Fantastic Four Omnibus Vol. 1 (New Printing)

Product Information

I digested this omnibus a lot more slowly than the list time I took it on and I think I appreciated it a lot more. However, there are other implications of Byrne’s fixation on past continuity and his desire to vindicate the team and their world. Does the fact that he has used his message board to deliver any number of potentially racist and sexist declarations diminish the work that he did decades ago? With its dynamic, clear storytelling and steps at innovations (for its time), this run of issues truly merits this deluxe edition.

Byrne's back to basics approach to the Fantastic Four brought Marvel's first family back to prominence. It was Kirby’s compelling art and the fact that these characters weren’t anodyne cardboard cut-outs.New characters are introduced, old characters are reinvented and the whole comic holds the reader's interest through the whole run. Additionally, they weren’t professional superheroes, as the Avengers were – so Byrne drew their uniforms as if they were actual clothes, rather than skintight costumes. I know it seems like a small thing, but reading fans reactions to the comics as they saw print is quite a tribute to the era and the comic. As the X-Men emerged as Marvel’s cornerstone franchise, the Fantastic Four were still looking to find a footing. I forgot how much he shifted hard from the prior creative teams to single issue stories for the beginning of his run and only opened up to longer ones later, and also how seldom he created new villains.

Fresh off an earth-shattering and reputation-making run as penciler on UNCANNY X-MEN, John Byrne proved his writing talent was every bit the equal of his art as he pulled double-duty on FANTASTIC FOUR, launching Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny into realms of imagination and wonder into which few creators before had dared to travel. Then he thought about honey (which he did a lot) and what to do next, and decided to just follow the links below - thinking was hard work for a bear!One interesting sidebar from this time period, at one point John Byrne was penciling both the Fantastic Four and the X-Men every month, then left the Fantastic Four to do Captain America for a few issues because two team books a month was too much. Certain items can take longer to source than the estimated week, particularly during busy trading periods and may take longer to arrive at our warehouse. Byrne might have done the art for those earlier stories but whomever did the inks overwhelmed Byrne's amazing art and you can't tell one of the greatest comic book artists ever penciled those pages. I wouldn’t class it as iconic or genre-defining, but it’s a remarkably solid examination of the franchise that launched the Marvel Universe. Explaining how Reed chose the building’s security mechanism, she states, “He’d considered something keyed to our fingerprints, but the Thing has no fingerprints.