John Byrne's Fantastic Four Omnibus HC

[samurainoir]

I was just thumbing through the Byrne Modern Masters and read that Byrne was actually only supposed to be the writer on his run of Fantastic Four (much like the concurrent Thing solo series he also wrote).

The artist was slated to be Bill Sienkiewicz! That would have been an incredibly different looking book for sure given the wild experimentation that went on in the book that he drew instead... Doug Moench's Moon Knight. Followed of course by the wild ride we took as he drew New Mutants, Elektra and Daredevil GN.

At the time it makes sense... both Byrne and Sienkiewicz were definitely heavily influenced by Neal Adams in those early days of the late seventies/early sixties before finding their own individual styles.

I can only imagine what Sienkiewicz on the Trial of Galactus would have been like.

[thunderbolt]

Yeah, then Byrne left the XMen and had drawing time on his hands. Really worked out for the best.

[Brazoo]

Byrne was so great a mining nuggets from the Lee/Kirby run and expanding on or riffing off some those ideas and taking them to new and even more dynamic places.

I think my favorite was No. 136 — the double-sized issue — with Dr. Doom and Puppet Master. Very touching "what could have been" story. The pacing of the story was great.

The Galactus storyline where Frankie Raye became his herald was really cool. Loved the guest appearances by all of Marvel's main heroes. The cover homage to FF 26 was fun and FF 26 was inspired by King Kong.

Inhumans moving to the moon.

The FF annual dealing the Skrulls who morphed into cows in FF No. 2 and how they infected the towns people was kind of genius.

The FF-Superman, I mean Gladiator, battle.

The way he drew Dr. Doom

Also how he elevated one of the most superfluous characters in all of super hero comics — Invisible Girl — into one of Marvel's most powerful characters — Invisible Woman.

His What If issue where the FF were still heroes thought they didn't get their powers.

I always thought She-Hulk was such a stupid idea, until Byrne transformed her into a character one could not help but like.

The only thing Byrne didn't do in his run — or at least I don't remember — was a Hulk-Thing battle.

Awesome list!

I didn't understand it when it came out originally, but the issue where he poked fun at Neal Adams' "expanding earth theory" was pretty spectacular looking back now. I can't remember the issue - Johnny was in a car race and he crashed, but the crash was really set up by a crazy mastermind villain who wanted to use Johnny's super-nova to expand the earth and solve the world's overpopulation problem.

Writing-wise I think Byrne really understood the family dynamic of the team. So much so that he could even take out (arguably) the most interesting character, The Thing, and still make it work very well. Most FF writers know the landmarks - like Thing and Torch bickering - but they rarely achieve the same rhythm of their relationships, and the characters seem more hollow under a lot of other writers because of it. He also really knew how to harmonize the mix of day-to-day life and super-cosmic adventures that makes it all work.

I think he also understood Dr. Doom's character better than almost anyone.

[thunderbolt]

^^^ That was the last Thing as a FF member issue before the Secret Wars, also took more than a few pokes at Walt Disney.

[samurainoir]

Writing-wise I think Byrne really understood the family dynamic of the team. So much so that he could even take out (arguably) the most interesting character, The Thing, and still make it work very well. Most FF writers know the landmarks - like Thing and Torch bickering - but they rarely achieve the same rhythm of their relationships, and the characters seem more hollow under a lot of other writers because of it. He also really knew how to harmonize the mix of day-to-day life and super-cosmic adventures that makes it all work.

I thought the Johnny/Alicia/Ben thing was absolutely heartbreaking, but did move the characters forward from a huge degree of stagnation they had been experiencing. I liked the Thing solo series (although I was a bigger fan of Marvel Two In One as a kid), and thought She Hulk on the team was terrific given Byrne's affinity for the character.

Other writers didn't know what to do with it after Byrne left, and it ended up being a bit of a mess that they subsequently made into a much bigger mess with the Skrull thing.


I know it's the nature of continuous serial storytelling, but given how abruptly Byrne tends to leave certain books, I sometimes wish his runs would have had neater conclusions to them now that they are collected. He left FF and Hulk to do Superman, but I was really into the Read's dead/time travel and Banner separated from Hulk storylines before he jumped and handed over the reigns to others. I think that's the first time as a kid I realized how much of a difference your favourite creators impact a title they write/draw.

Likewise, I recently picked up the West Coast Avengers trade and his jumping off prior to the conclusion of the Dark Scarlet Witch storyline was really disappointing as well. I think that could have been a really memorable arc with a stronger ending (although Bendis did revisit it as House of M much later).

[Brazoo]

Byrne had a great knack for changing characters just enough to give them some progression - advancing their overall story, if that makes sense? In the Lee/Kirby days the characters actually aged - and there was some sense of that in Byrne's run too.

I was totally sucked in and it kept me wondering where their story was going to go.

I think I mentioned this before - but I actually stopped collecting comics after Byrne left the FF. I didn't even really get that different writers or artists really effected the comics that much at the time - Byrne left and they kind of rebooted the FF back to it's typical structure.

Every month I use to get so anxious to find out what happened next, but when the group went back to normal to me it was like, "oh, nothing actually changes? it doesn't really matter?"

I just lost interest in comics - it kind of ruined how much I cared about the mythology in some way.

I got back into comics years later.

[Brazoo]

I liked the Thing solo series (although I was a bigger fan of Marvel Two In One as a kid)

Me too! I never really got into the Thing series.

My favorite Two-in-One was #86, where Thing and Sandman hang out at the bar and exchange stories and have a couple of beers. I loved that issue - I should dig it up.

Yeah, that Skrull Alicia story-line was terrible.

[madmarva]

I know it's the nature of continuous serial storytelling, but given how abruptly Byrne tends to leave certain books, I sometimes wish his runs would have had neater conclusions to them now that they are collected. He left FF and Hulk to do Superman, but I was really into the Read's dead/time travel and Banner separated from Hulk storylines before he jumped and handed over the reigns to others. I think that's the first time as a kid I realized how much of a difference your favourite creators impact a title they write/draw.

I may be remembering this wrong, but wasn't Byrne supposed to stay on FF at least as writer and do Superman when he first got the Superman assignment, but then politics eventually pushed him out at Marvel.

[thunderbolt]

Yeah, I think he planned to stay on FF while doing Superman. Guess Marvel or DC didn't like that idea much.

[samurainoir]

Oddly enough, I was reading in either the recent Back Issue article or the Modern Masters that Mike Carlin was fired from Fantastic Four for "Driving Byrne Away", only to be hired at DC and edited Byrne's run of Superman (and through to the Death of Superman and beyond).

Jerry Ordway as well, jumped from DC to work at Marvel as Byrne's inker, only to wind back at DC with Byrne on Superman. You essentially had the FF team on Superman.