John Byrne has several popular lies he likes to tell about me. One of his favorites jus resurfaced over on his board in a thread about whether the internet has ruined comics, in which he responds to the following set-up line–
“Wasn’t the ending to Alpha Flight #12 spoiled at a comic convention by another comic professional?”
–with the following lie:
“Peter David handed out xeroxes of Guardian’s death at a con about a month before the book shipped.”
Nnnnnno. A popular lie of John’s, but no. Number one, it wasn’t at a convention; it was at a get-together for retailers. Number two, it wasn’t Guardian’s death. It was an unlettered two page dream sequence in which Heather was seeing a dessicated Guardian tearing out the ground. Number three, it was part of a package of about two dozen photocopied highlights from assorted Marvel titles. Number four, the material in question was handed to me by Denny O’Neil, the book’s editor when I–in my capacity as sales manager at the time–was going around collecting material to put into the package. And when I said to him, “Are you sure you want me to include this in the material?” Denny replied, “Sure, what’s the harm?” Number five, retailers at the get together had no idea that the sequence actually indicated that Guardian really died. I know this because when John showed up at the get-together, he looked at the material, screamed at me at the top of his lungs, “How could you be showing this to retailers?!? It gives away the fact that Guardian dies!” and stormed out of the room, slowing only long enough to kick over a standing ashtray on his way out. At which point stunned retailers said, “Guardian DIES?,” started looking at the xeroxes again, and were muttering, “I thought it was just a dream sequence…”
Set your watches. I’m sure John will be hauling out the equally fun “Peter David was so stupid he had a character fall to his death underwater” lie sometime within the next six months. That’s one of his favorites.
PAD
• 
The principle of “repeat a lie often enough and people start to believe it” is not completely wrong, more’s the pity. Works for governments all the time.
Who did you have fall to their death underwater? I mean, that’s pretty crazy. 😉
“Who did you have fall to their death underwater? I mean, that’s pretty crazy. ;)”
It would be, had I done it.
The lie is rooted in an issue of “The Atlantis Chronicles” in which one character chucks another off a balcony. Since I’d firmly established that their clothes were weighted to counter buoyancy, the thrown character “fell” from the balcony, albiet slowly, and landed on his ášš.
This was reworked by John into that I was so stupid that I had a character fall to his death underwater.
PAD
Admit it, though, this story was the inspiration for the “Layla Miller” character…
Well, since I didn’t create Layla Miller, I’m not sure what the inspiration for her was.
PAD
OK….
I’ve never heard the underwater death thing before.
I’ve read Chronicles. I’ve given Byrne the “bad recollection” beneft for a number of other things he has said over the years (even the Alpha Flight one). But, dámņ, someone would have to have deliberately forced themself to misunderstand what was on that page to make a claim anything like that one.
John Byne also said there is no Santa Claus! How can he be so cruel?!?
John Byrne’s forum has quickly turned him into the laughingstock of the comix world. Familiarity need not breed contempt, but it does when the person you’re becoming familiar with is so close-minded and prone to fits of jealous rage.
I haven’t read a positive reaction by Byrne to any creator younger (or at least “newer”) than himself. He had to interrupt his ill-informed dissection of Grant Morrison’s shortcomings to mention Peter’s wrongdoing towards him. Don’t even get him started on Alan Moore (though PAD doesn’t miss many oppoartunites to go at that target, himself). Byrne called some fellow on his board an áššhølë just because he said he was looking forward to reading “Lost Girls.”
“He had to interrupt his ill-informed dissection of Grant Morrison’s shortcomings to mention Peter’s wrongdoing towards him.”
He did? I missed that one.
“Don’t even get him started on Alan Moore (though PAD doesn’t miss many oppoartunites to go at that target, himself).”
I do? Hmm. I only recall asking if people were planning to buy “Lost Girls” because of the controversy (or in spite of it), and I think I commented on the notion that Alan’s deal with “Watchmen” was pretty much standard issue for publishing, and characterizing DC as thieves and such when he knew the deal going in wasn’t exactly fair. Other than that…
PAD
I think that I’m going to go look at that thing. I’ve read a shorter version of this that Mr. David wrote before but I’ve never actually read anything that Mr. Byrne actually wrote himself about this incident. I’d be interested in seeing what it looked like through the lens of his perception. Given what I know of the two men, I believe what Mr. David wrote about it, but I’d still be interested in seeing how Mr. Byrne represents it.
Byrne just responded, actually:
“To this day, he maintains he was [justified in revealing Guardian’s death]. ‘I was doing my job!’ — as PR flak for Marvel. Someday, I hope some áššhølë does the same to him.”
As I say, you can bring up pretty much any active writer in that forum and John will come up with something to bìŧçh about.
PAD, as far as your attitude towards Alan Moore, I’ve just noticed that you’ve mentioned the pacing of The Watchmen and the characterization of Batman in The Killing Joke more than once each. At least you have reasoned arguments for each. JB is quite big on “quoting” pages and panels out of context, and using the most basic fallacies to claim that various comic writers are knowingly subverting or ruining beloved properties. It’s his big cause.
Or maybe not. I just read what’s there and it looks like he’s not inclined to go into it in any more detail than “Peter David screwed me in this way.” Maybe after work when I have more time…
Seems like if anyone blew the whistle on Guardian’s death, it was Bryne himself. PAD makes a convienent target because he was a marketing guy at the time.
But, seriously, screaming and kicking over something? It’s funny when my 10 month old son throws stuff around because he’s frustrated, but I think once you start to get the hang of language as a form of communication, the tantrum starts to lose it’s appeal.
It’s just amazing that he cares so much. We all have past coworkers that we really don’t like for one reason or another, but I try generally to forget about them. I don’t really care that they might have friends or be popular.
Now, I fully understand how he could’ve been upset at the event. But it’s not like you snuck into the Marvel Vault late at night, and said “Hee, if I slip in these pages, I’ll ruin John Byrne’s surprise! That would be such a clever prank!” It logically had to come from editorial. Byrne has a legitimate beef with his editor over how the promotion of his book was handled, but even then, that’s something that you give over to other hands by working at D.C. or Marvel. But gee, you’re barely even involved in the story.
Byrne is a competent artist, and his style of storytelling has found an audience, but I don’t see how rabblerousing when it clearly fails the logic test does him much good. Especially against someone who has the kind of credibility one can only get after years of personal interaction with his readers. Whether one likes PADs work or not, (and most of us here probably do), I’ve never known him to be dishonest.
Does it even matter at this point?
Say you are John Byrne and his story is true. PAD (seems like before he was PAD) spoils something relatively important-but important in 1984 (or whatever). It is a solid 20 years later. Things happen. It would be a shame, but life goes on. Both men have gone on to 912 things since then.
I never liked the talent taking pot shots at each other. Too much seeing the wizard behind the curtain. For some reason, JB tends to do it with a lot of people and seemingly always has.
“PAD, as far as your attitude towards Alan Moore, I’ve just noticed that you’ve mentioned the pacing of The Watchmen and the characterization of Batman in The Killing Joke more than once each.”
That’s entirely possible, but that has nothing to do with Alan Moore as a person; that’s just a discussion of writing technique.
PAD
I must admit it took me time to get used to some creators-JB, PAD, and others-who can be a bit gruff. I was used to the personas of Stan Lee, Gruenwald, Ralph Macchio, etc. who, from what you saw of them in the books, were not that way.
I stopped paying attention to John Byrne. He is an embittered little man, and his own worst enemy.
I just realized, Peter, that it may sound like I was trying to tell you to merely ignore John. I wasn’t attempting to give you that or any other advice. My situation is different from yours: I don’t know John, and he doesn’t know me.
I was merely attempting to illustrate how childish behavior like Byrne’s can backfire.
Here is John Byrne’s full expanded version:
http://byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13964&PN=1&get=last#395931
In the 70’s and 80’s, I was a big time Byrne fan. Now, I don’t bother. He has not done anything worthwhile since the second Generations limited series. In other words, he is irrelevant.
I hope that Byrne can get some help and return to form.
Byrne’s version story would have far more credibility were it not for the numerous times he has been caught red-handed while lying about fellow creators, or at the very least for telling stories which he later could not back up.
I’ll never forget the time he accused Roy Thomas of literally ripping pages out of a book he did not write and handing them in as a script. When confronted, Byrne issued a written apology that stated he was merely acting as an “office parrot,” and that the real blame rested with the people at Marvel Comics who told that story.
What a real stand-up guy.
Whoops, correction to the above, he issued a “non-apology.” He never said he was sorry and deflected the blame.
Yeah, I think he said Marv Wolfman had told the story.
Thomas allegedly threatened to sue him for defamation.
I think really what makes sense is that Byrne (and others) thought Thomas was adapting too many other works and ruining his talent. As Byrne said, “He used to be the best writer in the business.”
In doing so, he tells a joke, which he may have heard from someone else, but instead tells it as fact for some reason.
Then instead of saying “I was kidding, exaggerating to make a point” he gave a non apology.
Either way, if he does something I am interested in, I’ll buy it. I liked The Atom. and his art on Demon was stellar. I even liked Doom Patrol except for the nonsequential storyline.
Well, at least now John is coming up with brand new lies. It’s a complete fabrication. Total bûllšhìŧ. The only accurate part is this:
“Post Script — I notice David leaves out of this version of his tale the bit of embroidery where he and Tom DeFalco had to come up to my room to “calm (me) down.” It’s a tangled web. Hard to keep track of all the strands.”
Yes, I did leave that out since it wasn’t especially germaine to the lie. Tom and I went up to Byrne’s hotel room to try and calm him down, and I apologized profusely for having inadvertently upset him. I also assured him that I’d gone through the photocopies and removed the offending material, which I had.
Other than that, complete nonsense.
PAD
Anyway, I guess at this point, IMO, the best thing is to just ignore each other, although it is easy to say since I am not involved and not the ones being called a liar
Peter, one thing I’ve noted about you is that you stick with the facts when discussing disputes you’ve had with others. Byrne does the opposite. So, frankly, he can lie all he wants. I accept your version of the story because you haven’t squandered your credibility by slandering others.
PAD, you even admit you handed out the offending fliers. So, why are you even arguing about it now?
Because the issue at hand is not “Did PAD hand out the offending fliers?”. We’re going from “Peter David handed out xeroxes of Guardian’s death at a con about a month before the book shipped.” to PAD handing out editoriallly-APPROVED xeroxes to retailers at a retailer meet. The anecdote becomes humorous when it’s Byrne who accidentally spills the beans that retailers are witnessing Guardian’s demise.
I always find it incredible that people can hold grudges 22 years after the fact.
As it is, the whole story comes down to “he said, he said.” If PAD’s version of events is accurate, then he was merely handing out promotional material that was given to him by the editor of the book. In which case, Byrne’s real beef would be with Denny O’Neil, not PAD. The rest of the details seem trivial: Whether Byrne tripped over a chair or knocked over an ashtray isn’t really that important. Both agree that he was furious at the time.
So the key question is, which version of events seems more credible: Was PAD handing out a packet of approved promotion material or was he handing out copies of pages just to spoil Byrne’s story? To believe Byrne’s version, you’d have to think PAD was some kind of loose cannon at Marvel, leaking plot details out of spite. I can’t imagine he’d have risked his job if the materials hadn’t been approved by management. So PAD’s version of events sounds more credible to me.
This sordid miasma of bad feeling and acrimony almost makes you want to reevaluate the merits of killing a superhero and bringing him back to life at all.
…come to think of it, didn’t the cover of that issue say a memeber of Alpha Flight was going to die? Peter, were you responsible for that too? Maybe John has a point after all.
//I always find it incredible that people can hold grudges 22 years after the fact.
As it is, the whole story comes down to “he said, he said.” If PAD’s version of events is accurate, then he was merely handing out promotional material that was given to him by the editor of the book. In which case, Byrne’s real beef would be with Denny O’Neil, not PAD. The rest of the details seem trivial: Whether Byrne tripped over a chair or knocked over an ashtray isn’t really that important. Both agree that he was furious at the time.
So the key question is, which version of events seems more credible: Was PAD handing out a packet of approved promotion material or was he handing out copies of pages just to spoil Byrne’s story? To believe Byrne’s version, you’d have to think PAD was some kind of loose cannon at Marvel, leaking plot details out of spite. I can’t imagine he’d have risked his job if the materials hadn’t been approved by management. So PAD’s version of events sounds more credible to me.//
Another flaw in the JB story, at a convention a fan comes over and states he got pages from Peter David, except I don’t believe Peter David was that well known at the time. Saying “I got it from the guy at the Marvel Table” I could believe but specifically mentioning the name of a pro that fans really wouldn’t have known at the time. That leads me to believe it was a retailer event, given PAD’s postition at Marvel at the time retailers would know his name, average fans, not so much.
In any event everytime this story comes up I always have the same thought, namely maybe they are both right. Has it occured to anyone that maybe the editorial office did give PAD those copies to hand out and then when confronted by thier star artist just lied about it? (What are you talking about, I didn’t give it to him, I don’t know how he got it). Probably no way to prove or disprove it now but it’s not beyond the realm of possiblity and it would explain why PAD and JB see the incident so radically different.
Wow!
Does anyone even take Byrne seriously anymore when he goes off on these rants – hasn’t he become more like the crazy uncle of the comics industry that everyone just figures is going senile? It appears to me as time passes he is making more a name for himself by putting his foot in or shooting off his mouth than for any of the projects he works on.
Oops, I imagine just by saying something like that I’ll never be able to post up on his board… I’ll manage somehow.
Hmmm. Me thinks it is that Peter was in sales that has started John’s bad attitude toward Peter.
Whether it’s Rod, Joe, or “pseudo-Rod:”
I have known John Byrne for a number of years now and I have never known him to lie. I have never met PAD but it seems like he, at the very least, tells stories to make himself look good. Always.
You are at least passively comparing lies with spin, as if they are comparable, and they are not.
Presuming Byrne doesn’t believe that what he is saying is a lie, he isn’t even capable of admitting when he is wrong, which makes him exactly what you are accusing PAD of in your snide way. Witness Byrne’s recent post in a thread about the Eternals (http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=12952&PN=1&TPN=5), wherein he discusses the facts of Jack Kirby’s treatment by Marvel:
As one who was there at the time, I can report that Jack was given carte blanche until it was seen that sales were plummeting — at a time when FANTASTIC FOUR was selling about 190,000 per month, Kirby’s CAPTAIN AMERICA sank to 17,000! –whereupon the “real” Marvel Universe was placed out of bounds, and he was given books like MACHINE MAN and DEVIL DINOSAUR.
He starts by offering his credentials as “one who was there at the time.” Consider it certified, right? When several posters follow up by suggesting the 17K number seems unrealistically low for the period, Byrne defends it:
What you can “imagine” is not of a whole lot of concern to me. That’s the number I was told at the time.
And have I mentioned lately how incredibly tired I am of these “Gee, John, I know you were actually there, but I think things must have been different” responses?
Note his aggressive play once again of the “I was actually there” trump card.
Shortly thereafter, some statements of ownership get posted that prove the number never got below 130,000.
Byrne’s response?
Then I guess everyone up at Marvel back then was smoking dope or something.
At no point does Byrne apologize. At no point does he admit that he was misinformed and passed on that misinformation as fact, then defended it when it was challenged. When his position gets untenable, he abandons ship, without apology, concession or general courtesy. Why? Because Byrne always, ALWAYS, tells stories to “make himself look good.” If he’s wrong, he’s not wrong, it’s someone else: he was “merely acting in the office of parrot.” Yet again.
Your perceived allies are no more worthy of your trust than your perceived antagonists.
Look, I’m no fan of Byrne’s, nor of many of the sycophants who post on his messageboard. Nevertheless, to the Rod Odom impostors (and I’m sure neither of you are the real Rod Odom, because you do a poor job of mimicking his writing style and syntax): stop it. You are making áššëš of yourselves.
Get. A. Life.
(By the way, before anyone accuses me of being a PAD sycophant, search these threads. I’ve openly disagreed with him in the past. It’s just that, unlike some people, I don’t go out of my way to invent unfounded criticisms to level at him.)
“…come to think of it, didn’t the cover of that issue say a memeber of Alpha Flight was going to die? Peter, were you responsible for that too? Maybe John has a point after all.”
I don’t remember the cover in particular, but no. The sales department was/is responsible solely for getting the books into distributors’ hands and pushing the books that editorial hands us. We had nothing to do with sell copy on the covers. That was all editorial.
PAD
Well, now that mister Byrne has posted a version of events, I have an opinion. Mr. Byrne’s own account has him very upset at the whole affair while Mr. David is described by him as more calm (even “dear in the headlights” is more calm than “leave before I choaked the @#$%”). While I believe that Mr. Byrne is telling events as he remembers them, I’m afraid I’d trust the man the Byrne himself describes as less emotionally worked up by the whole thing. No surprise, there.
Plus, I can’t work out how Mr. David could have handed out material like that on his own say-so, infuriated John Byrne when he was at the height of his popularity…and still have kept his job after it got back to Denny O’Neil. Admittedly,I’ve never worked in Marketing at Marvel or anywhere else, but I can’t come up with a scenario that reconciles those things.
“Has it occured to anyone that maybe the editorial office did give PAD those copies to hand out and then when confronted by thier star artist just lied about it? (What are you talking about, I didn’t give it to him, I don’t know how he got it). Probably no way to prove or disprove it now but it’s not beyond the realm of possiblity and it would explain why PAD and JB see the incident so radically different.”
It’s certainly not impossible that Denny’s office tried to cover its own ášš. Of course, the concept that they didn’t know anything about it falls apart when the simple question is posed: How did I get the artwork? The ONLY way I could have gotten it is to have it handed to me by the editorial office, and the ONLY person who would make the call as to what to show the public would be the editor overseeing that office (i.e., Denny.) The only other possible concept is that I snuck around to offices, found stuff I liked, took it without their knowledge, photocopied it and put it back. In which case I would have been fired. Does that scenario make ANY sense?
PAD
Nef. Wrote: “PAD, as far as your attitude towards Alan Moore, I’ve just noticed that you’ve mentioned the pacing of The Watchmen and the characterization of Batman in The Killing Joke more than once each.”
To be fair, he also recently said:
PAD wrote “It’s high-priced, but hey, it’s Moore”
Which strikes me as an endorsement. Individual comments, be they positive or negative, should not be taken as reflecting the entirety of ones opinion.
“Another flaw in the JB story, at a convention a fan comes over and states he got pages from Peter David, except I don’t believe Peter David was that well known at the time. Saying “I got it from the guy at the Marvel Table” I could believe but specifically mentioning the name of a pro that fans really wouldn’t have known at the time. That leads me to believe it was a retailer event, given PAD’s postition at Marvel at the time retailers would know his name, average fans, not so much.”
Excellent point. Guardian expired in 1984; my first published comic work didn’t come out until 1985. It’s not like my work on “Marvel Age” established my name in the consciousness of fans. So Byrne’s latest lie becomes that much more obvious when faced with yet more indisputable facts. Sadly, most of the Byrnebots on his board will never look below the surface.
Oh, another popular Byrne lie, should it come up: Spider-Man 2099 #1 was the perfect example of a bad origin comic because the lead character never appears in costume. When it was pointed out to John that SM 2099 was in costume and in action for the first third of the book, he stated he didn’t remember it that way. So I think we can chalk this one up to another of John’s…how to put it…lapses.
PAD
Hey, kids, just stuck my head in the lion’s mouth and posed to Byrne some questions regarding his version of events:
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13964&PN=1&TPN=3
Can’t wait to see where this goes.
Byrne’s responded. But his response doesn’t really make sense when you consider the timeline.
Byrne answered part of my question at the time of this posting, but not all of it. So I rephrased the part of the question that was unanswered and posed it to him again.
It was worded in a non-threatening, non-inflammatory, but nevertheless direct way. Again, I am interested to see where this goes.
I have to admit that these PAD v JB things always amuse me. I have no idea most of the time who is right or wrong, and I don’t go spread these things to others, they do enough of that. But it really is like a reality show. I would love to see a new season of Big Brother with all comic creators. How wonderful would that be??
For the record though, I do think that if things had gone down according the JBs recollection, PAD would have been fired by Marvel in a heartbeat. For everyone else, ask yourself what your employer would do if you did something like that.
Oh, and I give PAD credit because I have seen many critiques and reviews of creators’ work, but I don’t think I have have ever seen an overall endorsement or opposition just because of who they are. He seems quite objective.
Regardless of who’s got the more accurate recounting of events…they were 22 years ago after all…I think the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. I was just getting into comics at exactly that time…Alpha Flight 16 was my first issue, I think. Anyway, the point is, imagine a marketing guy in your company releases some time-sensitive information that risks hurting sales, and maybe more importantly, upsets one of your star talents (say what you will about byrne today, no one can dispute that in the 80s Byrne was one of the top talents in comics). Now, maybe that marketing guy doesn’t get fired on the spot, but do you really think that the publisher is going to keep him on much longer? Let alone start giving him work as a writer for some of their most popular characters?
It just doesn’t fly. If events were more the way Byrne presents them, we’d not be having this discussion, because no one would know about PAD as a writer of comics. Maybe he’d still be writing stuff, but not the stuff we talk about more often than not. Because if Byrne really thought PAD had done something on his own, without Marvel editorial approval, he’d have had him canned.
It’s easy for PAD to pass the blame off onto a dead man – too bad he waited until Denny was gone to cast him as the villian in this story. Funny how often that happens.
*****
Yes, I am certain PAD was waiting andwaiting for Denny to die to bring this up, so he had a hypnotist sneakily introduce himself to Byne and make Byrne bring it up to begin with just so that PAD could blame Denny. I hear PAD is a criminal genious this way.
Do you realize how you sound?
Just as an excersise, everyone should take a moment to think about some event in their lives that occurred 20-odd years ago, and see how clearly they remember all the details. I’d have been 15. To be brutally honest, I can’t recall a single event with any clarity from that year. You’d have to skip ahead a year to when I first started dating for me to have any real clear memories, and even then, it’s mostly just the big details.
PAD’s been proven in the past to be a stickler for details and facts. Byrne’s demonstrated that he doesn’t really care if his recollection is right or wrong, he’s sticking to it. Which one makes the more reliable witness to you?
Because if Byrne really thought PAD had done something on his own, without Marvel editorial approval, he’d have had him canned.
*****
Maybe it is all about another Byrne lie and in truth he is really a sweet understand guy who can accept that people make mistakes and it wasn’t an intentional slight by someone out to get him so he stood up for Peter David and the became friends for life going on to work together for hundreds of issues of the best comic books in the world.
Oh how I love alternate universe stories.
I don’t want to ruin the PD.net/ByrneRobotics crossover (with Joe “Rod Odom” Zhang doing his best to play the role of Doombots), but in regard to L.Walkers post above (“To be fair, PAD recently wrote ‘It’s high-priced, but hey, it’s Moore'”):
In that post PAD was gauging fan interest in Lost Girls. I took the “hey, it’s Moore” to indicate only that many comic fans buy anything with Alan’s name on it. Maybe he did mean that he’s one of those fans, I don’t know. The (admittedly limited) evidence led me to believe that PAD thought Moore to be somewhat overrated as a writer, perhaps I was wrong.