I really liked it! I wasn’t expecting it to be a perfect movie, I just really wanted it to be a good representation of these characters and their world. And it was! It was just a great exploration of why I love these characters.
It really got to the heart of Reed and Sue which was the biggest thing I wanted. Previous adaptations didn’t really understand them beyond very shallow tropes. But even though First Steps didn’t go step-by-step with every detail with the comics, the movie really did make them feel as close to they should be in comics.
I know some people might be disappointed that Galactus didn’t do crazy Kaiju stuff in this movie, but I think that this Galactus is more true to the original vision of Lee and Kirby.
Really my only gripes would be that it’d probably be improved by a few scenes and dialogues here and there, but when my complaint is that the movie could have been longer, you probably did good.
I kinda stopped for so long because not only did I get distracted, but I also got stumped by this one. John Byrne is probably one of the most influential comic creators of the 80s, up there with Todd McFarland and Chris Claremont.
However a lot of that influence doesn’t feel deserved, mainly because of his rigid ideas of what he believes comics characters should be, while also trying to claim them as his. And no other run severely frustrates me than his Fantastic Four. And not because it’s an absolute bottom tier run as a whole. In fact, it has some of the best moments of the Fantastic Four.
But it’s buried underneath a creator’s ego and privilege.
I want to keep this somewhat brief just to make up for lost time, and also because I want to give a more in depth analysis later on. I’ll also be upfront which issues I think are great. 236, 242-244, 246-247, and 258-260. There are legitimately great stories that can be enjoyed on their own terms as Fantastic Four stories, where the Four legitimately feel like a family fighting against sci-fi threats.
Byrne wrote from 232-295, a whopping 63 issues, and about half of those stories are good, albeit with some weird caveats (weird implications, just sometimes being kinda predictable) and I can see why they pulled Fantastic Four out of a creative slump once Jack Kirby and Stan Lee broke off.
The other half?
Some of the most sexist, racist, self-congratulatory comics I’ve ever read and will never read again.
For a point of comparison, imagine you are a kid sharing action figures that you bought with another kid. You two get along for a while, having fun adventures with your toys. At one point you trust the other kid to play with the toys now that you’re kinda bored and moving on, and the other kid accepts.
Then, the other kid takes the toys and repeatedly starts smashing them together by themselves, happy that they could play the way they wanted all by themselves. Soon after as he keeps playing with those toys, all starting to break apart and get worn, no longer resembling what you bonded over, he starts talking about you behind your back, calling you a terrible friend, terrible at playing with action figures, and that only he knew how to play with the toys.
You are Jack Kirby. John Byrne is the other kid. And the Fantastic Four are the figures.
As I stated before, this run starts off in a fresh way, taking on radically different art-styles and methods, while still keeping the core family dynamic the same. The first half up to #260 genuinely treats the Four as an evolution of what Stan and Jack established.
However, once Byrne self-inserts himself into the story with The Trial of Reed Richards, the characters and dynamics are wholly shattered. In the hands of a good writer, this would be ultimately to break them down and rebuild them later. In Byrne’s hands, though, he broke down these characters to be what he thought they should be.
Reed Richards goes from a flawed scientist who grapples with his past failings constantly to a paragon of masculinity who truly always knows right. Ben Grimm becomes a mopey, depressed monster who had the one love he had, Alicia Masters, taken by his best friend Johnny Storm.
Even the ones I felt came out better from Byrne-ification aren’t unscathed. Sue Storm sheds the “Invisible Girl” moniker and becomes the strongest member of the team … immediately after an arc where she’s over sexualized, abused, and mentally manipulated by a villain. It’s a powerful moment for her to come into her own, but it’s very revolting how Byrne sets this up. Especially given that Reed “brings her to her senses” while Sue is psychically manipulated by slapping her and insulting her.
Johnny does mature in this run, and has less moments of him being a wiseacre, but that’s after he betrays the Thing. Jennifer Walters replaces Ben, but very often than not Byrne focuses on jokes surrounding her sex appeal rather than her own insecurities.
And this isn’t me speculating that this is how he views the Fantastic Four should be. John Byrne has multiple blog posts and even art sheets clarifying that there are certain “dos and do nots” of Fantastic Four, sometimes treating himself as a greater authority on these characters than their actual creators.
I know this run is profound to many, but with this sharp decline halfway through it became too much. I wanted to quit once I got to the Psycho-Man arc where characters start blurting slurs out of nowhere because the arc is supposed to be about how Psycho-Man brought the worst out of people. Byrne has also gotten on record that he was fine with using the N-Word multiple times in that story because he got the ok from editorial.
This is one of the runs that just does not resemble what I love about the fantastic four, at least the back half. It’s a real shame, because the front half is pretty good. But such a shocking and steep decline because Byrne wanted to make “his” Fantastic Four the definitive one, just cannot be understated.
It just devolves into melodrama and 80s edge that I just don’t look to the Fantastic Four for. At least the art looks good, but the writer is also the artist.
I think Ben is cute like a pug, too. Don’t listen to the below image.
Also I don’t think I have to say this but Byrne’s also a bigot. Transphobe, racist, sexist, homophobe, the list goes on. Don’t support Byrne directly.
