Just read the latest FF. Except for the Nu-World reference, it wasn't bad. I liked the art a great deal, except for Reed who was too buff.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

YES!


Finally a return of the classic FF, a FF I want to read.

It's been a long time since I've been so enthused over the FF. (I liked McDuffie's short run, before that..............Waid's, and the Thing solo series, that's been it)


It's got me excited for whatever is coming up.

I'm still not sure about buff Reed, but I've taken to it a lot quicker than I thought I would. It works for me, after reading the issue.

Yeah, I'm cautiously optimistic. The art is nice and clean, I like the family aspects and the mystery is cool. I have not liked the FF for a long time and found Waid's very overrated.

Didn't Kirby draw a buff Reed? I seem to remember him making him about the same size as Captain America.

He did.

Yeah, but I prefer a slightly thinner one.

I want to try this issue.

I liked the first issue quite a bit. Felt very much like the FF, but without being too beholden to or derivative of previous runs. My favorite runs on the book (and really the only ones I've ever liked) are Lee/Kirby, Simonson, Lobdell/Davis, Waid/Ringo, McDuffie/Pellitier, and Millar/Hitch, and I don't think any of those runs are anything like each other.

That just leaves the Pacheco solo run, Claremont/Larocca, Englehart/Buscema, Byrne, Wolfman/Byrne, Wolfman/Perez, Thomas/Buscema, Stern/Buscema, DeFalco/Ryan and a few other random runs.

And you're saying you NEVER liked the Byrne run?

I love Simonson on Thor and other work he's done, but I just didn't care for his art on his FF run. Particularly his rendering of Galactus. Story-wise, his run was interesting. I have to say I didn't hate any run on FF all the way up to hero's reborn, the end of the Ryan run. Then it failed until Waid. I even liked the so called dark years between Kirby and Byrne.

I started reading comics just after Byrne's run, so I've only read a handful of issues (there's a thread somewhere around here where I was reading through it). As far into it as I read it was just alright.

Even before encountering Byrne online I only ever thought he was an okay writer at best. I really liked his Namor and Avengers West Coast runs, but those might have been the only books he's written that I liked the writing on.

Oh, and of your list, I've really only read a couple of the Pacheco issues, about half a dozen of the Claremont/Larocca, and quite a few of the DeFalco/Ryan issues. For some reason FF is entirely hit or miss with me.

There's a whole lot of gold between Kirby and Byrne. I especially like the Roy Thomas issues, which are gold if you're a fan of his Invaders or All-Star Squadron.

FF Annual #11 is still my favorite comic book. Roy Thomas, John Buscema, FF versus alternate-world Invaders and Baron Zemo over Nazi Vibranium.

I read through the Lee and Kirby run a year or so ago for the first time and loved it. I was planning on continuing from there but decided to skip ahead to the Byrne run instead. I haven't gotten around to getting back into it again.

I would just like to gloat in passing that I called Hickman as the best new writer on the scene a couple years ago after reading issue #1 of his Nightly News from Image. Thanks, I don't do stock tips.

Yeah he did, but that look really hasn't been seen much since then

It threw me in the preview pages, but somehow it worked in the issue itself once I got used to it. Honestly, the beard stubble was more off-putting.

Same for the first part.

The stubble didn't worry me since I've seen it on him so many times in scenes when he's been in the lab for ages, so it was somewhat familiar in that way.

I loved that book too. Never cared for Waid's run but I thought Thoma/Buckler was underrated fun.

Ironically, Byrne is the artist who brought back the slim Reed and Johnny for that matter.

I agree with you on Thomas/Buckler. Marvel tried very hard to keep a Kirby feel on the FF throughout the '70s with Buckler, Perez and then Pollard all inked by Joe Sinnott.

See, that's why I don't rate that stuff so highly. It's almost like it became a DC comic. Nothing changed much, things were static, models were strict, etc. I'd have liked to see them expand on the run, not just hide in its shadow. To move forward, not just keep it in the same basic place it was when Lee/Kirby finished.