|
Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2022 18:45:44 GMT -5
I was watching the documentary "Chris Claremont's X-Men" from 2013 earlier today, and I found myself kind of put off by some of the interviews as I was watching. Actually pretty disappointed.
They had some scenes with Chris joined by Ann Nocenti and Louise Simonson giving their comments on being at Marvel back then and X-Men and whatnot, and would kind of flip back and forth with Jim Shooter being interviewed separately and giving his comments.
Chris and Ann in particular kind of turned me off, they seemed to be trying too hard to "sound cool", like even at one point kind of mocking a job where they worked on a religious comic that was commissioned which I thought was in pretty poor taste. Weezie I didn't mind as much even though she shared in the dialogue, but the other two disappointed me especially since they were part of some comics I really enjoyed in my younger years.
Shooter on the other hand came across a lot more down to earth, and just more enjoyable to listen to. Now of course he's telling his version of things, and I'm no stranger to controversies around him, but just purely on how he presented himself, a more positive vibe overall to me.
It's one reason I don't always like meeting or reading/watching interviews with my favorite creators...when they're cool, it's a great thing, but when they're the opposite, it sometimes taints my view/enjoyment of their work.
Curious what stories folks might have here on when you were let down in the past, as well as how did it shape your perception of their creative work. Did you find it easy to separate the two, or has it ever turned you off to something you used to enjoy?
|
|
|
Post by tonebone on Apr 14, 2022 20:03:38 GMT -5
That interview also struck me in a similar way. And whenever I hear Shooter interviewed, he seems logical and factual. I never hear him disparage anyone... if he has something bad to say, it's about a person's work but he always says what a great person they were.
The first creator that comes to mind for me is Mark Evanier. I LOVE the guy's writing, but he's usually talking about Kirby. And he tends to paint Kirby as a sad-sack that couldn't stand up for himself. Like he just sort of drifted through his career and was just lucky to make a dime, between getting swindled and cheated. Yet when you listen to Kirby, he's a confident, dynamic, down-to-earth person who just did what he loved doing.
|
|
|
Post by chadwilliam on Apr 14, 2022 20:25:38 GMT -5
Curious what stories folks might have here on when you were let down in the past, as well as how did it shape your perception of their creative work. Did you find it easy to separate the two, or has it ever turned you off to something you used to enjoy? Sometimes you can't separate the two because the writer has let it slip that certain decisions of theirs was directly informed by their own prejudices. For example, when John Byrne rebooted Superman he included a moment where Superman announces that he really has no interest in Krypton other than as a mild curiosity. Now, I'm not a fan of Byrne's writing or his work on Superman (for reasons that go beyond that Krypton thing I just mentioned), but I certainly didn't equate my judgement of his skills, or lack of, with my impression of who he is/was as a person. He could be a great guy for a knew, but who just didn't share my views on Superman. Big deal. However... When I came across a comment which Byrne made in 2005 that “Being an immigrant myself, I have something of an insight, I think, into the way Clark’s mind works. I was born in England, and I am proud of my English heritage (I was also quite a lot older than Kal-El when I left “home,” so my connections would be stronger) but I grew up in Canada and I have lived for the last 25 years in the US, and I don’t ever—ever—feel like a “displaced Englishman. (…)Clark would be proud, too, of his Kryptonian heritage, but later portrayals of him have tried to shoehorn in too much of the psychobabble of adopted children longing for and seeking out their biological parents. Excuse my French, but to me, they fall under the heading of “ungrateful little shits.(…)Clark grew up as human, thinks as a human, reacts as a human. He lives and loves as a human. And that is what really defines him.”I could no longer see that scene without understanding that, in this instance at least, Byrne was using his character as his own mouthpiece. There is no separation from the writer and the character here. For the record, I do know people who were adopted and who do wonder about their biological parents and they are not "ungrateful little shits". For all I know, that's the only time Byrne used a fictional character to voice his own unwarranted ugliness and hatred, but when a writer is unable to separate himself from his work, how can I?
|
|
|
Post by kirby101 on Apr 14, 2022 20:47:03 GMT -5
That interview also struck me in a similar way. And whenever I hear Shooter interviewed, he seems logical and factual. I never hear him disparage anyone... if he has something bad to say, it's about a person's work but he always says what a great person they were. The first creator that comes to mind for me is Mark Evanier. I LOVE the guy's writing, but he's usually talking about Kirby. And he tends to paint Kirby as a sad-sack that couldn't stand up for himself. Like he just sort of drifted through his career and was just lucky to make a dime, between getting swindled and cheated. Yet when you listen to Kirby, he's a confident, dynamic, down-to-earth person who just did what he loved doing. I don't hear that at all. I hear about a wonderful guy, who loved his family. Was very giving and a creative dynamo. The fact is his career was full of being cheated and abused. Yet he continued to create.
|
|
|
Post by badwolf on Apr 14, 2022 20:59:41 GMT -5
For the record, I do know people who were adopted and who do wonder about their biological parents and they are not "ungrateful little shits". Wonder, sure, but seek them out? If they had a good and healthy life with their adopted parents? That seems a little off to me.
Byrne has a blunt way of putting things but I don't disagree with him here, especially about this part:
Clark grew up as human, thinks as a human, reacts as a human. He lives and loves as a human. And that is what really defines him.
|
|
|
Post by chadwilliam on Apr 14, 2022 21:06:20 GMT -5
For the record, I do know people who were adopted and who do wonder about their biological parents and they are not "ungrateful little shits". Wonder, sure, but seek them out? If they had a good and healthy life with their adopted parents? That seems a little off to me.
Why can't someone have a good and healthy relationship with their adopted parents and still feel an unexplainable desire to seek out/connect with their biological parents?
|
|
|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 14, 2022 21:21:07 GMT -5
For the record, I do know people who were adopted and who do wonder about their biological parents and they are not "ungrateful little shits". Wonder, sure, but seek them out? If they had a good and healthy life with their adopted parents? That seems a little off to me.
Byrne has a blunt way of putting things but I don't disagree with him here, especially about this part:
Clark grew up as human, thinks as a human, reacts as a human. He lives and loves as a human. And that is what really defines him.
It’s not off in any way. It’s extremely normal. Byrne is an incredibly broken little troll. It would be a miracle if he were ever actually right about anything.
|
|
|
Post by spoon on Apr 14, 2022 21:25:41 GMT -5
My creator disappointment is also John Byrne. The first comics message I regularly hung out was actually the board at The Unofficial John Byrne Fan Site, a now defunct site run by a Swedish university student. I really enjoyed it there, but my enthusiasm for the site declined sharply after Byrne himself showed up. The site had been a pretty positive environment. Fans could be honest in their assessments (e.g., like this, dislike that, this is my favorite, least favorite). Of course, as a fan site, opinions were mostly positive, but you just speak openly.
So in one post I mention that I don't like the art in X-Men: The Hidden Years as much as some of Byrne's earlier work (like his original X-Men run). It wasn't an attempt to be trollish, and I thought my wording was fairly restraining. I had just gotten used to the normal, healthy environment of the site where people gave their actual views. Byrne actually responds to my post and says I don't know how to read comics. He also wrote that a lot of people who claim to like his art from his X-Men actually don't realize that they're really fans of Terry Austin's inks instead and don't like Byrne's pencils. In other words, I was too stupid to realize I wasn't actually a fan of his art.
Now, Byrne now a lot more about penciling and inking than I ever know, but what he's laughable ignorant about is my perception of art. I do like the Byrne/Austin combo, but I'm lukewarm of Austin paired with other pencilers. Someone he seems to come across as scratchy, whereas I don't see that in his pairing with Byrne. My favorite inker of John Byrne is actually . . . John Byrne. In terms of art (but not writing), some of my favorite Byrne comics are the parts of his Alpha Flight, where he inked his own pencils.
So basically, Byrne worked to alienate an actual fan. I can still separate art from artist, but enthusiasm dropped a couple notches. And it really ruined the message board. What once seemed to like a collection of cool, normal fans got polarized. Some people became excessively sycophantic, either to curry his favor or maybe because they did want him to flip out at them. On the other hand, we also started a bunch of anti-Byrne trolls who must've heard through the grapevine that JB had shown up. It was so, so dysfunctional.
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Apr 14, 2022 21:40:14 GMT -5
Shooter does present himself as professional, reasonable and approachable, in those things. In some interviews when he was EIC, it was a different story. He doesn't have those same stresses, anymore. When he talks about Marvel, it is his viewpoint, but I can find a lot more contradiction to his viewpoint that I tend to discount what he says more. When he is talking Valiant, I tend to believe his viewpoint more, especially given the financial shenanigans that went on behind the scene. The corporate set-up with the venture capital firm quickly became a clear conflict of interest and it is pretty self-evident. Shooter had a clear case for a big lawsuit; but, I think he recognized the financial cost vs what he could achieve, in court.
Claremont has always struck me as a bit of an odd duck. Interviews with him, that I have watched, can seem a bit off. Nocenti I have only seen on or two brief clips and can't recall a long print interview.
Evanier, to me, always described Jack as a guy who would stand up to the bullies of the world; but, when it came to demanding what was owed him by the owners, wasn't as quick to push his own case. It has more to do with when he grew up. Jack was the breadwinner for his family from his teen years and beyond, moving from his parents to supporting a wife and children. As an artist, he earned more by producing more; so, he got fast. He and Joe Simon were well paid, in the Golden Age and had a strength to negotiate; but, Simon was the business mind. Jack was more focused on the creative. Simon & Kirby struck out on their own, just in time for the outside focus on comics to cut the floor out from under them. They were too small to have weight with the distributors and there stuff would be returned, unopened. The Kefauver committee and other pressures that led to the Code pushed a lot of publishers out of business, including Simon & Kirby's Mainline. Now, they had to work with the ever decreasing group of remaining publishers. They lost that position of strength. Jack ended up having to swallow crap at DC, when he did Green Arrow, who were still mad because the deal they had in the 40s. Jack couldn't walk away so easily. Jack got into some situations with the Sky Masters strip, that he might not have, if he was still in partnership with Simon. That hurt him financially and came close to legal issues. Jack was welcomed back to Atlas; but, they were soon down to a skeleton operation and were losing ground, steadily. So, by the 60s, when Jack was given more freedom to let loose, it paid off. Except, he was too busy creating to recognize the strength he had, until the end of the decade. Then, he cut a pretty good deal with DC, until DC reneged on elements of the agreement. Then, Jack was caught in a situation where he had cut ties with Marvel and DC had him over a barrel. Where could he go? Harvey? They had given up adventure comics after Simon's line had failed, in the Silver Age. Archie? Their Mighty Comics revival didn't work. Warren? might have been more satisfying; but, might not have been able to afford him. So, Jack ate crow, until his contract was up and made a deal to come back to Marvel. Then, he found that a younger regime didn't respect his work and a certain faction wanted him out. He did what he could and then went off to work in animation, where his skills were valued and he was paid well and treated with respect. So, he did stand up for himself, to a point; but, he also knew when to pick his battles.
Evanier has talked about Jack calling up the crook who ran the Marvel merchandising company, of the era, who had been bullying Evanier and threatening him, when Evanier started questioning some of his shady practices. he describes Jack getting the guy on the phone and threatening to come over and nail his hide to the wall. The guy never leveled another threat at Mark. Will Eisner told the story of Jack standing up to some crooks trying to use intimidation tactics to extort money from them for a "towel service," for the Eisner-Iger studio. Jack got in their face and told them to hit the bricks. They backed down and left.
Jack was a fighter; but, he also was a provider and knew when he had to swallow some pride to provide for his family and when to stand on principle. Ditko could stand on his principles, since he didn't have a family to support, so far as is known. He just had himself to look out for.
Getting back to the original theme, I was disappointed more and more as I encountered interviews with Bob Kane and those of people who knew him and the situations behind Batman. As a kid, I would see the name and think it was cool that he produced this stuff. Then, you learn that his actual contributions were minimal and mostly swiped from elsewhere and that so many other people were responsible for things. Then, you'd catch him in outright lies, like major portions of his memoir. When I read his story of allegedly meeting a young Norma Jean Baker and basing Vicky Vale on her it just didn't ring true and timelines didn't match up. The more you heard from others, the more a liar and con artist he seemed. Then with the Burton movies, he was spreading it thick to the media. He started selling lithographs and got caught using ghost artists, while claiming it was his work. It was one thing to negotiate a byline on the Batman comic feature, it was quite another to say paintings were your work.
I have heard other stories about this guy or that, in convention settings; but, always took those with a grain of salt. Conventions are a different thing you can find dozens of reasons why a creator might be less than friendly after dealing with a crooked promoter, opportunistic dealer, or psychotic fan. I once saw Mark Gruenwald evaluate someone's work at a convention and thought he sounded like an a-hole and kind of kept that perception through the con, though I never spoke with him. I wasn't buying any Marvel titles except Classic X-Men; so, I kind of looked down on their line, at that time. When he passed away, all the stories about him were about how fun he was to work around and at conventions and how much he put up with, as Shooter's assistant. It made me reflect on what I saw and I realized that he had been honest with the kid, in terms of his storytelling, not his figure work (which is what I took in, when I saw the art on the page, and his being honest was of greater value to the wannabe artist than give him false compliments. After that convention, i had my interview for the Kubert School (about a year later) and had a blunt portfolio review; but, I knew going into it where my weaknesses were and could usually spot the criticism before the interviewer (Mike Chen) brought them up. That also changed my perspective on the evaluation I saw at the con.
I haven't had many personal interactions with pros and almost all have been very pleasant.
|
|
|
Post by foxley on Apr 15, 2022 2:01:14 GMT -5
To add to the pile on to John Byrne...
As a lit geek, I was severely irritated when he started attributing quotations from Shakespeare to Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, with no indication that he was doing so because he believes that de Vere wrote Shakespeare's play. And then in one of his editorials in Next Men he essentially said that no reasonable, sane person could possibly believe that anyone other than de Vere could have written those plays, and certainly not the son of a glove maker fro Stafford-Upon-Avon. Never mind that almost all literary scholars reject the Oxfordian theory, the mighty John Byrne has made up his mind and anyone who disagrees with him must be simpleminded.
Stick to drawing John (and writing, if you must) but leave literary scholarship to those with expertise and qualifications in the field. You don't get to decide who wrote Shakespeare, or force that opinion on your readers.
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Apr 15, 2022 4:30:31 GMT -5
I'm a big Jim Shooter fan as previous threads can attest to so I won't regurgitate what I've posted before. From interviews and podcasts I believe what happened was that the pressures from upper management In Marvel began to weigh on him and he became a different person. Even people like Romita Sr. say he was different from a certain point on. His dealings with the talent usually gets divided between the people he helped and the people that didn't want to be told what to do. Writers had a nice scam going in Marvel when he arrived as Writer/Editors of their own books. He eliminated that and I'm sure made enemies. I thought that maybe he was too hard on Gene Colan until it was revealed that many writers refused to work with Gene because he was hacking out the work in an attempt to produce as many pages as he could in order to pay some type of alimony. It's tough to be the boss.
As for Byrne, I chose to remember his great work on X-men, FF , Superman and dismiss his stupid opinions on the world.
|
|
|
Post by Cei-U! on Apr 15, 2022 5:32:10 GMT -5
I've only had four unpleasant encounters with pros, all of them Golden Age vets (Jerry Robinson, Martin Nodell, Russ Heath, Sam Glanzman), all of them at the very end of a multi-day convention when these old men were tired and understandably cranky. (There was also the time I saw David Carradine be VERY rude to a 10-year-old fan, but that wasn't comicsrelated.) Every other pro I've met was a genuine pleasure to interact with and some (Kirby, Colan, Perez, et al) became memories I'll treasure for a lifetime. Some have even become friends and/or colleagues (Thomas, Grell, Orzechowski).
Cei-U! I summon the good that outweighed the bad!
|
|
|
Post by MDG on Apr 15, 2022 8:49:48 GMT -5
^^^^ I'm shocked to hear that about Glanzman. He was at 3 or 4 Ithacons and always personable, though I believe it was very hard for him to hear well in that environment. And even though he was older--this was in the late 80s-early 90s--I'm pretty sure he came on his motorcycle at least once.
|
|
|
Post by kirby101 on Apr 15, 2022 9:05:38 GMT -5
Everybody has a bad day. I have mostly had very good experiences with pros.
I never met Byrne,but I hear if you did have a bad experience, you missed the fun.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2022 9:12:56 GMT -5
Agree with Slam_Bradley about Byrne. I hated how Byrne posted something such as “fanboys unleashed” about the Batman ‘89 comic. I thought that was rich coming from him. We’ve had “photocopy characters” such as Triple Helix, Trio, Next Men, etc (which I have enjoyed, well some of them). We’ve had him putting speech and thought bubbles over Star Trek: TOS photos. And he’s writing unaffiliated, unofficial X-Men stuff at his forum. Yet he has the audacity to describe the Batman ‘89 project as ‘fanboys unleashed’. Does he have no self-awareness or humility? Many, myself included, have craved more exploits from Reeve Superman and Keaton Batman. I’m glad we got it. I don’t think it’s ‘fanboys unleashed’. And should fanboy necessarily be a pejorative term? If I could write, and someone offered me the chance to do a Ghostbusters ‘84 comic, continuing on from the first movie, hell I’d do it! I just don’t know how he could write ‘fanboys unleashed’ when his most recent work has been Trek Photocopy Tales and unaffiliated X-Men stuff.
|
|