My two John Byrne stories

Some one asked me the other day if I hate John Byrne because I don't like his Superman run or if I hate his Superman run because I don't like John Byrne. That made me laugh. For the record, I don't hate Byrne. I really don't. I've been doing this for a couple of months now and it's true that probably every third post contains some variation of "John Byrne blows!" I probably shouldn't say that though, because what I mean is, "John Byrne's writing on Superman blows!"

The reason I keep ragging on his work on Superman is because I just think it's bad; it's got nothing to do with Byrne as a person. I think he took all the wonder out of the character and made him kinda boring. He threw out tons of things I love, needlessly complicated other things, told stories that were ridiculously inappropriate for the character and his world, and generally sucked the fun out of the character for me. I think he just doesn't get Superman. I love his pencils on the titles though. Look at this:

That's so great. How can you not love that?

So I don't hate John Byrne. I will be honest and say this of his public persona; I think he's a jerk, genuinely in need of psychological help, out of touch with the world and seemingly completely lacking in even the most basic social skills. I don't hate him for those things, though, because they all amuse me to no end. I love watching the spectacle that is John Byrne. And who knows, in person he may be very charming, I dunno, I've never met him. I have interacted with him online a couple of times, though. I've got a good Byrne story, and I've got a bad Byrne story.

This is my good Byrne story, and it's a very good one, and it colors my opinion of him on a personal level far more than my bad Byrne story.

I'm the sickly sort, and one period when I was especially unwell and unhappy I mentioned it to an online friend in the course of catching up with one another (we'd not spoken in a while). It was just one of a few things we'd been talking about, and John Byrne was another. It seemed pretty natural that he'd come up; she'd just become a moderator on his forums and I'm a huge Superman fanboy, a character Byrne's associated with pretty strongly. She asked me what I thought of his work and I mentioned I wasn't too familiar with it on the whole, but I loved his artwork on his Superman run and I thought his first Generations mini was a lot fun. I didn't think much of it, I figured we were just chatting about a common interest. A few weeks later this turned up in my mailbox.
How brilliant is that? I love the "From Superman and John Byrne" signature. Say what you will about John Byrne, he's the sort of person who will go out of his way to cheer up the sick friend of a friend just because he's a fan. And my friend went through normal channels to commission something from Byrne. Byrne art ain't cheap, but when he found out it was for her and why she wanted it, he did it for free. Class.

The kindness of my friend and Byrne's generosity made a really horrible time much better. I'm smiling even now as I type this. That drawing means the world to me; it's one of the few things I have that'd make the list of things I'd try to save in a house fire.

Now my bad Byrne story isn't so grand. John Byrne hates when nicknames are used in reference to super heroes. HATES it. Will rant and rave about how only self-loathing fans trying to look cool will refer to Wolverine as "Wolvie." Now I once mentioned on his board that I refer to Superman as "Supes" occasionally because when I was a kid, the Superman I read about was some one amazingly powerful but still approachable. He'd be your friend because Superman would be any one's friend, and if you affectionately called him Supes, he wouldn't care. Byrne disagreed. Strongly. He said he was bored with me, called me fuckface, and banned me from his board. Yeah. That kind of thing happens a lot over there. But it's a funny story, so at least i got that out of it.

In Byrne I've seen some one very cool and generous, and I've seen a straight up jerkass. But the good out weighs the bad in my personal dealings with him. Your mileage is almost guaranteed to vary.

So there we go. In the future, any time you see me bitching about Byrne around here, it's not Byrne the man; it's Byrne the really bad era for Superman comics.