Don't Need No More

Continuing a series of posts on The World's Greatest Comics Magazine...

This is the kind of grey, rainy day in late Spring that reminds me of truanting for the first time. It was School Sports Day at Strathaven Academy in 1976 and shortly after lunch time, I walked out of the rear exit of the school and wandered off up Glassford Road, before catching the next bus back to Chapelton. No one seemed to notice. I bought an issue of Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes and this, which is odd because it was nearly a year out of date:

Actually, Kirby was already back at Marvel, producing Captain America, the Eternals and this:

 This striking package with its Kirby cover probably says in one image what was great about the FF in the Sixties. But the Seventies, a decade both cynical and nostalgic, austere and decadent, didn't seem welcoming to Kirby's lost worlds and space gods. The FF foundered, except perhaps when in the milieu of a less complex era:

 This is a beautiful Buscema comic and a sequel to one of Roy Thomas's Avengers storylines. I wonder why Subby and the Original Torch never worked as Avengers in the 80s?
 In the latter half of the Seventies, two Marvel books replaced the Fantastic Four in my affections. The Perez-pencilled Avengers and the Cockrum X-Men. By 1979, they would both be pencilled by John Byrne and the FF would languish unloved for a couple of years. The same thing happened with Conan but that's a story for another day. Meanwhile, I was still faithful to the Legion of Super-Heroes and the Justice League. But the odd Perez FF cover could grab me:

 This was the last issue I bought while at Strathaven Academy

For nearly two years- through issue 200's 17th anniversary issue and its showdown with Doom (which I glimpsed in  Schipohl airport on my first visit to Amsterdam in bitter January, '79)-Marv Wolfman was at the helm. An almost year-long epic that pitted the FF against the Skrulls, Galactus and the immortal Sphinx also introduced a new Herald for the planet-eater: Terrax.

These issues were drawn by X-Men penciller John Byrne but I read them all, a couple of years later, as b/w reprints, in the dying days of weekly UK Marvel. Marv also tied up plotlines from his seventies Nova series.
( Perhaps that's why Quasar never caught on- Marvel already had an ersatz Green Lantern in Nova and look how many revivals he's had.) Wolfman produced compelling comics working with the right collaborator- Perez on New Teen Titans or Colan on Tomb of Dracula but with the wrong one, his writing was trite and dull. Worst of all, he exhibited no discernible sense of humour so his characters were often melodramatic and shrill.
After a bizarre pairing -Moench and Sienkiewicz- Byrne became writer and penciller (and occasionally inker or letterer) of a pleasingly retro FF. A greasy sword-and-sorcery nerd in first year at Strathclyde University, I bought my first issues in Virgin's grungy, psychobilly store on Union Street  in Glasgow and kept them in their lurid orange bag until Xmas, 1981.

Despite Byrne's failings- his addiction to telling not showing and exposition and the unfortunate taste for sadism that seems more and more prevalent - I loved most of his work in the 80s and wish he were working in mainstream comics now.
Byme's mentality can be charming or maddening, depending on your tastes: he wants to revert any characters he works on back to the way they were when he first encountered them. But the"Back to Basics" approach signalled in the title of his first issue only tells half the story. Innovation is often the keyword of the Byrne run and the reason why it's still so popular with so many of my generation. While it doesn't produce as many memorable and grotesque new characters as Alpha Flight- many of them as viable as anything by Lee, Kirby and Ditko- over almost five years Byrne delivers new costumes, a new HQ and a new member: the Sensational She-Hulk. There was a silent story, a Kirby monster book flashback, a wedding and a birth among the Inhumans and a variety of hairdos- some more attractive than others -for Sue. Ben reverted to his  FF#1 appearance and we met Aunt Petunia. Frankie Raye became the new Nova to replace Terrax.

 Marvel US discovers what we know as The Titans format

Galactus was given a  slightly tweaked origin while the origin of Ego the Living Planet was revealed as a hoax.. At least three Doctor Who plots were "homaged". Doom got a solo issue. Byrne made himself protagonist of a story. One annual featured an alien invasion centring on Skrull milk from Skrull cows:

  Susan Richards miscarried her second child as we discovered on the tragic final page of this issue:

Sue, partly as a result of that loss, took on the name Invisible Woman. Reed's father was revealed to be Kang's ancestor. The Torch got a supporting cast (including a Boy George lookalike); a new girlfriend Julie Angel, set up to be the daughter of the CEO of the evil Roxxon Corporation in Alpha Flight- although that went nowhere; but the biggest game changer was Johnny's subsequent affair with Alicia. Most audaciously, Byrne brought Jean Grey back to life after her apparent self-sacrifice at the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga:

He even managed to fit in an homage to a famous Superman image:

 She-Hulk: Best Substitute FFer ever. Fact.

Perhaps what's interesting about the Byrne Era is the villains he didn't utilise: the Frightful Four, Klaw, Dragon Man, Attuma, the Kree, the Mad Thinker and his androids (fair enough- he was an ugly long-hair in khaki coveralls) or one of my favourites, Quasimodo the Living Computer. Not even Kurrgo, Master of Planet X, whom I'm sure he would have loved to use.

When Byrne left to relaunch Superman, the title stumbled for a while- Ben returned to replace Jen and issue 300 saw Johnny marry Alicia- even though it was annoyingly retconned some years later. Stainless Steve Englehart, who had been working on West Coast Avengers, Vision/Scarlet Witch, the Silver Surfer (with frequent collaborator Marshall Rogers) and Green Lantern Corps for DC, took over the book and began to pick at the simmering feud between Ben and Johnny.
Reed and Sue left (again) for civilian life with Franklin and were replaced by an unfaithful Crystal and the second, man-hating Ms. Marvel, who was transformed into the rather ridiculous She-Thing. For the first time, the gender balance was split fifty-fifty and Sharon Ventura was such a flat-out obscure choice, it was fascinating.

Englehart also embarked on an epic, cosmic soap opera, not unlike his Celestial Madonna arc, that tied together Morbius, the Savage Land, the Cat People, Dr. Doom, the Cosmic Cube and the Beyonder. He brought the aforementioned Madonna, Mantis, to the FF but that story seemed to end anti-climatically.

 Any excuse to "guest-feature" Mantis

Englehart also revamped the Evil FF with Klaw, Titania and, er, Hydro-Man but then was apparently instructed to return Reed and Sue. He seems to have quit at this point as a reaction to what he describes as an "anti -creator crusade" and his last four issues were all a dream or something.
Englehart's characters like Shang-Chi have always been about the Rising and Advancing of the Spirit so perhaps his dysfunctional FF family would have resolved their problems. Anyway, he was replaced by Walt Simonson who seemed to be finishing storylines that he'd abandoned when replaced by Byrne on Avengers.

 Swap Sharon, Ben and Iron Man for Cap, Thor and Gilgamesh. See what I mean?

 Simonson's run is probably best remembered for his affectionately satirical New FF three-parter where he effectively invented the Bendis Avengers about fifteen years early.

That brings us up to the visual atrocities of the 90s and the very, very long run by Tom DeFalco, who got a lot of things right in his Thor homage to Kirby but not so much with the FF. Like Gerry Conway's Darkoth or Makhizmo, DeFalco's original creations were less than inspiring- Occulas, Devos the Devastator, Paibok the Power Skrull or Hyperstorm.
So let's steel ourselves for the era of embossed holographic covers, trading cards, pouches and jackets and mullets. No one here gets out alive.

The legal bit: This is a nostalgia blog for fun and comment. All images are presumed copyright of their respective owners,