John Byrne's Star Trek comic art

[Ptrope]

I've been a fan of John Byrne's art since he drew the Space:1999 comic for Charlton Comics, and especially when he did X-Men back in the '70s, with Terry Austin's inks (Byrne's inks always look sloppy to me ...). I like what he's been doing with the new books from IDW; the Romulans books were fun reads, and an interesting approach behind "Balance of Terror.' But I just found this panel from his latest Crew #1 book for the imprint, and aside from making the hangar deck a lot bigger than it could possibly be (in the inset shot), it's a great drawing of Enterprise (look closely, and you can even see that it's a Pike-era image ):

Shakedown

It's hard to tell from this shot, but Byrne has been doing a lot of 3D modeling the past few years, using Strata 3D initially, and then using the 3D models as the basis for his line work on ships and machinery. I'm curious to know if he did that for this shot (or he just has an old AMT model hanging around ).

 

[ancient]

Looks like Earth has been borgified.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Looks like I've got some comics shopping to do.

 

[Admiral2]

I've been a fan of John Byrne's art since he drew the Space:1999 comic for Charlton Comics, and especially when he did X-Men back in the '70s, with Terry Austin's inks (Byrne's inks always look sloppy to me ...).

I've heard this before, but I've always preferred it when John Byrne inks his own stuff (it looks "sloppy" because it's heavy-handed, the type of inking style I like). Terry Austin's inks were great when they were together on X-Men, true, but his style has changed since he inked John Romita's pencils on the book, and now with any other artist his inks look sketchy and incomplete.

As for this image, I like it. The "borgified" look of the Earth is probably just meant to convey we're over the night side of the planet.

 

[Praetor]

That's really excellent.

 

[dru]

It's hard to tell from this shot, but Byrne has been doing a lot of 3D modeling the past few years, using Strata 3D initially, and then using the 3D models as the basis for his line work on ships and machinery. I'm curious to know if he did that for this shot (or he just has an old AMT model hanging around ).

While he did do a Strata 3D Enterprise years ago, I don't think he's using it. He owns a Master Replicas Enterprise which would be a much better reference.

He is known to be using his DVDs as reference as well as that big online repository of screen captures.

He is using some Strata 3D models of pre-Constitution starships he designed for the Crew series, IIRC.

 

[JoeZhang]

USS Ventura

 

[Forbin]

NX-0002?!

 

[Praetor]

And some people thought NCC-0514 was bad.

The U.S.S. Ventura is interesting. Did he come up with that on his own?

 

[DEWLine]

NX-0002?!

Does seem more than a tad "off", doesn't it?

Mind you, the attention to detail otherwise is very good indeed.

 

[DEWLine]

I suspect that the Ventura is indeed a Byrne original, Praetor. He's had enough time to work with 3D-ware and with things Trekkish in general to get a sense of what fits with the Jeffries design philosophy on his own terms.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I suspect the thinking behind NX-0002 is that each ship is given a temporary NX registry while still in the initial testing phase, at least for the first few examples of a given class.

 

[Praetor]

Works for me. If 1701 is the second ship of her class, then a temporary 0002 designation would make sense.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Much more artwork and 411 from Byrne himself on his forum:

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=28178&PN=1&totPosts=252

Artwork from Crew #3:

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=29747&PN=1&totPosts=157

 

[TheSeeker]

I really like John Byrne's art too, but I agree with Ptrope. I like it better when someone else is inking.

 

[Forbin]

I really like John Byrne's art too, but I agree with Ptrope. I like it better when someone else is inking.

Si. I've always thought that about him. The Terry Austin years on X-Men were golden.

 

[Captain Robert April]

A little something I noticed on that thread over on Byrne's site....

Posted by John Byrne:

Since Roddenberry (retconning, imho) claimed that the holodeck was part of
his original plans for the show, and only the limitations of technology
prevented him for showing it aboard the original Enterprise, I will
suggest that the "bowling alley", if there was one, would be located there,
so as not to waste space!

Riley's pause, in "The Naked Time", might even be used to argue for this.
He takes a beat to decide what form the location of his party will take!

Once again, great minds think alike.

 

[Admiral2]

I really like John Byrne's art too, but I agree with Ptrope. I like it better when someone else is inking.

Si. I've always thought that about him. The Terry Austin years on X-Men were golden.

Sigh.

So once again I'm in the very small minority.

I just live here.

 

[Patrickivan]

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=29747&PN=1&totPosts=157

That's creepy! I want to read this one.

I really like the drawing. Some of the Trek comics look really sloppy, but this is great looking.

 

[Captain Robert April]

One of the latest entries, a certain starship captain named Bob....

It's really frustrating not being able to register there (AOL email addresses are blocked).