Essential Wolverine Cover by John Byrne

For a brief shining moment, John Byrne looked like he was going to be the closest thing Marvel had ever had to the second coming of Jack Kirby. He didn't quite get there, but, at the time, he was, hands down, one of the best and most popular artists mainstream American comics had seen in a looooong time.

If you read Marvel comics in the late 70's and kept going through most of the 1980s at both Marvel and DC, Byrne continuously worked on some of the most popular comics in the business. With apologies to Jack Kirby and Jim Lee, et al, his run on X-Men remains the singular most influential in the series' history. And you probably know the rest of the bio.

Byrne and Terry Austin came to Charlotte for one of the mini-cons Heroes Aren't Hard to Find used to run in the early 1980s. One of the dealers had a splash from the "Dark Phoenix" saga for the princely sum of (if memory serves) $500 (no bartering; take it or leave it). I wanted it, and I wish I had taken out the loan that it would have required at that time as I still must have been in college living off of my self-imposed $20-a-week spending allowance (meals and dorm room were covered in my tuition), but alas, I had other priorities back then.

Many years later, after I took the plunge into OA, getting an original piece by John Byrne was high on my wish list. Art from his X-Men and, to a lesser extent, his FF runs were already expensive and hard to find, but, one day, on eBay, Albert Moy posted this. It was described as an "Essential Wolverine Cover." I do not think it was published as I've looked around but have yet to find any comic, TPB; etc. with this image.

If memory serves, nobody bit on Albert's auction price (or it didn't meet the reserve or whatever). One reason might have been that he'd gotten it from Jim Warden (it arrived at my door still in Jim's packaging with his return address on it) at what must have been a cheaper price. More experienced collectors than me who knew the existing price ranges decided to pass. Smitten and thinking it would be hard to get a better page at a similar price, I made an offer and Albert accepted. Je nÕai aucun regret (thanks again, Albert; also, pardon my French).

While I believe Byrne was at his best during his collaborations with Austin near the end of their X-Men run in the early 80s, I really enjoy Byrne's own, almost savage inking style here. It's like he attacked the precise pencils that he laid down underneath. Christ, he even kept that vibe going on his signature (a nice touch IMO). Moreover, I think this is just a tremendous latter-day image of one of the key characters that helped make him famous.