I agree. That's exactly the kind of thing I want. I listened to that at the end of last year - haven't tried his new podcast on revolutions yet. This week I also discovered the BBC History Extra podcast: www.historyextra.com/podcasts it's better than the regular history shows IMO, as it lets actual experts take as much time as they need to talk about things. I'd love to see something like that for comics, where they could get the world's biggest X-Men nerd, or some of the people from TwoMorrows. Or even a keen amateur who takes a comic really seriously. But maybe there just isn't the market for that.

"anything can happen. But it probably won’t."

That describes the current Fantastic Four to a T.

After forty years of wishing I still had it, I finally bought my own copy of the greatest comic book ever published (IMO): Marvel Annual 1973. This was the first Marvel publication I ever read, and it doesn't get any better than this: The Hulk versus Tyrannus, the Fantastic Four on planet X (it looks glorious on the large size thick paper), Spider-man in two Steve Ditko classics, Conan by Barry Windsor Smith, and much more. This is what comics are about! 

I realise it's a hoax / humour site. But speaking as a subscriber and uber fan, I would be happy if the present FF went away. It would be great (IMO) if people would step back for a few years, then go back and either create something new, or remember what it was that made the title so great in the early days.

Dr Who is a good example. They took a few years off then did something different, and did it well. Personally I prefer the original stories, but the new stories have their own different appeal and they are popular. Great! We can still go back to the older stories and when the reboot eventually burns out who knows, we may get the old style back again. Everyone wins. But the FF? They will not let it either change or die. It's like a decaying corpse, but they keep painting on ever thicker make up and kicking it to make it move.

I hate sounding like The Comic Book Guy ("Worst. Issue. Ever.") so I tend not to comment on new issues. But to give an idea of my feelings, the most recent issue ended up as a base for my cat's litter tray. And I freely admit that the current run is better than the previous one, and that Hickman's run was the best for years. But that is faint praise.

What is so bad with the FF? Simply that there is no story. That is, no events have consequences. If lucky they have the ILLUSION of consequences until the next writer comes along, but even there the events are recycled from previous issues. I don't blame the writers: permanent change is banned, so what can they do? They may as well give the company what it wants and take the money.

Take the current arc for example: it's another reboot (the third in three years IIRC). Characters are losing powers again - the same theme as the previous year's reboot. The team is hated and in court - how often has that happened? Being hated was fresh in issue 2, issue 7 and issue 9, and being in court was still fresh in the overmind saga (121?) It was getting a bit stale by the 330s (acts of vengeance I think). And now it's all I can do to stifle the yawns. The whole current run is like a parody of itself - "the end of the Fantastic Four" that trope is so stale that Byrne was mocking it inside the comic in the early 1980s! The main difference now is that they drag it out for endless issues, diluting any accidental interest to homeopathic levels. And don't get me started on how the characters are nothing like the original team and have been stripped of anything that made them interesting.

Even the very best issues are terrible. The latest one, issue 5, is being praised for its fun nostalgia fest, as nostalgia is all the team is good for at this point, but they can't even do that right. The sliding time scale has destroyed so much of the original stories that the motivations no longer make any sense. For example, the events of issue 1 are attacked because everyone acted so jumpy - racing to the flare gun and causing destruction along the way: this made perfect sense in an era of nuclear and communist paranoia, an era before mobile phones when you either fired the flare or waited til the evening. But it makes no sense now. And of course the issue involves the team mainly sitting or standing around, which is all they seem to do these days. Do I really need to compare the new issue 5 to the original issue 5 (the first appearance of Dr Doom)?

I could go on. And get off my lawn.

My secret pleasure is to find a "bad" issue of the FF, curl up in bed, and let the rest of the world melt away. The only problem is, six or twelve happy hours can pass on a single issue.

I love that Hulk era.

As you know, I am basically a Fantastic Four fan, and I'm very critical of other comics, but I make exceptions for some runs. Probably my favourite non-FF Marvel run is the Trimpe/Englehart Hulk. Every issue a classic. That is how comics should be! Enough crazy fun to satisfy the most OCD kid, yet surprisingly realistic and so creative. Have they ever been collected outside of Essentials?

It saddens me to see what the comic business does to people: like Kirby said, the comics biz will break your heart. Last time I heard of Trimpe he could not get work, and was retraining to be a teacher I think. His crime? Trying to please his bosses. In the 1990s he tried to copy the then-popular atrocious Image style, resulting in some appalling/hilarious art. So everybody remembers old Herb as the guy who can't draw. That is a great crime for the guy who saved the Hulk from obscurity and pushed him into the top spot.

It's kind of like Gene Colan, in his last ComicGeekSpeak interview he says how he just could not get work in comics., But the Internet saved him: there are still legions of fans who recognise quality even if editors don't. and Colan was able to spend his final days creating well paying commissions. He was quite chocked up with gratitude when he spoke about it.

Anyhow, back to the FF  Englehart's Hulk run is a big part of why I side with Englehart on his FF work. When he says the later issues were dross because of editorial interference I believe him. But the twelve issues where he was able to more or less write what he wanted? Those are golden. And they include MY favourite Hulk-Thing battle: FF issue 320. The one where Ben beats the Hulk. In my view this issue is historically incredibly important. As I interpret it, the following issue, FF 321, was the last one to be "in continuity": the entire run from 1 to 321 forms a single story, and after that it's a different team.

FF320 is where Ben, for 27 years the underdog, finally wins. It's beautiful stuff.

I also have a real soft spot for that other issue you mention, FF 166. Normally the Hulk wins because he does not hold back. Ben usually holds back in fights, afraid of accidentally killing somebody. But in FF166 he doesn't hold back.



When Ben doesn't hold back he can floor the Hulk with a single punch. 'Nuff said.

An excellent choice. From the Steranko cover to the historic bombshell ending, through all the fun and personality in between: an epic.



Those weak endings have always impressed me: it's a theme unique to this period. Everything is deliberately left hanging, uncertain, in a void, reflecting the crisis going on in the team. Buscema's run covered the break up of the marriage, from Sue's first conscious decision that they need tome apart, to when Reed zaps Franklin. I think it was important to have such a polished, classical superhero artist and such fun stories to balance the uncertainty and despair underneath. I love this era, it was unique in the whole history of the FF: both the brightest, boldest simplest battles and the most tragic, personal emotional crisis at the same time.

BTW, ff1by1's claim that these issues (the 130s) are not connected has led me to look closer at how they are connected. It's fascinating. The 12 issues from 130 to 141, from the separation to zapping Franklin, all take place in 1973 (or the few days before). The date, January 1st 1973, is a big deal in issue 133, the Ramona Fraydon issue. Looking back it's the mirror image of ten years earlier, 1963, Marvel's most positive year when everything went right. The six stories of those 12 months - Thundra defeats Ben, Johnny loses Crystal, Reed loses Sue, Reed misses his chance, twice, and Reed zaps Franklin - are all stages in the decline, representing the men's weaknesses just as 1963 represented their strengths. Each story naturally leads to the next. For example, the Shaper of Worlds does not just appear out of nowhere, as FF1by1 claims: the previous issue has Reed dreaming of Sue, and this attracts the Shaper (he's attracted to the power of the suit that was designed to extract Reed and Sue and Franklin's DNA). The Shaper was almost certainly looking for Reed, and would have made his dreams come true, but instead Reed uncharacteristically just left, so the Shaper found the only person he could, Slugger, who still had radiation from that suit. That is just one of many details. it all fits. It's all one big story: Reed's decline in 1973. Eventually the women save the day (note how Alicia bookends the 1973 stories)- foreshadowed by Thundra's show of power. It's layers within layers, more complex than anything Chrios Claremont ever devised. I love it.