MODERN MASTERS VOLUME SEVEN: JJOHNOHN BBYRNEYRNE By Jon B. Cooke and Eric Nolen-Weathington Modern Masters Volume Seven: JOHN BYRNE Table of Contents Introduction by Walter Simonson . 4 Part One: Drawing with a Ballpoint Pen. 6 Part Two: The Fantastic Climb up the Marvel Ladder . 19 Part Three: Up, up, and Away from Marvel. 45 Part Four: A Legend is Made . 56 Part Five: Storytelling and the Creative Process . 70 Part Six: John Byrne Takes On... 77 Art Gallery . 93 3 Drawing with a Part 1: Ballpoint Pen JON B. COOKE: Where are you originally from? JOHN: Quite a bit, yeah. In fact, I said to Mike Carlin a while back—this was when I was doing the John Cleese JOHN BYRNE: Well, I was born in England and I lived Superman project [True Brit], and so I’m calling up all my there for about the first eight years of my life. Then we old memories of England, because the gag is what if immigrated to Canada, and I lived there until I was Superman landed in England rather than the United about 30. Then I came to the States. States. And I said, “Y’know, people are going to discover JBC: Do you have any brothers and sisters? my secret, here.” Because I have this reputation for being able to draw the ’30s and the ’40s so very well, and all I’m JOHN: No, only child. really doing when I do that is drawing the England that I remember. So now I’m drawing the England that I JBC: What did your parents do? remember as England. So people will know my dark secret. JOHN: My father is a town planner—zoning, architec- JBC: What year were you born? ture, that kind of stuff—and my mother is a housewife. JOHN: 1950. JBC: What got you guys to make the move to Canada? JBC: So England was still in a post-war kind of semi- JOHN: Land of opportunity. They wanted me to have Depression...? a better chance than they’d had, and they thought they could find it there. JOHN: Pretty much. I have false memories of World War II because all my relatives talked about JBC: Was it pretty much a middle-class life style? it so much when I was a kid. It took me a long time to realize that I had not actually lived JOHN: Mostly, yeah. Maybe nudging through World War II, because I have such.... A toward upper-middle-class. But my few years ago, when people started talking father was, by the end of his career, about false memory syndrome, fairly highly-placed in the city gov- I went, “I know what that is! I ernment in Calgary. He was the know exactly what that is!” City Clerk, which is a lowly- sounding term for what is the JBC: Did Birmingham suffer highest non-elective office. So much damage? he was powerful. I didn’t realize how powerful when I was a JOHN: Quite a bit, yeah. The kid, but... we lived all right. street that I lived on in West Bromwich until I was about eight, I would go down the JBC: Where you were born? street around the corner to walk to school, and two houses in, there was a vacant lot JOHN: I was only born where I which was a bomb site. It was a house was born. We lived in a town called that had been completely taken out West Bromwich, which is just north by a German bomb in World War of Birmingham. II. It was just around the corner JBC: Is that pretty much in the cen- from where my grandparents lived. ter of the country? JBC: So the Blitz really went that far in—? JOHN: Yeah, the Midlands, in fact, JOHN: Yeah. And in fact, when I was it’s called. about nine years old, we had a funny experi- JBC: Do you have much memory of it? ence. Late at night a truck drove by and backfired, and I heard this tremendous 6 thump in the next room, my parents’ room. the same cos- My mother had actually, in her sleep, tumes—costumes jumped out of bed and rolled under the bed. being the key word—the same JBC: Something she had done before? architecture. It’s a JOHN: Yeah, an instinctive movement, very different and now we’re talking close to ten, 15 years urban environ- after the war. ment from what Edmonton was, JBC: Was there any rationing in the ’50s? because Edmonton is JOHN: A little bit. I didn’t feel it much. much further north, like 120 JBC: Socialism was kind of coming— miles north. JOHN: Working its way in, and we were You’re starting sort of aware of changes. That was probably to get into the one of the key reasons that we moved to cold parts. Canada. Calgary, yeah, is much more JBC: Was your father a Tory? open. They think they’re JOHN: Weeelll... yeah, I suppose so. He’s cowboy. sort of apolitical, but he would lean con- They’re not, servative. but they JBC: Obviously the climate of Calgary think they must have been worlds different. are. [laughs] JOHN: Well, yeah. Calgary’s better than JBC: How did Edmonton, which is where we first landed. you come across the Pond? Did you fly? I mean, Edmonton is that Canadian winter JOHN: No. We took the big boat. In fact, that people think about, where it starts in we came over, we went back, we came September and ends in May. [laughs] And over again. the skies are gray the whole time. And then we moved to Calgary when I was 16. JBC: Why? Calgary is in the foothills of the Rockies, and it gets these warm winds that are JOHN: My mother decided she didn’t like it, possibly because when we came over the called Chinooks, and they come down Previous Page: Panel first time she had appendicitis and Dad over the Rockies and the temperature will detail in pencil form from literally go from 40º below to 40º above couldn’t find work and I had a bone disease True Brit. overnight. And that will last for a week or and she sort of said, “I don’t like this!” So Above: John’s old so, just like spring, and then the winter we went back. And then we decided that, memories of England comes back. I was there from age 16 to 30. all things considered, Canada was better. So provided nice details in we returned. these pencils for page 47 JBC: Isn’t Calgary out west? of True Brit. JBC: How long was the return to JOHN: That’s the good image for it. Superman ™ and ©2006 DC England? Comics. They think they’re cowboys. JOHN: Two years in Canada, two years JBC: But they’re certainly more back in England, and then we returned to “American” than the rest of Canada. Canada when I was eight. So I usually skip the part where we went back and forth and JOHN: Yes. Very much. In fact, the first just say I’ve been in Canada since I was eight. time I visited Dallas, I thought, “Wow! This is Calgary, but bigger!” And then I thought, JBC: What was the experience of being “Well, of course. It’s the other end of the on a boat ride for that long? What was, it, pipeline, isn’t it?” It’s the same people, it’s five days? 7 JOHN: Five days. It was wonderful. It’s the We crossed on the Queen Elizabeth, the Below: Jack Kirby, Alex only way to travel. I was a tiny little kid; it’s Queen Mary, and a little boat that nobody’s Toth, Steve Ditko, Ross a hell of an adventure. I was four or five the ever heard of called the RMS Ivernia—that Andru, Frank Bellamy, and first trip and then seven, six-and-a-half or was the three trips. It was five days each way. Neal Adams are but a whatever it works out to, and eight. We had And then, of course, a long way by train get- few of the legendary to cross without my father, and my mother ting out to western Canada. Although that’s comic-book artists was hideously seasick the whole trip. I had one of my favorite little memories, too, is whose stellar work crowds the walls of the free run of the boat, and it was wonderful. that when I was four years old, we came in Byrne sanctuary (not to All the stewards and whatnot took care of through New York. And I have a vivid mem- mention spectacular art me, and I was eating in the dining room all ory of Grand Central Station from when I by some spectacular by myself, because everybody was seasick. It was four years old. And I’ve often said Grand comic-strip masters as was like an Atlantic crossing worse than Central Station is the only thing that hasn’t well, including Charles anybody—this was on the Queen Elizabeth. gotten smaller. I stand in the middle of Schulz and Roy Crane). Grand Central Station sometimes and I go, The proud owner poses JBC: It was rocky water? “It’s still big! It’s every bit as big as it was before a mere portion of when I was four years old!” the breath-taking JOHN: Oh, yeah, boy. And I have one collection at his former vivid memory, which is that I was going to JBC: Did you get to know other people? home in Fairfield, Conn.