Fandom Lounge's Journal - Day

1:26PM - John Byrne makes us all laugh

This doesn't really count as wank, since most of the discussion appears to be made up of "We agree with you, John!", but it amuses.

Byrne goes off on a tear about "the oft stated desire of so many artists to 'make (their) mark' upon the existing characters to which they are assigned."

You can imagine the fun of this, but I particularly like this bit, called out by Stuart Immonen on his own blog:

John Byrne:
I've invoked Mickey Mouse before, in this context. Over the years, The Mouse has had many different looks, but all the artists who worked for Disney stayed on model as far as whichever look was in vogue at any given time.

What we see in comics today is, in the end, a lack of discipline. Artists want to draw, say, Batman, but they want to draw their version of Batman. Yet, in bygone days, before credit boxes, before rockstar artists, Dick Sprang, or Carmine Infantino, or Neal Adams could draw Batman, and the work was instantly recognizable as Sprang, Infantino or Adams -- yet Batman looked like Batman. As noted above, Neal redefined what Batman looked like, but at first he drew on-model. In his own style, yes, but there was no doubt that the Batman he drew and the Batman Carmine drew were the same guy. Bring it within the scope of my own career, and at roughly the same time Sal Buscema, Ross Andru and I were all drawing Spider-Man, each with our distinctive styles -- yet Spider-Man looked like Spider-Man. He looked like the same guy Ditko had drawn.

Artistic ego was sublimated to the greater good of the characters.

Coming from Byrne, this is rich indeed.