There are certain hallmarks one can hope for in a classic Fantastic Four story – adventure types we’ve come to expect from Marvel’s First Family. A sampling of their best and most famous stories would turn up certain recurring roles the team has taken: they are a team of giant monster tamers, of despot deposers, of cosmic adventurers.
Not every sample span of Fantastic Four can be expected to hit all these highlights; indeed, to rely overly on them would be to diminish the allure of the book, to avoid novelty and stagnate. But every so often, a period of the original series checks all those boxes, novelty included. Such is the case with the issues collected in Fantastic Four Epic Collection: Four No More.
Over the 25 issues collected, the Fantastic Four revisit classic villains, overthrow a government, and go to space; they discover a new (to them) alien civilization, and they have dealings with Galactus. There are family dynamic concerns – no good FF story is without them – and even a Human Torch/Spider-Man team-up.
Ever think you’d see Galactus straight-up slap a guy?
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The gang’s all here: Diablo, Impossible Man, Namor, Red Ghost, Doctor Doom, and Mole Man. Iron Man makes an appearance, as does Nova (and a bizarre team of ‘New Champions’). It’s almost as if series writer (and major force in Marvel world-building) Marv Wolfman sat down with a checklist of how to craft Fantastic Four based on the nearly 20 years the book had been running at that point.
And HERBIE is there, too.
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This isn’t to say that Wolfman doesn’t innovate during these issues. The introduction of Xandar – the alien civilization from which Nova gained his powers – coupled with the elevation of Nova villain Sphinx into a world-ending threat injects fresh takes on those classic concerns. The book also introduces a new herald for Galactus in Terrax the Tamer, a homicidal warlord willing to undermine his cosmic master in the name of vengeance.
Sprinkled throughout the volume are single-issue stories that engage the FF at their most fundamental: a filler issue set in the ‘Sargasso of Space”, a sort of spaceship graveyard, allows the team a one-off adventure with some new intergalactic bugs (who aren’t, confusingly, the Brood); at intervals, the whole team have solo adventures, allowing for some light fare in the middle of all that cosmic bigness.
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While a few of these issues aren’t as stellar as the more action-and-adventure heavy issues, they never feel tedious, in no small part to the incredible pencillers who craft them. Greats like Keith Pollard, Sal Buscema, and a pre-reknown John Byrne make every panel emblematic of the era, flawlessly crafted even when the stories they accompany lack thrills.
While the late 1970s might have felt less iconic than the Lee abd Kirby ’60s or even the Byrne-explosive 1980s, Fantastic Four Epic Collection: Four No More encapsulates what was great about the series all along. It hits all the markers of a great FF collection without feeling like a retread of more famous stories, even when it apes to join them.
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