You know what was wrong with
John Byrne's run on
West Coast Avengers?
It was very,
very VERY red.
I can't believe it was intentional, but over the first 8 issues of his run any characters who
didn't wear significant amounts of red were shuffled away--
Hawkeye and
Mockingbird (was she
Mockingskrull at that point?) left,
Tigra was essentially written out (in a never-ending subplot where she stayed in her quarters all the time and went feral). Meanwhile,
U.S. Agent came on board, the
Wasp took to wearing mostly red,
Wonder Man got a new costume, and the
Vision had all of his yellow and green bleached away. So by the time we got to issue
#50 (1989):
I mean, that's a
whole lot of red there, without any other primary colors to distract us.
Reading these issues meant having to rub your eyes and check to make sure they weren't bloodshot, because you got scene after scene of groups of people in red standing together and talking. Visine time.
But wait, we're
not done yet! In that very same issue:
The
Original Human Torch joined, in his
head-to-toe all-red costume!! But wait--
there's more!! Just one page later:
Iron Man rejoins, in his predominantly red armor!! As a bunch of guys dressed in red watch him.
Byrne was gone a few months later, and the red lessened: Hawkeye returned, Tigra got better,
Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) joined,
Quicksilver joins...
So, did Byrne have the market cornered on red ink, or what? It's hard to imagine that he didn't notice, right? Was he deliberately bringing in all the red he could?
Or did he want characters who all just happened to be red? If so, surely he could have redone some costumes, right? Maybe Iron Man's was relatively sacrosanct. But he just completely refurbished the Vision, and probably nobody at marvel would have squawked to loudly if he had given makeovers to
Hank Pym's red jumpsuit or Wonder Man's costume, for example.
Maybe he lost a bet...I'm just sayin', that was an awful lot of red!