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Topic: When JB Left Marvel For DC in the 1980s! Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Phil Southern
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Joined: 17 May 2005
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Posted: 21 August 2025 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply
This brings back painful memories--I had subscribed to Fantastic Four, starting with issue #290--I then had eight Byrne-free issues coming monthly in that brown paper sleeve!
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Greg McPhee
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Posted: 21 August 2025 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply
It was always jarring when there would be a sudden change in a creative team in 70s and 80s comics. And it was only through (in my case) with the Internet later on you would find out why (I didn't have access to industry publications in the 80s).

It really seemed to happen at Marvel a lot more than I recall at DC. And I am aware of some of the reasons for this at Marvel.
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John Byrne
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Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 21 August 2025 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply
Harken back to my earliest experiences with American superhero comics, where most issues would contain three or four stories (plus filler) by different writers and artists, usually without credits.

Then the problem was not with artists leaving, but with an issue containing one or more stories by artists I didn’t like.

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Matt Hawes
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Posted: 21 August 2025 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply
Greg: "...I suppose after John Byrne left Marvel they really didn’t have any real big name or “superstar” creators still there...."

JB was unquestionably Marvel's biggest talent at the time, certainly in terms of sales. I noted even as it was happening that once JB left Marvel, they started reprinting his run on "Marvel Team-Up" in "Marvel Tales,: a title that previously only reprinted "The Amazing Spider-Man" run for years. And I noted also that by the time that run finished its' course, "Classic X-Men" would be reprinting the JB era X-Men stories. Was this coincidence or planned... I don't know, but it kept JB at Marvel in some sense for a few years more.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 21 August 2025 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply
Ah, CLASSIC X-MEN. Two things:

Shooter insisted we were not being paid “royalties”. They were “incentives” to encourage use to do better. (Royalties might imply ownership.) When I got my “incentive” for CLASSIC X-MEN I said I really wasn’t sure what I could do to boost the sales on a REPRINT.

That “incentive”, btw, was more than my page rate had netted the first time around!

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James Woodcock
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Posted: 22 August 2025 at 6:06am | IP Logged | 6 post reply
Pre-internet, when all we had were magazines and Marvel Age to inform us,
I was reading things like Speakeasy, Comics International etc for my
information.
Without doubt, the two biggest shocks I had were JB off FF (I really
expected you to be there for 300, especially based on that MA interview)
and CC off X-Men. I know they were not the same year by any shot, but I
had the same reaction.

The second I opened both books my first thought was that you had both
been sacked due to some power grab decision. Brain dead editors who did
not actually care about the readers was my second thought.

I was around 17 when JB left FF, and from then on I knew that political
decisions were more important than a good product.
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