When Did John Byrne "Lose It"?

[s-man]

It is impossible to over-estimate what Terry Austin brings to the party.

 

I think too many people overestimate Austin's contribution, personally. I agree that he was one of the best inkers for Byrne, but it's also obvious that John put a lot of work into his X-Men art, at that came out as well.

 

I can pick up an issue of MTU, or Iron Fist or Champions with Byrne art, and it's not like there's any real difference in terms of layout, action of pencil quality. In fact, I often prefer Layton's inks over Austin's, depending on the book.

 

 

Dave Hunt on MTU wasn't too bad either.

 

 

 

 

PLEASE TELL ME YOU USED READER COPIES TO MAKE THESE SCANS!!

[Kermit]

X-men was epic and FF was a great run, lower in quality than x-men but not much...some of my all time fav. covers from the FF are from byrne.

[Foolkiller]

I think Byrne really hit the wall early on in his Alpha Flight run... his FF run for the most part, was pretty darn good I thought... but somewhere along the line of his Alpha Flight run he fell off... and when he moved over to DC it just got worse... thought his early Superman stuff was pretty good though.

[mr_highgrade]

[blowout]

I would agree with most here that his art started to suffer as his other duties increased. For me his best work was on X-Men and Iron Fist and I am really not all that keen on most of his post '81 work.

[HighVoltage]

I think you could argue that Byrne started 'losing it' toward the end of his FF run. His detailed backgrounds really began to drop out & he started carrying that more 'sparse' style over into Superman. In fact, I think Byrne is even on record as saying he had Keith Williams ink/fill in his backgrounds at that time (late in the FF run AND on Alpha Flight, which he did concurrently with FF).

 

Perhaps Byrne was distracted towards the end of his FF run, though, since he was about to make the jump over to Superman and Action. He started off strong enough on both DC flagship books, but he seemed to lose steam again & quickly, leaving after a 2-year run - jumping ship to She-Hulk. Again, he started off strong on that book, with really nice art on the Green Gal in particular, but after only 8 issues he left again. During this short run, you can see LOTS of empty backgrounds...

 

With each jump, he seemed to lose a little bit more detail & get a bit less tight with his finished art (even noticable on the foreground/main figures of a panel). When you look at Byrne's next extended project, Next Men you can see the transformation to 'lost it.' At this point, his artwork was in almost 'full sketchiness mode,' with little concern for the formerly clean lines he was known for!

 

By the time Byrne got to Wonder Woman, his style seemed markedly different from those days of the Byrne/Austin X-Men that are so loved.

 

Anyway - that's my 2cents. Great topic.

[minutekev@50]

John Byrne 'lost it' when he started reading his press and believing he WAS the second coming of Kirby/Adams/etc.....I still like looking at a Byrne art piece, but nothing compares to his X-Men and early work on the FF. He never achieved the status of fellow 80s writer/artist...Frank Miller...

[Rickdogg]

Byrne's worst artistic endeavors have been from lack of pencil art. Somewhere along the line he decided sloppy or no layouts at all were good enough. He was paid for both pencils and inks so who's gonna know the difference? Most of his recent stuff looks like it was inked with one of those big Sharpie permanent markers.

 

Which is exactly what he used on some of his FF work... ugh!

 

Byrne's work is best inked by someone else. Some of his Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-in-One pages are quite nice.

 

 

There are some on ebay right now if anyone is interested.

 

dagnabit