I used to post on the John Byrne board when he’d go off on another one of his inaccurate rants about me. No point nowadays. Not only does the merest mention of my name cause denizens to cry “Off topic” or tremble in fear that a fight might break out and disturb the peace), but John announced that he now has the power to lock up threads and delete posts to cut down on some of the “twaddle.” The hilarious bit was that he announced it in a thread titled “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.” It is gloriously ironic that he quoted the famed Shelley poem “Ozymandias,” a cautionary parable about the futility of egomania and the emptiness of self-aggrandization. It’s the most unintentionally self-revelatory thing John’s said since he used a quote from a fictional Nazi as his sig line.
In any event, John–who never hesitates to castigate others for proclaiming to be mindreaders, but doesn’t hesitate to put forward his opinions on my state of mind as fact–claimed, “PAD is evidentally one of those people who cannot separate himself from his work, and so has taken each of my comments as a personal attack, responding with personal attacks, including most unprofessional “commentary” in the comic books he writes.”
Well, no. I’ve pointed out that some of his critiques of my work were wildly inaccurate (for instance, holding up Spidey 2099 #1 as an example of how to do a first issue wrong because the hero never appears in costume…except he does, for eight pages. Later John admitted he hadn’t actually read it, but stood by his opinion nonetheless.) And I’ve taken his personal attacks as personal attacks (for instance, his claiming that I advocated the concept of people standing by and doing nothing while policemen were beaten to death.) But I’ve written quite a bit more than John has, and separating myself from the work has become pretty easy. Unfortunately, John doesn’t quite seem to be able to reciprocate. For instance, he obviously thought the sequence in “Captain Marvel #2” in which Rick Jones laughs at the Hulk Annual was some sort of retaliation directed at John. No. I would have done the same sequence no matter who wrote that idiot annual, presuming the editor let me.
Jeez. Jack Kirby created Funky Flashman and HouseRoy, obvious Stan Lee and Roy Thomas pastiches. What an unprofessional that Jack Kirby was. And hey, how about that story featuring a superpowered character visually based on Jim Shooter, right down to the acne scars as I recall, blowing off his own foot with a blast beam. Who is the unprofessional person who drew that story? I’m trying to remember…
PAD
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John Byrne quitted She-Hulk because he didn’t agree with the scene where She-Hulk shaved her legs. That scene was shown ia a She-Hulk GN, written by another person. But Byrne didn’t agree with it and quitted the title.
So, it really all comes down to a “leg-hair” item. Hëll, She-Hulk is a Marvel property, another writer can even turn her red skinned, if Marvel let him.
Alex; did you even read SER’s posts???
Hey, given Byrne’s opinion about how a first issue should be done, I wonder how much he liked Silver Surfer #1 from a few weeks ago. I mean, the Surfer was in what, two panels? If that.
Yes, I did read them. But that doesn’t change it at all: Marvel owns She-Hulk and can do whatever they want with the character. Byrne should already created a proper and decent creator-owned series or character. He should stop complaining about how a publisher treats its sandbox characters. Not even Stan Lee cares about this characters anymore.
**Serious question, Frank: PAD and JB have a definite past together, and so there’s a reason for their animosity toward one another. But, why do you have such a grudge against JB that you constantly dog on him? Is it just because of something he said in response to you on a message board?
If you don’t care for his attitude, fine. But, I think this vendetta of yours is unhealthy. Do as you please, I guess, but sometimes you seem as obsessed as Kurt Busiek’s ex-pal that dedicated web pages to haunting the guy.
Seriously, do you think anything positive will result from your attacks on JB? Is there an end result that you are shooting for, or do you just receive satisfaction from deriding the man?
Just curious.
If it’s your idea of fun, go ahead, but it seems like a waste of energy that could be put to better use. **
I’ve never understood these remarks on message boards — like clockwork, they come up, someone saying someone else’s posting style is unhealthy, and they should be focusing on more productive things.
It’s not as if I spend a majority of my waking hours on message boards. I don’t even spend spend a majority of my free time on the internet. Of my internet time, only a small portion is spent on message boards, and an even smaller time on comic book message boards.
Even given all of that, I still find any admonishment like “Oh, you could be doing something more productive” disingenuous. We’re all right here posting on comic book message boards, which I think meets the definition of unproductive. We can all spend our time on message boards on other, more productive, pursuits, but, at that moment, we’re not, and that doesn’t mean we don’t spend our other time on more productive things. So, I don’t see this validity of the productivity assumption.
On Byrne:
Nothing specific has happened between us. We’ve never met. As long as I’ve been reading interviews with him, there has always seemed to be a disconnect between what he says (in stident terms) and what he does. As the 80s and 90s moved on, I found what I was reading to be more and more outrageous and to be simply unable to stand up under scrutiny.
Finally, I discovered that he was posting him comments online and that he would take questions from others. There was a consistent pattern of assuming an agenda from question-askers, speaking authoritatively on things on which he had no authority, and general rudeness.
My goals when I first began contacting him online were to clarify comments he’d made that seemed too outrageous to be taken seriously (this was The Time Before People Like Ann Coulter), and his responses were rude and missed the point. He claimed over and over that he liked debate (“dust-ups”) and that he gave as good as he got. I found out over time that this was complete BS on his part. I was consistently polite and supported my comments while he would spew profanities and insults and resort to ad hominems.
For a long time, I thought it was a simple question of miscommunication. I thought I could reach him by pointing out the fallacies in his positions. He was clearly not interested in that kind of discourse (simply look at his non-apology apologies that have been on the internet in recent days.)
Now, I don’t think I can reach him, but I think I can reach the people who read him messages, either through humor or debate. His meltdown over the rape/file-sharing comments should have come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to his behavior. Sometimes you just have to laugh at (not with) what John says.
Clearly, I’ve struck a chord with someone. There are a number of userIDs out there with variations of my name who post on various boards to mock me. I fugure that there are less actual people behind those userIDs than there are userIDs.
I post about John Byrne because I have something to say, because I think it’s fun, and because I like to. No one has to read it.
Listen,
Going against the grain here, but, I like John Byrne. As an artist. A writer, however, not so much. His stories that I’ve read…as well as his novels just really don’t do anything for me. PAD however ROCKS, I mean sure there’ve been a few missteps as far as stories go, there always are, but they are few and far between. My opinion is this, Byrne needs to stick to what he does best, which is art…leave the writing to the professionals.