Fantastic Four Visionaries

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Summary: Fantastic Four Visionaries
Review: I can't believe its been twenty years since this first came out. This book contains the issues #232 through 240 of FF where John Byrne assumes the roles of writer, penciller, and inker. The artwork is stunning and often reminds you of Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott at their peak. Byrne's writing is inconsistent, though. While he has a lot of interesting ideas (Thing mutation, Frankie Raye transformation, and Doctor Doom anniversary story), his ideas become overly complicated and his stories tend to become very wordy, especially in sequences where Reed tries to explain things to the rest of the group. While the Doom and Inhumans stories contained here are great, the Spinnerette and Ego tales are uninteresting (not coincidentally, these two are not part of the regular FF rogues gallery).

This is, in essence, a microcosm of John Byrne's work. Great artwork, great ideas, but wordy and complicated stories...all of which are hallmarks of his career whether it be in FF, X-Men, or Superman. If they continue the FF Byrne Visionaries sequence, the next volume will contain better stories.

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Summary: Only the beginning...again!
Review: 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!

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Summary: Byrne fans won't be disappointed
Review: If you're a fan of Byrne, these stories certainly will not disappoint you, although they could have chosen better yarns to put together in a TPB. Most of these are slightly above average -- the Ego battle, the revelation that Frankie Raye is a human torch, and the Inhumans moving Attilan to the Blue Area of the Moon -- but the others are just average. For a "Visionaries" TPB, you expect top-notch vignettes. You get it here....almost.

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Summary: Fantastic Fantastic Four!
Review: Ok years ago I had never heard of fantastic four, my father brings home a comic for me and it was trial of Galactus, it was an amazing read and hooked me on the F4, well for years i could never get any of the issues of Byrnes other than the trade, now marvel comes out with this collection that is i hope one of many.

it's amazing as i read it i can see the little set up he was making, i'm sure at the time it may not have seemed as epic as F4 liked but when the puzzle falls into place it's amazing.

Byrne has lost his art and writing talent in recent years, some people may be scared off by that, so if you read his recent JLA tenth circle or spider-man year one don't worry, this was back when he was the best man around, he was writing the best superman, F4, and co-writing x-men among others, it was like he could do no wrong, he understood what made them tick.

they are a family and they are not crime fighters liek a batman who patrols the city, they are explorers and that is what is great, we get great sci-fi stories of living planets and aliens aplenty.

if you have never read the F4 then this is the perfect place to start, then pick up the second volume to see where the set up goes and fine more wonderful stories.

also this book is great for kids and adults, i would give this to a kid just was my father gave me the byrne issues so long ago, now reading the issues again i see there is much more there to enjoy like bens struggle with being a monster, reeds struggle with having caused it...and much more.

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Summary: Byrne's real hallmark FF work was later...
Review: 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, which I believe is being released in July.

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Summary: Byrne's Legendary FF Run Starts Here!
Review: 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!