Byrne on Moore & Brits

[uncle fester]

Has Alan Moore ever publicly voiced an opinion about John Byrne? Would love to hear what he thought of all this.

[Peter Wolf]

"The thought began to take shape in my head that any revisiting of those characters should be a continuation of the "tradition" of WATCHMEN. That is, as Moore trashed everything superheroes were all about, the next go-round should do the same with WATCHMEN itself. So the ideal candidate for doing the project should be someone who is equally a one trick pony, but from the opposite end of the spectrum. Immediately, one name sprang to the forefront: Rob Liefeld.

No, I'm not kidding. Liefeld would be to WATCHMEN what Moore was to superheroes in general. And it would be such fun to watch a whole flock of retailer's heads exploding, as they tried to serve two entirely different faces of mammon!"

This is becoming tiresome and i am seriously thinking that John Byrne needs some professional counselling.

"As Moore has trashed everything that suoerheroes were all about"

Absolute rubbish.All Alan Moore did was write an alternative take on superheroes [who are pretty one dimensional at the best of times] which as a writer Alan Moore has every right to do and its also apparent that superheroes are doing quite well for themselves despite Alan Moore so the problem is really John Byrne and it has nothing to do with Alan Moore.John Byrne is massively insecure and has more than a bit of a problem with Napoleon syndrome to deal with.

Also for someone who is quoted as saying that he doesnt suffer fools i often wonder who he suffers himself.

I can understand someone have a gripe about something but when its over and over and over again then its obsessional behaviour and that is a type of mental illness.

The fact that John Byrne calls Alan Moore a "One trick pony" is ridiculous and perhaps a little bit hypocritical.

Since he calls Alan Moore a one trick pony then why not call every other creator or writer or artist or musician or actor or whatever a "one trick pony" ??

[Potato]

"The thought began to take shape in my head that any revisiting of those characters should be a continuation of the "tradition" of WATCHMEN. That is, as Moore trashed everything superheroes were all about, the next go-round should do the same with WATCHMEN itself. So the ideal candidate for doing the project should be someone who is equally a one trick pony, but from the opposite end of the spectrum. Immediately, one name sprang to the forefront: Rob Liefeld.

No, I'm not kidding. Liefeld would be to WATCHMEN what Moore was to superheroes in general. And it would be such fun to watch a whole flock of retailer's heads exploding, as they tried to serve two entirely different faces of mammon!"

This is becoming tiresome and i am seriously thinking that John Byrne needs some professional counselling.

"As Moore has trashed everything that suoerheroes were all about"

Absolute rubbish.All Alan Moore did was write an alternative take on superheroes [who are pretty one dimensional at the best of times] which as a writer Alan Moore has every right to do and its also apparent that superheroes are doing quite well for themselves despite Alan Moore so the problem is really John Byrne and it has nothing to do with Alan Moore.John Byrne is massively insecure and has more than a bit of a problem with Napoleon syndrome to deal with.

Also for someone who is quoted as saying that he doesnt suffer fools i often wonder who he suffers himself.

I can understand someone have a gripe about something but when its over and over and over again then its obsessional behaviour and that is a type of mental illness.

The fact that John Byrne calls Alan Moore a "One trick pony" is ridiculous and perhaps a little bit hypocritical.

Since he calls Alan Moore a one trick pony then why not call every other creator or writer or artist or musician or actor or whatever a "one trick pony" ??

Especially funny when you consider that Byrne has said in the past that he is the one they (marvel/Dc) called when they wanted something fixed, Chapter one, man of steel etc.

So by his own standards he is also a "one Trick Pony" the only difference is that Moore has a better trick

[Jim_Campbell]

Byrne asserts that Shakespeare was a frontman for Edward de Vere based on a book he read that was really expensive and so must be true, gets argued into the ground by Knut Robert Knutsen

Enjoy it quick, while it's still there. Knut kinda loses his rag at the utter shite being spouted by the semi-literate* fucktard sycophants trying to bolster Byrne's ridiculous position on the Shakespeare authorship thread. My particular favourite is the guy who tries to twist the forum rules to suggest that Knut can't respond to anything Byrne posts because Byrne has him on ignore.

Deletion and banning must surely be imminent.

Cheers!

Jim

*Keep in mind that over their Alan Moore thread right now, people are arguing that Suicide Squad and Master of Fucking Kung Fu are more innovative works within the comic medium than Watchmen. On one of the many deleted Moore threads I recall one of JB's little henchmen, possibly Emily Calamari, asking what authority I had for asserting the literary merit of Moore's work, to which I observed that, unless they too had an honours degree in English Literature, I certainly had more authority than they did.

[Richmond Clements]

How easy it is to smugly congratulate oneself about how unassailable ones arguments are when one simply ignores the facts one doesn't like. Ignores the arguments that one doesn't like. Ignorance truly is bliss.

Brilliant!

[Proudhuff]

Just in case its purged from there:

I've tried to be somewhat moderate in this thread but it's exasperating to me that so many arguments in this thread betray a complete ignorance of how facts and evidence are examined and presented in the various fields of history, literary and linguistic studies and theater studies. It just so happens that these were my fields of study at University and while I haven't devoted that much time to the Shakespeare Authorship Question, I do have a strong formal background that makes me qualified to judge the evidence and the arguments and the methodologies employed.

Michael Penn accuses Stratfordians in general and Shapiro in particular of being deceptive by not bringing up any and all uncertainties related to facts or evidence when presenting possible scenarios in a popular form. Implicit in it is the suggestion that there is something suspicious or untowards in the ways they try to tell the story of how Shakespeare's life might possibly have been, based on this evidence. 

And that this gives grounds to doubt the Stratfordian position.

But in academia, the basic principle is and always has been "This is the most probable scenario based on a reasonable interpretation of all available facts."

In academia, when working on a thesis or a research project, one goes to the sources and tries to weigh the credibility and usefulness of various facts. Whether texts or artefacts. At this point, a full accounting of doubts is proper.

In a presentation to the general public, one does not start weighing in with "we're not sure about this, this is conjecture" when it should be clear from the context that it is. Too much hedging might cause a layman to think there is more doubt than there really is. Shapiro, for instance, made it very clear what his premise was in the Buc scenario and that he was presenting a hypothetical scenario and for what purpose it was used.

Which purpose Michael Penn either failed to grasp or chose to ignore.

And in terms of looking for Shakespeare. It is a fact that we really do have very little information about most people of the time. And Shakespeare really hits almost every point that guarantees relative anonymity:
His family was common and rural and living in a very puritan part of the country, and although he himself rose to wealth, he was raised poor.
His family died out within a few decades of his death, and his daughters (or at least one of them) were illiterate or barely literate and he didn't seem to have a very close relationship with his son-in-laws.
He retired to the country before his death.
He didn't attend University.
Everything suggests he spent most of his time working in some capacity or other.
He didn't kill anyone or commit any big, sensational crimes worthy of gossip. Unlike Marlowe, and Jonson and DeVere.
And his place of work/business, the Globe, burnt down a few years before his retirement.

I mean, look at it. Considering all the strikes against anyone saving papers relating to his business, he did very well.

The First Folio, for instance, was supposed to be typeset from the original manuscript and Shapiro suggests that there are writing mistakes like using the name of the actor instead of the character that to me seems to suggest that it's possible those were the original manuscripts in William Shakespeare's hand. Which would mean that the printers probably turned them out with the trash when they were done.-

I'm sure, with the large quantities of Golden Age artists' original art that went straight from the printers to an incinerator, that this will not be an incredible scenario?

The two-pronged test of "identified as author, identified  as grain merchant" is a test that has no grounding in history or literature studies. Such a test would only be emplyoed when there was evidence of at least 2 Wiliiam Shakespeares, Napoleon Bonapartes, Abraham Lincolns or Winston Churchills in the same place, at the same time.

Such a test would never be employed to determine whether a person owning or acting in a theatre and a writer of the same name writing exclusively for that company was one person or two. Unless one knew for a fact that there were two different people with that name in that place.

The burden of proof is on those who seek to split this person into two. That's not new. That's how we'd approach anyone.

The sole purpose of the two-pronged test is to exclude William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. It has been devised solely for that purpose. It is not in any way a part of standard scholarship in the fields of history or literature to use this test. There are other ways to look at whether the authorship makes sense, that are actually useful.

The two-pronged test is not, as it ignores the fact that usually, when we talk about a person in one capacity, we do no casually interject observations about another trade or hobby that they may engage in.

How many actors are waiters on the side(for instance)  and how many of them are referred to consistently in the trade press or on web-sites as "actor/waiter"? No, really. You might see it if they get hauled in for committing a crime, or if someone wanted to suggest that this person wasn't "really" an actor (i.e. as an insult) but you wouldn't expect to see it otherwise.

Also, the insistence of "in his lifetime" is arbitrary and again, designed solely to exclude Shakespeare (or Ben Jonson's foreword to the first folio.) The actual differentiation made between such sources is "Written close to the time something happened by someone who was a witness and experienced it first hand".

We have here a written testimony by a man who knew Shakespeare very well when he was alive in a professional and it seems private capacity, written within a decade of his death. Historians would give their right nut for evidence this reliable of such a quality in matters of some interest or importance.

But even this pales to more solid evidence, such as that found in linguistic examination of the plays, within the context of history studies and theater studies. The kind of cross-disciplinary efforts that Anti-Stratfordians claim Stratfordians shrink away from or try to discredit.

As said before Shakespeare's shift to tragicomedy, the change in style and the identity of his new collaborators show this work to be written for the Blackfriar theatre about 1610. And the collaborative manuscripts contain mistakes that point to both collaborators working concurrently, so that it can't be an unfinished play finsihed or altered posthumously by another author. (I'd say probably is not, but to Michael Penn that might sound like 50/50 and that would be a shame).

The autobiographical readings of the plays?  Shakespeare was intimately familiar with the scenarios and Lazzi (or routines) of Commedia Dell' Arte (In England known in the form of Pantomime, mainly) . He used the techniques in everything from his comedies to his tragedies (Hamlet has several elements taken from this artform). This is an actor's artform. The only way to learn it is to either watch lots and lots of these plays or , more likely, actually be part of a theater troupe (the latter would of course be impossible for an aristocrat). 

Written sources for the scenarios didn't exist until 1611, and then only in italian (though greek and latin plays did influence the artform and were extant before). The Lazzi did not exist as written material and could only be observed in performance.

And once we look at the plays, look at the sources for the plays, look at how the dynamics and archetypes of Commedia Dell'arte or greek/latin comedies or tragedies are employed in the plays in balance, we find very little room for autobiography. Polonius, for instance, is a classic Pantalone. 

As for the Looney list, I have said over and over again that it seems like a good idea. Except that Looney was incompetent in his examination of the plays and shaped his ideal "Shakespeare" according to his own views, not according to reality. And any Anti-Stratfordian argument emanating from the disproven items on this  list must be considered suspect.(I'd say outright wrong, but hey ...)

Several points about how Shakespeare treated servants as fools and with contempt and thus must have not been common, and how he treated nobility with deference and must have been noble evaporate once we see that Looney grossly mischaracterizes the portrayal of such characters, and that the "comedy relief" in Shakespeare's plays are drawn from Commedia  dell'arte. A complete artform with lots of ridiculous or comedic "commoners", but one that nevertheless pokes fun at the upper middle class or professional class (nobility being somewhat absent from classic commedia dell'arte , presumably because they can't take a joke). 

The claim that Shakespeare must have travelled widely, and then especially in Italy, is a claim made by someone sufficiently ignorant that he did not realize just how little Shakespeare actually knew about Italy (if we look at the actual plays). And it's baffling that this point even now is paraded around as if it doesn't prove the speaker an utter fool.

And it is strange that when Shakespeare writes a metaphor about falconry (which it would take about 15 minutes of talking with a commoner working as a falconer for some nobleman to work out) it must mean that he's a nobleman.

But when he shows remarkable insight into the life, methods, practices and rate-calculations of money-lenders, that is about the only "deep fact" that is discounted as not even remotely likely to be based on personal experience lending money. And why? Because William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was a money lender. And William Shakespeare has been disapproved of as a candidate.

(and anyone who considers Shylock's adversaries in this play to be shown in an actual heroic and favorable light must be dreaming. They are hypocrites, racists, corrupt opportunists and callous cads. Now, an Elizabethan audience might not have seen them as such, but very rarely would Shakespeare give protagonists such "ambiguous" traits that Elizabethans would accept them and later generations reject them. This is actually the only play of his that I've personally seen such flagrant immorality (from a modern perspective) on the part of the protagonists).

The "Education" that the plays actually tells us is necessary for the writing of the plays is intense studies of theater (especially as noted, Commedia dell'Arte) and of a wide variety of books on historical subjects, mythology, fact, fiction anything.  This "Education" is now possible to obtain through a good University. In Shakespeare's time, if that's the kind of education you needed, University would be a serious waste of time.

An ignorant man might be forgiven for thinking that all this knowledge, this wide reading and all the wealth of information Shakespeare possessed suggested a University education. It seems so obvious. Until we actually look at what Shakespeare knew and what Universities of the time could provide.

Now, this is me being just fed up with a bunch of amateurs who really don't know what they're talking about, going on and on about all the proof they have (which they don't)  and how there is no evidence of Shakespeare being a playwright (again, an outright lie).

The supposed mountains of evidence are all the quaint little comparisons they make between incidents in the lives of their candidate and some incident or person in Shakespeare's plays.  Plays demonstrably filled with deliberate comic archetypes that anyone not raised in perfect isolation would recognize as "hey, I know him, he acts just like my Uncle, or cousin, or boss".

Plays written in the very small context of London/ England at this particular time, so that all the candidates share a somewhat similar broadly defined cultural context.

I mean, it might seem an interesting way to look for historical evidence in books and plays when you're 12.  But at a certain level it just becomes ridiculous. Writers put their life experience into a text, sure. But they lie. They don't just take what they see and write it down.  At least not the good ones (within the genres we're discussing, obviously there are later, autobiographic works, some 200 years later).

It just seems so amazing to me that this isn't sinking in.

(edited for pronoun confusion)

[JamesC]

What confuses me is what someone like Knut is doing on Byrne's forum in the first place.

The Byrne forum seems like some kind of online S & M club where intellectual people go to be punished and called an idiot. Knut's probably getting off on it and Byne's wearing leather pants.

[Potato]

Byrne asserts that Shakespeare was a frontman for Edward de Vere based on a book he read that was really expensive and so must be true, gets argued into the ground by Knut Robert Knutsen

Enjoy it quick, while it's still there. Knut kinda loses his rag at the utter shite being spouted by the semi-literate* fucktard sycophants trying to bolster Byrne's ridiculous position on the Shakespeare authorship thread. My particular favourite is the guy who tries to twist the forum rules to suggest that Knut can't respond to anything Byrne posts because Byrne has him on ignore.

Deletion and banning must surely be imminent.

Cheers!

Jim

*Keep in mind that over their Alan Moore thread right now, people are arguing that Suicide Squad and Master of Fucking Kung Fu are more innovative works within the comic medium than Watchmen. On one of the many deleted Moore threads I recall one of JB's little henchmen, possibly Emily Calamari, asking what authority I had for asserting the literary merit of Moore's work, to which I observed that, unless they too had an honours degree in English Literature, I certainly had more authority than they did.

They really are dense, I got quietly banned for my defense of Moore in that thread

Especially when i showed that byrne had done many (if not ) all of the things they were criticising Moore for

[Peter Wolf]

How easy it is to smugly congratulate oneself about how unassailable ones arguments are when one simply ignores the facts one doesn't like. Ignores the arguments that one doesn't like. Ignorance truly is bliss.

I just quoted that to an individual on another forum just now and its no coincidence that this individual always ignores my replies and refuses to debate the topic with myself completely and anyone else in a way that isnt conveniently slanted.

And anyway the way he totally ignores my comments that expose him as a cheap fraudulent internet shill just goes to show that his arguments are very very weak indeed.

[Matt Timson]

Purely in the spirit of gleeful voyeurism, here's a thread where the JBF tie themselves in knots trying to work out why Arnold Drake liked Morrison's Doom Patrol better than Byrne's.

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=34442&PN=1&TPN=6

That's quite an astonishing thread.
Even after someone posts and says they spoke to drake personally about it you still get massively arrogant posts like this:

Remember, what Drake is reported as saying is that Morrison that understood what Drake was trying to do, that he "got it" which is different than saying he simply liked what Morrison was doing. Of course, what Drake doesn't say is exactly what "it" is, what he saw in Morrison's work that echoed what Drake thought was in his own and was lacking in other versions especially since Morrison's version was a complete purposeful deconstruction and destruction of all that had come before.

That Ed Love fella's a bit of a cock.

I have just read 55 pages of this thread, took me nearly 2 days.

Some great stuff.

The hate they have over there for people like Moore and Morrison is truly bizare.

and Matt Timson, nice to see you again.

Love impaler

Cheers!  Is that the same Potato of IMWAN fame?

[Potato]

Purely in the spirit of gleeful voyeurism, here's a thread where the JBF tie themselves in knots trying to work out why Arnold Drake liked Morrison's Doom Patrol better than Byrne's.

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=34442&PN=1&TPN=6

That's quite an astonishing thread.
Even after someone posts and says they spoke to drake personally about it you still get massively arrogant posts like this:

Remember, what Drake is reported as saying is that Morrison that understood what Drake was trying to do, that he "got it" which is different than saying he simply liked what Morrison was doing. Of course, what Drake doesn't say is exactly what "it" is, what he saw in Morrison's work that echoed what Drake thought was in his own and was lacking in other versions especially since Morrison's version was a complete purposeful deconstruction and destruction of all that had come before.

That Ed Love fella's a bit of a cock.

I have just read 55 pages of this thread, took me nearly 2 days.

Some great stuff.

The hate they have over there for people like Moore and Morrison is truly bizare.

and Matt Timson, nice to see you again.

Love impaler

Cheers!  Is that the same Potato of IMWAN fame?

Indeed it is.

Hows things?

[Matt Timson]

Not bad- I'm in Cornwall at the moment- with rubbish internet and even more rubbish weather- hence spotty replies.

[Proudhuff]

aaaah, its just like friends re-united round here

[James Stacey]

aaaah, its just like friends re-united round here

I suspect there is more activity on here than Friends Reunited

[Eric Plumrose]

Byrne ACTUALLY talks* about 'Block-Out at the Crater Bowl'





* Okay, so it's mentioned only in passing.