FANTASTIC FOUR was my favorite series for a long time, and the book that finally got me to take the plunge into the Marvel Universe. So you’d figure that, even in lean times, it would take a lot to dislodge me from following it. And you’d be right. Except that that’s totally what happened. This may have even been the impetus for my overall pruning of my buying list, as I figured that if I wasn’t enjoying FANTASTIC FOUR properly anymore, what was the point in buying all of this other stuff that I liked even less. This also seems like a relatively blasphemous place to put the title down, as this run by John Byrne is historically considered second only to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s definitive first 100 years. But, hey, what can I tell you?
The first issue of FANTASTIC FOUR I had ever bought was this one, #177, which I picked up along with the next two issues, #178 and #179, from a local drug store that sold recent-but-old comic books out of a big bin. After several years of being turned off to Marvel comics due to a couple of bad early encounters with them, I’d finally taken the plunge after reading about the Golden Age Human Torch in THE STERANKO HISTORY OF COMICS and THE GREAT COMIC BOOK HEROES. To no great surprise, these books completely hooked me, and I started buying new issues immediately thereafter. I became a great admirer of artist George Perez and inker Joe Sinnott.
The first issue I found on the spinner rack proved to be #187, a full ten issues later. I would spend a bunch of effort that first summer attempting to fill in that gap in the run. But from this point on, i was a dedicated follower of the series, only missing one issue during that time, the sought-after #200, which didn’t arrive at my regular 7-11 due to the fact that it was oversized and they had stopped carrying oversized books. It was a heartbreaking, scarring moment when #201 showed up.
I was also a fan of John Byrne’s work based on his runs on UNCANNY X-MEN and AVENGERS and MARVEL TEAM-UP and so forth. I had even sent a letter in to Marvel suggesting they allow Byrne to write and draw FANTASTIC FOUR after reading is really great 50th issue of MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE, in which the modern day Thing met his earlier counterpart from the first issue of the title. So this was very much a “be careful what you wish for” experience for me. Because John had strong opinions about the Fantastic Four, and he wasn’t above making changes to the fundamental formula of the series. And many of those changes weren’t to my liking.
This is funny in retrospect, as some of the things that Byrne did on the title that irritated me are things that I’d go on to replicate once I was editing the series. So first off, I didn’t love that he seemingly de-aged Johnny Storm, making him younger and less mature. This felt to me as though all of the stories that I’d read concerning the character’s growing maturity were being tossed out the window. And in a way, they were. But this was John pushing the character back to the core of what made him work within the ensemble, so he wasn’t wrong to do so. He similarly slimmed down Reed considerably, and did a run of stories in which the Thing was transformed back to his original lumpy appearance. I understood Byrne’s nostalgia for when he had been reading the book, but as a reader, i was much more focused on my nostalgia–which didn’t line up with John’s. Finally, under John, Joe Sinnott, the longtime FF inker whose slick lines had come to define the look of the series, came off of the title. In hindsight, I think this was probably a good choice, as while it took him an issue or two to find his groove, Byrne’s lusher native ink style was a better compliment for what he was doing. But in 1983, I did not like it.
But the breaking point may have been Byrne changing the team’s costumes in this issue. Today, that seems utterly preposterous, as costumes get changed all the time, even for iconic characters. But in 1983, that really wasn’t the case. And it was a change that I didn’t like (though Byrne always did the new black-and-white uniforms well. Other artists, however, left the black areas more open for blue color, and the result seldom looked as good.) But John’s explanation for how it happened didn’t make sense to me, as the cut between the old costumes and the new was different, so they couldn’t have just bee the old suits with the colors “reversed.” Similar, but not the same. It also didn’t help matters that I was finding frustration with a lot of John’s stories. His plotting chops didn’t seem to be up to snuff. So after a 250th Anniversary Issue that wound up being a mindless double-sized fight with a bunch of Skrulls pretending to be the X-Men for no reason other than commercial ones, John had the team embark into what turned out to be a six-issue sojourn within the Negative Zone. This gave John the opportunity to bat out a number of Star Trek or Doctor Who-style ideas that he’d had, but I found the results often unsatisfactory.
This final chapter wound up being a somewhat-unnecessary crossover with an issue of AVENGERS on sale at the same time. That should have felt fun to me, but instead the two halves of the story didn’t really entirely come together properly, and so I felt as though the climax was reached simply because it had to be, without the characters having been involved with the win. What’s more, I was expected to follow both titles as well as the new ongoing THING title if I was going to follow the story. And that’s where I went, “Nope!” and did the unthinkable–I purged FANTASTIC FOUR from my buy list. I kept a long-range eye on it thereafter, unable to divorce myself completely. And I remember being aghast when the Thing was replaced by She-Hulk, a character who had been the subject of ridicule in my comic reading circles, in the aftermath of MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS, Good riddance, thought I.
This was a situation that only lasted for about a year, though. What brought me back? Something of a fluke. My family had gone to a local supermarket to restock our pantry, and while I was walking around the place, I happened to check out the current issue of FANTASTIC FOUR that was then on sale. Flipping through it, I hit the last page in this issue, in which Sue miscarries her unborn child, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. But I didn’t buy the book just then. It took a couple of days. But that page, that moment, stuck with me. So I headed out to my local comic shop, Captain Blue Hen’s on Main Street in Newark, Delaware. But when I got there, they didn’t have any copies of the issue left, though the next one, #268, was already on sale, and so I picked that one up. And I went back to the nearby supermarket, where they still had the book on sale. But I was in high school at this point, and the thought of having to go through the checkout lane with only a copy of FANTASTIC FOUR to pay for, embarrassed me. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. So instead, I wound up concealing the issue on my person and walking out with it. Yes, I shoplifted this issue of FANTASTIC FOUR, the one that brought be back to the fold. It’s nothing I’m proud of–but it’s the way it was, so no sense concealing it.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
That story reminds me of the story bob Newhart told in his autobiography.
Richard Pryor told Newhart (a few years before Pryor passed away), “Hey, Bob, I stole you.”
Pryor told him that when he was just starting out as a comic and had no money. He stole a copy of The Button-down Mind of Bob Newhart from his local Woolworth’s because it was a major hit at the time (around 1961).
Pryor was trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t and wanted to see what worked for a new guy who was succeeding.
Newhart considered the story a great compliment. (You would have to ask Jim Shooter and John Byrnes what they thought about the FF comic).
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Or the grocery store manager. 😉
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Woah. What the statute of limitation on supermarket comicbook theft? Was this the Pathmark in the College Square shopping center? With the blue & yellow “Photomat” in the parking lot? I remember seeing comics there. It sounds like you learned your lesson. Case dismissed.
I’m not the biggest Byrne fan, or even a big FF fan. I probably owned 2 issues of Byrne’s run on that title. There was an appeal to his style, but I had to adjust my eyes to it. Sometimes it looked too stiff, then too loose. But his stint seemed well received , and kept his career snowballing, getting a large, loyal audience.
The best FF arc I’ve read was Morrisson’s “1,2,3,4”.
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I bailed out during Byrne’s run as well. He was delivering some really excellent artwork, but I have never been able to connect with Byrne’s solo writing. His plots never made any sense to me, and his “twists” just left me rolling my eyes (e.g., the oft-mentioned Aunt Petunia being revealed as a young hottie).
I didn’t come back to FF until Steve Englehart’s run, which I quite enjoyed (which I know puts me in an even smaller category than “people who didn’t like Byrne”).
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Whoa, that reminds me of an old memory – I sort-of partly stole a Fantastic Four comic as a teenager. A junk shop had some classic American FF Annuals, #3, #4 and #8, for sale. It was the cool kind of shop that didn’t mind people taking them out of the plastic bags and reading them, and they were all very reasonably priced (less than £5 each, I think), but #3, the coolest one which I really wanted, was about a pound more than the others, and more money than I had in my pocket at the time. So I swapped the bags and bought it for the price of one of the others. My best friend was appalled and from that point on probably thought he was harbouring a master criminal. But I did go back another time and buy the other annual, still in the higher-priced bag, so it wasn’t really stealing at all. That’s my only act of comic book larceny, unless there’s another I’ve forgotten…
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I loved Byrne’s FF at the time but as the years have passed it has lost its luster for me. Doesn’t help when you have scenes where Reed literally slaps some sense into Sue Richards/Malice.
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To me that does seem like a very weird time to drop the FF. I was a big fan of Byrne’s work and tried my best to collect everything I could find of his. I remember as a kid, I saw a comic he drew once and not having much experience with other comic artists, thought it was the “norm”. For quite awhile, I couldn’t undertstand why so many comic artists “sucked”! 😉
I haven’t read Byrne’s FF run in quite some time, but I was pretty unaware of the issues that people have since pointed out. At the time, I still think it was one of the best series going on. I believe Miller had already left DD and it wouldn’t be too much longer before Byrne jumped ship to DC. I really enjoyed She-Hulk on the FF too. I probably didn’t think I would at first, but Byrne had a connection with the character that made her feel very real.
That’s a funny story about shoplifting the comic out of embarrassment. Of course the consequences of getting caught stealing a comic book, would be even more embarrassing!
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JK Carrier said:
“I didn’t come back to FF until Steve Englehart’s run, which I quite enjoyed (which I know puts me in an even smaller category than “people who didn’t like Byrne”).”
I also have the honor to be a member of both groups.
My general feeling is that even when Englehart gave you a so-so story, he was always good at teasing out the mystery of his Big Reveals.
Byrne, not so much. I glanced at the stories in which he introduced Malice-Sue, and he just kind of tells you, “Psycho-Man brainwashed Sue to make her filled with hate.” Even when he adds some justifications, Byrne doesn’t make the transformation seem logical or consistent with the character’s history. Essentially it’s just a plot point the reader can either accept or reject.
I’m not saying Byrne never tried the slower approach, but I think he liked to introduce his plot points fast– maybe, the better to drop them just as quickly. I think Don Simpson spoofed Byrne’s run on NAMOR by saying, “He gave the character amnesia and headed for the hills.”
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Byrne’s pacing on FF could be breakneck… but I presume that was an effort to inject some energy akin to the Lee/Kirby run where something eventful happened almost every issue once the book hit its stride. Prior to Byrne I think the FF had been running on fumes for a while.
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I never made such a comment on Namor, sorry; I never had any interest in Byrne or other continuators of mainstream comics mostly after 1975. I was in into increasingly esoteric material like undergrounds, Heavy Metal, reprints of classic strips, etc. by the time I graduated high school in 1980. Never thought of X-Men as more than a reprint title of lame, pedestrian Werner Roth — I was urged by a fan to pick up the latest X-Men c. 1981 and thought it was dull — turned out to be part one of “Days of Future Past” — just to illustrate how completely out of it I was in regards to superhero IP fandom very early on.
Never learned to appreciate the game of “move around the pieces but make sure you put all the toys back in the toybox when you’re done.” I suppose I can appreciate a modern retelling of Frankenstein by way of Poor Things and so on, but I’ve never cared for what Marvel-DC has generated for more than half a century. I’m sure some of it is well-crafted and entertaining, but it’s just never capture my attention or imagination. No disrespect intended.
The FF I read, by the way, was #126 — all the Sept 1972-dated Marvels. Not first generation Marvel, by a long shot, but still closer to the first generation. One could still get plenty of coverless comics from the late sixties, and lots of reprints began appearing — Origins and Son of Origins, treasuries. I can’t say I’m an originalist, but my highest regard is for guys like JBuscema, Kane, Romita, whose job it was to valiantly turn Kirby and Ditko into a house style of some workable sort. Not an easy task but a testament to their skill and versatility that they were able to pull it off at all.
I did read Byrne’s Next Men, or part of a run, until I came upon a missing issue, that a retailer lent me. Breakneck and a page-turner, I have to admit, but I wished he would have slowed down for some character moments. In other words, I’ll hand it to Byrne that he knew what he was doing, but I always found him deficient in basic figure drawing skills and therefore as something of a counterfeiter, not a real cartoonist. But that’s just my own subjective two cents. (Wish my backgrounds could be as obsessively detailed, particular headquarter control rooms, but never envied his figure work at all — it’s pretty bad.)
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There are things about Byrne that bother me, besides his less than stellar attitude. He cannot draw children. There are a limited number of faces he can do, something exposed fully when he did the headshots for Avengers’ corner box. He would undo years of other writers’ work if he disliked a plot point or character bit that had been longstanding. And that Lolita thing he’d use when allowed with an adult man and teen girl was just icky.
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Thanks for responding, DS, but with respect, SOMEONE wrote the following lines in SAVAGE DRAGON VS. SAVAGE MEGATON MAN for a Namor-clone:
“I was stripped of my flying ability after looting my undersea kingdom to build a giant corporation Johnny and I couldn’t properly run. He gave me amnesia and ran for the hills.”
The context being that the Namor-clone is one of “Johnny Redbeard’s Nixed Men.”
So since that’s a Savage Dragon segment, I guess that was Erik Larsen. I cop to guessing wrongly that the script was done in collaboration, rather than as separate segments.
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Steve Mc said:
“There are things about Byrne that bother me, besides his less than stellar attitude. He cannot draw children. There are a limited number of faces he can do, something exposed fully when he did the headshots for Avengers’ corner box. He would undo years of other writers’ work if he disliked a plot point or character bit that had been longstanding. And that Lolita thing he’d use when allowed with an adult man and teen girl was just icky.”
I never noticed Byrne having problems drawing kids, though now that you’ve mentioned it, I might give a look to his depiction of Franklin Richards. And if he did introduce Lolita themes some place, which I don’t recall but don’t deny either, that does ring oddly to his reason for undoing the long sanctioned Vision-Scarlet Witch relationship. Pretty sure that in a JOURNAL interview he said it would be like making love to your toaster. But of course there are all sorts of inappropriate relationships, some worse than others.
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On John Byrne’s comment on the Scarlet Witch being love with the Vision being the same as being in love with a toaster, well that is because the Vision over the years got turned into a robot: Cause his description in Avengers#57 ( October 1968 ) by Goliath ( Henry Pym ) –“According to my examination he’s EVERY INCH A HUMAN BEING … … except that ALL HIS BODILY ORGANS are CONSTRUCTED of SYNTHETIC MATERIALS!” — page 9 panel 3, and Page 9 panel 4 ” A SYNTHOZOID, Panther … a name I once coined for an Artificial Human!” In Avengers#62 ( March 1969 ) page 8 panel 2 the Vision says, “The wine…DRUGGED! What..??” — so since when can a robot be drugged? The Vision in The Avengers#93 ( November 1971 ) that Hank Pym as Ant-Man took a walk inside does not match up with the description of the Vision in The Avengers#57 or the drugging of the Vision in The Avengers#62 ( Cause that Vision the Scarlet Witch could have a relationship with like she could with this artificial human — HIM/ADAM WARLOCK. The Original Human Torch ( That was EVIL shoe horning him into the Vision. Vision was a great character that didn’t need to be connected to the Torch ) was also drugged many times in Timely Stories ( and in The Invaders series once when he and the Invaders were in front of a firing squad ). You BUILD A ROBOT and YOU GROW AN ANDROID — which was what John Byrne was trying to say in The Avengers West Coast#44 ( May 1989 ) — just to bad in Avengers West Coast#50 ( November 1989 ) he didn’t think to show the INSIDES OF THE ORIGINAL HUMAN TORCH with HIS BONES, TISSUE AND ORGANS mentioned in The Invaders series.
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Also in The Avengers#81 ( October 1970 ) Goliath ( Clint Barton ) told the Vision that he was an Avenger back when the Vision was just a bunch of chemicals in a test tube ( page 15 panel 6 — “Huh? This is Goliath you’re talking’ to, fella … and I was an Avenger when you were a buncha chemicals in a test tube!”) . Young Men#24 ( December 1953 ) the original Human Torch says he was born in a test tube ( page 4 panel 2 –“You remember, Chief, that I was born in a test tube during the last World War…” ( Plus both he an Toro were affected by Solution X-R ).
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Unlike some of his contemporaries, or even predecessors, and some who came after him, Byrne seemed to stop progressing his style. He achieved a point of cartooning that represented the human figure & faces enough, which was possible to reproduce at a fast pace, to take on the amount of work he did. Which I get. Drawing is so time consuming, 10+hours at the board, leaves little time for any other steady source of income. And royalties didn’t start until after he worked several years in the business.
I don’t think anyone at his level of popularity or sales, drew as many or more books than he did at his busiest. Maybe this allowed other artists to hone their styles more than Byrne did with his own. Perez was good in the 70’s, too, but compare it to his even more amazing work in the mid-80’s and early 90’s. Simonson, too pushed his style. Miller experimented. Mignola nearly reinvented his art. Byrne’s work stagnated, until it started to look more rushed, and even wonky. Economics may have prevented him from really taking his time, achieving better artistic results. His human figures and their limbs often looked more modelled on toy action figures than life drawing.
I noticed that later in Jim Lee’s career, his mid-point, in retrospect (but before “Hush”, which saw him return to a tighter style), his drawing became looser. When Jim Lee was cutting corners back then, taking shortcuts, his work, figures and faces, started resembling some of Byrne’s. Similarly with Mike Parobeck’s simplified, distilled (but fundamentally sound and visually appealing) style. Although Mike and his inkers never used the squiggly and heavy rendering Byrne’s work sometimes had.
I’m seriously not trying to insult Byrne or his fans. And I could never draw anywhere near his level of skill. I just think if he’d’ve wanted to, or if his life circumstances would’ve allowed less income (tough friggin’ choice when you’ve got financial commitments like mortgages and a family), he could’ve produced even higher quality work. But the reality of his huge output meant that his style was diluted in order to meet those multiple deadlines.
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I’ll also cop to having used Don Simpson’s name as shorthand for something I wasn’t remembering entirely. When I wrote what I wrote, I’m not 100% sure I remembered that the line was from SDVSMM. I think I may have just been thinking, “something Don Simpson was involved in.” I seem to remember discussing the issue at a con with a pro, and he told me that when Byrne jumped back to Marvel from DC, he supposedly went to An Editor and said, “OK, I’m ready to do X-Men again and make a lot of money.” The response: “Oh, sorry. those books were all assigned in your absence, but how’d you like to work on Marvel’s First Mutant…?”
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Fantastic Four 267 might have been the issue that got me into comics. It certainly made me a fan of the title, and it’s the standard by which I still compare all depictions of Reed Richards. Whenever a writer makes him out to be full of ego, lacking in empathy, unable to focus on the issue at hand (or that Reed can’t project the same clear aura of danger and unchallengeable force of will as Doctor Doom, when appropriate)…naw, that writer messed up. This is probably my single favorite page of comics ever.
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