He’s a hero.’ He’s not a hero, he’s in hell.”

Never thought I'd devil's advocate defending John Byrne, but I thought I'd point out that even though I totally disagree with Byrne's comments on this (and everything else), some have posited that he didn't mean that Reeve was burning in hell in the afterlife but that after the accident, his life became a living hell what with the paralysis and all. Although I totally disagree with "he's not a hero", the second half of Byrne's statement may just have been 'he was miserable after the accident.'

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

22:16 / 03.12.04

Who cares? He still sounds like the biggest dickhead on the planet.

Who's up for a petiton to get DC to fire this fucktard?

22:22 / 03.12.04

Online petitions never solved anything.

06:06 / 04.12.04

"What this has earned us is..."

Has this quote been sourced? Byrne is Canadian not American citizen as far as I know.

Likening a little blowhard like Byrne to Hitler cheapens the power of the evil bastard's name (Adolf's, not John's).

Byrne story: back when Marv Wolfman sued Marvel for a piece of the BLADE profits, Byrne testified against Wolfman as a sort of expert witness, and trumpeted the corporate side of the issue. (He made a famous comment back in the 1980s that he was happy being a little cog in the big corporate machine). When Marv took that stand, Byrne supposedly pulled faces and stuck his tongue out at him.

Yes, he is a wanker, but he's endlessly entertaining, appalling and thus of some value in the world of comics. if he shut up and let, he could quote Nixon: "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore." A Byrneless industry would be slightly less colorful, even if that color is shit-stain brown...

14:27 / 04.12.04

Likening a little blowhard like Byrne to Hitler cheapens the power of the evil bastard's name (Adolf's, not John's).

Oddly enough I was just thinking this as I was veiwing the active topics so I'm going to move to change the title.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

15:25 / 04.12.04

Byrne is an American citizen at this point (he became a citizen back in the laet 80's IIRC), and has always been a Corporate Conservative, happily giving away his work to the compnay as long as they treated him like a star, and then bitching about HIS rights as a creator when he is dismissed.

BTW, Doom Patrol has been renewed through issue 18 according to the contracts, but sales don't look like it will last much past that.

Any truth to the rumor that he and Mike Carlin are friends, so as long as Carlin has a position of power at DC, Byrne will always have a monthly book if he wants it?

00:57 / 05.12.04

I'm going to move to have the title changed to Biff "Fucking" Tannen's "Cuntyfuck McTwatface, the Shit-Eating Racist Freak".

05:06 / 06.12.04

"BTW, Doom Patrol has been renewed through issue 18 according to the contracts, but sales don't look like it will last much past that."

Is anybody reading DP? I loved Morrison's run, yet still like the original core concept too, which Byrne's offal, er, sorry, book is supposed to harken back to. I read issue one, an extension of an apparently appalling JLA story, and it was piss-poor but not without nostalgia value...almost. I keep reading online that it's "meat and potatoes" solid fun, but most of what passes for human thought on Comicon and Newsarama is reactionary fanboy shite.

I suppose my question is, is DOOM PATROL merely formula hackwork, or is it train-wreck shit on a stick?

Please discuss.

PS: Kirbyfan and fool that I am, I plan to check out Byrne's SEMEN OF THE DEMON book (or whatever it's called), which is at very least scripted by Will Pheifer (sp?), who I hear is decent, but he writes Aquaman, so what the fuck? It's a damned uncertain world.

XXII:X:II = XXX

06:15 / 06.12.04

By this point Byrne has sewn up his legacy, and the past few years have been him taking that for granted and diminishing it in the process. I do not debate that in his day he played an important role, but that does not give him leave to be the enormous dingus he's become. If you really look at his characters you see he's actually got a staggeringly limited palette of facial features and bodytypes he's got at the ready. It's lazy is what it is, which shows in things like his Wonder Woman run when he couldn't even be arsed to draw backgrounds most of the time.

I liked Dan Slott's joke recently that in the "season finale" of his SHE-HULK series it will be revealed that this "John Byrne" she's referenced in the past is a figment of Shulkie's imagination. This seems only good and proper to me.

/+,

Haus of Mystery

22:07 / 13.12.04

*BYRNE UPDATE*

I suppose, I should anticipate being 'discovered' by a new generation of artists who will somewhat sycophantically elevate me to levels as just unrealistic as the depths to which the previous generation sought to condemn me! Fun, ain't it?"

Who's he comparing himself to? That's right it's Jack Kirby.

Is someone writing Byrne nowadays? Is he a REAL BOY?

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

01:29 / 14.12.04

BUT.

Kirby rocks my balls into outer space.

Byrne just draws the same creepy faces, again and again.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

14:03 / 14.12.04

Byrne has OFTEN called himself the current version of Jack Kirby....referring to the speed of hsi drawing and the like, but him being Jack Kirby is retelling all of Jack's stories or working on Jack's characters.

This is the main thing about Byrne that pisses me off to no end, as Kirby hated working on characters someone else created. Kirby kept trying to do new things, even into his 70's while Byrne is happy to keep writing comics like it's 1975, and his vaunted "style change" was to get even lazier with his layouts and figure drawing. Kirby was unfailing gracious, and often had fans at his house, while Byrne is best known for his prima donna attitude at conventions. Kirby often helped artists break into the business, and helped a LOT of artists at Marvel learn dynamic layouts after years of working in more static styles; Byrne often compains about new creators, and is known for his "feuds" with other comics creators.

Bryne did work on a lot of Jack's stuff, and he can crank out pages, but I met Jack Kirby, I read Kirby's stuff, and Byrne, you are no Jack Kirby.

XXII:X:II = XXX

05:26 / 16.12.04

SR: Byrne has OFTEN called himself the current version of Jack Kirby....referring to the speed of hsi drawing and the like, but him being Jack Kirby is retelling all of Jack's stories or working on Jack's characters.

Wouldn't Byrne have to have something to do with what's going on in comics today in order to qualify as the "current" anything? Everything he does is pretty much its own thing and cannot rightfully be regarded as having anything to do with anything. Save for his stint on JLA, which thankfully they didn't let him write alone, just about everything he does is rehashing something from 30+ years ago: Generations, Doom Patrol, Spider-Man: Chapter One, X-Men: The Lost Years, Marvel: The Lost Years...

I think he's trying to tell us something: he got lost years ago. If only he had managed to stay there.

/+,

10:32 / 16.12.04

/Bryne did work on a lot of Jack's stuff, and he can crank out pages, but I met Jack Kirby, I read Kirby's stuff, and Byrne, you are no Jack Kirby. /

Excellent.

16:19 / 28.12.04

i decided to do an experiment, and join the John Byrne forum. i was totally polite and articulate, refrained from any personal attacks or even criticisms of JB's work.

all i did was defend the work of a few people JB apparently doesn't like in the Warren Ellis thread, and disagree with him over an issue in the gay superheroes thread, and it took me less than a day to get banned, apparently permanently.

wow.

17:26 / 28.12.04

Wow, diz...very interesting. Yeah, I hear Johnny bans people left and right. He even banned Mark Waid and Peter David, also within 24 hours, I think, for similar polite disagreements.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

17:53 / 28.12.04

So, any word on how well his Doom Patrol is doing? Sales?

A

02:54 / 29.12.04

Byrnesy was up in Arms when Marvel cancelled X-Men: The Lost Years, but it was (at the time at least) The worst-selling X-Men comic in history.

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