Saturday, September 15, 2007

John Byrne and Terry Austin - NYC Creation Con - c. 1979

The pics below were taken by my dad at a Creation Comic Con in NYC in the late 70's. I'm figuring it's likely 1979, right during the heart of the Claremont/Byrne/Austin run on X-Men. I remember their table being swarmed with people and briefly thinking about getting a commission, but realizing there was no way I'd be able to. Take a look at that piece Austin is working on....pretty darn
detailed! For years I thought that they were working on a convention sketch, but as I found out a couple of years ago, it was, in fact, the cover to The Comics Journal #57, Summer 1980.  odd that they'd be working on a published cover at a comic con!

That's me, off to the right, eagerly enjoying watching Austin at work. Even the pencil sketch that Byrne is working on in the first shot (likely later to be passed on to Austin) seems to be possibly a group shot, as if you zoom in and rotate the pic 180 degrees, you can see that there's more than just Wolverine there. The paper that Byrne is holding over the drawing, to prevent his hand from smudging it, looks like it's hiding Nightcrawler, as it appears to be his hand coming out from under it. What's odd, though, is that the pencil sketch appears to be the same image as the cover, yet Austin is also inking that same image. Strange. As if they were working on the same piece, like a recreation. John Byrne has a forum on his webpage and I think I'll have to ask about this, should he even remember. The photo of John Byrne in conversation, was after a talk he did. I only seem to remember being around for his talk just a little while. I don't remember any of what went on. It was at this same con that I got a Moon Knight sketch from Bill Sienkiewicz, which I then brought over to have inked by Joe Rubenstein. The two were working together on the character's appearences in the back of The Rampaging Hulk magazine. Moon Knight didn't yet have his own title.