Byrne's take on X-Men and Alpha Flight
"Ah, yes, X-MEN/ALPHA FLIGHT. What a pleasant experience THAT was!
"Shooter had been bugging me for a couple of years about doing that project. But I had no interest in working with Chris again. And I said so, time and time again. But Shooter kept at it, and finally I said "Okay, how about this? Get somebody else to plot the thing, then I'll draw it and Chris can script it, and I'll never have to look at it again." Shooter agreed. "And," I said, "please keep Kitty out of it. I don't like what Chris has done with he. Have her driving off in a taxi on the splash, or something." Again, Shooter agreed. No problem, he said. My requests were perfectly reasonable, he said.
"A few weeks later, a big fat plot arrived. That it was about twice as many pages in length as the first issue was going to be made my spider-sense tingle immediately. I read a few pages, and it was pure Claremont. Not only that, but Kitty was all over it.
"I called the editor to complain. This was not what had been agreed to. She called me "unprofessional" and hung up on me.
"So, remember that! If you lay out what you want from a project up front, have those needs agreed upon, then find out you have been lied to and complain about it -- well, that makes YOU unprofessional."
great insight, thanks! And I'm glad we got more Paul Smith X-Men work out of the conflict.
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