Customer Reviews

Fantastic Four Visionaries - John Byrne, Vol. 1

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I've always loved the Fantastic Four. To me they represent the very best of what the Marvel Comic universe is all about. Created by the legendary duo of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the Fantastic Four formed a thematic bridge between the Timely Comics era of B-movie style sci-fi/horror and the Sixties superheroics of the Marvel Age. They were pulp adventurers fighting aliens and subterranean monsters -- but with superpowers. They didn't even wear costumes in the their debut issue! Lee and Kirby did their best work on the book, introducing characters like Doctor Doom, the Inhumans, Galactus and the Silver Surfer to name just a few.

After Kirby left the art chores on the book and Lee later stopped writing, The Fantastic Four took a long (decades long), slow slide into complete generic mediocrity. In 1981 long-time comics fan-turned-pro John Byrne, hot off a pencilling stint on the ascendant Uncanny X-Men, decided to try his hand at his old favorites...The Fantastic Four. This was made more interesting by the fact that he intended to write and draw each monthly issue alone, with only a letterer and colorist assisting. Although he was a top young talent at the time, not many people believed he would keep a monthly schedule, let alone make the book interesting enough to read. But Byrne had a plan...

"Fantastic Four Visionaries: John Byrne" collects the first eight issues of his triumphant five-year run on the book, and highlights Phase One of the Byrne FF Plan: Get Back to the Basics. For his first several issues of there's not even a visual cue that the book isn't set in the Sixties; the street clothes, dialog, art -- even the coloring! -- is straight out of the Lee/Kirby days. In effect, it's retro yet so bereft of irony that it's classic! These issues are a love letter to the days when the book was great and also a little work therapy to get Byrne (and the book) in fighting trim for the real battle: returning the Fantastic Four to it's rightful spot as "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine". The pinnacle of this phase is the return of Doctor Doom in Byrne's now-classic 20th anniversary story, "Terror in a Tiny Town".

Byrne's sixth issue marks the beginning of Phase Two: Shake Down the Status Quo. After declaring that he's finally found a cure for Ben Grimm's disfiguring transformation into The Thing, the stretchable super-genius Reed Richards proceeds to screw him up even worse -- and permanently -- by 'devolving' Grimm back to the even uglier lumpy orange oatmeal look that he had immediately after his initial cosmic ray accident. Then the Inhumans are forced to move their entire homeland, to the Moon to escape death from the pollutants in Earth's atmosphere. Oh, and Johnny Storm's shy girlfriend turns out to have flame powers almost as powerful as his own!

My singular complaint with collection is that it ends just when Byrne is hitting his stride on the book and just before Phase Three of his Master Plan: Really Big Changes. Being arguably the best work of his career and definitely the best post-Lee/Kirby era for our titular heroes, I can only hope "Fantastic Four Visionaries: John Byrne, Volume 2" is coming soon!

When I was in Grade School, every kid I knew collected Comic Books. We would all get together every Friday in the Lunchroom and swap Comics, try to get each other to try different books, etc. I remember the excitement that we all felt when the first issue of John Byrne's Fantastic Four came out....the feeling of greatness that we all got when we read it. Everyone agreed that there would be no passing this book around- we'd all have to get our own copy every month.

So, with a real feeling of nostalgia, I picked up Volume One of Fantastic Four Visionaries. The stories hold up amazingly well, even after Twenty years. Byrne doesn't do a flashy overhaul of The FF (Like he did with DC's Superman..); he simply returns the group to their most basic element: They are not a Super-Hero group. They are a FAMILY, and Byrne, for the first time since the Lee/Kirby run, has them ACT like one. They bicker. They squabble. They tease each other, but they do it with love. When one is in trouble, the others rush in to help. They have more at stake when they're in a battle than the fate of The Earth: They have to worry about the Family members they're fighting alongside.

The stories in this volume are really just warm-ups for the stories that will (Hopefully!) be included in Volume II. The FF runs into Alchemical creatures sent by Diablo; Johnny (The Human Torch) Storm tries to clear the name of a dead man; The Earth is saved by the most powerful man in the World, while The FF are battling The Living Planet, Ego. A strange alien is coerced by winos (!) into helping them rob Banks. The FF welcome a new member, and help the Inhumans relocate to the Moon. Most importantly, they have their fondest wish granted by their greatest enemy: Dr. Doom. This story is perhaps the most poignant FF story ever. The emotions that Byrne imbues the characters with in this story are totally believable. The only beef that I have with the book is this: It would have been nice if Marvel had re-mastered the color. (And Byrne's stories are too wordy!! But that's just a small quibble.)

Fans of The World's Greatest Comic Magazine will love this book!

The Fantastic Four were a major part of my comic collection growing up, and I remember how much I enjoyed John Byrne's run on the FF in the early 80s. Buying this book was part of my ongoing effort to collect some of the best stories I remember from my years collecting comics to share with my two sons. I really do feel that this time period was the golden age of comics, and I want my boys to see these stories along with standards-bearers like the Daredevil-Elektra and Dark Phoenix tales.

Unfortunately, I'd forgotten that the first few issues of Byrne's second FF run were really a set up to what follows. With the possible exception of issue #236's Dr. Doom tale, they were largely the kind of stories that filled a comic between longer epics, with less substance. As a result, what you really have in this book is a series of short vignettes spanning one, perhaps two issues. Most pay homage to the history of the Fantastic Four, which is great, and Byrne's illustration is as excellent as usual. In the end, I would've purchased this reprinting anyway, but the great stories - including the amazing Galactus tale and the Gladiator/X-men story of issue #250 - happen later in the run.

In general, writer/artist John Byrne's "re-boot" of the Fantastic Four comic book series with issue #232 is highly enjoyable, though in my opinion the first few issues of his run over-corrected things a bit. In fact, Issue #232 (the first of the nine consecutive issues of the series collected here) reads like an only slightly more sophisticated version of 1961's Fantastic Four #1, which for all its innovations at the time, now basically reads like a children's comic book, albeit a good one.

But things soon pick up with some truly imaginative stories and some complex characterizations. Highlights here include an encounter with Doctor Doom and some very interesting developments with Johnny Storm's girlfriend, Frankie Raye.

"Fantastic Four Visionaries: John Byrne Volume 2" is where things really pick up, however. That's where we see that Mr. Byrne apparently didn't hate every component of the series that was added in the years right before he took over. In particular, there's a really terrific Galactus story that makes good use of Galactus' herald Terrax the Tamer, the character created only a couple of years before Mr. Byrne's takeover of the title.

But for now, Mr. Byrne's initial Fantastic Four stories, despite some stumbling out of the gate, do a very good job of getting back to the elements that work best in F.F. stories: wonderment, high adventure, and a sense of family.

loved the collection, i only wish the printing process had been corrected, there is a rather distracting effect on the pages from the dot coloring that was corrected in subsequent issues. loved the work though.

Byrne's famous run begins in '81 with great stories yet slightly-on-the-crude-side artwork (by today's standards), in part because he inks himself consistently for the very 1st time. If you can get past this initial element, the characters & stories here are colorful, lively & fun.

If people need proof that Byrne *could* draw better than this, check out his Avengers 189, 190 & 191, inked by Dan Green, circa 1979. It seems like it's inking that makes the difference as these 3 issues are some of my favorites Byrne's ever done. In any case, my favorite issue in this 1st volume is the attractive looking #238, featuring the Human Torch, Frankie Raye, the Thing, and even Herbie(!). I consider this to be the 1st landmark visual improvement in Byrne's highly successful run.

It seems Byrne has a thing for the original, Invaders era Human Torch, as he consistently deals with this character in his work all throughout the eighties. We see it in this 1st volume in his FF, as well as his runs on Avengers West Coast, Namor, and briefly in his She-Hulk series too. It's a common thread in his eighties/early nineties work, and I like this consistency in artistic vision.

-Printing Quality-: The first two volumes in this series had inferior reproduction in their 1st printings, creating a very dated, dot-matrix look in various flat areas of color throughout. Second printings of these volumes corrected this with high-quality color reconstruction. Online ordering *may* result in getting a 1st printing instead. Buying in person is the best way to be sure in what you're getting. (I actually have a 2nd printing of volume 2; I haven't yet seen a 2nd printing of volume 1. They may not have issued it yet.)

Included in this volume:
*Issue #232- John Byrne writes & pencils; Bjorn Heyn inks (Byrne pseudonym)
*Issue #233- John Byrne writes, pencils & inks
*Issue #234- John Byrne writes, pencils & inks
*Issue #235- John Byrne writes, pencils & inks
*Issue #236- John Byrne writes, pencils & inks
*Issue #237- John Byrne writes, pencils & inks
*Issue #238- John Byrne writes, pencils & inks... my favorite here
*Issue #239- John Byrne writes, pencils & inks
*Issue #240- John Byrne writes, pencils & inks

P.S. And check out The Art of John Byrne (Marvel Masters), an interesting career collection. It's also available here on Amazon.

I've already got John Byrne's FF run in original comic book format, so this review is more about his entire run than this specific collection.

Way back in the 80s through to the early 90s, I've been a fan of John Byrne's, notably of these issues, which I found extremely entertaining. I'm currently re-reading the run, and while they are still entertaining, they otherwise don't hold up that well (and I can't say I'm as big a fan anymore). For example, there are some throw-away or filler issues in the early part of his run that would not have been missed; and later on, there are some ethically questionable issues that have to do with Reed Richards saving the life of Galactus (a being who takes his sustenance from habitable planets, leaving the planets and its inhabitants destroyed) and his justification for doing so (there's even an issue where Richards is held on trial). Otherwise, it's fairly solid entertainment throughout.

Overall, the main reason these stories look as good as they do is because they're allegedly better than what came before. Certainly, John Byrne brought a unity and cohesiveness to a book that seemed to lack it before he took over. Byrne stayed on the title for 5 years, so the mag enjoyed a fairly coherent vision for a while. I think that, in itself, helps put the work in a better light.

This first collection of John Byrne's run on "Fantastic Four", comprising issues 232 to 240, starts off that writer/artist's impressive run on that flagship Marvel title.

I can't believe it's been over 20 years since these comics saw light; even when I was younger, I realized that these were the beginnings of something special.

My only complaint is that the print quality is sub-par. Specifically, it's the color. The cover is glorious, yet the inside is pretty sloppy. I glanced at later volumes, and this has been corrected, but for these first issues, it's kinda distracting.

That's it for the negative stuff; this is a great read.

Byrne brought back the humanity to this family that had been missing since the hallowed Lee/Kirby days. At the same time, he revisited the topics and characters that made the FF "The FF".

In these few issues, we get a little Doctor Doom, a "little" Puppet Master, Ego the Living Planet, a story about the Inhumans, a few stand-alone "freak-of-the-week" stories, Baxter building hijinks and The Thing, once again, morphs.

The key to this run's success lies in the fact that John Byrne manages to emphasize each character's personality to create that old sense of "family." Yet, he does so while surrounding those moments with galactic, heroic plots.

That was what was always great about "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine", and that was why it had nearly become so again...

On to Volume 2!

I will never get tired of a good, old-fashioned John Byrne story. He is always able to take and insignificant book/character and give it cosmic importance. Where many writers and/or artists have failed to craft an interesting story--John Byrne consistently SUCCEEDS! When you read a John Byrne story, you never want it to end. Thank you, Mr. Byrne for all the years you put into the industry elevating your craft.

I read all the great Marvel titles in the late 70's and early 80's. This book chronicles the beginning of John Byrne's masterful run with the Fantastic Four. Byrne's art was revolutionary at the time and still hold up well today, his stories were just as good. This masterful book includes Doctor Doom, the Puppet Master and the introduction of a second human torch; only hotter this time. :)

The only Marvel run that compares to Byrne's FF was his collarobration with Chris Claremont on the X-Men IMO. I absolutely loved this, I've already ordered volume 2!