John Byrne's LEGENDARY Fantastic Four RUN Begins HERE! 

Yeah, bringing back memories...this Byrne run came out right in my prime comic book teen age reading years. He really recaptured the spirit of the Lee/Kirby run. As much as Byrne is known as an artist, I think it was his seemingly endless flow of story ideas that made this run what it was.

6:20 - page 3, panel 1: The hair salon "Casa Tindolini" and the hair dresser "Milo"...a nod to the movie "Sleuth" where Michael Caine played a hair dresser named Milo Tindle. (If I'm not mistaken, in the movie Milo even says that his father changed their family name from "Tindolini" to "Tindle" to sound less Italian.)

You mentioned Byrne, Miller and Perez being the hot artists at the time. The other artist I would add would be Simonson (although I think his run on Thor started a year or two after Byrne started his run on Fantastic Four.) Some of my other favorites from back then were Jim Starlin, Gene Day, Mike Golden...

I have both omnibuses of this run at home. Read a smidgen of it awhile back. Definitely great storytelling. Byrne clearly has love for Lee/Kirby era FF, and a genuine passion for the cast.

I loved how Byrne did Reed’s tech and aliens, alien ships and tech The only person even close was Larry Stroman’s work on Alien Legion

257, 258, and 267 are my favorite issues from this run.

Great review and analysis ❤ I guess another great superhero artist beside Byrne and Miller was Walt Simonson.

Byrne literally said Back to the Basics and he meant it! In early 1979 Byrne wrote and penciled Marvel Two in One 50 with the Thing teams up with his younger self in the immediate past! Inks by Joe Sinnott and was a nice one and done story! Later in the spring of ‘79, Byrne with veteran inker Sinnott jumped on to FF 209 with standard Marv Wolfman stories! Finally with 220/221,Byrne wrote FF basic 2 parter that was originally supposed to be a promotional book for Coca-Cola, but they deemed it was too violent, which is bullshit! Anyway in April 1981,232 his ongoing run began and as everything with Byrne it gets tedious in particular with his ink style, got sloppy with sharpies yahoo! And almost to 300 ,Shooter lowered the boom on Byrne and fired him, because he was going to do Superman at DC! All that said ,X-men loss was an FF gain with a much needed shot in the arm for them! Great era of stories!

Sue Storm is a babe in those early issues. Ed is trippin

Stan Lee had a go to answer for pretty much any question he would get during his con appearances and his answer for "lamest character he created" was Diablo

If I could draw like a legendary comic artist for a day it’d be Byrne.

Perfect timing for me! I just started this run 3 days ago. I love the Kirby/Lee run and the Simonson run also. Finally getting to these.

This is so awesome you gents doing this. Love it.. like @jimruggart I bought this and 80% of the whole run out of a quarter box at Motor City Comic con 1994 ish. I got the whole run out of quarter boxes eventually and have since bound it in 3 volumes. Great to re-read.

Two years before this issue John Byrne is on pencils and sometimes writing for a around a year. Very fun outer space adventures with appearances from Nova, Galactus and the Skrulls. Following that an underrated run with Bill Sienkiewicz and Joe Sinnot with his heavy finishes. Anyways, I believe the first half of this run is Byrne at his best. I've read that Bryne didn't like how he was drawing heads (larger foreheads) and how he was inking. I personally really liked it. I was always slightly disappointed with Jerry Ordway's and Al Gordon's inks late into his run.

Great video! Would love it if you guys did every Byrne FF book in his run and then made a playlist. Keep up the great work! Love your channel!

I think in the next one or two issues they have to fight Ego, some great visuals in that one. Anyway, great run. Loved the solo Doom story.

What’s the story with Ed’s book Mudfish? It’s like, completely unfindable online. It’s become my Bigfoot

I'll always have a soft spot for John Byrne's FF. FF#286 was the first Marvel comic book i bought, back from a news agent in Kentish Town. I bought both John Byrne FF Omnibus'. Great art. Great stories.

There's no guessing involved - at this time (1981) The New Teen Titans was one of the biggest comic books on the planet (a sales juggernaut), so George Perez was clearly in the Top 3 of names then.

While Byne leaving X-Men was disappointing, discovering he had gone to Fantastic Four was a dream come true. He loved these characters and we loved these characters. It was the right man at the right time. The only time I felt the pain of his leaving the X-Men was when he left the F.F. abruptly. Yes, John Byrne's run is the second best after Kirby/ Lee. The next best was Jonathan Hickman and even though it was a short run, Walter Simonson's time.

If you have never heard it, listen to the Norm MacDonald Fantastic Four bit.

Byrne FF was one of my favorite runs that I can always reread.

Interesting idea on the fine lines getting lost in printing and maybe that's why Byrne went thicker in the 90s... I never would've connected that, but it today makes sense!

Absolutely correct when he lists the superstar artists at the time: Byrne, Miller, Perez. -In that order!

Haha! The dude in NYC with the microwave-head is on my feed too, Ed!!

Subject request: Elementals. More Mage The Hero Discovered. More American Flagg!

🔥💀🔥 "Mr.Fantastic." Norm Macdonald.

I just reread most of his run and I think this issue is a solid start to a run that REALLY gets going a few issues in and scarcely lets up in levels of greatness after that. I generally disagree with y'alls critique of later Byrne. I think he's always beenm pretty stellar. I do agree that he wasn't trying to upend the artform like Miller and Sienkewicz (whom I also love) but Byrne definitely evolved the artform for the better. His take on most characters quickly becomes the standard for me.

I like Byrne's FF run, but I feel that if Simonson had stayed on the book longer he could have surpassed Byrne for that #2 spot behind Lee and Kirby.

He’s an egghead

They probably did bump up the run by quite a bit. A pretty big spec book when it came out. I bought several copies when it came out as Byrne was my favorite artist and anything he did was hot. Miller kind of took over as the hottest artist soon after this. Probably wouldn't have happened if Byrne stayed with the X-Men.

💯💯💯💯🔥🔥🔥👍