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Topic: John Byrne: King of the Cornerbox Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Julius Cepeda
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Posted: 03 October 2020 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

One of my favorite pieces of John Byrne’s art is his corner box artwork.  I just looked at the corner box for Amazing Spider-Man #1,vol.2. (2000), and it’s amazing. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time just looking at and admiring the corner box artwork on his Avengers run 181-191 and Uncanny X-Men run. This is how I describe John Byrne’s art:  he draws the characters how their supposed to look like. That’s why he’s my favorite comic book artist. 
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John Byrne
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Posted: 03 October 2020 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

I thank you!

The irony here is that when they were introduced I thought the corner boxes ruined the covers. I much prefer BIG LOGOS!

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Peter Martin
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Posted: 03 October 2020 at 1:53pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

This is how I describe John Byrne’s art:  he draws the characters how their supposed to look like.
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This is what sealed JB as my favourite artist for Marvel characters (which is not to say he isn't great at DC ones too, just that I was a Marvel kid at the time): I began to realise that the characters all looked like how I thought they were supposed to look when JB drew them. He drew the best version of nearly everyone in Marvel's roster.

And very much a master of the cornerbox as well.
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Tim O Neill
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Posted: 03 October 2020 at 1:58pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply





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Tim O Neill
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Matt Hawes
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Posted: 03 October 2020 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

The corner boxes feel "right" to me, but that is partly because I grew up mostly a Marvel reader, and the boxes were standard for so many years on Marvel comic books. And, yes, JB's corner boxes were the best for me! Like you other guys point out, JB's versions looked like how I wanted the characters to look.

Trivia: I learned this when I read an early "Fantastic Four" letters page... Steve Ditko is the fella that came up with the idea of using a corner box.

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Matt Hawes
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Posted: 03 October 2020 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Tim, I LOVE those boxes in particular, especially the X-Men one.

I mentioned this before, but the "new" X-Men box intrigued me as a youngster when I first saw it on the cover of "Uncanny X-Men" #122" (though that version was by Dave Cockrum, and just one issue before the box by JB was used). I think it's taken for granted now, but mask-less characters having no visible pupils in their eyes was not very common, especially for heroes, excepting the "Orphan Annie" comic strip.

So, here we have Storm, Colossus, and Nightcrawler, all without pupils, Wolverine with the traditional "no pupils while wearing a mask" look, and Cyclops with his visor. Only Banshee was normal-looking. I found them fascinating as a result. The team looked so odd (in a good way for me) compared to most every other superheroes of the period and before.


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Vinny Valenti
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Posted: 03 October 2020 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

"though that version was by Dave Cockrum"

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Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I had long thought that those pre-Byrne corner box heads were actually pencilled by Gil Kane and inked by Cockrum - maybe I assumed that because it was Kane that pencilled the cover that they first appeared in (#94). Does anyone know for sure?


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Brian Miller
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Posted: 03 October 2020 at 4:19pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Those heads look nothing like Kane to me. Pure Cockrum to my eyes.

Edited by Brian Miller on 03 October 2020 at 4:22pm
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 03 October 2020 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

I'd love to have a card set of all those Fantastic Four corner box pieces in nice reproduction, maybe color one side and b&w the other? The X-Men heads are gorgeously inked; Terry Austin could really knock it out of the park sometimes!

Around age 11-12 I used to find it fascinating somehow all the variations in coloring for the same corner box on the Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica comics I was into. I would line them all up next to each other. Before then that feature of Marvel comics didn't appeal to me because I was just a single issue here or there person. Then with F4 where the art there changed from issue to issue I thought that was the ultimate! Also if the corner box was in any way reacting to the rest of the cover, that was always fun (thinking of a Sienkiewicz New Mutants cover here).
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Adam Schulman
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Posted: 03 October 2020 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

I appreciated the X-MEN and AVENGERS corner boxes. Both teams had shifting lineups, and you could tell who was now on each team because of the faces in boxes. 

Of course, eventually this also applied to FANTASTIC FOUR when Ben left and Jennifer Walters joined. 
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Wallace Sellars
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Posted: 03 October 2020 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Count me among those who liked the Marvel corner boxes, particularly JB's X-MEN.
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