Comics Interview: Dissected #22 – Comics Interview #25
Welcome to the latest instalment of our Dissected feature here on Nerdly, where one of our comic gurus, Ian Wells, delves into comics history and looks back at Comics Interview, the long-running journal of interviews and criticism from David Anthony Kraft (DAK).
The moment we have all been waiting for, the all John Byrne issue of Comics Interview. Way back when, we had a ‘Giant Thor’ issue, which was false advertising. While it was a larger issue, it wasn’t an all-Thor issue and followed the usual format well established in CI. This time it is a regular-sized issue, but it is all Byrne from front to back cover. There isn’t even an Up Front with DAK section. Instead, it goes straight into the interview, which is conducted by Jim Salicrup. So, to bring you up to speed on where John Byrne was in 1985. His groundbreaking work on X-Men was long in the rear-view mirror. He was now into his final year of a five-year run on Fantastic Four. His time on the series was praised for bringing the series back up to the standard of the Kirby and Lee era. Two years previously he had also written and pencilled the first twenty-eight issues of Alpha Flight, his Canadian babies. I found these issues very underappreciated in terms of both story and art. It is often said he would experiment on AF for things he wanted to do in FF. And also, he would cut corners on AF to concentrate more on Fantastic Four. #5 of Alpha Flight is good evidence supporting this theory.
The interview dives right in at the deep end, starting with how he came to be on Fantastic Four. As he put it, he had “delusions of adequacy as a writer” from his time on X-Men. Upon hearing the news at a con that Doug Moench was leaving Fantastic Four he threw his hat into the ring to take over. Then, after quitting X-Men, he decided he wanted to pull double duty on Marvel’s First Family. This created a sliding doors moment in comics history. Bill Sienkiewicz was the penciler on FF and was shifted over to Moon Knight. Just reading this sentence, my mind couldn’t picture Sienkiewicz evolving his style the way he did if he had stayed on Fantastic Four. Salicrup backs me up by adding, “I thought he was really better suited to the Moon Knight stuff.” You can’t talk FF without talking The King, and it is actually Salicrup that brings up the subject because of his time as an editor. He would say to an artist, “Think Kirby” his meaning was often translated as to imitate Kirby. When really what he wanted was to bring his power, his energy and his storytelling, as he’s able to explain better here. There is a nice little exchange where the duo reminisce about Salicrup being Byrne’s editor on Fantastic Four and what story ideas he had to veto. It all seems very good-natured, considering Byrne has a reputation for being difficult to work with. Some of the vetoed ideas included a Thing vs Sasquatch issue, Alicia Masters being brutally beaten up and killing Franklin! As I mentioned earlier, his time on Fantastic Four was often compared to the work that made the title popular under Kirby and Lee. Being both writer and penciler allows him to fulfil both roles without anything getting lost in the wash.
Reading the interview you get a sense of how fondly and in high regard Byrne himself holds those issues. Several of his answers reference the early issues, specifically the story and visuals of #3-#5. He states how he adopted Sue as his character because “Really nothing had been done with Sue in twenty years.” Also, there is his desire to turn The Thing back into the tragic, especially when it comes to the visuals. The Thing should be an actual thing. It’s here he references those early issues, and we even get some black and white of Kirby’s original #1 cover idea, showcasing a more ‘thing’ like Thing. There is a nice piece of Marvel history when then get into talking about Byrne’s idea to establish that the FF have only been around for seven years. There was no big thinking behind it really, as Byrne says, “If we didn’t do it, the characters would become unmanageably old.” In his own head canon it makes it even simpler. Any comic you read is happening in the present unless it is specifically stated for a certain story. Salicrup however, has the rebuttal “I’m not a fan of the ignore age policy. These solutions, rather than solving the problem,m only bring more attention.” Really, the cover should herald this as a Byrne and Salicrup special issue; they bounce off of each other really well, and I would have to say Salicrup does make more interesting points than Byrne. A lot of the interview space is dedicated to going through specific plot points of his FF run. I do wonder how this would have been received when those stories were much fresher in the memory. It is more interesting to read it now with time removed, especially as someone who hasn’t read it. As I have always said, I’m more a fan of process and inspiration talk rather than going deep on current plots. The conversation about characters’ age and which stories take place when and where goes on for 3 to 4 pages! I, for on,e am disappointed there is very little Alpha Flight talk. He mentions in passing that he will soon start work on Incredible Hulk. He has swapped writing duties on that with Bill Mantlo, who will take over on Alpha Flight. It was to be a short-lived run after one of those occasions where Byrne can be difficult to work with. There are a few instances scattered throughout the interview where he is happy to laugh off some incidents and put them down to editorial. But knowing what we know from the stories we have heard, I wonder if we were to hear about these incidents from other people’s viewpoint, whether they would put the blame on Byrne. He briefly touches on his two issues of Indiana Jones and says how it has put him off working on licensed characters for good. It amazes me how Disney own Marvel Comics and LucasFilm and are not doing an Indiana Jones comic currently! Later on, Salicrup asks him if he has seen the John Byrne parody character Cogburn in Destroyer Duck. He says he hasn’t seen it, but you know full well he has.
In 1974 Byrne had completed a Fantastic Four sampler. Not only is this the longest and most in-depth interview in CI, but it is also something of a precursor to the Artist Edition culture we find ourselves in today. That 1974 sampler is printed in its entirety. As the cover proclaims, there are 30 pages of unseen pencils to see. As well as the normal images accompanying the interview itself. These 30 pages make this a must-read for Byrne fans and aspiring comic artists. As I said, I like process talk, which we don’t get any of, but these 30 pages make up for that. Byrne’s black and white work is gorgeous. The storytelling is amazing, even as an art sampler you can get a real sense of the story he is telling just from the images. His facial expressions, especially for The Thing, really do help convey all the emotion of the story. There is dynamism on every page, and one strong point is the artistic choices used for showcasing special powers. The Kirby influences really shine through while it is still very much his own thing. If you are an aspiring comic artist, you can certainly flick through these pages time and time again and take some different from them each time.
