I have not been kind to John Byrne's work over the years, and we've not exactly held a love-fest for him on this website. But I used to like his art and his writng. So, can I say fifteen nice things about John Byrne?
1. He can draw comics. He has a solid sense of anatomy, panel flow and action. He's a good penciller.
2. He has good story ideas. (I won't speak to his execution.) Alpha Flight was a good title in his run. The Trial of Reed Richards could have been a good story. I don't like what he did with Superman, but it was a good story. It just wasn't a good Superman story.
3. He knows his characters. He does his research and he makes references to the books' history. (Again, the execution...but I'm sticking to the postive here.)
4. He pays attention to continuity. He rarely contradicts himself.
5. He includes a variety of fully realized characters in his works. He does not fail to develop his characters to the extent he can in the comic books.
6. (well, probably 5.5, but we'll call it 6) He includes minorities in his work. Lesbians, gays, black, hispanics, Amerinds... Nobody can accuse Byrne of painting lily white worlds (whether the minorities want to be included or not...but I'm trying to be nice here.)
7. Many of his words are spelled correctly. Okay, that was probably a crack...let's try again.
7. His dialogue has a nice feel to it.
8. He has good ideas for his characters. In West Coast Avengers he might have violated every concept of what made the characters workable and totally ruined the characters for anyone else to use, but if it had been a stand alone series, his ideas wouldn't have been awful. They actually would have been pretty good.
9.He's very open to discussing his work with fans.
10. He has a good sense of humor. Some of his stuff is genuinely funny.
11. He can hide good girl art in the context of superheroes. Whether this is a good thing, I leave as an exercise for the reader, but he's clearly trying to do it sometimes, and he is good at it.
12. He provokes discussion of comics among fans.
13.I've never seen him support Hitler or any other totalitarian hate-monger.
14. He's never killed anyone.
15....
Nope, can't do it.
Posted by Mike Chary at May 21, 2005 10:11 PM