Mike played poker each week with a group of comic book guys and gave my name to one of the players, Sol Brodsky, who was the production manager for Marvel at the time, and I went up to see him with my work. My first job was pencilling a Doctor Strange issue, which was written by Roy Thomas. [Issue #171].
Outside of those couple of pencilled pages for Wally Wood this was the first comic book pencilling I had ever done and it must have showed. Dan Adkins did a tremendous job inking the issue making me and the book look quite professional. When I returned to pencil another issue I was told they had a new penciler and would I like to ink him? I had done enough inking for advertising art so I took the opportunity and inked that next Doctor Strange issue, #172.
The new penciller was Gene Colan and it was the beginning of a wonderful relationship both personal and professional. I worked hard on that first inking assignment and did everything I could to turn his illustrative pencils into inked line art for printing. Remember using a lot of zip-a-tone to capture all the subtle penciling Gene had done, which he was a master of. I soon learned that Gene pencilled quite differently than other pencilers using graded pencil tones to render form and shadow and not strictly pencil lines. I enjoyed the challenge. Marvel must have liked what I had done and I was asked to return for the next issue.

The first issue of the X-Men is what I remember the most vividly. The first three to five pages, with the Sphinx in the background, the rocket car—I would just sit back and marvel at these beautiful renderings. In Neal's second issue with the shot of King Faisal, where he's pointing—you can see Neal used a photo—I was just taken aback by the rendering of that pencil drawing. It's easy for me to describe from my eyes or my memory of that time, but to sit there and look at that stuff—I don't mean to make this sound too much like a religious experience, but it was whatever would be close to that.

The first pages of that "Fantastic Voyage" issue [#93] just blew me away. Neal just amazed me with what was going on. There were some shots in there, some of the scenes—it was all so original. I remember spending a lot of time on that issue—and coloring it also. I don't know if we traded coloring assignments, but I remember Neal felt confident about that. There was a satisfaction, I think, for both of us—that issue may have been the high point of it all. At least I remember being very proud it.

I don't think Byrne ever looked like he wasn't a professional, even with some of the faults of his later work... and other than the slanted panels, his work looked the same as always, not very Neal Adams-esque.

I guess maybe if you could be more specific about what in particular looks like Adams. For me, the faces look like standard John Byrne faces and don't remind me of Adams; same goes for the anatomy. And the way the characters are posed look like standard Byrne poses -- he doesn't seem to use the same extreme forced perspective shots that are a trademark of Neal's work. He looks like he's still in the Kirby / Buscema school of figurework, whereas Neal Adams was a little more naturalistic and came more from a Gil Kane approach.

The only thing that screams, "Neal Adams!" to me are the panel layouts -- prior to this project, Byrne always used rectangular or square panels. On XM:THY and his work afterwards, he really got into the whole slanted panels thing that Neal Adams was famous for.

Well we disagree of course - because it's both faces and anatomy to me! The Adams influence is in the sinewy forms, it seems to me, and the focus on facial expression which Adams made a point of in his X-Men work.

The cover of Hidden Years 3 for example, is pure Adams (not as good of course!) to me,

I see the Adams influence.