Fantastic Four Omnibus Vol. 1 (New Printing)

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John Byrne's run on Marvel's First Family is a lot of fun to read, perhaps more fun than the Stan Lee-Jack Kirby run (at least for me anyway).

Plus, the Thing and Alicia find themselves stuck in a time loop and Johnny Storm, AKA Human Torch, is the most hated hero in New York city! As the X-Men emerged as Marvel’s cornerstone franchise, the Fantastic Four were still looking to find a footing. Marvel have dedicated themselves to collecting a pretty comprehensive bibliography of John Byrne’s work on The Fantastic Four, collecting all sorts of odds and ends, instead of just the issues he wrote and illustrated. He’s a character who has none of the real thirst for knowledge that the Fantastic Four have, and thus lives a mundane life – he’s proof that the powers don’t make the hero, and an example of what the Four might have been had they been more boring individuals.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

I’ve found this X-Men connection fascinating, because I’ve always thought that Fantastic Four and the X-Men served as interesting counterpoints to one another, as the two faces of two very different versions of Marvel. He inks his own pencils here, and he suits his own work – there’s a realistic edge that marks his FF from what had gone before. Switch the phone off and settle down to hours of fun courtesy of two of the greatest comics creators of all time! My only quibble is that more of the Thing's solo series, which Byrne wrote but for the most part did not draw, was not included. The length of the run has since been surpassed, appropriately enough, by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley on Ultimate Spider-Man.

is a Cold War thriller pitting the quartet against a Soviet scientist in the race to reach the Moon: and notable both for its moody Steve Ditko inking (replacing Ayers for one glorious month) and the introduction of cosmic voyeurs The Watchers. I have to admit, while not quite blown away by it, I was remarkably impressed by the love and craftsmanship that Byrne poured into the run. John Byrne was largely responsible for making the Fantastic Four a must read title during the 1980's. Maybe it’s a measure of consciousness, but it seems strange that the Fantastic Four are so indifferent to the risks of killing some Skrulls. A monumental tale by the standards of the time, it saw the FF repel the undersea invasion through valiant struggle and brilliant strategy whilst providing a secret history of the secretive race Homo Mermanus.