Articles: John Byrne Transcript

John Byrne has worked continuously in comics since 1975, following his first professional sale in late summer of 1974. Beginning humbly enough, with the likes of Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch and Doomsday +1 (for Charlton Comics), and Iron Fist and The Champions for Marvel, he eventually moved on to Marvel's number one cult book, X-Men (not yet Uncanny) in 1977. It was his work on X-Men which truly ignited John's star, and from there he moved to Captain America, The Avengers, and a five year run on Marvel's flagship title, Fantastic Four. Seeking new heights to conquer, in 1986 John accepted the daunting assignment of revamping the oldest and most famous of all superheroes, Superman. Beginning with the hugely successful Man of Steel miniseries, John brought Superman back into the attention of the fans.

Below is the transcript of an interview conducted by Mark Lerer for Marvel Age in early 1984. This time-frame is often considered the best of Byrne's work on Fantastic Four, if not the best of his career.

Mark Lerer: what's a typical day for John Byrne?

John Byrne: The alarm clock goes off at 6:45 AM. I have breakfast. I'm at the drawing board by eight or eight thirty, and I work til about 11:30 or noon, when I break for lunch. I like to be back not too much later than noon, and then I work through until four o'clock, or until I have three pages done, whichever comes first. The whole thing begins again the next day when the alarm goes off at 6:45!

ML: Where do you live?

JB: I live in Brooklyn Heights with my wife Andrea and my step-daughter Kate. My house overlooks the promenade along the East River, so I have a beautiful view of the southern end of Manhattan. Whenever I need New York reference, it's right ther for me!

We moved here recently from Evanston, Illinois, just outside Chicago. That's where I met my wife -- at a comic convention, in fact! It was the July Chicago Comic Con of 1980. Andrea, who is an actress, had gotten tickets to the con from the stage manager of Warp, which was playing in Chicago at the time. It was her first experience with the world of comics, and it was pretty strange for her! We got married in November of that year. Andy's acting career has been successful -- many people don't know that Chicago, along with Los Angeles and New York, is one of the three major palces where they shoot TV commercials. She was doing so well that we thought we'd try her luck out on the East Coast -- and it was certainly no inconvenience for me to move even closer to the Marvel Bullpen -- so here we are. Andy, Kate, and I are all very happy.

ML: Where are you from originally?

JB: I was born, thirty-three years ago, in England, in a small town called West Bromwich, near Birmingham, in the midlands. I'm an only child, no brothers or sisters. I was raised there and in Canada, in towns called Edmonton and Calgary, in the western part of the continent -- straight north of Denver.

ML: How did you first get into comics?

JB: My first experience with comics had to be when I was a kid in England. I remember the Superman TV show, which starred George Reeves, and seeing the Superman comic. After we moved to Canada, I found the rest of the Superman books. I remember reading the first Supergirl story, in fact.

Just before I turned twelve, in Edmonton, I found a copy of Fantastic Four #5. It blew me away. First of all, the artwork was like nothing I had ever seen. It was like nothing I had ever seen. It was more exciting, more alive -- not necessarily more realistic, but more alive -- than other comics. Second, it was a full-length story -- not three little eight-pagers! That bowled me over. And, to top it all off, the action took place in New York! I knew that there was no such place as Metropolis, but I knew that there was a New York -- I had been there! The boat docked on the several trips we had made coming over from England! Think of it -- a twelve year old kid living in the middle of nowhere reading about this fantastic adventure taking place in an actual city. It made wonder if it could be real.

I waited a lifetime for FF #6 to come out! I was hooked. Of course, I soon discovered te rest of the Marvel line -- but because my parents restricted how much money I could spend on comics, I couldn't collect all of them. The Avengers was a godsend -- I couldn't afford to buy the Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man -- and there they all were in one comic book! You know, years later, when I began to collect comics again, it took me a long time to start picking up the Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man -- funny how that old preconditioning can stay with you.

When I was about fifteen, I stopped buying comics and got into other things. I rediscovered Marvel when I was twenty-two and started buying up all the back issues that I had missed. Hey, maybe you can make some sense out of this old "thirty-two" thing that's been following me around all my career -- I stopped reading comics with Fantastic Four #32, I started again with Fantastic Four #132, and the first issue that I wrote and drew was #232. Think that means anything?

ML: How did you start writing and drawing?

JB: Well, I started drawing when I was a very small child. I remember sitting on my grandfather's lap, drawing a picture of a horse on a chalkboard as he guided my hand. My parents still have that chalkboard drawing. It's the earliest known John Byrne original! I'm almost entirely self-taught as an artist, except for a while when I attended the Alberta College of Art in Calgary. I didn't really publish much "fan" art at all. Around 1975, I did do some drawings for a fanzine called CPL, which also helped launch the careers of Roger Stern and Bob Layton. But I went professional so soon after that -- that very year, in fact -- that I would call that my "non-pro" as opposed to my "fan" period. Within a few months, I was working for Charlton, and then I began drawing for Marvel.

But I really started out to be a writer! I was very involved with science fiction in high school, and during that time, at about age fifteen or sixteen, I wrote about fifteen novels and it must be over five hundred short stories. My parents' closet is still full of them! The good ones eventually got turned into comic book stories, by the way -- for example, the Galactus story Fantastic Four #262 is based on one of those old stories I wrote then.

I'm particularly a fan of Isaax Asimov's Foundation trilogy -- which I insist is still a trilogy -- and his robot novels, such as I, Robot. Lord of Light by Roger Zetazny, and Ringworld by Larry Niven, particularly influenced me. Larry Niven is a great guy, by the way, and a good friend of mine. He tells me he's a John Byrne fan, too!

ML: What's your advice to beginning artists and writers?

JB: First, learn to draw by looking at the world, not just at comics. Every professional will advise anyone who wants to enter the business to draw what's out in the world. If you can draw the world, we can teach you to draw super heroes.

As for writing -- I learned the same important things from my favorite science fiction authors that I did from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four. Character is more important than cosmic. The people in the story, and their reactions, are more important than the colossal event. You've heard this all before, I'm sure, but it bears repeating -- concentrate more on the "Man" than on the "Super."

For writers and artists who are entering the business right now, I'll share a rule of thumb I followed when I took over the Fantastic Four. Turn the clock back. Get back and see fresh what it was that made the book great at its inception. Find that, and translate it into 1980's concepts. Don't just tack the 1980's concepts on.

ML: Being the writer and artist for the Fantastic Four is a coveted job. How do most people react when you tell them what you do for a living?

JB: I'll tell you, it usually takes a twenty-minute sermon to explain to people what I do, because mopst people don't know how comics are made -- that they don't spring full blown from the brow of Zeus! I get tired of explaining -- so when someone at a party asks me what I do for a living, I usually make some gag up! I'll tell them I'm a gynecologist or something. Eventually, though, if I'm getting to know someone, they'll wheedle out of me that I'm a comic book artist. If they know the Fantastic Four, or if they've heard of Marvel, they're usually impressed. It's neat.

What's really fun is meeting friends and co-workers of my actress wife's. I'm really impressed when I meet actors and famous people. Ron Parady of Hill Street Blues is a friend, and I've met more brothers and sisters of famous people than I can even recall! Sometimes these people know my work, that's always fun and gratifying.

ML: How do you go about plotting the FF?

JB: I have the Fantastic Four roughly plotted out for about a year in advance. The same thing goes for The Thing and I generally have Alpha Flight plotted out for about six months or so in advance. I'm alwyas kicking around the ideas in my head for how to go with the series, what directions the boook will take, and what villains and new characters will appear. Before I begin writing each issue, I turn in a written plot and meet with the editor, Bob Budiansky, for the FF and Thing, and Denny O'Neil, for Alpha Flight, help me fine tune the plot.

ML: What's in store for the Fantastic Four?

JB: They're going through a very difficult time right now. They'll suffer a terrible loss, the most traumatic tragedy of their careers. The repercussions are devastaing, but the four deal with it realistically, and they do continue as a team.

Their lives aren't going to get easier. The same week that they suffer this loss, Terminus arrives on Earth. He's really a cosmic sleazebag. Galactus may eat planets in order to survive, but Terminus has no such nobility. He pillages planets, selling the populations into slavery and stealing the planet's natural resources. He's just basically rotten and evil.

She-Hulk, as you know, is the newest member of the team, temporarily replacing Ben. All this hits her during her first week on the job, and the way she reacts to it all should reveal quite a bit about her. Speaking of revealing, She-Hulk will appear in a solo story in FF #276, when a helicopter pilot catches her sunbathing on the top of the Baxter Building!

In the middle of all these events, also, the Fantastic Four have to contend with Dr. Doom!

ML: But Dr. Doom is dead!

JB: I know.

ML: The is it Dr. Doom or isn't it?

JB: Well, yes... and no. By the way, I want to clear up a rumor about Dr. Doom's face. His face is a mess. There was a rumor that he was a perfectly handsome man under the mask, except for one scar which, because of his tremendous ego, made him feel hideously disfigured. Nonsense. He is hideously disfigured. Remember, when the Tibetan monks who raised him first placed the mask upon his face, the metal was still hot! If his face wasn't misshapen before, that along would do it.

ML: We still want to know if it's Dr. Doom or not, and how it can be if he's dead.

JB: Next question, please!

ML: How did you come up with your interpretation of the Thing?

JB: Again, I turned the clock back. When Ben Grimm first became the Thing, his arms, legs, and head were stubby, and not proportioned like a human being's. He was a monster. As Joe Sinnott has said, as the years went by Ben gradually turned from a monster into teddy bear. Now my rendition of the Thing has him rocky, not lumpy, but I want the rocky Thing to work and move like the lumpy Thing did. His proportions are not human. He's really shaped more like a starfish than a human being, and he doesn't move or function as he would were he human.

This is why Ben is so miserable as the Thing. I got a fan letter recently from a reader who wanted to know why Ben was unhappy being the Thing, who concluded "You think that he'd like it by now!" Well, he doesn't like it. He's a lot lik ethe Elephant Man in this respect, and that's why he had the particular reaction that he did when he saw The Elephant Man in issue #232.

ML: Talke about the other members of the FF -- Reed, Sue, and Johnny.

JB: Johnny hasn't grown up at all. He's still the hot-headed immature adolescent he's always been. Wait'll you see how he reacts to having the She-Hulk in the group.

Reed Richards would probably be a small town college professor if it hadn't been for the accident that made him into Mister Fantastic. Contrary to popular belief, Reed is not perfect. There are some quirks in his personality than [sic] I want to reveal as I delve into his past in the coming months. What was he like in college? What was his childhood like? We really don't know!

Think. Reed Richards, the most steadfast and cautious man you can imagine, the who double-checks every instrument fifty times before he embarks on anything -- this got once got in a untested rocket ship, knowing full well that it had insufficient shielding, with his fiancee and a sixteen year old kid? There's more to Reed than we know about. That's all I'll say for now.

Sue Richards has been unintentionally pushed to the sidelines a lot in her career. I want it to be clear that Sue has a memory and an imagination. She may not be the strategic genius Reed is, but she's contributed her share of moves to the group's fighting style, and she's remembered them, and learned a great deal quickly and well. She's a bright lady.

Basically, Sue is a mother, not an adventuress. Being a mother is a full-time job. She's a beautiful woman, and if I had to describe it, I'd say she has more of a radiant beauty than the glamorous beauty that Dazzler has, or the kind of whimsical charm the Wasp has. I think of Sue as the mother of the Marvel Universe, and, of course, everyone's mother is the most beautiful woman in the world.

ML: What about Franklin? How does he handle being the child of super heroes?

JB: You might think that being a five-year-old whose parents battle for the survival of earth is abnormal, but not having grown up any other way, it's all perfectly normal to Franklin Richards. I suppose it's like being the child of movie stars, in that respect. In fact, the life he's starting to lead now, since they moved to Connecticut, is abnormal for him! Now he's livigin in Small Town, USA! He'll be starting kindergarten soon -- that should be entertaining!

ML: What makes a good comic book?

JB: A good comic book has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That doesn't mean the story can't continue for more than one issue, but each part of the story contained in one comic book should have a beginning, middle, and end. The characters should be realistic, but not ponderously so -- in other words, they shouldn't preach. The story should be fun, as distinguished from funny.

The best comics are those which have emotional impact. I can think of a few offhand that have actually made me cry. Iron Fist #8 comes to mind. That story is a good example of Chris Claremont's writing at its best. It brought a tear to my eye even though I saw the story in advance and drew it! The stories starring Darrell The Clown, back in Man-Thing, written by Steve Gerber and drawn by Mike Ploog touched me. Len Wein wrote a beautiful Hulk story a few years back, in which the Hulk befriended a little blind girl. "The Kid Who Collected Spider-Man" also had an impact on me. A really good comic can make me laugh, too, but it's harder to think of examples of that offhand.

ML: Are you competing with what Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did when they wrote and drew The Fantastic Four?

JB: Oh, no. I couldn't compete with Stan and Jack. I'm not the writer Stan is nor the artist Jack is. Being one person both writing and drawing the strip means that I have a potential for a better synthesis of art and story, perhaps. But I don't think I could ever create Galactus, the Black Panther, or the Inhumans. And those guys created Galactus, the Black Panther, and the Inhumans all within six issues of each other!

I hope to be a worthy heir to Stan and Jack. The Fantastic Four is the second highest selling Marvel title today. But by all accounts, it should be number one, and I intend to make it that way! It is, after all, "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine!"