Fantastic Four Epic Collection: Back To The Basics

by John Byrne, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby (Illustrator)

John Byrne's timeless run as writer/artist starts here! The Fantastic Four are going back to the The debut of John Byrne in his celebrated run as FF writer/artist begins in this Epic Collection! Byrne's deft creative balance - renewing the characters' core, revitalizing old foes and introducing new concepts - gave the FF a bold vitality, restoring them to the lofty heights of the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby era. The Invisible Girl's powers go through a dramatic evolution, Galactus gets a surprising new herald and the FF join their most hated rival, Doctor Doom, in a fight for Latveria! Restored from a trove of original Byrne art, and including cool bonus items like Fred Hembeck's riotous FF Roast and Byrne's excursion into the world of WHAT IF?

Collecting FANTASTIC FOUR (1961) #232-248, FANTASTIC FOUR ROAST (1982) #1 and material from WHAT IF? (1977) #36.

496 pages, Paperback

Published February 3, 2026

About the author

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There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

John Lindley Byrne is a British-born Canadian-American author and artist of comic books. Since the mid-1970s, Byrne has worked on nearly every major American superhero.

Byrne's better-known work has been on Marvel Comics' X-Men and Fantastic Four and the 1986 relaunch of DC Comics’ Superman franchise. Coming into the comics profession exclusively as a penciler, Byrne began co-plotting the X-Men comics during his tenure on them, and launched his writing career in earnest with Fantastic Four (where he also started inking his own pencils). During the 1990s he produced a number of creator-owned works, including Next Men and Danger Unlimited. He also wrote the first issues of Mike Mignola's Hellboy series and produced a number of Star Trek comics for IDW Publishing.