When I was 15 years old, there was no greater comic book artist than John Byrne. While his art has evolved in directions away from where my interests lie, I have to admit that when I think about the superhero comics that grabbed me the most in my formative years, it was those Byrne/Austin X-Men comics from the late 1970s and early '80s.
Byrne's influences include three of the masters of comic art, Jack Kirby, Neal Adams and Gil Kane. Objectively, all three are superior artists, but Byrne's dynamic synthesis of their styles, in combination with the precise, fluid inking of Terry Austin on Uncanny X-Men during their run, resulted in some of the most visually appealing comics Marvel has ever published.
A friend of mine who owns a comic book store in Albany, New York has in his collection a page of Byrne's late-'70s Iron Fist artwork. And while that's a great little collectible by itself, when you look on the back, Byrne has sketched out his ideas for the issue of Uncanny X-Men in which the team has had their memories wiped and are enslaved in a carnival sideshow. There's an unbelievable image of Wolverine in chains, and I have to say that that piece of original art is one of the coolest comics-related things I've ever seen. For better or worse, like him or loathe him, Byrne's best art has a visceral immediacy that is pure comics.
Here are some great examples of Byrne's work for you to seek out.
* The Art of John Byrne -- A long out-of-print trade paperback that featured copious sketches, black and white illustrations and a wordless short story that features Byrne's favourite character -- himself -- in a well-drawn wish-fulfillment sci-fi fantasy involving a naked girl. The many sketches and finished drawings give you great insight into Byrne's process, and in fact are an art lesson unto themselves.
* Uncanny X-Men #108-143 -- The crowning achievement in Byrne's career as a corporate comics superhero artist. Memorable for Byrne's attention to detail and disciplined page and panel design, and crucially abetted by inker Terry Austin. Austin's meticulous, steady style is 180 degrees from Byrne's organic cartooning, and for this brief season, which coincided wonderfully with my adolescent immersion in comic book art, they could do no wrong. These issues will cost you a fortune if you want the originals, but Marvel recently published an Uncanny X-men Omnibus, which reprints a good chunk of the Byrne/Austin artistic era (a second volume would complete it, and is most welcome as far as I am concerned). Yes, it's $100.00 bucks, and may now be hard to find, but it reprints something like 40 issues, many of which you would pay $100.00 for individually. Additionally, it's on great paper stock and includes the original letters pages, which are kind of a treat to see in print again.
* Doomsday+1 -- This Charlton series (reprinted by Fantagraphics in the 1980s as "Doomsday Squad") was an early indicator of Byrne's artistic origins (his desire to be Neal Adams was never more obvious than here) and his eventual growth. The art is rough but wildly enthusiastic, and it's always interesting to me to see how many starting adventure comic artists' styles seem to resemble the work Byrne was doing here.
* John Byrne's Next Men -- A still, I think, underrated (if flawed) superhero comic Byrne did for Dark Horse under the abortive wanna-be-Image Legend imprint (which also gave us Hellboy). I know the occasional Byrne effort since then has had its minor charms, but for my money, Next Men was the last Byrne comic book that was created with discipline, skill and a love of comics. I've often said that everything else Byrne has created since has been revenge on the marketplace for the failure of this series, and I continue to believe there's more than a grain of truth to that. Next Men is being collected in black and white by IDW, and is definitely worth a look.
* Marvel Team-Up -- One of my dream projects is to see a nice hardcover of Byrne's MTU work, often with X-Men cronies Chris Claremont and Terry Austin. They did fine, fine work on the title, certainly as good as their X-Men efforts, and the Red Sonja/Spider-Man team-up remains one of the best and most entertaining single issues Marvel ever published.
Byrne has fallen out of favor with many of the powers that be at the major corporate comics book publishers these days, but he has a couple of projects coming out from independent publisher IDW, including a superhero series called FX and a Star Trek-inspired series titled Assignment Earth. You can also see many of his current commission sketches of popular superhero characters, and read his iconoclastic and often controversial views on comics and current events, at the John Byrne Forum.
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Have a comics-related question for Alan? Send it to alandaviddoane AT gmail.com and he will answer it in a future post.