Fantastic Four Epic Collection, Vol. 7: Battle of the Behemoths

Fantastic Four Epic Collection

by Stan Lee, Marvel Various (Illustrator), Archie Goodwin (Writer)

Only an artist as immortal as John Buscema could fill Jack “King” Kirby’s Galactus-sized shoes on Fantastic Four! “Big John” joins Stan the Man on a timeless run in this collection of FF from the early ’70s: Johnny Storm and Crystal develop their romance, while Ben Grimm learns to change into Thing at will; Reed Richards takes on Annihilus and Janus in the Negative Zone, and none other than Doctor Doom teams up with the FF to face the awesome threat of the Over-Mind! Plus: Gabriel the Air-Walker debut as Galactus’ new herald, and he’s arrived on Earth to force the Silver Surfer to submit to the Big G’s will—or the Earth dies! All this plus the return of the Monster from the Lost Lagoon!

COLLECTING: Vol. 7: Fantastic Four (1961) 105-125, Annual (1963) 8-9 covers only

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Superheroes, Graphic Novels, Collections

472 pages, Paperback

First published August 25, 2021

About the author

Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber) was an American writer, editor, creator of comic book superheroes, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics.

With several artist co-creators, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor as a superhero, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, the Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scarlet Witch, The Inhumans, and many other characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. He subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.

Reviews

[Sean Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Buscema = underrated.

Overrated = bean bag chairs unless you are 8 or an invertebrate (this opinion unrelated to the book in question)

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jack Kirby has left the building. And it shows. Stan Lee delivers, roughly speaking, the last two years of “writing” for the Fantastic Four. And yes, that’s “writing” because I am definitely in the camp of those who have come to recognize that the actual writing styles on all the issues he is credited with are completely inconsistent. Was he the editor on all those issues? Absolutely. And he did a phenomenal job at it. But the writing? Nope. Suspension of disbelief is officially suspended (at least for me). So this volume, with John Buscema handling the art, with some assistance from John Romita Sr. and some archival material from Kirby, is not anywhere near as entertaining as previous volumes. The characterizations are not quite the same, a bit more stereotypical and two-dimensional, and the stories are definitely … well, let’s just say they don’t live up to those from the Kirby and Lee years.

Fantastic Four #105-106 - Opening up the volume is a 2-part Cold War era weird monster piece with art provided by John Romita Sr.. A strange threat appears it the city and the FF are tasked with dealing with it. It’s pretty straightforward, nothing special, but what is interesting are the various background elements that complicate the otherwise clichéd narrative. This sub-plots will all get played out in future issues and they do tie this volume together rather nicely.

Fantastic Four #107-110 - This picks up the loose end of curing Ben, begin in the previous issues, but quickly evolves into a story that offers some archival art from Kirby’s last unused FF story. The closest we’ll ever get to seeing that actual story is in Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure #1 (also included in Fantastic Four Epic Collection, Vol. 6: At War with Atlantis). Here, as it was actually published, it is chopped up and presented as a flashback to an unpublished story. The narrative then resolves into another Negative Zone chase, stranding, and escape story, that feels more like Lee couldn’t figure out what to do so he just borrowed some ideas from the last time Reed was trapped and about to die in the Negative Zone. The resolution is new, since Agatha Harkness wasn’t around the first time this happened. And that leaves us with the cliffhanger that begins the next arc.

Fantastic Four #111-116 - This starts off with lots of repetition of old themes: the Thing runs amok turning on his teammates, the Thing and the Hulk have slugfest, then we get the introduction of a new threat (the Overmind), and then a pseudo history lesson from the Watcher about the Eternals, before it’s Reed’s turn to run amok and then Sue recruits Doctor Doom … wait! Say what? Eternals? Doctor Doom recruited? What the heck? Okay so the Doctor Doom is just a one-off, no need to lose sleep. But the Eternals are … interesting. No. These are NOT the Eternals that Kirby would bring along in a couple of years (see The Eternals by Jack Kirby MONSTER-SIZE). But there are some interesting similarities between this bunch and Kirby’s characters. More on this later. In any case there’s a lot of stuff going on here, but not much really happens. Part of this is because the FF have virtually lost all of their agency and become inconsequential pawns in this cosmic game of bean toss. In fact, Johnny is so pissed off about the whole fiasco, it turns into HIS turn to run off. Wow, way to be creative.

Fantastic Four #117-118 - Johnny is running amok, wait wasn’t it the Reed’s turn? And before that Ben’s? Yep. How’s that for creative storytelling, we'll just have a different member of the team run off like a crazy man for an issue or two. Then rotate and repeat. So, we’ve got a teaser about an Inhumans situation coming up, nothing original there either as it’s just another attempted coup from Maximus the Mad. Oh, there’s the return of Diablo. That’s cool right? Yeah, not that cool. Even with me being a big Human Torch fan, this was still pretty much a snooze-fest.

Fantastic Four #119 - This one offers an attempt at some social commentary on apartheid but it is undermined by the incomprehensible decision to attempt changing the name from Black Panther to Black Leopard. A flimsy rationale is offered that Panthers are Leopards, implying that it makes no difference, completely ignoring that the Black Panther is a religious symbol to the people of Wakanda. Thankfully this absurdity does last. And while the Black Panther is one of my favorite characters at Marvel, this is definitely not a high point for the character.

Fantastic Four #120-123 - Gabriel comes to earth to blow his horn and herald the end times. Wait, did someone say Herald? That can only mean it’s time for yet another pointless Galactus story. I mean a repeat Galactus story. Because after the masterpiece of Fantastic Four #48-50 is there really any point in yet another Galactus story? No, there isn’t and Lee and Buscema prove it with this silliness. Gabriel is a red herring, the Silver Surfer is relegated to being a mere guest-star, and Galactus is just … a lame joke? Jeez, how the mighty have fallen.

Fantastic Four #124-125 - This tale is a sequel to events from FF #97, and features yet another “do over” repeat of basically the same events from that issue. Sure the details are different, but it’s basically the same story. So this volume starts off with some interesting, and even high concepts, and squanders it all away into a series of been-there-done-that recycled stories.

[Eddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my binge-read of the original 416 issues of FF, I felt like Stan Lee left almost immediately after Jack Kirby did, and that his post-Kirby work wasn't good. Reading these as a distinct volume reminded me that Lee was actually around for a couple of years, and the issues were pretty decent. Obviously not up to the standards of the first 100 issues, but the Overmind saga was actually a surprisingly long storyline with escalating tension. Much more fun when read by themselves.

[Justin Partridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

“ALL NEW …and ALL GREAT!”

And with #121-125, I find the World’s Greatest Comic Magazine slotted firmly into the 1970s and dealing with a mostly smooth transition from Stan and The King to Stan (mostly) and “Big” John Romita.

And I think what’s interesting about this stretch is how much they really start to calculate between the mythic and the mundanity of the stories, helped in kind by some really game fill-in writers like Goodwin and Roy Thomas, both of whom I didn’t know worked this early on the title.

We’ve got Johnny continuing to navigate his relationship with Crystal, we’ve got JJJ turning the city against the FF, Sue and Reed negotiating their day jobs with being new parents. It’s pretty awesome to see Lee at the end of his stretch bringing to the surface all these smaller stories, dashed with a lot more Mighty Marvel cameos like Peter Parker and Black Panther (who helps Ben and Johnny literally smash racism, it’s the best/silliest bullshit but I love it).

But then Galactus shows up again and Lee starts playing the hits just with another guitarist and I’m a little more checked out on it.

Honestly, these have still be a delight to parse through. Especially this 70s stuff which I have really little to no contact with. It’s giving me this really awesome context for Romita, an artist I don’t have the relationship with other readers do for sure, and it’s also been so fun to see how the title itself is evolving as it heads into a whole new decade (with Marvel as a whole blossoming around it).

I really can’t wait to push on (hopefully with a bit less Galactus and a bit more like…I dunno, Diablo. I was so hyped when Diablo showed back up in this volume). Make Mine Marvel!

[Alex Andrasik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunate post-Kirby, late-Lee kookiness. Most of it is just not very good. There was obviously an expectation of introducing the Over-Mind as the next big cosmic threat, but he falls flat. And the humiliation of Galactus is at its apex here, with the unbeatable force of nature stalking around Coney Island and getting knocked over by the Thing. (Let's pretend that didn't happen to preserve the power of a later and more impactful tumble.) Gabriel the Air-Walker is a neat concept with an impressive look (thanks to the art of John Buscema, whose work is the consistent high point of the collection), despite the confusing Biblical allusions (why would Galactus' herald be created in the image of Earth mythology? Are we supposed to presume that Galactus' Gabriel came first and inspired the Biblical one? If so, where's he been all this time, and why was he here centuries ago?). The Ben Grimm de-mutation/heel turn was an interesting concept but just came off as mean-spirited. The Torch and Crystal spun their wheels. Sue was given a few interesting things to do - she helped in pivotal ways in the Galactus series - but they keep reducing her to "the histrionic female" and damsel in distress, especially in the unnecessary "return of the creature" Black Lagoon knockoff (an inexplicable sequel to one of the worst stories from the previous collection, an embarrassingly ho-hum creation of an all-the-way-checked-out Jack Kirby).

[Molly Lazer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am so glad I got to continue on with reading FANTASTIC FOUR to my 5-year-olds after running out of Masterworks and omnibuses, so thank you, Marvel, for making these collections so accessible. While these issues do suffer somewhat from the lack of Jack Kirby in terms of plotting, I really like John Buscema's artwork on FF, even more than I liked Romita's. The stories in this volume are a little repetitive in relation what came before them (did we really need a return of the monster from the lagoon?), but there were some highlights, especially the return of Galactus. His return and eventual defeat are pretty ingeniously done. Even though Sue doesn't feature prominently in most of these stories, she is sidelined ever-so-slightly less than in previous issues, and her powers do end up saving the day in a number of occasions, which I appreciated. I am always impressed with the cool uses for the FF's powers that Stan, Jack, and both Johns continue to come up with, especially when it comes to Johnny and Reed. They are often more innovative than the way I see the foursome's powers being used today.

[Doug Duncan · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was a good but not great volume overall. the stories felt pretty fast paced, even if they had extended run times through multiple issues. the return of Galactus with air walker was cool, as was the overmind stuff. it did feel like the writing was inconsistent and the stories just weren't quite up to par with most of the series so far.

[Federico Kereki · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Buscema drawing Fantastic Four is as epic and famous as Romita on Spider-Man -- very enjoyable stories here!

[Jeffrey Greek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing particularly memorable about this volume. Stan Lee was definitely starting to tread water at the end of his run.

[Bob Wolniak · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the peak of the John Buscema era after the very long run by Jack Kirby. On some level, it was like a re-envisioning of previous similar storylines regarding Galactus, Hulk vs. thing, and others if John Buscema illustrated them instead of Jack Kirby.