Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Re-Reads (Now Reading: Swamp Thing: 1971 through 1985)

Yeah, I suppose. It occurs to me that perhaps the reason I find Frankie/Nova such a frustrating character is that, to my knowledge, she lacked a full character arc (which I still think Byrne had planned for her, but he left FF and, for a few years, Marvel itself, before he got around to it.)

Frankie starts out as an alluring mystery girl (I forget which of the pre-Byrne writers created her), and an atypical challenge for Horndog-Casanova Johnny. So far, so good.

Byrne takes over the FF, and before long, we finally learn her secret -- Frankie is She-Torch, the adopted daughter of the scientist who created the android Torch. We discussed those issues a while ago, and IIRC, my response was that her origin, as well as her own reaction to learning it, were lame, creepy, and implausible even by superhero standards.

Frankie joins the FF. Uh...OK. They sure take her in on a leap of faith -- understandable with Johnny, but not the rest of the team IMO.

Frankie quickly becomes dissatisfied and disillusioned with being part of the FF, as it becomes clearer with every panel she appears in that she's not a nice person, much less considerate of others or looking out for anyone but herself.

Finally...Galactus comes to Earth, upon which Frankie demonstrates that her callousness is even worse than it seemed, bordering on xenophobia. She appeals to Galactus's worst aspects, and gets her wish to become his new herald.

So...where does she go from there, if readers are expected to have some kind of emotional investment in her, be it positive or negative? I'll admit I haven't read all the appearances she made in the Silver Surfer's 80s-90s solo book, but of the ones I have, she seemed to settle into becoming a bland cosmic cipher, devoid of any character evolution (and, to add insult to injury, she had an annoying habit of calling the Surfer "Silverado.") By the time she died in the pages of the Surfer's book, it was being written by Ron Marz, a writer I despised even before he displayed a horrible attitude towards any readers who even slightly criticized his Green Lantern stories. So I don't know how she died, or if she'd shown any kind of evolution before she died. But I doubt it would be worth my while to find out for certain.

Point being, I'll concede she might have worked for me in the long run if her dubious attitudes had ever been addressed, and if we had seen that she may still have possessed some glimmers of humanity within her -- either by Byrne or by other writers. File her under Missed Opportunities, then?

Those are very fair points. It certainly didn't help that subsequent writers lacked interest in really developing her story. Certainly Byrne had an interest in her, as she starred in his unfinished "Last Galactus Story".

It's just one of those "what ifs" fans will never know the answers to if Byrne had either not been lured away before whatever point he would otherwise have left or if Quesada's hate-on for Byrne had made a potential FF return (something Byrne had often said he was very much open to) impossible.

Thanks, Lardy.

I have to admit, I've actually never read the portion of Byrne's "The Last Galactus Story" that did get published.

I forget, was it being serialized in "Epic Illustrated?"

Could you please summarize it, at least providing the gist?

Regarding Byrne vs Quesada, I don't think "Mighty Joe" really has much influence anymore at Marvel on what gets green-lighted or not. Oh, sure, they gave him a fancy new job title, and probably a raise, but I suspect it was really a sidelining disguised as a promotion. After all, Joey's big, filthy mouth was never going to fit in with Marvel's new public image as Disney's Family-Friendly Fanboy Subsidiary. Axel Alonso, for all that he appears to be one sneaky, calculating little sh*t, does know how to play the diplomat in public. And that's actually what fuels my little ember of hope that Alonso and Byrne might actually be able to negotiate a return to the FF. That said, there is, as my friend Matt pointed out to me not long ago, one quite possible obstacle, and that's Tom Brevoort, who is rumored to hate Byrne even more than JQ does. I'm not sure just how much juice TB actually has ATM, and, unlike JQ, he does usually know when to dial it down (which I think explains TB's sporadic blurting of tasteless and stupid remarks -- keep a lid on a pot too long, and you know what happens.)

No can do because I've never read it! HOWEVER--it IS collected in the Vol. 2 FF/Byrne Omnibus which I DO own, so I will read it re-read project.

From what I understand, 9 of 10 parts of the serial were published in Epic Illustrated. Epic was cancelled just before its completion, and part 10 was never produced. Byrne has gone on record as to how he planned to end it, though.



If you're right about this not being an obstacle anymore, I think it probably still is too late for Byrne to return. All he's doing these days are those Star Trek fumettis in the years since he had a string of good-to-great minis at IDW. I don't know if he's made an official statement, but I feel he has little interest in drawing anymore and is effectively retired.

Retired?

Poo.



OTOH, if he's doing fumetti and he's got lots of free time, maybe he can join Legion World!!

BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA! I knew I wouldn't be able to post that without cracking up.

I mean, I'm sure most of us would be respectful, but even a few of our more well-adjusted posters carry a grudge about The Death of Superboy, and how it arguably wrecked the Legion. But IMHO, Byrne is not to blame. If anyone's a villain there, it's Mike Carlin. (:waves: Hi, Mikey. Enjoying the way you're demoted one more notch with every DC executive shuffle?)

Please humor me, Lardy. Some days I can handle minor disappoints more graciously than others.

And I look forward to your review of "The Last Galactus Story."

(Also, Lardy, I know you're a Gym'll's mod, so if you think my little pot-shot at Mike Carlin is inappropriate, feel free to delete it.)

I'll allow it.

Thanks, Lardy.

It's karma in action.

Karma for Carlin.

Lardy, I was wondering something. My Byrne FF Visionaries trade places FF #257 in between issue #2 of the Thing's solo book (written, but not drawn by, Byrne) and FF Annual #12 (written and drawn by Byrne.) Should be cover either of those in this thread? I'm asking because 257-262 are arguably the pinnacle of the Byrne era (along with FF 256/Avengers 233, of course), and I think cover those stories would break up the flow.

But whatever you prefer to do is OK with me, either way.

That's how they're placed in my Omnibus, as well. I was thinking we would cover Thing 2, FF 257 & Annual 12 in the next segment, but we could do Thing and the Annual instead and place 257 in the next one--?

Perfect solution, Lardy. Thanks.

Quite apropos, I think, that you went through a phase of using Captain Marvel (the Fawcett/DC original) as your avatar. You just used the wisdom of Solomon right there.

Um, since I presented two options, was my wisdom in doing all three books in the next round or leaving 257 out for the one after it? Uh, I know I'm wise, so this is a test--uh, for YOU! (Yeah, that's the ticket! )

LOL

Leaving 257 out for the one after it showed the Wisdom of Solomon. Then it'll be 257-262 straight thru -- all killer, no filler.

Sorry about the confusion.

We interrupt your regularly-scheduled FF issues to present 2 standalone books between issues 256 and 257, both of which are worth your time!

First up is "For Beauty Passed Away" from Thing 2! (And if we also reviewed Thing 1, we might have the makings of a Dr. Seuss tale! ) The Thing had just been awarded his first solo ongoing book, initially written by John Byrne, and issue 2 serves as a kind of epilogue or (perhaps more aptly) a coda to the Negative Zone Saga. The biggest connection to said saga is that we open with Ben visiting the hospital and getting confirmation that Franklin and Alicia will be okay.

But that's far from the impetus of the story. What we get is a fairly rare look into Ben's life pre-Thing as Ben gets a mysterious letter from a former girlfriend, prompting a flashback to Ben and Reed's college days. We see how Ben gets dumped by a girl he is head-over-heels for because she has ambitions to be something much bigger than just someone's wife, in this case the pursuit of a career in Hollywood.

But now, out of the blue, she wants to meet up with him, and Ben is feeling vulnerable because he is now a "monster" and doesn't know if he can face someone he used to care so much about the way he is now. In a twist, it turns out his old flame has suffered a stroke and sees herself as a kind of monster, as well. She feels she has this in common with him and seeks his advice on how he lives with his disfiguration.

I wouldn't call it a "great" story on the whole, but it is a really good one, especially because there's a real maturity and frankness to the storytelling. There's not any of the comic book histrionics that typified comics of the time and the Thing in particular. He and Alicia have a real, grown-up conversation about what he is feeling and feel more like a real couple in those panels than they ever have, in my opinion. And Byrne leaves the meat of Ben and old flame Alynn's conversation to our imagination. Based on what we've seen of Ben this issue, we just know he says the right things and comforts Alynn in her time of need, even if he himself may still feel torn apart inside over his own circumstances.

Another reason for the story's inclusion is that Byrne inks Thing regular penciller Ron Wilson and adds to the story his own artistic flair. Wilson was a long-running artistic portrayer of Ben Grimm thru most of Marvel Two-In-One and all of this first solo Thing series' 36 issues. While it's undeniable that Wilson was an important artist for Ben Grimm, his style has never really grabbed me at all. But it does look great here with Byrne's inks, and together they portray the story in a way that conveys the emotion and mood of the story very effectively. It's a human story and they bring that feel very well. I'm especially fond of their pre-Thing Ben Grimm we learn more about in the flashback.

I'm really glad that Marvel included this story in Byrne's Omnibus and his Visionaries series. It could easily have been left off, as it contains no really essential story information to his run. But it's a surprisingly mature and frank exploration of a beloved character and one that is, in hindsight, well-timed in Byrne's overall run, considering what will soon be happening with Ben's role in the FF.


Next up is FF Annual 17, "Legacy". I've pointed out before how at different parts of Byrne's run, he has told scattered FF tales that show a desire of his to tell weird sci-fi mysteries that might belong in a TV show like the Twilight Zone or in some of the old sci-fi pulp magazines or any of the above-two's assorted and sordid kin. This one is the latest in the series and, in my opinion, Byrne's most successful attempt at such to date!

It doesn't hurt at all that Byrne now has the larger format of an Annual to tell this type of tale at the pace it needs to breathe. To illustrate this, the story follows minor supporting character Sharon Selleck for a full 17 pages before the FF enter the action. Those 17 pages are akin, in their own way, to that first sequence in Hitchcock's classic "Psycho", in which we follow Janet Leigh's character through all of her travails (and ultimately her famously brutal, untimely end) before the story switches gears. Sharon fares better than Janet's character, but there's that sense of impending suspense and dread allowed to breathe that makes both openings effective and grounds the rest of the story.

Another thing that distinguishes this entry from its predecessors is how it turns out that the root cause is something based out of FF history, rather than just some chance encounter. The idea itself is brilliant: what if those Skrulls the FF encountered in just their second issue that the FF left living as supposedly harmless cows had not only produced "milk" but said milk had been consumed by humans?

(Now, the Skrull "cows" had long sense been re-Skrulled and played a part in the classic Kree/Skrull War Avengers story, but the premise here is the damage from their "milk" had already been done during their time as cows.)

It's a very novel idea that Byrne came up with, including some help from Jim Salicrup, Tom DeFalco and Al Milgrom, if I'm reading the intent of the "special thanks" portion of the credits correctly. Regardless, the execution is all Byrne's with him credited for full art. His use of minor bit player Sharon is excellent. She is inquisitive and intelligent, not just an idle victim. In the liberal (regrettably now-extinct) use of thought bubbles, we see her puzzle through everything with us, and we really begin to fear for her as the walls begin to close around her. In the end she almost gets out on her own, but the threat is just too big for any normal person.

Segue to the FF. In her quick-thinking efforts to get help, Sharon has made two phone calls which together alert the FF that this is a situation they really need to look into. Deducing quickly the nature of the threat (something I can forgive because Reed is and should be portrayed as a hugely next-level thinker) given the information at hand, the FF come into town at first covertly to both confirm their suspicions and find Sharon. Once they've done both (and given us a nice summary of the FF events that caused the situation), the FF spring into action and use the preparations Reed made thru his deductions to save the day.

But like any good horror/sci-fi yarn should, we get a one-panel stinger that shows the threat may not only not be over but could get a lot worse! Perfect ending! Even if (Maybe--? Can't recall! ) there's never a follow-up story, the ending is just the icing on the cake for a story that plays with some horror and sci-fi tropes!

Byrne's art is really awesome here. He subtly changes his style to match the tone he's trying to pull off here. Those first 17 pages, especially, feature slightly heavier inking to emphasize the creepiness and suspense of the situation. When the story shifts to the FF, the art shifts subtly, too. And when the two worlds merge, we get a mixture of both.

For the story to work, Byrne especially does a good job with Sharon. She's kind of a sexy horror movie protagonist, but she's also not idealized. She's not particularly well-endowed, and her hair is kind of a mess. Plus, she wears glasses. I think this works well and makes me like her much more than I did in her few previous appearances. All things considered, this is impressive work considering my (and presumably the rest of the book's audiences') prior ambivalence to her. If we didn't want her to survive, the story wouldn't be as good.

So, yes, a very good story and, I feel, the best of Byrne's attempts thus far to emulate the sci-fi mystery sub-genre that he clearly had an affection for. I like that he chose his first FF Annual to tell this smaller story and that his craft as writer/artist had come so far to make it so memorable. In fact, I think this calls for an (unexpected!) update to my overall list of the Best Byrne FF stories to this point in the run:

1) Negative Zone/Annihilus Saga (FF 251-256, Avengers 233)
2) Terrax/Nova/Galactus (FF 242-244)
3) 20th Anniversary/Liddleville (FF 236)
4) "Legacy" (FF Annual 17)
5) FF vs. Ego (FF 235)

How about that! This calls for a celebration! Maybe some cookies and mil----uh, nevermind.....

Wonderful reviews as always, Lardy.

I've got the 3rd Byrne FF Visionaries trade right next to me as I'm typing this, so I'll post my own very soon.

BTW, my reading of the "Special Thanks" to Salicrup, DeFalco, and Milgrom is that it was a very polite way of acknowledging that the FF comic had passed through three different editors while Byrne was working on that story.

And you'll never guess who ended up as the regular FF editor once the musical chairs had stopped:

Funny thing was, I went into reading Annual 17 not knowing if I would like it, even though I read it as a teenager. The thing was, I was a teenager not used to unconventional superhero tales like "Legacy". Plus, I seem to recall that I was fighting a stomach bug when I first read it. So I kind of associated the story with vomit and diarrhea! (This is kind of funny because Sharon is implied to be physically ill during the story in the same way!) So coming into reading it again all these years later, I really wasn't sure I would like it and did not, in fact, expect it to make an appearance in my running Top Stories list at all.

But here I am, an adult currently not experiencing stomach illness and who, I feel, has developed much more sophisticated tastes in the interim--and as I'm writing the review, I realize this story VERY much deserves to be on my running "best of" list for this re-read!

I was and am pleasantly surprised!!!



Aw, shucks....

Hey, Lardy,

I feel I owe you the courtesy of explaining why I've stalled yet again with the Byrne FF re-read.

I imagine you, and others, have already noticed my relative paucity of postings these past several days. But I'm happy to say it's all good news. In a nutshell, the Legion Retroboot Continuation has grown and evolved -- at a rate so fast, I was barely able to hang on at first -- into a whole Mini-Multiverse I've called "DC Universes: The 7 Worlds of Wonder"!! So I've been spending almost every minute of my free time working on all this good stuff, and my only regret is that my Byrne FF Visionaries trade ended up getting buried underneath a bunch of DC trades which I've been using for 7Wow references.

I have to digress for a minute, to reiterate that I was very pleased to see you chime in to comment on the (now-nearly-completed) Legion Retroboot Continuation, and to now add that I greatly hope you'll do the same for 7Wow (which will have a Who's Who companion thread, and a Chronology & Fanfic Vignettes companion thread.) If anything, what I think this...uh...Tower of Fan Fiction, I guess it could be called...has really evolved into, now that I've been able to get some perspective on it, is not at all unlike your beloved Astro City, only with 7 universes instead of 1, and using (mostly) actual DC characters instead of analogs.

Back on topic, I've come to the conclusion that it might be best to see the Byrne FF re-read through all the way to the end of the Trial of Reed Richards issue, and then go on a hiatus, which will hopefully not be too long...at least until I've gotten the 7WoW threads up and running, and completed the first arc of the Legion Retroboot Continuation (and, like I alluded to earlier in this post, there's only one installment of it left to finish writing and posting.)

So...our last issue before the hiatus would be...I can't recall the exact number ATM, but I think it's right around 262. That would make it a nice even 30 monthly issues, plus the Annuals and spin-offs and stuff. In all, I'd say a satisfactory Phase One. Hope this is all OK with you, Lardy, and please don't hesitate to share with me any reservations you might have.

It is issue 262. The hiatus would be okay with me, thought I hope it won't be super-long. I also hope you'll be forthcoming soon with your write-up of Thing 2 and Annual 17, so we can proceed toward the conclusion of "Phase One"!

I will be posting the reviews of Thing #2 and FF Annual #17 very soon, because it just so happens that, within the past 24 hours, I've reached the point where I have to step back for at least a couple days and allow my creative batteries to recharge.r

And, no, the hiatus won't be long at all. Just enough time for me to wrap up the first arc of the Retroboot Continuation, and then get the two companion threads up and running (it goes without saying that the companion threads are going to be works-in-progress for many months to come, but like I said, I'd like to at least "lay the foundation," so to speak.

Thanks, Lardy.

The Thing 2

If I may be so indulged, I'd like to preface this review by providing some context -- specifically, my creative life over the past 2 or 3 weeks:

For most of my free time over the past 2 or 3 weeks, I've had my nose to the grindstone (OK, who am I kidding, my fingertips to the keyboard-- ye Gods, it's like that Monty Python sketch about the son of a writer who rebels against his hard-working dad by becoming a miner. Sheesh!!) And it's been mostly at the service of creating (either in outline or story form) big, cosmic, dark, DCU epics, many of them re-imaginings of some truly tasteless and/or just plain awful scripts from 2003 to 2009. To put it more plainly:

"Just imagine...ALAN GRANT reimagining crap-tastic GEOFF JOHNS "event" stories from the 2000s!!"

Not surprisingly, I've found myself on the verge of burnout a couple times in the process, and what always cures it for me is to step back for a day or two and read and/or write stuff that is 180 degrees from the creative project at hand.

All of the above is a roundabout way of saying that the timing couldn't have been better for me to read a tender, character-driven done-in-one story like the one in Thing 2. It's a tonic in the truest sense. (A tonic for the trouper? The Super Trouper?? Y'know, as in the classic 70s song by ABBA?? I'll stop. )

Byrne's script is quite possibly my favorite from this re-read so far. It's extremely insightful of the human condition, saying a lot about such worthy themes as: choosing your ambitions over what's true to your heart, the foolish choices of youth, the shallowness and transience of fame & fortune, guilt over an old lover trying to get back in contact, fear of a current lover getting jealous...I could probably fill a whole thread analyzing this little gem of a story. Kudos to Byrne for pulling off what is at the very least a minor miracle within the superhero genre. I think even non-Marvel readers might enjoy this one!!

And art-wise, I was far more impressed with Ron Wilson than I had expected to be. I'm only familiar with his 70s work, so I guess he'd improved a lot by 1983, and/or Ben Grimm was a character who meant a lot to Wilson. It's never been easy for any artist to find the means of expressing emotional nuances using Ben's default gravel-face and block-body. But find them Wilson does, and he deserves a lot of credit for that. And I don't really know quite how to explain this, but I found that I enjoyed Byrne inks over someone else's pencils better than over his own pencils, and, in hindsight, I think it's a pity that Byrne didn't take on this artistic challenge more often, as it certainly seemed to have a good effect on his own pencils at the time!!

In summary, a wonderful, low-key, melancholy vignette, of the kind most superhero writers only DREAM of creating!! Also a good reminder that, for all the ups and downs of re-reading Byrne's approximately 5-year FF run, or really, the ups and downs of just about ANY superhero comic run that passes the 4-year mark, it's stories like this that make it all worthwhile and give a welcome, renewing boost to the morale of this particular re-reader.

My review of FF Annual 17 will be ready for posting within the next 48 hours. And, Lardy, I've been projecting ahead -- with the upcoming holidays and everything, I figure we'll probably wrap up before the hiatus right around the end of the year. So how would it work for you if we resumed the re-read in March 2017?

Fantastic Four Annual 17

Sorry to say, Lardy, that I didn't like this story nearly as much as The Thing 2.

I do agree with you that Byrne does an effective job with the mystery and suspense aspects of the early sequences, first by immediately establishing that something's a little bit "off" in this remote neck of the woods where Sharon's car has broken down, and then by building up the tension until it's almost a relief when we cut to the comforting familiarity of the FF at the Baxter Building.

But there are two things that take me out of the story -- one is that Sharon Selleck does not particularly engage me as a protagonist. In her previous appearances, she'd come across to me as a cipher, little more than a foil for her roommate Julie D'Angelo/Julie Angel's quirkiness, and there's nothing in this story that changed my mind about Sharon. In fact, as I was typing this paragraph, it occurred to me that I'd rather have seen either the (IMHO) much more interesting & likeable Julie in Sharon's place, or better yet, Julie & Sharon on the road together, both getting entrapped by the sinister townspeople. The second problem is that I found Byrne's art here very disappointing, especially compared to his mostly stellar showings in the last several issues of the ongoing which precede Annual 17; I found too many "Default Byrne" poses and facial expressions here, and the inking is...well, a bit of a misfire to my eyes. As you observed in your review, Lardy, Byrne's inking goes from dark and rough to clean and smooth once the story shifts from Sharon's imperilment to the Fantastic Four themselves. This is, in theory, a perfectly viable use of the creative possibilities unique to sequential art -- Peter Milligan & Duncan Fergedo's wonderful Vertigo mini-series "Enigma" used it to superlative effect!! Where I think Byrne errs is by making the stylistic shift too abrupt, leaving his story too neatly divided between the "rough portion" and the "smooth portion", whereas Fergedo made it so gradual and so subtle that it was barely noticeable to me until I was thoroughly engrossed by, and many pages deep into, the "Enigma" story.

I'll admit that I found the revelation of the plot's relation to an obscure loose end from early FF continuity to be clever and well-executed (certainly better-executed than when Grant Morrison & Mark Millar basically ripped off Byrne's premise, using red meat instead of dairy, with far less effective and more tasteless results, in their justifiably forgotten mid-90s Marvel mini-series "Skrull Kill Krew.") Also, I agree with you that the stinger at the very end of the issue is masterfully done. And finally, I think that Byrne knows the FF themselves so well by this point that the foursome come alive with nice character moments no matter what kind of story Byrne puts them in.

In the end, I suppose that last paragraph might seem like damning with faint praise. That's certainly not my intention, yet I simply cannot deny that the two things that a story like this hinges on -- a strongly defined protagonist and art that does not call attention to itself -- were lacking in my opinion, while your review makes it clear that your opinion is just about 180 degrees from mine, and you felt they were both very much present in the story. And there's nothing at all wrong with disagreeing, but I did feel a bit worried about coming off too harsh in trying to explain why I feel the way I do about this story, considering how much you clearly like it. No hard feelings, I hope?

Sorry, Fick--you're dead to me, now.

LOL

I wasn't fooled for a nano-second.

Big hug.

And I agree, it has been a very pleasant re-read in the way that we've been on the same page so far about pretty much all the most salient themes.

Regarding Byrne's recurring Twilight Zone homages in this run, I'm 99% certain that I would consider FF Annual 17 be the best-written up to this point. To be totally sure, I'll have to go back and read my reviews of all the previous TZ homages.

A quick heads-up, Lardy.

FF 257 is set in stone to be re-read before I go to sleep tonight. Review to come tomorrow.

4 days later...

(...better late than never, right?)

Fantastic Four #257

Continuing to mine the rich creative vein he hit recently with the awesome conclusion to the Negative Zone Saga, Byrne boldly returns to the loose end of Galactus and his desperate search for sustenance, now with new herald Nova searching -- in the ruthless, relentless fashion I'd expect from the former Frankie Raye -- for a planet teeming with organic life...and, again very much in keeping with her character as established, Nova has zeroed in on...the Skrull Empire's Throneworld!!

But before we see whether Byrne really "goes there" and has Galactus and Nova commit genocide on what might be the Marvel Universe's first established alien race (?), as well as the co-villains of the flawed yet memorable Avengers epic "The Kree-Skrull War"...Byrne slyly reminds us beforehand that Galactus and Nova are not completely monstrous.

The opening sequence showcasing Galactus, in particular, comes off as particularly poignant and loaded with gravitas -- extra kudos to Byrne for bringing in the MU's incarnation of Death, as first seen in Jim Starlin's Bronze Age cosmic spectacles, establishing her as Galactus's sister, and making her more than just a flat, if visceral, icon by having her interrupt Galactus's soliloquy (compelling as it is) and conversing with him.

Nova's own thought balloons as she moves in for the attack upon the Skrull's defensive armada hint at possibilities which will sadly be left unexplored before Byrne's untimely departure about 35 to 40 issues from this one. Having her actually lusting for Galactus seems a bit on-the-nose at first, but when one consider the potential inherent in perhaps Nova evolving into Galactus's equal and becoming his bride...I find it undeniably intriguing.

And then the issue reaches what I consider a masterful crescendo when the Skrulls...who, remember, started out as a throwaway race of evil little green people, and who gained scope, if not depth, in subsequent appearances over the course of 2 decades...are seen as frightened, vulnerable, even borderline sympathetic!! I particularly treasure the darkest-hour verbal exchange between Empress R'klll and Princess Anelle, both finally given full-bodied and engaging personalities with shades of gray by Byrne -- the close-up panel (Page 9, upper right-hand) of the two is especially memorable, the archetypal picture saying a thousand words...and the words Byrne has them speak are the icing on the cake.

The next three pages have some of the best cosmic imagery ever to flow from Byrne's fingers to the blank pages before him. Galactus's devastation of the Skrull Throneworld has all the gradeur, horror, and visceral widescreen power that it calls for.

Cut to the planet Earth.

Having fed us readers our fill of thrills & chills and action & adventure, Byrne goes for the heart for the majority of the remaining pages of this issue. The sequence of Johnny running into Julie & Sharon while apartment-hunting is delightful, the scenes involving Susan, Reed, and Ben finding the best of both worlds for a fleeting moment is heartwarming and deserving of a tear to the eye in its honest understatement. And the last scene, in which Reed begins work on repairing the Vision, only for...SOMETHING...to apparently kidnap him in a violent fashion, wraps things up with an awesome cliffhanger!!

Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, and lining this up with Byrne's then-concurrent work at Marvel as either writer/artist or writer -- Alpha Flight, the Thing's solo book -- he was very much soaring to what might be the highest peak of his career next to his previous plateau as the pencil artist & co-plotter of Uncanny X-Men. I certainly feel ATM like I could kick myself for giving away my aforementioned copy of the vintage "FF: The Trial of Galactus" trade many years ago, when I was going through a phase of "Byrne-is-overrated-and-he-seems-like-a-jerk." Ahhh, the foolishness of youth... But I now thank the Gods that Marvel has continued to keep Byrne's FF in print. It really is something to be treasured.

Jeez Louise, I haven't posted a FF re-read review here for 3 weeks!!

Sorry, Lardy.

Will do so this weekend.

I also still have to review Superwoman #4, although at least in that thread I left the gist of my (very pleasantly surprised & positive) opinion right away.