It's mild clobbering time

I never saw the Fantastic Four at their best, because I always came to the comic at the worst times. Some of it just ain't my fault - Kirby left the comic years before I was born, so I was never going to see it in its prime - but whenever I ended reading it for months at a time, it wasn't the greatest.

There were snatches of brilliance in the comics I saw in the local stores, like the three issues with Art Adams, or the few John Byrne issues I could get my hands on (it was weirdly hard to find in my area). Byrne's comics - once seen as the pinnacle of non-Kirby FF - now seem clumsy, overwrought and frequently baffling, but still have plenty of vigor and charm, and I could only wish I read them as new, monthly issues.

No, the only time I bought more than three issues of FF in a row was when Tom DeFalco and Paul Ryan were in charge of the World's Greatest Comic Magazine.

Their long run in the early and mid 1990s were not great comics, full of cliche and empty bombast. Far from being the standard bearer for the Marvel Universe, the book shamelessly chased after contemporary trends - there is an unfortunate attempt to sex Sue Richards up with a very revealing costume that was so clumsy people are still making fun of it today, and I do still wonder if they ever played up the connection to Nathaniel Richards and Cable any further, stab their eyes. 

But it also had a pleasantly retro vibe, with DeFalco channeling the verbosity and unnecessary complexity of the 70s and mixing it with the eternal stodginess of Ryan's art. Ryan always felt a little unappreciated - some of the first vicious comments about a particular artist on a particular book that I ever saw online were complaining about Ryan's work on The Flash in his post-FF career - but his figurework and anatomy were always pleasingly consistent, at a time when none of the cool kids cared about shit like that.

I came into their FF not long after this team started, lured in by a New Warriors guest appearance, and bought it for a good couple of years. And maybe those comics don't hold up so well now, but I was rarely actually disappointed by any of their comics I got at the time. Even the most average Fantastic Four comics can have their charms.