Anyone recall his STUNNING painted artwork (before such a thing was common) in the
DOCTOR STRANGE : INTO SHAMBALLA original graphic novel?

Beautiful!

I remember picking that up when it was released and looking at it going... this is painted by "that inker"?

If you haven't read it (it's a really great book), go pick it up cheap on eBAY or used from Amazon.

You won't regret it.

~P~
P-TOR

I think that Scott Hanna though does the best job of presenting and preserving Byrne's line work while still tightening up any looseness and adding much detail. If you've had the chance to see the original Amazing Spider-man pages, Hanna was actually doing a lot of work on some issues as the pencils were pretty damn loose. Also it took Hanna about 6 issues to get a real feel for how to ink and present Byrne's pencils. Hanna's a great inker and the best who still works regularly in the industry.

He's quickly followed by the stunning work of Dexter Vines. I've purchased pages just for Vines' inking work. He's a huge part of the success of Ed McGuiness on Superman/Batman and of Leniel Yu on X-men and Superman. My favorites though are the Dave Johnson pages from Wildcats vol.2 which were written by Alan Moore.

Hanna on the other hand, made his characters pop and look more 3 dimensional.

For me, Terry Austin will always be the one who brought the best out of Byrne. In fact, he often brought the best out of anyone…

While not a knock on Austin, the idea that he "brought out" anything from the work of others seems odd to me, as Austin's big thing seems to be adapting other artist's style TO his work.

So when you see John Byrne and Terry Austin, you're really seeing Terry Austin's version of John Byrne's art.

Which looks nice, as Terry Austin is a good artist.

But I don't think it is brining anything out of the original work - it is more covering up the original work more than anything.

have you read the wolverine story that byrne drew with janson inks? i believe wolverine 17-23 (and for contrast, byrne inks the last one himself)

Before he got so into his tech pens, I would say that Austin was his best inker. I tend to like Byrne's own inks while he was on FF, though not now. I'd love to see some Byrne/ Janson pages. It's an interesting combination.