What if John Byrne went full Mandala?

[TREK_GOD_1]

Byrne's a better artist now than he was back in his X-Men days. Looking at some of that stuff can be painful. Byrne's understanding of things like anatomy, architecture and mechanics is better than many of his contemporaries. And better than many who came after

Bryne's art was reshaped to be appealing by Terry Austin. Without it, Byrne's anatomically off high pectorals, broad, line mouth, dimpled figures were not what would help sell that then-new X-Men.

I really enjoyed Byrne's hand drawn Trek work and I don't think Terry Austin was anywhere near those.

I was talking about Austin inking him on the X-Men.

]Of course not. Those photo books came out before VHS was going full force and people could get hold of any episode, any time they want. The market is completely different now. Just like the market for novelizations has changed.

It's not the changed market, its the poor state of Byrne's stories that in no way measure up to TOS and grade-school Photoshop work that is not drawing great interest. If the work is worthy, interest will be there, as seen (a few years ago) with DC's use of captures of Filmation's 1967 Teen Titans cartoon to publish a special issue.

On the subject of comic at least being close to the appeal and spirit of the source, in more recent history, DC's Batman '66 Meets the Green Hornet (Smith, Garman &Templeton) caught the eye of fans as being as entertaining as the source, since all involved really understood the material, and followed the series' path and creative directions--something lacking in Byrne's ST.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Bryne's art was reshaped to be appealing by Terry Austin. Without it, Byrne's anatomically off high pectorals, broad, line mouth, dimpled figures were not what would help sell that then-new X-Men.

Oh please. Byrne's success as a penciler was not dependent on Austin's inks. Don't forget that right after X-Men he went to an incredibly popular six-year run on the Fantastic Four and then went on to revamp Superman. Austin didn't do more than half a dozen issues of those. Byrne and Austin made a great art team, but Byrne has WAY too much success without him for your opinion to hold water.

If the work is worthy, interest will be there, as seen (a few years ago) with DC's use of captures of Filmation's 1967 Teen Titans cartoon to publish a special issue.

...Seriously? You prefer crappy screencaps of an old Filmation cartoon to what Byrne's doing? No accounting for taste...

 

[FormerLurker]

Byrne was just as popular drawing both Captain America and the Avengers at the same time he was doing X-Men, and was inked respectively by Josef Rubinstein and Dan Green. Rubinstein's inks were much in the vein of what he has always done, and well done at that, using much different tools than Terry Austin, and on some pages looking much better. Dan Green, on the other hand, earned his fan title of the Tracer King over Byrne on Avengers, much the way he did over John Romita Jr. on X-Men a decade later, applying ink on the pencil marks themselves, with no embellishment whatsoever. Yet fans loved that Byrne was doing the pencils. So no, Austin was in no way the defining force behind what was making the X-Men popular. That was all Chris Claremont.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Bryne's art was reshaped to be appealing by Terry Austin. Without it, Byrne's anatomically off high pectorals, broad, line mouth, dimpled figures were not what would help sell that then-new X-Men.

Oh please. Byrne's success as a penciler was not dependent on Austin's inks.

The evidence is in the work after no longer working with Austin, which is why Byrne's X-Men run is considered his best work...thanks the the shaping by the talented Austin. Byrne was no Neal Adams or Jim Steranko, who were as effective with or without inkers.

...Seriously? You prefer crappy screencaps of an old Filmation cartoon to what Byrne's doing? No accounting for taste...

Crappy? Hardly, and yes, using the original scenes as presented soars past chopped up, bodies, grade-school structures slapped on captures, and more misaligned heads / wrong era than a crappy Hanna Barbera cartoon. The utter incorrect, slapped together Byrne work looks like parody images.

 

[Nerys Myk]

His FF work is considered a classic as well. As is his Superman run. His She Hulk run is also fondly remembered.

 

[Kor]

I reiterate that I like Byrne's hand-drawn comics, both the artwork and the stories.

But somehow I get the feeling that with "New Visions," he's sitting there in front of his computer, mad with creative power and an inflated, cynical artistic ego after years of success in the comics industry, and just throwing together this slapdash Photoshop stuff and knowing that lots of fans will voraciously gobble it up because it's a media tie-in.....

And laughing all the way to the bank.

Kor

 

[BillJ]

I reiterate that I like Byrne's hand-drawn comics, both the artwork and the stories.

But somehow I get the feeling that with "New Visions," he's sitting there in front of his computer, mad with creative power and an inflated, cynical artistic ego after years of success in the comics industry, and just throwing together this slapdash Photoshop stuff and knowing that lots of fans will voraciously gobble it up because it's a media tie-in.....

And laughing all the way to the bank.

Kor

The way comics sell now, I doubt he's laughing all the way to the bank. They're probably selling between 10,000 and 20,000 copies per issue.

 

[Kor]

Well, if I spent ten minutes throwing something like that together on my computer, and then each issue sold twenty thousand copies, and then the issues were republished as collected trade paperback editions and sold at every major bookstore in the country, I sure would be laughing about it.

Kor

 

[BillJ]

Well, if I spent ten minutes throwing something like that together on my computer, and then each issue sold twenty thousand copies, and then the issues were republished as collected trade paperback editions and sold at every major bookstore in the country, I sure would be laughing about it.

Kor

I think it's poor form to state he's only spending ten minutes on them. Obviously, IDW is happy with the work or else they wouldn't keep publishing them.

Bryne probably made more money in the 80's and early 90's than he makes now doing Star Trek, which is a fringe property at this point. And I've yet to see a Byrne photomanip book on the shelves of any bookstores where I live.

 

[FormerLurker]

I think the bulk of Byrne's income these days come from his commission work. An average of four drawings a month, with an average of $2500 per commission, is no small potatoes income.

 

[Nerys Myk]

He seems to be getting a kick out of making them and they're selling well enough, so fans like them.

 

[A beaker full of death]

I think the bulk of Byrne's income these days come from his commission work. An average of four drawings a month, with an average of $2500 per commission, is no small potatoes income.

$2500? Jeez, I had no idea he was charging that much.

 

[FormerLurker]

Something like that. Whatever the exact sum is, it's what the first fan that wanted one offered. I don't know the details, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's along the lines of: $1000 for a single figure with no backgrounds, $500 for each additional figure and/or a background, with it adding up from there. Most of the commissions are for multiple figures, with backgrounds. A 20x30* commission is going to cost at least twice what a standard 11x17* commission will, as well, just because of size.


*in inches.

 

[JRoss]

The Fotonovels were great when I worked for a company in a man-made cave, there was no tv, radio, or phonograph at night. Not even a window to outdoors. I had audio tapes I'd made of episodes, the Fotonovels for those tapes, so it was almost as good as the real thing.

Wait, for real? You have to give details.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Well, if I spent ten minutes throwing something like that together on my computer, and then each issue sold twenty thousand copies, and then the issues were republished as collected trade paperback editions and sold at every major bookstore in the country, I sure would be laughing about it.

Kor

I think it's poor form to state he's only spending ten minutes on them. Obviously, IDW is happy with the work or else they wouldn't keep publishing them.

Tell you what, Kor. Why don't you spend 10 minutes throwing together a Trek story on your computer, post the results here, and then we can all critique you.

You're perfectly entitled to not like the results, but it's absurd to suggest that Byrne is just hacking these things out.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

You're perfectly entitled to not like the results, but it's absurd to suggest that Byrne is just hacking these things out.

Then it makes the end result worse than originally considered--if he's actually spending time to produce amateur Photoshop jobs.

 

[BillJ]

You're perfectly entitled to not like the results, but it's absurd to suggest that Byrne is just hacking these things out.

Then it makes the end result worse than originally considered--if he's actually spending time to produce amateur Photoshop jobs.

Or, it is a skill he is still learning.

 

[The Lensman]

You're perfectly entitled to not like the results, but it's absurd to suggest that Byrne is just hacking these things out.

Then it makes the end result worse than originally considered--if he's actually spending time to produce amateur Photoshop jobs.

Or, it is a skill he is still learning.

He's not going to get much better with this photoTrek stuff because he's limited by the existing photographs. So we get inconsistent hair styles, uniforms, coloring, and lighting due to that. And his ability to create ships, life forms or architecture in the classic style is non-existent as is his ability to composite his original creations into the original elements. As someone who works with the same program, it's horrifically jarring to me.

If he's bored of or unable to draw, then I'd much rather see him break ground in producing an ORIGINAL concept photocomic where he can control those elements I mentioned above. That would allow him to integrate his original elements into the photos a bit more seamlessly. The man has talent and a good work ethic and I'd be much more interested to see what he can do without the constraints I've listed.

I enjoyed it when he was drawing Trek and writing at the edges of the Trek universe. But I have no interest in watching him cutting and pasting pictures from Trek Core or watching him write the kind of fan wank that he takes others to task for. John routinely gripes about when comic FANS started becoming writers in the industry and started writing comics for other fans, meanwhile he's pretty much doing that with this series. How many of the stories in this series are follow ups to previous episodes?

It seems like we've had follow ups to "Where No Man Has Gone Before", "Doomsday Machine", a story featuring the androids from "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", the Mirror Universe and so on. We've had the return of Harry Mudd, Pike and Crew and Gary Seven. What's the ratio of all original stories to follow ups or returning characters?

Byrne was my favorite artist for decades, and is still one of my favorites. For the most part I've enjoyed his writing, though his Demon and Doom Patrol runs were underwhelming. I thought his recent Byrne-verse (for lack of a better word) books were the best stuff he's done in years and looked forward to more. It's sad that it's looking like we'll never get more stories set in those universes. I was looking forward to seeing the Conclave, more adventures in the Doomsday .1 world and especially The Highways. I really loved that last one.

I may not care much for the man anymore these days, but his drawing skills are still top notch and he's an incredible work horse with a great work ethic who can produce more in one month than others can in several. It's a damn shame, that we may not see any more drawing from the man.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

If he's bored of or unable to draw...

Again, neither one of these things is true. Byrne chose to produce New Visions via Photoshop because he thought it was the best way to do this particular project, not because he was bored with drawing or physically unable to.

It's nuts that after Byrne has produced a (as of this writing) 139-page forum thread detailing the genesis, motivation, methodology, and evolution of this project that people here are still speculating and flat-out making things up about what he's doing and why he's doing it:

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=43808&PN=1&TPN=1

Really, pretty much any questions you might have about New Visions are answered there. But I guess it's more fun to theorize that Byrne has arthritis and can't draw any more (but can somehow still operate a computer for days on end).

It seems like we've had follow ups to "Where No Man Has Gone Before", "Doomsday Machine", a story featuring the androids from "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", the Mirror Universe and so on. We've had the return of Harry Mudd, Pike and Crew and Gary Seven. What's the ratio of all original stories to follow ups or returning characters?

Much tougher to do 100% original stories when you're only allowed to use a limited pool of TOS guest stars. That's why Harry Mudd was put into a clone of James T. Kirk's body. That's why Roberta Lincoln was "on vacation" in the Gary Seven issue. That's why Khan Noonien Singh won't be popping up on camera. That's why he's "recast" a few people like Barbara Babcock as new characters and used friends like Paul Kupperberg and Scott Adsit in cameo roles.

It's pretty easy to write fan-fiction when you're only limited by your imagination. But Byrne is doing an officially-licensed product, which means he has to abide by CBS/Paramount's rules, including those rules about which actors have granted likeness rights and which ones haven't. And no, he can't bring in other 1960s actors like Robert Culp that never guest-starred on TOS.

Do you see how that restriction starts to limit what he can and can't do in the book? And it's not like other Trek novels and comics have had any shortage of sequels to begin with. And several of Byrne's sequels (like the "Doomsday Machine" follow-up) have built on existing Trek lore, rather than just regurgitating it.

Again, I'd love to see what sort of amazing Trek stories you folks might do working under the exact same restrictions that Byrne is. I sincerely doubt they'd be any better.

It's a damn shame, that we may not see any more drawing from the man.

Byrne still regularly posts commission work on his site. There's also a John Byrne Draws tumblr (not run by Byrne) that post his commission work regularly.

 

[FormerLurker]

Thank you, JonnyQuest. Your post saves me and several other fans of the man and his work the trouble. The naysayers here seem to be what members of the John Byrne Forum call "ByrneBashers", many with "Bad Byrne Stories" that don't actually hold up under examination.