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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6277
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| Posted: 21 May 2014 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | 1
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Great choice Tim. That opening sequence is powerfully etched in my mind. The spare number of pages set in that horrible future are surprisingly evocative. It's surprising to go back and see how much more I remember than is actually there.
I am sorry that Chris' scripting couldn't have been more in synch with John's storytelling because all those words definitely contribute to the sense of richness in the story. It's too bad that what was so satisfying to some in the audience was so irritating to the artists creating the work!
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12565
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| Posted: 22 May 2014 at 3:41am | IP Logged | 2
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"Hunted down and -- with a few rare exceptions -- killed without mercy."
Why were those exceptions allowed to live?
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 22 May 2014 at 4:32am | IP Logged | 3
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Also, I just read somewhere either in this forum or in an older article, that in Next Men you either experimented or dropped all together the use of thought balloons. ( I may be way off base too) And now I can't help but see them as awkward.Did you end up dropping thought balloons from your story telling? •• That started long before NEXT MEN. I was working on FANTASTIC FOUR when I first began leaving out both thought balloons and sound effects. Those two things were a big part of the language of comics, but I started to think of them as a bit of a cheat. (Screen writers often say the same about voiceovers.) I felt that as writer/artist, I should be able to find other ways to express those familiar tropes -- especially since, in the case of sound effects, they had become a big part of what made civilians think of comics as empty-headed and foolish. (Thank you, William Dozier!)
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 22 May 2014 at 4:39am | IP Logged | 4
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"Hunted down and -- with a few rare exceptions -- killed without mercy."Why were those exceptions allowed to live? •• It's really too easy to pick apart Chris' writing from this period. SO much excess verbiage -- copy, it sometimes seemed, just for the sake of copy. (Look at the third panel in the first page posted above. HOW long did it take Kate to roll down that ramp?? Or, how about Logan's fight with "Big Alex" on the next page. The art seems to say it was over in an instant -- but the dialog says something else!) It did, however, lead to something kind of amusing. When Chris teamed with Frank Miller on the WOLVERINE mini, Frank was well aware of Chris' tendency to be verbose - in large part because of me complaining about it to Frank! -- so he left lots of dead space for Chris to fill with words. But Chris, having paid attention to Frank's own writing style on DAREDEVIL, decided to get terse. The result was lots and lots of blank space in the panels and pages -- which many fans at the time hailed as a brilliant "innovation!"
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Eric Ladd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 August 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 4506
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| Posted: 22 May 2014 at 5:24am | IP Logged | 5
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I remeber that Big Alex fight because I found it confusing or at least a mistake that the balloon with Wolverine's thoughts was connected to Big Alex's "URRRGrl".
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Charles Valderrama
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4737
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| Posted: 22 May 2014 at 10:00am | IP Logged | 6
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But Chris, having paid attention to Frank's own writing style on DAREDEVIL, decided to get terse. The result was lots and lots of blank space in the panels and pages -- which many fans at the time hailed as a brilliant "innovation!"••••••• Funny, JB - since you at one point got a lot of flack for leaving out backgrounds in your work! Go figure!!
-C!
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Peter Martin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 March 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 15881
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| Posted: 22 May 2014 at 10:08am | IP Logged | 7
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I think the 'forbidden to breed' bit does add little extra oomph in terms of how freedom has been crushed in this future, but I can see how throwing these extra bits in when you've created it from the ground up would be irksome. If it's any mitigation, I didn't ever think 'Hey, there's no As!".
Edited by Peter Martin on 22 May 2014 at 10:08am
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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
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| Posted: 22 May 2014 at 10:44am | IP Logged | 8
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Michael: "Hunted down and -- with a few rare exceptions -- killed without mercy."
Why were those exceptions allowed to live?
**
I think you make a fair point, but to this young reader the effect of this kind of detail was pure intrigue and wonder. That the kind of quirky detail draws me into a sci-fi world-- It makes me want to hear about those few exceptions and it's only too bad we don't have more time to get into it.
Plus, I can't help instantly imagining how some might escape that doom-- wealth, corruption, exploitation, whatever. Obviously, it's a question of taste, but this particular example was one I thought really added a lot with just a phrase.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 22 May 2014 at 11:08am | IP Logged | 9
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Thing is, this "hunted down" line is a rare example of Chris writing TO the pictures -- and reinforcing the popular misconception that the artist just draws what s/he's told. After all, Kate is walking thru an enormous cemetary, the headstones inscribed with many familiar name, including non-mutants. Isn't everything we need to know right there in the pictures? Is there some danger a reader might think the Sentinels had been something other than ruthless?
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
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| Posted: 22 May 2014 at 11:10am | IP Logged | 10
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I would have presumed based on the art that those who were dead had been killed actively resisting and that those who were not had stopped fighting (at least in any overt ways). Seems straightforward.
It's Claremont's description that creates interesting complexity or unnecessary murk, depending on your taste.
I'm not really trying here to negatively judge him (although I personally prefer clarity), and it is definitely a point to Mr. Claremont's credit in terms of his success and legacy that so much of what he added in his work with JB ultimately later offered, because of the nature of his writing (including his verbosity, writing against the art, etc.), both him and so many others after him openings to create whole new worlds and realities and visions and re-visions, etc., which probably more than anything else fueled the decades of X-Men dominance.
JB has insisted continually that the original story was meant to be a "clean" win. And I do think that's a hallmark of so much of JB's work: clean storytelling. Something not characteristic of Chris Claremont, in my opinion.
So, for me, re-reading all those Claremont-Byrne issues regularly shows me that questions I had 35 years ago, virtually issue by issue, almost exclusively arose from Mr. Claremont's words and not Mr. Byrne's art.
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Vinny Valenti
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Posts: 8072
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| Posted: 22 May 2014 at 11:11am | IP Logged | 11
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I'd be curious to see the DOFP issues "re-mastered" with JB scripting instead
of CC, just too see how different the story would read (as well as how
different the characters would sound! - for one thing, though JB is so
associated with Wolverine, he's only actually dialogued him just a few times).
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 22 May 2014 at 11:16am | IP Logged | 12
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I'd be curious to see the DOFP issues "re-mastered" with JB scripting instead of CC, just too see how different the story would read (as well as how different the characters would sound! - for one thing, though JB is so associated with Wolverine, he's only actually dialogued him just a few times).••• Delete Chris' references to the whole plan maybe just creating an alternate timeline, and the "incestuous Lesbian kiss" moment, which confirmed that was what happened, and, Chris' excess verbiage aside, you have my story. It's an interesting lesson in just how little it takes to gut a story!
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