Post by MacNimon on May 23, 2014 5:50:36 GMT
This thread will be an attempt to catalogue and showcase all of John Byrne's comics, in chronological order. For those who have been following my thread elsewhere, this will be an expanded version which will also feature covers from other artists on series which Byrne worked, but didn't often provide covers for...series such as Marvel Team-Up and The Champions.
We'll kick off with some background information first, courtesy of Wiki...
Byrne was born in the UK, in West Bromwich in 1950, before emigrating with his family to Cnanada in 1958. It was there that he got his first introduction to the world of comics, with the Superman tv series, and his interest was hightenede by a later appreciation of the work of artists such as Jack Kirby and Neal Adams, both of whom would influence his style.
In 1970, Byrne enrolled at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary. However, he left the college in 1973 without graduating. He broke into comics with a "Fan Art Gallery" piece in Marvel's promotional publication FOOM in early 1974 and by illustrating a two-page story by writer Al Hewetson in Skywald Publications’ black-and-white horror magazine Nightmare #20 (Aug. 1974).[9] He then began freelancing for Charlton Comics, making his color-comics debut with the E-Man backup feature “Rog-2000,” starring a robot character he’d created in the mid-1970s that colleagues Roger Stern and Bob Layton named and began using for spot illustrations in their fanzine CPL (Contemporary Pictorial Literature). A Rog-2000 story written by Stern, with art by Byrne and Layton, had gotten the attention of Charlton Comics editor Nicola Cuti, who extended Byrne an invitation. Written by Cuti, "Rog-2000" became one of several alternating backup features in the Charlton Comics superhero series E-Man, starting with the eight-page "That Was No Lady" in issue #6 (Jan. 1975). While that was Byrne's first published color-comics work, "My first professional comic book sale was to Marvel, a short story called Dark Asylum' ... which languished in a flat file somewhere until it was used as filler in Giant-Size Dracula #5 [(June 1975)], long after the first Rog story." The story was plotted by Tony Isabella and written by David Anthony Kraft.
Byrne would work for Charlton for a short time, before getting the chance to work for Marvel doing Iron Fist, then Marvel Team-Up. Stints on other series would follow, including The Champions, Power Man and Iron Fist, Avengers, Fantastic Four (twice!), and of course, the series which really made his name...X-Men. He would move to DC in the mid-80s to work on characters such as Superman and Wonder Woman, as well as return to Marvel for such characters as Namor and She-Hulk before going independent with creator-owned material, and in recent years working on some Star Trek series for IDW.
We'll have a more in-depth look at John Byrne's work over the coming days, but to kick us off, here is an early cover of his produced for a fanzine in 1973...
And here is the rarely-seen above mentioned two-page strip from Nightmare #20, The Castle...
We'll kick off with some background information first, courtesy of Wiki...
Byrne was born in the UK, in West Bromwich in 1950, before emigrating with his family to Cnanada in 1958. It was there that he got his first introduction to the world of comics, with the Superman tv series, and his interest was hightenede by a later appreciation of the work of artists such as Jack Kirby and Neal Adams, both of whom would influence his style.
In 1970, Byrne enrolled at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary. However, he left the college in 1973 without graduating. He broke into comics with a "Fan Art Gallery" piece in Marvel's promotional publication FOOM in early 1974 and by illustrating a two-page story by writer Al Hewetson in Skywald Publications’ black-and-white horror magazine Nightmare #20 (Aug. 1974).[9] He then began freelancing for Charlton Comics, making his color-comics debut with the E-Man backup feature “Rog-2000,” starring a robot character he’d created in the mid-1970s that colleagues Roger Stern and Bob Layton named and began using for spot illustrations in their fanzine CPL (Contemporary Pictorial Literature). A Rog-2000 story written by Stern, with art by Byrne and Layton, had gotten the attention of Charlton Comics editor Nicola Cuti, who extended Byrne an invitation. Written by Cuti, "Rog-2000" became one of several alternating backup features in the Charlton Comics superhero series E-Man, starting with the eight-page "That Was No Lady" in issue #6 (Jan. 1975). While that was Byrne's first published color-comics work, "My first professional comic book sale was to Marvel, a short story called Dark Asylum' ... which languished in a flat file somewhere until it was used as filler in Giant-Size Dracula #5 [(June 1975)], long after the first Rog story." The story was plotted by Tony Isabella and written by David Anthony Kraft.
Byrne would work for Charlton for a short time, before getting the chance to work for Marvel doing Iron Fist, then Marvel Team-Up. Stints on other series would follow, including The Champions, Power Man and Iron Fist, Avengers, Fantastic Four (twice!), and of course, the series which really made his name...X-Men. He would move to DC in the mid-80s to work on characters such as Superman and Wonder Woman, as well as return to Marvel for such characters as Namor and She-Hulk before going independent with creator-owned material, and in recent years working on some Star Trek series for IDW.
We'll have a more in-depth look at John Byrne's work over the coming days, but to kick us off, here is an early cover of his produced for a fanzine in 1973...
And here is the rarely-seen above mentioned two-page strip from Nightmare #20, The Castle...
It was Byrne's early freelancing work for Charlton Comics which first got him noticed by Marvel, though. His first creation was a robot called Rog-2000, and here are a couple of pages from that first strip...certainly not as polished as his later work, though!
This strip appeared as a back-up in issue #9 of E-Man, cover here by Joe Staton...
