{"id":5818,"date":"2009-07-06T23:14:34","date_gmt":"2009-07-07T03:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=5818"},"modified":"2012-03-11T13:23:20","modified_gmt":"2012-03-11T17:23:20","slug":"happy-59th-birthday-john-byrne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/06\/happy-59th-birthday-john-byrne\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy 59th birthday, John Byrne!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy birthday, John!<\/p>\n

John Byrne<\/a> and I met more than a third of a century ago, back when we were both just fans, before I’d started on staff at Marvel Comics. And since it’s traditional to embarrass old friends on their birthdays, here’s a blast from the past even he may have forgotten about! I know I almost had.<\/p>\n

John’s first professional comic-book art was published in the Skywald black-and-white horror magazine Nightmare<\/em> #20 (August 1974), just about the time I started in the Marvel Bullpen. My own first professional comic-book script appeared about a year later, in Dead of Night<\/em> #11 (Aug 1975). It was the first story about the Scarecrow, which Marvel seems to be calling the Straw Man<\/a> these days.<\/p>\n

The character had gone through many incarnations before it saw print, incarnations which John had known about and, as you’ll see, even participated in. In May 1975, I received a fan letter from him in which he wrote\u2014<\/p>\n

Just got the first issue of SCARECROW (D. O. N. #11). Love it! Really tremendous. And I much prefer this version to my pumpkin rendition.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Enclosed is a subtle hint.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The letter was accompanied by the sketch you see below.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now you might think as you read that note\u2014what pumpkin version?<\/em> And you know something … I was just thinking along those lines myself.<\/p>\n

I started writing this post only expecting to share the drawing above, but once I transcribed John’s note, I remembered that he did an earlier drawing before the Scarecrow ever saw print. I suddenly thought\u2014Hey! Don’t I have one of those drawings packed away with all the other original artwork I got back on the comics I wrote?<\/p>\n

And you know what? It turns out I did.<\/p>\n

Here another Scarecrow image, unseen since … I have no idea, since I can’t remember what this was done for, why it was done, or when it might have been published.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Please forgive the difference in tone between the top and bottom halves of the illustration\u2014I don’t have a large enough scanner to accommodate the entire image, and so scanned each half separately and put it all back together again in Photoshop.]<\/p>\n

Was it done for a fanzine? Perhaps. Could it have been done for one of the ACBA portfolios? I think maybe it was, but I can’t be sure. I’ll leave it to some detective of 1970s’ comics ephemera to track down its place of original publication. As for me, I’ll just say\u2014<\/p>\n

Happy birthday, John!<\/p>\n

Have I made you feel old enough yet?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy birthday, John! John Byrne and I met more than a third of a century ago, back when we were both just fans, before I’d started on staff at Marvel Comics. And since it’s traditional to embarrass old friends on their birthdays, here’s a blast from the past even he may have forgotten about! I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[151,18,179,20,136],"class_list":["post-5818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-birthdays","tag-comics","tag-john-byrne","tag-marvel-comics","tag-scarecrow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}