Fantastic Four Epic Collection: The New Fantastic Four

Fantastic Four Epic Collection Vol. 21: The New Fantastic Four by Walter Simonson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Fantastic Four Epic Collection: The New Fantastic Four collects Fantastic Four #347-361, plus Fantastic Four Annual #24 and material from Marvel Holiday Special #1.

I was a Fantastic Four subscriber off and on for the better part of a decade and I'm trying to get trades and omnibuses of all the issues I have so they aren't a pain in the ass to dig out of totes and read. This one is out of print but I found someone selling it for cover price after watching it for a couple months. Fuck off, gougers!

This volume contains the end of the Walt Simonson era plus the beginning of the Tom DeFalco/Paul Ryan era. Simonson's issues see Art Adams drawing the titular three issue tale with Hulk, Spidey, Ghost Rider, and Wolverine taking over for the FF, a Doctor Doom story, plus fallout from the timestream story of the previous volume in the form of the TVA and Justice Peace. There are also a couple fill in issues.

The DeFalco/Ryan era starts off with a bang, revealing Alicia Masters has been a Skrull since Secret Wars, sending the Fantastic Four into battle with Skrulls. Later, Ben and Johnny battle Dreadface and there's a Yancy Street Christmas with Ben to round things out.

Arthur Adams' art isn't my cup of tea but you can tell he had fun in the New FF storyline. I think Simonson was running out of steam by then, though. His art in the Doom two-parter and the TVA story wasn't quite up to snuff. The stories were written well enough, though. As an early 1990s comics reader, Ghost Rider and Wolverine were everywhere and I resented THOSE guys coming into MY book.

DeFalco was never the best writer in the Marvel pantheon but he helped reset the Fantastic Four back to baseline in this volume and gave Paul Ryan some great things to draw. Outting Alicia as a Skrull was a little heavy handed and felt mean-spirited at times. I think he did a great job with the Yancy Street Christmas story. Paul Ryan was a dynamite artist. As much as I like Walt Simonson on Thor, Ryan blows him out of the water on Fantastic Four.

Fantastic Four Epic Collection: The New Fantastic Four felt more like a transitional, rebuilding volume more than anything else but there are promising things ahead. Three out of five stars.

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