PeterDavid.net

I dont want to get off on a rant here but...

The only real problem with the internet is that it is the newest piece of technology, and with new technology, there will always be a "big problem with..."

If you don't agree, explain how I'm wrong to the single mom who paid thousands of dollars (to an industry already making billions) because her son downloaded songs off the internet.

So please: Download music, cyber-chat with someone from Sri Lanka, check the status on PAD's formally wounded cat, enjoy porn, read movie spoilers, and most of all...complain about the dangers of cloning, cause that technology is so new! Stop worrying about the internet.

and, while im ranting. The great scourge of the comic book industry are artists who think they can write (no dis-respect to David Mack and Frank Miller).

Clearly you wrote this with some insidious plot in mind. Your goal must be to co-write a new West Coast Avengers book with Byrne.

Well, John Byrne is a discussion that's appearing a lot online. I'm glad you brought this up. I've never met him so whatever I've heard and would repeat is hearsay, but people generally have bad news to report on him from conventions or whatever.

My beef with the guy is how much bad product he's put out, can you honestly think of anything that's A-list from him? Good ideas, but no storyline execution whatsoever. Disappointing. And you can tell when he's rushing his art or being a complete hack. Sometimes the dialogue rings so untrue you can't believe it. Besides his Uncanny X-Men where he's known to just plot and draw (well) and some Hulks/She Hulks/Wolverine/FF I don't have anything left of his on my book shelf or comic boxes. Byrne pissed me off so many times in the 80-90's because he wouldn't stay on a title for a decent amount of time, nor wrap up any loose things. It got to the point where I stopped buying his work because it seemed like he'd commit to like 6 issues here and there and then onto another title for more of the same.

can you honestly think of anything that's A-list from him?

X-Men

Fantastic Four

Hulk (first time)

Alpha Flight

Next Men

Babe & Danger Unlimited

Superman

She-Hulk

Generations

Just a few, mind...

seemed like he'd commit to like 6 issues here and there

If you actually check his history, you'll see that John does commit to projects and does stay on the books he takes over for a fairly long period of time. He produced a whole barnyard full of Superman-books, stayed for years on FF and Next Men, Namor and Wonder Woman and so on. He had somewhat shorter stints on Hulk and WCA and some other titles, for various reasons, which often were out of his control.

Well this is just silly. Everyone knows the scourge of the internet is USENET.

hehe.

Michael Norton

All hyperbole and allegations of hypocrisy aside, Byrne does have a point. It can be pretty annoying having someone put thoughts in your mind (an analogy to putting words in your mouth that strangely doesn't work). But I think it's more to do with people being wrong, vindictive, petty, dumb, etcetera when doing that, than with the simple act of trying to ascertain someone's frame of mind. If someone is genuinely interested in what was gooing through someone's mind at some point, and tries to deduce that based on relevant data, then I see nothing too wrong with that. But when used to insult, prove a point, or with whatever bias suits the "deducer", well, that's another matter entirely. And of course, it should be put into perspective, meaning that it should be clear that its someone's interpretation, rather than truth. Which I find is true of most things.

Anyway, that's just my opinion, expressed while thinking of coke and cookies and a million other things...

Actually, mind-reading (as defined by John Byrne) is the scourge of critics, and of course the logical extreme of that concept, everyone with a voice. It's the downside of freedom of speech -- abuse of freedom of speech. It's not all that bad a scourge, when you think about it. Of course, it's never more scourge-like than when the mind-reader is actually right and the mind-read doesn't want to hear it.

The scourge of the internet, of course, is actually a number of different things, all of which can be found in my e-mail inbox.

Actually, the scourge of references like that is folks who make references like that.

Folks who say the worst thing about anything is the one thing they happen to be kvetching about at that moment, when what they're kvetching about at the moment is far from the worst thing, or even the three hundred and seventieth worst thing.

Illustrative:

"You know the worst thing about Ted Bundy? He always parked his car so it was hard to get out of my driveway."

or

"You know the worst thing about Nazi Germany? The waiters were so rude."

The scourge of the internet? Viruses. No contest. AFTER that, spam. After that, stalkers. Somewhere twenty or so entries further down the list, MAYBE, folks who assume they knew what you were thinking.

I really have mixed feelings about John Byrne. He's hit a few grand slams that I enjoyed but he's also struck out a few times. From his own comments he seems to contradict himself quite often and without realising it, but should I allow that to colour my opinion of his WORK?

It seems like he has reached a point in his career where justifiable or not, people consider him washed up and I prefer to give creators who have impressed me before a chance to do so again with their newest project instead of automatically declining to purchase it.

That said, his opinions and antics towards fans and other creators make me avoid any type of "behind the scenes" fan-forum/fan-websites dedicated to him because I'd rather know of John Byrne solely through his published work.

I don’t know how much “mind reading” is actually involved when pointing out one’s past statements with one’s conflicting new statements, but maybe I simply haven’t been to the websites containing these myriad prognosticators.

Every time I hear something about Byrne it reminds me of what Kurt Busiek, among others, has said about the behind-the-scenes dramas rendering comic book reading less enjoyable.

The truth is that out of everything I've read that Byrne has written (FF, Alpha Flight, She-Hulk, Hulk, Avengers, Namor), I've enjoyed very little. My opinion of his skill is that as a writer, he's a damn good penciller. I will not buy a comic he's involved with, but if I'm honest with myself, I know that the main reason I won't give his work another chance has nothing to do with his writing, but with the baseless, stupid comments he's made on the Internet; in particular what he's said about PAD's work, and most recently his thoughtless comments he made about the Hulk movie based purely on what he saw in one of the trailers.

There's a part of me that, like Marc, wants to ignore all this behind-the-scenes stuff, and that part of me is a little angry that I've completely tuned out Byrne's published work simply because of his online antics.

But, at the same time, I have to admit that the fans' growing knowledge of the behind-the-scenes stuff has done quite a bit of good. After all, if it weren't for Internet outrage, would Spider-Girl or Captain Marvel still be around? Would Waid and Weiringo have been put back on FF?

I guess I'm pretty conflicted on this issue. I don't have a definitive opinion as to whether or not comic book readers being able to peek backstage is good or bad. Just felt like talking about it.

I used to enjoy Byrne's work, but not since he started doing revisionist comics history (Spiderman year 1, X-Men the Hidden Years, Marvel the lost Generation, Generations).

The latest Generations is just plain confusing and he's losing readers. The article that PAD refers to sounds like an attempt to justify that and blame it on others. I'm still looking forward to his JLA arc with Claremont.

"John has declared that the great scourge of the internet is mind-reading: i.e., people who write posts in which they opine as to what was going through someone's mind when they said or did something. And he is exhorting anyone on his board to try and stomp this practice out whenever possible."

Good luck to him. I don't think it's possible to improve people's reading comprehension so that message board posters read what other posters actually wrote instead of what they think is meant, but it's a noble effort, whether or not he falls victim to the scourge himself.

"See, I would have thought the great scourge of the internet was spam. But apparently this is right up there."

Spam is mostly a problem in e-mail, and perhaps still on Usenet. When it comes to message boards, the lack of reading comprehension is, I would say, probably a bigger problem than the occasional troll. People can ignore trolls relatively easily, at which point they usually fade away, but talking past each other seems to be eternal...

"The latest Generations is just plain confusing..."

It is? Are we reading the same book?

I really don't particularly go for the mind reading (though at the time of the Spider-Clone debacle I did get into a drinking game whereby we pretended to be Marvel editors and tried to come up with a way to screw up Spider-Man to a greater extent than they had . . . ) but I will say that the paucity of his recent work that I have read has caused me to go back and reassess his older work: I don't actually think it was that good to begin with. Frank Miller's stuff holds up a lot better. I also think his art would look a lot nicer inked by someone like Cam Smith or Mark Farmer.

Michileen Martin: But, at the same time, I have to admit that the fans' growing knowledge of the behind-the-scenes stuff has done quite a bit of good. After all, if it weren't for Internet outrage, would Spider-Girl or Captain Marvel still be around? Would Waid and Weiringo have been put back on FF?

Luigi Novi: W & W have been put back on FF? When did this happen? I didn't hear of it anywhere.

Can anyone link me to a new/reference source for this? Thanks. :-)

luigi, go to http://www.newsarama.com

“The truth is that out of everything I've read that Byrne has written (FF, Alpha Flight, She-Hulk, Hulk, Avengers, Namor), I've enjoyed very little.”

-All the justification that you or anyone should ever need to remove a comic creator’s upcoming work from your comics-budget.

I've harbored the notion that Byrne is a very unpleasant person all the way back to his big interview with The Comics Journal back in the early 80's. It was, if memory serves, the first "major" interview he'd really done, and there were a lot of snide comments about Shooter, Claremont, and Perez in there.

Time has done nothing more than bring it more to the surface and given him more to spew his bile about.

To be honest, I learned very quickly that it's best to keep one's heroes at arm's length. Experiences with a number of Doctor Who actors really brought it home. In fact, I would say the only people that I've admired from afar that turned out to be the genuine article would be Ian Marter (Harry from Doctor Who), John Leeson (K9), Ray Bradbury and...well, Peter David.

I've never forgotten the time we spent with Peter during a 1993 Kansas City comics con (though I'm sure he has!). He was very friendly and open, and it was a race to the wallet to compare baby pictures. :)

JSM

I'm not a fan of Mr. Byrne's work at all and I think he's pencilling work has decline over the past ten years, which has exposed his limitations as a writer even more.

Still, he does have a point. I've scene many trolls on the message board who do post as if they are privy of the most intimate thoughts of writers and artists. Usually, it's one that they don't like.

There's a guy who posts regularly on the dccomics.com message board almost daily, usually describing how Mark Waid is plotting to destroy the entire post-Crisis continuity at DC.

Haha, you mean MoTA? That guy posts everywhere from Newsarama to the Pulse about what a horrible job Waid and Leinil Yu are doing.

Is Byrne really as nasty as people describe him to be though? Living in Australia, there's very little chance a prominent comic book writer/artist would come down and visit and do a signing (hint hint), so I can't say I've met anyone remotely famous. I've been to his message board and most of the people there seemed like they would defend him to the death. Just like...the people...here...

There are about five posts actually dealing with the mind reading thing. The rest have to do with Byrne's work and personality. While this is not mind reading per se, it does demonstrate an inability to stick to the point. It's like someone posting about the PAD/Quesada debacle and then everyone piping in with "Well, I hated his Supergirl run!" What does that have to do with anything?

John Byrne being or not being likable is beside the point. I'm not buddies with anyone in comics nor do I expect to be. The issue should be whether you enjoy their work.

SER: There are about five posts actually dealing with the mind reading thing. The rest have to do with Byrne's work and personality. While this is not mind reading per se, it does demonstrate an inability to stick to the point.

Or it simply demonstrates a desire to talk about something else. There's nothing on this site that says we have to stick EXACTLY to what PAD says, point-by-point, when we post on his blog.

And by the way, your post wasn't exactly "sticking to the point," either.

There are about five posts actually dealing with the mind reading thing. The rest have to do with Byrne's work and personality. While this is not mind reading per se, it does demonstrate an inability to stick to the point.

-Actually, PAD’s post expresses amusement over the fact that Byrne is contradicting himself, as Byrne has and does engage in “mind reading”. Thus commenting upon Byrne’s hypocritical staements and whether said contradictory statements can affect one’s enjoyment of Byrne’s work is on topic.

So what you're actually saying is that John Byrne is the antichrist?

Seriously though, perception is an interesting thing. When I was a kid, plunking down my 12 or 15 cents for comics, I used to read the Marvel bullpen bulletins and letters pages, filled with descriptions of people like 'Jolly' Jack Kirby and 'Jazzy' John Romita and think Marvel must be a pretty cool place to work, with lots of fun guys, all having a great time.

When I got into high school and college and began to have a bit more disposable income, I started going to the occasional comic convention in New York. At that point, I basically discovered that the quality of someone's art or writing had little bearing on what they were like as human beings. Some people who I thought were going to be cool people turned out to be jerks, while others, whose work I maybe didn't like all that much, turned out to be decent, well-spoken guys. The exception of course being Jack Kirby who was delightful. I remember spending the better part of an hour with three or four of us clustered around his table while he explained to us all the mythic archetypes that he used for New Gods, Forever People, and so on.

In the late eighties, when I began writing for the late-lamented Comics Scene, my perceptions changed again. I enjoyed talking to creators about the books they were writing or drawing, bearing in mind that most of them were touting their wares, which meant they generally put their best foot forward.

And now we've got the Internet, where creators (including our kind host) get to espouse their views, keep us updated on what they're doing, and hopefully get a little extra attention for their books. We get to hear about the financial deals they've made, personal grudges, publishing delays; the list goes on and on. And while I still enjoy learning more about those creators, a small part of me misses those days when I'd plunk down a couple of dimes and read about my favorite comic book people, with names like 'Jazzy' and 'The Man.' And a computer was something you used to play Pong.

Rose colored spectacles have now been removed. We return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Haha, you mean MoTA? That guy posts everywhere from Newsarama to the Pulse about what a horrible job Waid and Leinil Yu are doing.

Well . . . (sheepish grin).

The "scourge of the internet" is all of the responses by people (including this one) who think they have something important to say in response to blog entries made by people more famous. ;)

The "scourge of the internet" is all of the responses by people (including this one) who think they have something important to say in response to blog entries made by people more famous. ;)

You mean it? I'm a scourge now? All right! Made it, ma! Top o' the world!

Over the years of reading the JB/PAD exchanges, I've found a common trend - JB's criticisms of PAD were more for his work than anything else (like his habit of writing characters, well, out of character, for the sake of a joke). But PAD criticizes JB himself. Of the two, I'd have to say the latter is worse.

vv

The exception of course being Jack Kirby who was delightful. I remember spending the better part of an hour with three or four of us clustered around his table while he explained to us all the mythic archetypes that he used for New Gods, Forever People, and so on.

Do you have any idea at all how lucky you are and how much I envy you? :)

I had the same thought when he said he got to talk to Kirby.

Over the years of reading the JB/PAD exchanges, I've found a common trend - JB's criticisms of PAD were more for his work than anything else (like his habit of writing characters, well, out of character, for the sake of a joke). But PAD criticizes JB himself. Of the two, I'd have to say the latter is worse.

If you view it in a narrow sense, I suppose it comes across like that. But it's not accurate. It runs more like this: John makes comments about my work that are factual inaccuracies. I reply, No, that's wrong, and he should acknowledge it's wrong. Which he doesn't do and makes snide remarks besides.

My favorite was the time he attempted to rebut my critique of "Chapter One" by saying I was advocating crowds standing around and doing nothing while policemen were beaten to death. Oh yeah. That sure stuck to my work.

PAD

I used to manage a Burger King that John Byrne came to a few times. I'm proud to say I never tried to read his mind and always waited for him to tell me what he wanted. I may have assumed he was hungry and thinking he'd rather eat somewhere else, but I kept that to myself.

Oh, and he never hit me or spit on me or anything. Actually, he was a lot nicer than most customers.

Does anyone envy me serving fast food to Byrne?

Btw, I think most of JB new stuff sucks. Could any of you read my mind about that when reading the above?

John Byrne is basically an EGOMANIAC. Way back in the eighties his work was incredible, now I find it run of the mill. As a writer it seems he's stuck in the old days and can't move forward. He tries to shock the audience but fails miserably. As for his artwork, it has deterioted over the years. Sketchy, less detail, sorry John, but you are HACKING.

Peter, in any given issue of any series you wrote you had more humor in that one issue than Byrne had in his entire run of the She-Hulk. Quite frankly, I'm mystified at all the fans out there that enjoy his new stuff. It's horrible! Byrne clearly has a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore.

I am a fan of both John Byrne and Peter David. I regularly read both message boards as well as both creators works. I find Byrne's work to be very entertaining and I look forward to anything that he comes out with. This whole bashing of creators or slamming on their work (regardless of who's doing the bashing) is a complete waste of time and space. Enjoy it or don't but stop the pettiness.

My hatred for John Byrne derives from one thing and one thing only:

He ruined Supergirl and it took Peter David to fix her.

I may be shallow, but at least I'm shallow in a very specific manner. :)

You think your life's rough? Try being a fanboy stuck with the same name. Regardless of whether or not Byrne's as vile as (nearly) everyone makes him out to be, I've had an unpleasant experience or two at the four conventions I've been to in my lifetime, simply because of the name recognition and the baggage it brings.

Once I was standing in line for an Andy Kubert signing. This one guy heard my name was John Byrne, and the moron started bagging on THE John Byrne's work and called me an @$$hole a few times before I could get it through his thick head I was in grade school during JB's original X-Men run. Like THE John Byrne would be standing in line for a signing at a convention, anyway...

My childhood dreams of drawing for comics? Dashed before I graduated high school, thanks to the inevitable association of his reputation (and my not being able to come up with a cool nom-de-plume like the already-taken "Mobeius"). Ditto for writing, unless I felt like changing my name, or using my middle name (only serial killers are recognized by their middle names, so that was right out).

And you can forget about posting on fan sites under your real name. You think some people'd be able to figure that one out for themselves, but noooo.... :)

Not THE John Byrne, but ANOTHER John Byrne

"My hatred for John Byrne derives from one thing and one thing only:

He ruined Supergirl and it took Peter David to fix her.

I may be shallow, but at least I'm shallow in a very specific manner. :)"

Actually....I think Marv, George and Jerry ruined Supergirl.

I've met Byrne a few times...and he's been nothing but nice to me. And why should I care if he's an ass? Hell...I'm an ass! PAD routinely defends Harlan Ellison who has no less a history of saying whatever he feels. I judge a man by what I see him do. And other than a few conversations with one of the three creators I previously mentioned....I have nothing to judge them by but their work. And I remain a fan of all three despite their "rumored" foibles.

The thing that really bugs me about efforts at mind-reading, whether I'm reading a review of someone else's work or of my own (I write in the gaming field), is that critical mind-reading almost never works and wastes time and effort that could go into better analysis of the actual work at hand. There are contexts in which it matters to me whether someone's a rude bastard or a gentle soul who smooths troubled crowd, but often what I want to know are things like "Is it a fun read?", "Does it deal with the preceding work on the subject?", "Is there something distinctive here that I haven't seen before, or haven't seen this way?", and like that.

As a writer, I want to know what people take away from the work so that I can try to build up the parts that worked as I intended (and, sometimes, the parts that worked better than I intended) and to fix or do something with the parts that didn't work. As a reader, I want to know if it's a good story, suitable to its subject, worth my bucks.0.

Whether the reviewer was as psychically traumatized by Peter David's entry in The Faces of Science Fiction matters in a "Peter David: Threat or Menace" retrospective (he said, ducking and running), but probably doesn't when it comes to telling me whether I'd likely enjoy recent issues of Captain Marvel. Mind-reading games distract from the thing that reviewing ought to be doing most of.

John Byrne got me into comics. If not for his runs on Iron First, Marvel Team Up and X-Men, I may well not have started reading comic books at all. I moved on to reading and enjoy a wide variety of comics...my comic book heroes today are Englehart and Gerber for the most part, with places in the pantheon for a lot of other writers...but I'll always remember reading the story where Spider-Man and Adam Warlock teamed up.

I'm not a big fan of what I've seen of Byrne's modern work. I didn't like his run on Wonder Woman (mainly because I felt it was a lot of talking: he'd do entire pages where the Justice Society would be standing around discussing the plot of the past five issues in an exposition blizzard) and I don't like Generations or his revisions of Marvel history. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't check out his work if they announced he was doing something else. The man's a hell of a penciller, and he did some amazing work on Fantastic Four as a writer.

Having read the back and forth ego wars between comic creators doesn't really matter to me. I probably wouldn't approach Byrne if I somehow found myself in proximity to him. But I probably wouldn't approach *any* professional writer. I don't have that kind of self-confidence. The work is the way I know them, and it's enough for me.

John Byrne has a long history of finding fault with others for the things he's guilty of himself. He has repeatedly, for years, claimed to know what writers were thinking when they wrote such-and-such story, or, he's ascribed motives when he really knows squat about what that writer was thinking. He has repeatedly accused certain writers of plagiarism, and despite being corrected by people who know better, never stops repeating the same false stories.

For those of you who only see the calculated results of Byrne's tactics, let me enlighten you. You think he doesn't make personal attacks? So, comparing a writer's entire award-winning run on a comic book to excrement isn't a personal attack? He seems to be confining himself to creative matters, but in reality his comments are so negative, and in many cases so inaccurate and scurrilous that they amount to personal attacks.

PAD has been the target of these types of camouflaged personal attacks on a number of occasions. I've not seen PAD ever resort to the same when he's had to defend himself. Not in all the years I've been online, or reading comic-book related reporting.

As for the topic at hand, I repeat, Byrne himself has many times stated as fact what his opinions, his psychic impressions are regarding a writer's and editors motivations or thoughts during the creation of a story. I investigated one such set of claims, for personal reasons, and found them to be utterly false.

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