A person posted a small part of the court transcript on Jim Shooter's blog that addresses Shooter's claim that JB said he earned 10 million dollars from Marvel...

QUOTE: Question: "You have earned over ten million dollars at Marvel?" Byrne: "That's probably fair." He then qualified that with the following, after stating that he made less money doing Alpha Flight than any other book; Question: "During your career you earned 20 million from others than Alpha Flight?" Byrne: "Right. I should point out that did not earn 10 million specifically from Marvel. I would say ten million probably in the course of my entire career, I have made four or five million doing the Next Men, which I created to own at Dark Horse.

Jim Shooter's response to the facts:

Jim Shooter wrote: ...I remembered the "That's probably fair" part, if not the exact quote. The point is he made a lot of money...

Byrne: "That's probably fair."

He then qualified that with the following, after stating that he made less money doing Alpha Flight than any other book;

Question: "During your career you earned 20 million from others than Alpha Flight?"

Byrne: "Right. I should point out that did not earn 10 million specifically from Marvel. I would say ten million probably in the course of my entire career, I have made four or five million doing the Next Men, which I created to own at Dark Horse.

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??!!

I think there must be a transcription error there. I could say with confidence that during Shooter's time at the company, I GENERATED more than 10 million dollars in income FOR MARVEL, but for me to have EARNED ten million myself would have required my receiving a MUCH larger share of the sales than was the reality.*

Same with NEXT MEN. Altho that book was a HUGE seller when it started (outselling any other direct sales only book by something like a factor of ten), even the (by then) high cover price and larger share of the sales would not have put $5,000,000 into MY pocket.

I can only have been talking about what the PUBLISHERS were earning from the books I worked on.

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* Do the math, and you will see my run on FANTASTIC FOUR probably pulled in close to $9,000,000 FOR MARVEL, but since the first half of that run was done without royalties, my own share would have been around $180,000.

Do the math, and you will see my run on FANTASTIC FOUR probably pulled in close to $9,000,000 FOR MARVEL, but since the first half of that run was done without royalties, my own share would have been around $180,000. ----JB

How much of that did you get to keep after local, state and federal taxes, retirement and health care costs are deducted?

When someone wins the lottery and the amount is annouced, I imediatley begin to think, "How much did they REALLY win?" after taxes are subtracted.

"Ask people who know me if the tale as he relates it rings true."

I'm glad you isolated those two lines, JB.  Because to me, he contradicts himself right off the bat.  He says it never happened but then challenges the telling of the tale itself.  Which would mean there was a tale, but that it wasn't being recalled correctly in his opinion.

It's certainly a strange response from someone if they were never involved in a particular situation.

Too bad someone else who was there hasn't confirmed the story to support JB.  Larry Hama doubts it happened and posted as such and this whole thing has really illustrated to me just how much bickering and drama there must have been going on.

Wolfman, David, Shooter, etc., there are just so many heated stories and bad relationships from back in those days.  Trying to catch up on what happened back then is certainly disheartening for me.  As a fan, it's hard to break the image of the happy bullpen of artists and writers working together in the industry that we all love that letters pages and that sort of thing presented.  Innocence(ignorance?) of youth I guess.

I suppose art and ego are just too hard to separate.  Sometimes the conflict produces a great final product but it seems more often to just tear things apart.

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What is the "it" Larry doubts? With all the back and forth and overlap in this thread, I have lost track.