It is, of course, too late to ask him; but I wonder what Curt Swan felt when he was told he was being put out to pasture so John Byrne could revamp Superman back in the mid 1980s.
John Byrne seems a bit put out that Marvel Comics has cancelled X-Men: The Hidden Years, and it strikes me as ironic, because I suspect it's for very similar reasons.
Byrne says Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada won't give him any sort of reason that makes sense in regard to the book being cancelled. When I asked him about it, Quesada said "With regard to John's remarks I think he meant to say that my reasons made no sense to him. We discussed the reasons and came to the conclusion that were not going to see eye to eye. " Byrne says it's a profitable book in a failing market. True enough. But maybe, as astonishing as it seems, Marvel is taking the long view of its properties, and how to best preserve and present them for future generations of readers. It's ironic, but perhaps Marvel's financial troubles have gotten so dire that their employees are able to worry not so much about the next quarter's profits and losses, but more on how to utilize their valuable, near-iconic characters in ways that encourage long-term growth instead of short term profits.
Having recently tried to read some of the lower-tier X-Titles such as Bishop and Cable, I can say without reservation that cutting a wide swath through the X-Cessive X-Books is an X-Cellent idea. I'm sure the books each have a core of readers, and it's a shame to lose them, but the books in many cases are directionless, pointless, unreadable crap, designed solely to generate profits among whatever portion of the readership exists that will buy anything published by Marvel that has an "X" in the title.
Hidden Years is a bit harder to dismiss, for a number of reasons. Writer/penciler John Byrne is a talented craftsman, there's no doubt about that. At his best (Uncanny X-Men, Marvel Team-Up), he has created some of the most reliably entertaining superhero comics ever published.
At his worst (Jack Kirby's Fourth World, Spider-Man: Chapter One), he is a mind-numbingly wrongheaded creator.
Hidden Years is certainly more craft than art, and mostly, for me, it was a disappointment. Byrne's X-Men run of the early 80s with writer Chris Claremont is probably solely responsible for me making it out of high school with some measure of sanity intact. As a young teenager, the saga(s) the creative team concocted were mind-blowing stuff, with a heavy emphasis on family. If I had to come up with a moder-day equivalent, probably Buffy The Vampire Slayer (the TV show, not the comics) is the only thing that comes close.
When Byrne's Hidden Years project was announced, I was cautiously intrigued. I had recently been hugely disappointed by Byrne's Wonder Woman and JK4W runs at DC, but Byrne back on the X-Men could -- could -- have been a great thing. The fact that inker Tom Palmer was aboard was hopeful, as he provided some wonderful embellishment to the pencils of Neal Adams on his 1960s X-Men run.
I bought the first 5 or 6 issues of Hidden Years, and even gave the first issue a fairly positive review. Byrne was clearly resurrecting his Neal Adams phase (most obvious in his early work for Charlton), but with inker Palmer along, it seemed to have a degree of legitimacy.
After half a year, though, I was so bored by Byrne's slow-as-molasses plotline that I dropped the title cold and never looked back. I understand Storm and Phoenix have since made cutesy "prequel" style appearances, but once I drop a title, I generally stick with the decision.
Now, Marvel stands on the verge of releasing what will undoubtedly be a huge first-issue for them, perhaps the best selling comic book of the year, Ultimate X-Men.
This series will focus on the team as if it were first beginning, I guess, in the year 2001. All the characters will be in the early days of the career, with new and exciting adventures promised.
Makes Hidden Years seem pretty redundant, doesn't it?
If the elimination of John Byrne's vanity project, crushing bore that it is, prevents confusion in the minds of new readers picking up Ultimate X-Men for the first time, profitable or not, it's worth getting rid of Hidden Years.
Joe Quesada's a smart guy. I doubt he wants to lose Byrne completely. Unfortunately, when I asked him about Byrne's current status with Marvel, Quesada told me "I think John made it very clear that he had no intentions to work with Marvel, but if he ever has a change of heart, he knows where to find us." Sounds pretty final to me. Perhaps it's just as well, based on the mediocrity of Hidden Years. We know Byrne can create quality work; he done it before. But he can also create crap, and well-crafted crap is, at the end of the day, still crap. Combine that with the likelihood that it will just stand in the way in efforts at streamlining the Marvel Universe, and that's a formula for cancellation that's hard to argue with.