John Byrne (comics) - Creator-owned Works

Creator-owned Works

In the early 1990s, Byrne began creating a series of original, creator-owned works for publisher Dark Horse Comics. This was during a general trend in the industry for established creators working for Marvel and DC to bring their original works to other publishers or create their own companies to publish the works themselves (one prominent example is Image Comics). A number of these creators, including Byrne, Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, and Art Adams, banded together to form the Legend imprint at Dark Horse.

Byrne’s first title for Dark Horse was Next Men, a work he considered darker and more realistic than his previous work. The Next Men were five young people who were the product of a secret government experiment. Byrne said, “I thought I would see what I could do with superheroes in the ‘real world’ ” and “xplore the impact their existence would have.” Byrne’s other Dark Horse titles were Babe, and Danger Unlimited, an all-age readers book about a team of heroes in the future fighting an alien occupation of Earth.

The Next Men lasted until issue 30 in 1994, when Byrne ended the series, intending to return “in no more than six months.” However, Byrne says he “did not count on...the virtual collapse of the whole comic book industry, which seemed to occur at just the time I put Next Men on the shelf...In the present, very depressed marketplace, I don’t feel Next Men would have much chance, so I leave the book hibernating until such time as the market improves.”

IDW, an independent publisher, revived John Byrne's Next Men in 2010 following a series of trade paperbacks that collected the first series. The original storyline that had a cliffhanger ending in 1995 was continued.