Great looking page. Even without the words you can see the story progressing.

I am excited about this.

How do you decide which panels need backgrounds and which ones don't?

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I thought JB didn't do backgrounds...

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Mostly, it's a question of "focus". Occasionally I will drop backgrounds for dramatic effect, but usually I do so to throw the foreground figures into sharp relief. In cases like that, sometimes backgrounds can be distracting, especially if they are complex.

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I thought JB didn't do backgrounds...

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You're joking, of course, but I am sometimes amazed to still hear/read this complaint. It goes to what I have said about how many of the Byrne bashers seem unable to update their complaints. It's true that, for a while, and about thirty years ago, there was a period when various "outside influences" caused the backgrounds to become a bit more scarce than the usual case -- but, like I say, that was thirty years ago.

Like I've said before, just about every complaint that has been leveled against my work has been true at one time or another -- but not all at the same time!! Internet trolls seem not to worry themselves too much about those kinds of details, tho!

(When those "outside influences" were eliminated, and the backgrounds came back with their usual vigor, it became a source of fascination to watch the length to which some would go in order to keep complaing that "Byrne never does backgrounds." Superman flying thru the sky was considered a panel without backgrounds, for instance. Even more bizarre, tho, was when the camera angle was downwards, and the background was rocks, or grass, or pavement. These, apparently, constituted "no backgrounds" in the minds of some!!)

You're joking, of course ...

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Absolutely - just for clarity!

And, I have to admit, if a book is written and drawn well and, therefore, I am enjoying it, I never don't think I actually notice whether there is a background or not.  If it's needed it'll be there, if it's not, it won't.

The agreed upon solution was for me to ink the pages before they were lettered. This is, of course, how the great majority of pages are done these days, but back in those pre-computer, pre-Photoshop days, it was complicated. For one thing, there was a company policy of actually paying the inkers more (if I recall correctly, 20%) if they had to work on unlettered pages. Since in my case it would be by choice, and not due to deadline pressures, that extra money felt like a bit of a scam. So I suggested that instead of fully inking each panel, I would indicate the lettering in pencil and ink the balloons and captions.

So far, so good.

But it turned out my ability to judge the space a letterer would need was not always accurate. Often my balloons would have to be whited out and redrawn. More work for the letterer, and sometimes cutting into the art.

Of course, on panels without backgrounds, this was not a problem, and almost unconsciously I began dropping backgrounds in order to better accomodate the lettering. In some panels I would still ink in my own balloons, but the number of panels without backgrounds increased. At the time, I wasn't really even aware it was happening.

When I moved to New York and was able to hand deliver the pages, the problem quickly corrected itself, but "Byrne never draws backgrounds" had become a mantra.