John Byrne vs George Pérez

[SHAMWOW!]

george perez (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Perez)
http://sites.google.com/a/comicbookseries.info/gpz/_/rsrc/1216084784069/checklist-20/dc-comics/crisis/final-crisis/final-crisis-legion-of-three-worlds-2/FCLW-Cv2-bw.jpg

vs


john byrne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Byrne)
http://www.artofjohnbyrne.com/commissions-covers/images/2007-07-17_093642_Loki.jpg
though not entirely similar.. both influenced a professional artist who themselves became legends.

yet both seem to hit the stigma that their style is now considered old. and boring.


which of these legends will you stand by.

[SHAMWOW!]

although i think perez has longer staying power.. looking back i enjoyed and bought more of john byrne's art especially his reboot of superman origin and his issues with classic xmen. so my vote is with byrne

[Paulo_P]

Nice penciled piece by George Pérez. If the poll was between the two art pieces, I'd have picked Pérez.

[Popninja]

Byrne easily.

Perez is a great artist, too, but there's little to no organic feel in any of his work. Everything is so effing tight, it's ridiculous. He's the master of the team book, though.

But as a creator, Byrne beats Perez.

[Paulo_P]

Agreed. I always found Byrne's work more vibrant and lively. I was never a big fan of Pérez, though I do really like that penciled piece.

Incidentally, I believe Byrne consideres Pérez his superior.

[airbrushartist]

Byrne. Perez did some nice stuff with teen Titans and WW back inna day but I didn't run panting like a dog down to my local candy store to buy Perez books. It was to bask in the Glory of X-men Marvel Team-ups and just about anything else he did. My biggest issue with Perez was his way of drawing every tooth in a face or every pebble on the ground. Tell you what my Favorite Perez book is his X-men Annual with The X-men Fighting Arkon. and his work on Marvel premiers issues with The Man-Wolf.
http://biccomix.com/xmenannual398.jpg
http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/marvel-premiere/45-1.jpg
http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/marvel-premiere/46-1.jpg

[CWmax]

Byrne---80's X-Men -80's Fantastic Four - for the Win.

PS- that X-Men Annual cover was drawn by Frank Miller

PSS- Heh- I have that Marvel Premire: Man-Wolf #45- Yes that book does have cool pics!

CW

[sdowner]

Probably Byrne overall. I think Perez' work suits modern coloring styles better, though. His myriads of tiny lines look great color held. Check out Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds for his most recent stuff. That's what the Saturn Girl up top's from.

Bitch to color, though.

[Repo Man]

I like them both and both were a big part of my childhood. But if I had to choose, I'd have to go with Byrne. That run he had on the classic X-Men series takes it for me.

[Wild&Uncouth]

Byrne.
His 80's Superman run was awesome.

[misfitX]

i didn't read any of this but the first post.. I voted for perez. I don't see how he could ever be called old and boring. Byrne's a nut, but look at his run on X-Men. Though these days, his efforts need a lot of inker type help.

[ballpoint]

Byrne all day. Whenever i think of George Perez, i think of this .

http://dailypop.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/jla-avengers4.jpg

[misfitX]

ok good point there. But that's still the worst thing he's done. He's better on the whole than that.

[jujigatame]

While I dig the detail of Perez's work, I always thought his figure work was pretty vanilla. Loved looking at his originals in person, though....insanely tight and detailed.
Byrne's figures looked more appealing-even though he seemd to be mining a specific template for all of his figures & faces..plus he was no slouch in the detail dept either.

[smygba]

http://biccomix.com/xmenannual398.jpg


that's frank miller no?

John Byrne is light years ahead of Perez

[airbrushartist]

Yup, Miller inked by Austin, Cover.

[misfitX]

byrne isn't good at detail. He's good at finding good inkers. Go look at Superman Batman Generations. Not a whole lot of tightness or detail. In fact it's downright sloppy. Not to sound belligerent, but i get tired of prima donna pencilers like byrne getting more credit than is deserved. I completely agree with the other assessments of both byrne and perez. Plus perez is an all around nice guy, or so i hear.

[airbrushartist]

You'd have to have seen Byrne originals for yourself. I've seen a few pages that he did while on the original X-men run, and they looked like inked art but they were pencils. I also saw a Star Lord page he did that wasn't inked or used. Badass pencils so clean and tight that today they would have gone right to colors. Right now he's fallen into a comfortable niche. Can't blame him. Also give him credit he , at times was doing three comics a month. Yeah inkers help but he still put a lot of effort into his initial work in comics.

[misfitX]

i've inked some byrne, mostly from his superman run, and yeah he can be tight. I'm just never really gonna get over the stock face thing. And his attitude will always have him lose points in my book. That said, byrne's Next Men is still one of my favorite stories of all time.

[airbrushartist]

Stock faces are a sign of achievement. Once you can draw the same face no matter what , over and over again, I think you've arrived. Who would want to see a face, drawn in a comic, different from panel to panel? All artists have stock faces. His attitude is a non issue as I don't have to live with the man. In fact other than the one time I met and talked to him as he signed my mound of Comics, I've never spoken to him.

[Popninja]

byrne isn't good at detail. He's good at finding good inkers. Go look at Superman Batman Generations. Not a whole lot of tightness or detail. In fact it's downright sloppy. Not to sound belligerent, but i get tired of prima donna pencilers like byrne getting more credit than is deserved. I completely agree with the other assessments of both byrne and perez. Plus perez is an all around nice guy, or so i hear.

If you've seen his commission work, you would know that even today Byrne can do some really tight ink work, and very detailed. If you've seen his recent work on Angel: Blood and Trenches, you also wouldn't be able to say he isn't good at detail.

Byrne inked by Byrne is almost always better than Byrne inked by anyone else nowadays. In the heyday, Terry Austin was to Byrne what Scott Williams is to Jim Lee. More recently, Tom Palmer(on X-Men Hidden Years) was doing great inks over Byrne's pencils.

And co-sign with aba about the attitude. Internet persona, as we've learned here on this very site, is not always the true person's persona...no matter what they say.

[misfitX]

alright, I know when to quit. Off to do some Byrne research. ;)

[airbrushartist]

As I was drooling over those pages of un-inked Un published Byrne X-men pages I thought seriously of Beating the owner up and stealing his hundreds of pieces of artwork portfolios. He has some of the sickest pencil works by a lot of old masters. It seems like he was able to talk guys like Gene Colan and Jose Luis Garcia Lopez into drawing some of the best work I've ever seen them do. He had a Jonah Hex page done by I believe Dick Giordano that should be hanging in a gallery. It was all pencils but so nicely done.

[golgotha]

i have been a byrne fan since 1983 when i was 12. i buy everything from byrne for years. i joined his forum a couple years ago. and now i no longer have the desire to buy his stuff just because it is drawn by him. i stopped the star trek. his attitude in his forum is not very reader friendly. he rags on all other artists and sometimes they (eric larsen) join his forum and he talks down to them. he calls his fans names and seems to be running people off. i was banned from his forum twice for reasons i don't even know. there is another web site forum composed of people banned from there. it is imwan.com. i still really like his comic art and will always, but now it feels tainted. also, if you look at all his commission pieces you will see several of them look rushed and not too good. he even sold an invisible woman piece where she has six fingers. i

[Popninja]

i have been a byrne fan since 1983 when i was 12. i buy everything from byrne for years. i joined his forum a couple years ago. and now i no longer have the desire to buy his stuff just because it is drawn by him. i stopped the star trek. his attitude in his forum is not very reader friendly. he rags on all other artists and sometimes they (eric larsen) join his forum and he talks down to them. he calls his fans names and seems to be running people off. i was banned from his forum twice for reasons i don't even know. there is another web site forum composed of people banned from there. it is imwan.com. i still really like his comic art and will always, but now it feels tainted. also, if you look at all his commission pieces you will see several of them look rushed and not too good. he even sold an invisible woman piece where she has six fingers. i

Awww, did Byrne hurt your feelings? It's his forum, so if you've been there, you know the deal. I've been in lurk mode pretty much forever, because all I need to see is some artwork. I don't need to read what he thinks of Steve Irwin or Christopher Reeve. And while I can agree that a few of his commissions look rushed, they still look really good AND the ones that aren't rushed look incredible.

I mean, come on...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v488/Popninja/2009-09-10_094811_ChampionsJoH1.jpg

...rushed...?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v488/Popninja/2009-08-24_044842_Nathan35B.jpg

...not too good...?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v488/Popninja/2009-08-02_161354_102.jpg

Really, the man is the reason I knew I wanted to draw comics when I was 12 years old. But, even if I don't agree with most of the stuff he says or how he treats people, at the end of the day, it's all about the art for me.

[golgotha]

no, my feelings were not hurt. i could care less. i just veiw him in a different way now. i lost that "wow, it's a new byrne book" feeling. if you know what i mean. and yes, i have a folder full of his posted commission pieces. sometimes i practice digital inks with his pencil pages and color his commissions. i was just saying he can go on and on about how "modern" comics suck and how there is nothing good about frank quietly's art. but, i am sure curt swan felt the same about him back in the 80's and i like comics to evolve and creativity to make changes in art styles.

[golgotha]

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/uploads/JohnByrne2/2009-08-15_081705_Thanos.jpg

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/uploads/JohnByrne2/2009-05-03_103510_Bat.Robin.jpg

[Popninja]

no, my feelings were not hurt. i could care less. i just veiw him in a different way now. i lost that "wow, it's a new byrne book" feeling. if you know what i mean. and yes, i have a folder full of his posted commission pieces. sometimes i practice digital inks with his pencil pages and color his commissions. i was just saying he can go on and on about how "modern" comics suck and how there is nothing good about frank quietly's art. but, i am sure curt swan felt the same about him back in the 80's and i like comics to evolve and creativity to make changes in art styles.

But what I'm saying is, if you couldn't care less, why did you lose that "WOW, it's a new Byrne book" feeling? Personally, I've read what he thinks about several different things, and in a lot of cases, I thought he was way off base. I do agree with some things he says, though. But nothing Byrne says now makes me think his art is any less than it was before. As a matter of fact, regardless of what others think, I believe Byrne is actually better now than he was in the so-called glory days. My only problem with how he is now is that there's ZERO chance he'll ever work on Superman again, or Fantastic Four. I also don't get excited seeing his work on Star Trek books, but that's more of a preference thing for me. I don't care for Star Trek at all.

I just think it's kind of sad that someone's internet ramblings about how comics should be, among many other ramblings, would kill your joy for that same person's art.

If I let the someone's personal beliefs do that to me, I wouldn't be a Prince fan, that's for sure.;)

[golgotha]

well, an example is i am not a fan of star trek. the old me would pay the 4 dollars for his star trek book that i would not even get around to reading. now, the excitement is gone and i will not pay the 4 bucks for the book i won't read just because he is on it. it is like he has made his career go full circle. when he started he was doing tv show adaptations for a small publisher and now he is doing the same. i am still a byrne fan, just seems a little different. my favorite story of all artists is john byrne's next men. it would be cool if he finished that story.

[NickRocks]

And co-sign with aba about the attitude. Internet persona, as we've learned here on this very site, is not always the true person's persona...no matter what they say.

true that!

[Flairbrusher]

Good match up. Back in the 80's, I thought that Byrne's work fell flat after he quit Captain America and the X-Men. I think it was due to his extreme schedule. He was writing, penciling and inking Alpha Flight and Fantastic Four at the same time, and penciling other titles, such as Indiana Jones. I did love his run with Joe Sinnott on FF, though. George Perez' work was becoming more exciting for me at that time.

[Geekboy]

John Byrne is an egomaniac and a terrible writer whose work is undone every time a decent writer has half a chance to do so. He's rude, condescending, and possibly racist (see his "all ethnic women with blonde hair look like whores" comments).

George Perez is considered one of the nicest guys in the industry and has been responsible for some of the greatest runs on some of the best books out there.

Byrne's personality online is his personality in person. I saw him at a con years ago and he was just a colossal jerk to everyone who came up to talk to him. Little kids, bumbling awe-struck fans, they were all an annoyance. Whenever I talk to someone else about their experiences with him at cons I hear the same story as if they were at the same con (even though they weren't).

The list of pros who won't work with him and openly mock him is so large for a reason. At certain points either or both of the big two companies have refused to work with him.

Look, I love the Claremont/Byrne X-Men run like a cute little puppy, but Byrne's a hack nowadays. His work has declined in quality over the last two decades as he just gets lazier and lazier. Byrne inking Byrne is the complete opposite of what was described earlier in this thread. The guy desperately needs a good inker and an even better editor. I mean, did you guys see the same run on Hyppolyta-in-the-past Wonder Woman that I did?

Perez has done nothing but improve and I've never seen or heard anyone say an unkind word about him. Crisis on Infinite Earths is still mind-blowing and that cover that he penciled and Alex Ross painted for the hardcover edition was just amazing.

I'm so sad that Legion of 3 Worlds was essentially Perez's swan song due to pain in his hand that makes drawing difficult and often impossible.

I'd love to buy Perez dinner some time and hear him talk about art and his experiences in the industry. The only thing I want to buy John Byrne is a massive bowl of dicks for him to choke on.