John Lindley Byrne (born July 6, 1950) is a
British-born American comic-book writer and artist. Since the mid-1970s, Byrne has worked on many major American
superheroes. Byrne's better-known work has been on
Marvel Comics’
X-Men and
Fantastic Four and the 1986 relaunch of
DC Comics’
Superman franchise, the first issue of which featured comics' first
variant cover. Coming into the comics profession exclusively as a penciler, Byrne began co-plotting the
X-Men comics during his tenure on them, and launched his writing career in earnest with
Fantastic Four (where he started inking his own pencils). During the 1990s he produced a number of
creator-owned works, including
Next Men and
Danger Unlimited. He scripted the first issues of
Mike Mignola's
Hellboy series and produced a number of
Star Trek comics for
IDW Publishing. In 2015, Byrne and his longtime X-Men collaborator
Chris Claremont were inducted into the comic book hall of fame.