For me, Byrne began losing it during ALPHA FLIGHT. His Snowbird story, where she's the only thing he's drawn in the entire book, trying to convince readers that she's lost in a snow storm, was really pathetic. His issues began to feel less and less like a full book (though I commend him on the creation of one of my favorite characters, Northstar, that was a bold move).

And like many, I found his attitude toward taking over Superman to be somewhat lacking in proper reverence. As though his vision for the character was the only correct one.

And his Internet persona has never been the most fan-friendly.

Of his work lately, I really wanted to like THE HIDDEN YEARS, but I just didn't care for what he was doing with the characters. His inclusion of Storm was silly. LAB RATS was never a concept that interested me.

With his revising the Doom Patrol, I'm interested because it's got the original team in it, not because it's Byrne. Though I will fully admit, I got a bit of a chill reading JLA 95 and seeing some of the DP's action. I'll stick with John's DP as long as the stories are to my liking. There's a lot of sturm und drang over on the DCMBs because John's probably going to wipe out just about all DP history. But I'm not in a knot over it. Tell a good story.

OT a bit: anybody else think that this "Tenth Circle" story that he and CC are doing in JLA is just a kind of a cheeky X-Men reference...as X stands for 10, and I'm envision an X in a circle...which is a classic X-Men symbol (I have a tee shirt with that very symbol on it and I wore it proudly to the premier of X:2 last summer).

Jim


We all wear a green carnation.