Have you seen this image before?
If you are not a member of ByrneRobotics or following my Twitter you may have missed this discussion. Bringing it here to get a bigger audience. The above image is being sold for $17,000 at RomitaMan.com Terry Austin became aware of it and contacted John Byrne. Terry swears he did not ink it. John does not remember drawing it. Here are a few things John has said in the last day:
This drawing, if I did it, would have to have been done sometime before March 14th, 1980. That was the day I quit UNCANNY X-ME*, and I declined (courteously) to do any X-Men drawings for a long, long time after that.
I’ll admit there is something in me that hopes that, if I drew this, even in 1980, it would have been BETTER! On the other hand, the signature, which forgers usually get wrong, is spot on – tho oddly placed.
IF it’s a forgery, it certainly seems to have picked up on most of my quirks of the time. The haggard faces, for instance. But, well, I hope I would have positioned everything better. And not signed Xavier’s chin!!
I’ve spoken to various professional artists who know much more about art than I do. Each and every person has said they believe this to not be Terry’s inks and are leaning toward it being a tracing of John’s art from various sources.
There has been no clear answers though and I hoped someone reading this may have some ideas?
