John Byrne: Being

“There had been fan clubs before. The Merry Marvel Marching Society shamelessly stole its name from the Mary Marvel Marching Society. I was, myself, a member of the Supermen of America. What was key to these, tho, was that the fans who belonged were not truly interconnected. There was a sense of being part of a greater whole, but the hobby itself remained largely solitary. Which, the history of the industry seems to teach, was a good thing.”

John Byrne

2007
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=19499&PN=0&TPN=1
On the idea of comic fans utilizing the Internet to interact and share their hobby with each other

History , Sense , Parting

“The question becomes, I suppose, one of value. Knowing that the Vision’s complete personality/memory/intelligence was downloaded into a computer in Titan (was it Titan? Memory blurs) allowed me to scrape his brain in my VisionQuest story, since everything could be restored with a literal flip of a switch. Should something that can be so easily copied and retrieved be treated as having the same intrinsic value as a human being? Should any of the human Avengers, for instance, ever risk their lives on behalf of the Vision? My vote would be no (as some of you have probably already guessed)—but I would say that even if it were not possible to restore or “save” the Vision in any other way. He is a “toaster.””

John Byrne

2006
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=15591
The humanity of the Vision, an android hero whose body was once the original Human Torch

Way , Intelligence , Question , Memory

“This guy should have been taken out of the croc pen, had his kids taken from him, and been thrown in the deepest, darkest, dankest pit the Australian judicial system has to offer. Preferably after being skinned alive. Asshole is too good a word.”

John Byrne

2006
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=14104&PN=1&TPN=3
On the death of Steve Irwin, "The Crocodile Hunter"

Guy

“Aliens 3 [sic] is everything that’s wrong about Hollywood, from an incorrect title (it’s Aliens 2)…[after being shown that the title was, indeed, Alien3]…Aliens 3 or Alien 3—title is still wrong.”

John Byrne

2007
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=20864&PN=1&TPN=1
Alien 3

“Tom Strong and the rest of the ABC bunch leave me cold for a lot of reasons. First—and I realize this is purely subjective, but what isn’t?—I find a smugness, a condescension that reads to me as nostalgia being done by someone who is not in the least bit nostalgic. Almost as if Moore sits down to write and flips his brain 180°, so he’s not really writing what he feels or what he likes, just the exact opposite of what he would usually write.

Also, there is the whole pastiche/homage/whatever thing. I find this really annoying. Not just when Moore does it. I can look back on elements of my own work and be annoyed at myself for going down that path. I only did it on rare occasions, tho. Moore has turned it into a career. So much so, that in the post-Watchmen era I have trouble calling to mind much that he has done that was not based on someone else’s previous work. I am not the most original guy on the block, but at least when I do Superman, I do Superman.

I suppose a lot of this could simply be the bad taste his earlier work left for me. All that tearing down and “deconstructionism.””

John Byrne

All that revealing of the flaws and feet of clay, not a bit of which has served the industry in any positive way, and, in fact, has left huge scars across it, like the ones left in the landscape by open pit mining.
Alan Moore

Way , Guy , Feeling , Tear

“One of the things that kept most comics from being monthly was that very few artists could produce 24 pages per month. Jack Kirby was very much the exception to the rule, but his towering presence at Marvel started to dictate the whole shape of the industry—and that's where problems set in!”

John Byrne

2008
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=26500&PN=1&totPosts=7
Monthly comics and creator's ability to keep on schedule

Problem