It was during the time I was doing this that I first began expressing my concern that the books were becoming increasingly incestuous -- that I often found I could not follow a storyline in one title because I was not following another. Many Marvel writers had forgotten how to do self-contained titles, and -- a manifestation of fans turning pros -- were increasingly wanting every book to touch every other book.

Well, I call BULLSHIT. There are plenty of comics for the "grownup" to read, without insisting that a form invented and intended for the juvenile audience should "adapt" to the reading needs of a bunch of immature knuckledraggers. GET OVER IT. Superheroes are cut from the same cloth as Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, Harry Potter, and a host of others. If you cannot appreciate them as such, MOVE ON. If you got to a fancy restaurant and order a four or five course meal, you don't put A1 Sauce on every course. You savor each for what it is, and for the pleasure you are meant to derive from it.

This thread reads to me like the genesis of a Bad Byrne story because it points out quite vividly that Byrne is always already assumed to be "bad" at the outset.

Dear John Byrne, you sad, disdaining, cantankerous outcast from the "community" -- the "general consensus" of which has proclaimed you irascible and unreasonable -- if only you would agree with me, why then, your whole view of your life's work and of this industry would be redeemed! But, alas, you will not even try, not even so much as to respond my plea exactly as I so "sincerely" desired... Oh well, "I should have known better."

John Byrne wrote: Today, we have professionals and readers who are so embarassed to have anything to do with superheroes (yet are addicted to them, in the first case for the money, in the second for the "fix")

How do you know the current professionals are addicted to making comics for the money?

You don't like mind-reading when it's done to you. It's only fair that you don't do the same for others.

Some have said it in so many words. That's a pretty good clue.

Many have also said that they love what they do. In the case of the many writers that come from other mediums, they indeed do it for love.

As with everything -- or almost everything -- I write, I tried to make my Superman stories "layered", so that readers who came back to them a few years, or even decades, after their first reading would find elements to the story that they had not noticed before.   This is what I would define as an "All-Ages" approach, rather than adult or "grown-up".