Re-Reading Steve Englehart’s Classic “New” Fantastic Four Comics from the Eighties!
One of my favorite comic book series as a kid was The Fantastic Four, and to this day, I still deeply love those characters. Although I’ve gone back (many times now!) to read and love John Byrne’s lengthy run on the FF in the eighties, I actually started reading the FF comic book series about a year after he left. The first issue I ever read was FF #307, the start of the “New” Fantastic Four storyline by Steve Englehart. Mr. Englehart’s run on the FF isn’t so well known these days, but I have deep, deep love for those comics. I recently went back and re-read them and was delighted that I enjoyed them almost as much as I did back when I was a kid!
After Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s unprecedented 100-issue-plus run on the Fantastic Four, there were some good stories told, but I think that John Byrne’s epic run on the series (from #232-#295, running from 1981-86) was the next truly great run. After Mr. Byrne left the title, the series floundered for a bit. (I’ve gone back and read those issues, and other than the terrific Ben Grimm/Mole Man story in FF #296, they’re pretty bad.) But when Steve Englehart took over the series with FF #304, he launched a terrific new era for the series.
At the start of Mr. Englehart’s run, Reed Richards and Sue Storm announce that they’re leaving the FF, so they can devote their time to raising their son, Franklin. They put Ben Grimm, the Thing, in charge of the team. This was a dramatically new role for Ben, to be the leader of the group. For decades of previous Fantastic Four stories, Ben was the outsider, the grumpy one who often would rage against the rocky form in which he was trapped, and who would repeatedly threaten to leave the team. But now Ben had to be the one guiding the group and holding them together. This was a wonderful period of growth for this character, and this is the Ben Grimm with whom I first fell in love as a reader: the flawed “everyman” doing his best to do the right thing and keep his motley crew together.
Mr. Englehart and artist Keith Pollard also created a wonderful new visual look for the Thing, after a mission gone wrong results in his being bombarded by Cosmic Rays again (that’s what originally gave the FF their powers), further mutating Ben into a different-looking rocky-monster form (in FF #310). I always thought that was a clever development, and I loved that new, sharper-edged look for the Thing that stuck around for several years.
Johnny Storm remained with the team, and I enjoyed the way these stories explored Ben and Johnny’s relationship. As Mr. Englehart’s stories began, the two are feuding as never before. Ben is still pissed that Johnny went and married Ben’s long-time girlfriend Alicia Masters (this was a major development in Mr. Byrne’s run), and so, to get back at Johnny, Ben recruits Johnny’s old flame Crystal to join the group as their new third member. Despite that contentious set-up, I enjoyed the way these stories showed Ben and Johnny’s having to find a way to work together as veteran members of the team, without the “mom and dad” of Sue and Reed to oversee them. I like this version of a more-adult Johnny, dealing with the stresses and complications of being a married super-hero. (It’s always felt a little bitter-sweet to me that most later runs on the FF returned Johnny to his younger, unmarried, more fun-loving persona.)
Crystal is an interesting character with a long history in the Marvel comics. As a reader I first met her here, and I really love this version of the character. Crystal had been married (to Quicksilver) but got divorced shortly before these stories (after she cheated on Quicksilver, in the Vision and the Scarlet Witch mini-series which was also written by Steve Englehart). Here in these stories, she’s somewhat lost, estranged from her husband and her family (the Inhumans), trying to pull her life back together and conflicted about her feelings for the married Johnny Storm. But I like this Crystal, who is trying to be a hero and do the right thing amidst all of these personal complications.
The fourth member of this “new” Fantastic Four was Sharon Ventura, who at the time had the moniker of Ms. Marvel. This version of Ms. Marvel is a fascinating character. She and Ben had a flirtation back in the day, which is why Ben originally invited her to join the team. But in her appearances in a different comic book series shortly before this FF run, Sharon was brutalized by a group of villains, and when we meet her again here in the FF comic she is suffering from what today we’d call PTSD, and a fear/hatred of men. Sharon gets herself mutated by the cosmic rays along with Ben in issue #310, transforming into a Thing herself, and she goes on an interesting journey of learning to once again become comfortable with herself and her body once she’s in her new mutated, rocky form.
Sharon’s story is incredibly dark for a comic book series. Her brutalization is depicted in very vague terms. There’s nothing salacious there. As I kid I thought she’d been beaten up, but reading these stories now it’s clear to me that the description of what happened to her was code for her being raped. As if that wasn’t enough, as we see Ms. Marvel struggling to deal with her transformation into a Thing, she repeatedly attempts suicide. This is rough stuff, very adult, and perhaps somewhat out of place in an all-ages super-hero comic. But I respect Mr. Englehart (and his editors) for bringing such mature content into these stories. One of my favorite aspects of Mr. Englehart’s run was how grown-up the stories and characters were. As a kid I was completely hooked into the very adult complications in these characters’ lives and their tangled relationships, and I enjoyed that aspect of the stories as a modern reader too! (As just a taste of the complicated interpersonal dynamics between the four FF members: Ben used to be in love with Alicia and still had feelings for her; at the same time he was interested in Sharon. Sharon was in a place of being repulsed by men, but she didn’t feel that way about the mutated Ben, which only made Ben feel lousy about not being a real man in Sharon’s eyes. Crystal was recently divorced and wrestling with the love she used to feel towards Johnny. Johnny was married to Alicia but still feeling a pull towards Crystal….) These soap-opera shenanigans did border on over-the-top at times to me, reading these stories now, but on the whole I loved how the interpersonal drama was actually far more important to most of these stories than the supervillain battles. (I was particularly invested in the Ben-Sharon romance, one of my favorite aspects of this run. I remain bummed that no future writers did much with those two as a couple!)
Somewhat more problematic to me, as a modern reader, is some of the ways the female characters are depicted. In the context of the time, I truly think Mr. Englehart was being ground-breaking in centering so many of his stories on interesting and complex female characters. At the same time, some of how those female characters were depicted rubbed me the wrong way as a modern reader. None of the characters have much sympathy for what Ms. Marvel has been through, repeatedly describing her as “nuts” (in issue #308, again in #311, and other places). Alicia Masters seems over-the-top and a little shrew-y in her jealousy of Crystal. (Though maybe her jealousy isn’t so over-the-top, because Crystal doesn’t seem too resistant to rekindling things with Johnny, even though Crystal knows Johnny is married to Alicia!) There’s a twinge of male sexism to be found, to my eyes, in some of how Crystal and Alicia are written. They’re at times reduced to one-dimensional soap-opera versions of women. And although these are brave, tough heroes, we still get some stuff like Crystal’s faint into Ben’s arms in issue #308. Oy. There’s also some sexism to be found in how the men treat the women in these comics, such as how Johnny calls Ms. Marvel “legs” (in FF #308 and others). Re-reading these issues, I was intrigued to read a letter in FF #317 in which a reader calls out Mr. Englehart on some of these problematic depictions of women. Mr. Englehart defends himself in that letter column, and I am inclined not to judge him too harshly, because it does seem to me that his intention was to do right by his female readers by writing complex, flawed female characters who are facing challenges. At the same time, certain aspects of this clearly rubbed even the readers of the time the wrong way, and rightly so — and they for sure haven’t aged well.
(I also feel I have to mention the memorably eyebrow-raising, but at the same time hilarious, panel of Johnny checking out Crystal’s ass as she bends over, in FF #315. That panel made quite an impression on me, decades ago…)
I loved the soap-opera stuff, but the other aspect of Mr. Englehart’s run that blew my mind as a kid — and that I also loved upon this re-read — was the way those stories built into an epic saga that tied together many disparate aspects of the long and wonderfully complex history of the Marvel universe. FF #316 contains a long series of monologues/flashbacks in which a bunch of characters get together and talk about the history of the Marvel universe. That could have been boring, but I thought it was a super-cool story that showed just how wide and weird the Marvel universe was! I thought it was thrilling how Mr. Englehart’s twisty stories developed to reveal that the FF’s modern-day adventures were connected to this ancient history. In FF #316, we read about Atlantis and Lemuria and the Eternals & the Deviants and the Savage Land. I thought that was super-cool as a kid, and it still tickles me as an adult nerd. That issue builds to a revelation of the involvement of “Beyonders”, which leads up to the double-sized FF #319, titled “Secret Wars III”! I loved that this saga turned into a stealth sequel to the two Secret Wars crossover-mini-series from earlier in the eighties. In FF #319, we get all sorts of amazing cosmic stuff involving the Beyonder and the Cosmic Cube and I love every page of it. This is one of my favorite big cosmic Marvel stories. It’s a shame that it’s mostly forgotten these days!!
I love the involvement of the Molecule Man in those stories. Owen Reese was also in Secret Wars, but it was in these FF issues that I really grew to love him. In the decades since, I don’t think any writer has written the Molecule Man as well as Mr. Englehart did here. We also get a LOT of great Dr. Doom stuff. Doom appeared throughout Mr. Englehart’s FF run; he was often like the fifth main character! I loved how prominent Doom was in these stories.
Mr. Englehart’s early FF issues were pencilled by the great John Buscema (one of the best and most iconic classic Marvel artists), but when Keith Pollard joined the title in issue #310, he really made the series his own. I adore Mr. Pollard’s work on this run of FF. He drew the FF the way I think they should always be drawn. Equal credit for this iconic look to the artwork must go to inker Joe Sinnott, whose bold, powerful linework defined the look of the FF, and Marvel Comics in general, for me and so many other readers.
Mr. Englehart’s initial run came to a brilliant climax in issue #319. Mr. Englehart continued to write the title until FF #328, but those issues didn’t seem to me to quite have the same spark or direction that his initial run of stories did. There were some fun, relatively stand-alone stories, but they didn’t hang together nearly as well as that first run of issues did, nor did they seem to be as clearly building to something. (Though I did enjoy seeing the return of Mantis, from Mr. Englehart’s previous Avengers stories.) I’m not sure what Mr. Englehart’s plans might have been. He left in the middle of a storyline, so I don’t know if he’d intended to stay on and build these stories into something more. Those next several issues by other writers and artists are pretty terrible. The FF floundered from issue #329-333. But then Walt Simonson came aboard in issue #334 and began his amazing run, one of my favorite FF runs ever!
But while Mr. Simonson’s run is terrific and justifiably well-known, I think Steve Englehart’s run — particularly issues #304-319 — is terrific and deserves to be remembered as some of the best FF stories ever told. I had a ball revisiting these classic stories!
Steve Englehart’s run on The Fantastic Four is collected in these two “Epic Collections”: “All in the Family” and “The More Things Change…”
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