John Byrne’s WW

[SJNeal]

It was pure laziness, you can tell by the way he undid all his changes to the costume in his final issue.

Attachment 102007

Also notice the under eye and laugh lines are gone and replaced by dimples. Like I said she got prettier after he stopped doing his own inks.

Though clearly an homage to his own work in Man of Steel #1, I think this page is beautiful! While I wasn't a fan of his writing on Wonder Woman, I could have at least gotten behind the art if it'd looked like this throughout. Which begs the question, why didn't it?

I'll have to Google some interviews because now I'm curious what inspired the changes to Diana's look.

[Frank]

Alex Ross famously called him out in a Wizard interview.

He did, but iirc there was also text to indicate he was laughing. I don't think it was a hard, angry "BYRNE IS LAZY!" thing, but more of a "gee, this is a pain in the patoot, Byrne is lazy (and may be onto something)" kind of thing.

And I promise I'm not attacking you, Stanlos! I just remember reading that in Wizard as more of a friendly jab than a declarative criticism. Then again, I did put in "iirc" b/c it's been a loooonng time since I read the interview.

And many stars for the win!

[Jim Kelly]

Byrne's a polarizing figure with a long reputation of being difficult to work with.

I'm gonna speculate that these digs by other professionals are the result of personal interactions they may have had with the man.

I can understand someone not liking Byrne and making comments about him as a person. I can even understand in the heat of the moment someone might say something stupid, just to come up with an insult. How many people call someone fat when they're at a loss for anything legitimate to say about another person?

But leaving stuff out, simplifying details is at the core of comic book art. It's not the photo-realistic painting that Alex Ross does (which I don't consider to be comic book art)--and for which he gets bags of time to complete the work and for which he's paid well. But it's the basic story telling art that developed in the middle of the twentieth century, where economy of line and detail became the purpose of comic artists.

Byrne is an old-school comic book artist. And his work on Wonder Woman was very much in that tradition.

Some people hated his inking style--and I can understand why, because it was this loose style of inking rather than the tight style which distinguished his early Marvel work. I see inking (on classic comics) as falling into these two camps--loose and tight. On the one hand you have Dick Giordano and on the other you have Murphy Anderson.

I notice that a lot of artists as they mature go from a tight style to a loose style. While the tight style is impressive for all the detail work, it's kind of static--like the image is frozen on the page. Whereas the loose style is more dynamic--bold lines and spotting the blacks directs the eye forward across the page. Artists that became looser in their style as they developed: Wally Wood, Carmine Infantino, Joe Kubert, Gil Kane, Keith Giffen. Even Terry Austin as an inker went from a tight style to a really loose style.

In terms of painted art, the photo-realism of Alex Ross is the equivalent of the tight inking style--it's static. Contrast that with someone like Harvey Kurtzman, who went from classic comic art (for E.C.) to doing painted comics (as in Little Annie Fanny for PLAYBOY)--Kurtzman was always an artist who had a loose, dynamic style and that was translated into his painted work with Will Elder.

Someone like Alex Ross, I assume, knows all this about the history of comics art--so if he said that John Byrne was lazy for reducing the number of stars on the costumes then he had to know that was a stupid comment. Maybe he was just reaching for some negative thing to say and that's all he could think up at the time.

Personally I hate all the stars on the shorts. It's the one thing that always bugged me about the Wonder Woman outfit. And it seems like every artist struggles with this design element--trying to come up with their own solution. So many stars just seems far too busy to me--and especially around her pelvic area--that's crazy.

The thing that I didn't like in the Byrne costume design was the big bracelets on her arms--but he's not the only artist that has done that. If he was trying to reduce his workload (which is clearly not what he was doing, since he was doing so many jobs at the time), why would he have included those overly embellished bracelets?

[SJNeal]

Excellent post, Jim Kelly - much more articulate that I'd have been!

Frank's post above yours offers a different lens through which to view Ross' comment, and may be more accurate than the snark that I interpreted. That said, I completely agree with you about Ross' style; it's very pretty to look at, but a storyteller he is not. He must realize that himself, hence the disproportionate lack of interior work.

[Thirteen]

Cutting corners on a relatively minor detail, while doing the work of four people on the book, every month for three years, isn’t what I call lazy.

It was his choice to do all of the above work to maintain more "control" of the book. To then cut corners doesn't reflect well, but there are worse things, of course.

A couple of articles on Byrnes run in retrospect:
https://screenrant.com/wonder-woman-...ons-explained/
https://fanbasepress.com/index.php/p...s-wonder-woman

[Stanlos]

He did, but iirc there was also text to indicate he was laughing. I don't think it was a hard, angry "BYRNE IS LAZY!" thing, but more of a "gee, this is a pain in the patoot, Byrne is lazy (and may be onto something)" kind of thing.

And I promise I'm not attacking you, Stanlos! I just remember reading that in Wizard as more of a friendly jab than a declarative criticism. Then again, I did put in "iirc" b/c it's been a loooonng time since I read the interview.

And many stars for the win!

I loved the stars too! Adam Hughes would be great with the stars of he would have just given her short more real estate

[Largo161]

It was his choice to do all of the above work to maintain more "control" of the book. To then cut corners doesn't reflect well, but there are worse things, of course.

It wouldn’t reflect well if he’d cut corners on something significant. It’s not like he decided to put her in a single-color unitard to make it easy.

I don’t think Byrne saved soooo much time by reducing the star count that he could leave the office midday to play golf or whatever. :-)

[SiegePerilous02]

Byrne seems like a work horse. Whatever else we could say about him, I don't think "lazy" ever fits.

[Koriand'r]

Byrne seems like a work horse. Whatever else we could say about him, I don't think "lazy" ever fits.

However it's a whole lot easier drawing two stars aligned evenly than fifteen.

[kcekada]

The star-spangled panties look was dated long Before Byrne took over. I guess Perez can make anything look good, but I can't fault Byrne for trying to fix the problem -- even though his stylized stars weren't an ideal solution. He had not gone crazy with the tiara and breast plate-- maybe people would have been more accepting.

I do think he entire run on WW looked rushed -- it was not his best work.

[SiegePerilous02]

However it's a whole lot easier drawing two stars aligned evenly than fifteen.

It is, but I'd be quicker to label an artist as lazy if they also weren't going everything else Byrne was doing in that instance.

[AlexLyo]

When I was younger, Byrne's run was one of the first where I actively stopped collecting WW comics. Partly it was really having no interest in his depiction of Hippolyta and partly it was really disliking the art (hilarious considering I was apparently fine with Deodato's bad girl art before it. Oh how our tastes change ). I eventually picked it all up but didn't revisit it again till this year when I re-read it.

I've completely mellowed on the art now, and apparently on the story too. I think after years of being actively infuriated by Finch and Robinson, or simply disappointed by Fontana, Wilson etc, his run just reads so much better in comparison and with hindsight. Even given Byrne clearly wanting to write mostly everyone but Diana, his depiction of her still felt superheroic, strong, vivid, compassionate etc.

I think Diana's voice is something I really miss when a writer isn't hitting the mark, and I go back looking for places where its strongest. Rucka always does that for me, Jimenez, Perez, Orlando too etc, but it totally surprised me that when I sat down to re-read Byrne, his Diana didn't feel totally far off what I miss. Not perfect, sure, but far better than what I've become resigned to in recent years. She sounded a little like the Diana I miss.

[Largo161]

I think that Byrne was trying to incorporate some Deodato-isms into his WW art, in the beginning, seeing as how popular the style was at the time. Nobody loved Byrne more than I did in the early eighties, but his art on WW wasn’t what I was expecting.

[Will Evans]

My criticism for Byrne’s run is that most times it felt like an Etrigon the Demon book guest starring Wonder Woman, than the other way around.

[Koriand'r]

Simplifying the star spangled-ness of her shirts to just 2 big stars as a time saver as an artist was a BAD sign of being overworked. I did like Byrnes connecting the belt with the emblem, though. It unified the design.

There's too great a distance between the bottom of the breastplate and the top of the belt to cover, unless there's an eagle perched atop the belt or some other way to elongate the breastplate like in the movie costume.