Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Tag: Fantastic Four

Erik Larsen, Paul Ryan & Al Milgrom — Fantastic Encore

Original Art and The Artists

Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Comics Magazine #2, March 2001

Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Comics Magazine isn’t like a sequel to Lee and Kirby’s original run—it is one. Same premise, same mission: pick up the world’s greatest comic right after issue #100 and keep the engine humming.

This mini-series exists because a generation of creators grew up fluent in Kirby’s visual language and wanted to continue it, not reinterpret it. No grim updating. No clever winks. Just more Fantastic Four.

This page nails that idea perfectly. Erik Larsen provides the layouts, setting up classic, confident storytelling. Paul Ryan delivers clean, readable draftsmanship. Al Milgrom locks it all together with classic Marvel authority. You get the full team, Crystal, and Namor battling the Sentry—all in one terrific page of original art.

Across the series, the creative roster reads like a roll call of die-hard Kirby believers. Other contributors included Bruce Timm, Ron Frenz, Keith Giffen, and Rick Veitch—artists who didn’t just admire Kirby, they revered him and understood what made the Fantastic Four tick.

What makes World’s Greatest Comics Magazine special is its confidence. It doesn’t explain itself. It assumes the Fantastic Four never stopped being the future. In that sense, it isn’t nostalgia—it’s continuity of imagination. And that’s about as Fantastic Four as it gets.

John Byrne — Fantastic, Again

Original Art and The Artists

Fantastic Four #256, July 1983

John Byrne’s Fantastic Four earned its legendary status the right way. He took the keys to one of Marvel’s great books, respected the Kirby engine that powered it, and pushed it forward with smart, late-’70s storytelling.

This Negative Zone page feels like classic FF: clear storytelling, dangerous tech, and characters who sound like smart people under pressure. Reed is cool and precise. Sue keeps things grounded.

Drawn oversized, the page has room to breathe — big machines, strange worlds, and that unmistakable sense of scale. Nothing feels decorative. It feels built.

The kind of Fantastic Four that made opening a new issue every month feel like an event.

John Buscema & Joe Sinnott — Fantastic Follow-up

Original Art and The Artists

Fantastic Four #109, April 1971

If Jack Kirby built the Marvel Universe by flooring the gas pedal, John Buscema is the artist who proved it could keep moving at speed without flying off the road. This page from The Fantastic Four #109 doesn’t feel like a reset after Kirby—it feels like a smooth handoff. (Especially with the amazing Joe Sinnott continuing on as co-pilot.)

Nearly everything that defines the FF is here: impossible tech, last-second switches, and reality bending under pressure. Kirby detonates ideas; Buscema directs them. The action is clean, the staging is crystal clear, and even as the team tumbles through the “Distortion Zone,” you always know where everyone is—and what’s about to go wrong.

That’s why Buscema was the perfect artist to follow Kirby. He didn’t try to out-Kirby Kirby; he translated the chaos into confident, cinematic storytelling.

Fantastic Four #109 lands squarely in my prime spinner-rack era—back when the future arrived every month for 15 cents a pop. Owning this page feels like closing a long loop—from Wurman’s candy store (Long Beach, NY) back to the original art board, without losing any of the wonder.

In fact, it gains even more.

The early Buscema stories (plus some late Kirby and the fill-in Romita stories) can be found in the FF omnibus #4, with either the Kirby #100 cover — or the astonishing homage by Arthur Adams.

Jack Kirby & Joe Sinnott — Fantastic, 4ever

Original Art and The Artists

Fantastic Four #76, July 1968

Jack Kirby & Joe Sinnott original art from Fantastic Four #76 --- from the collection of Greg Goldstein

Sixty-five years on, The Fantastic Four still feels like Marvel figuring itself out in real time—and getting it spectacularly right. These weren’t heroes born in alleys or back rooms; they were a product of the early ’60s, when the Space Race filled the headlines and the future felt thrilling, reckless, and inevitable. Rockets were launching, limits were being tested, and the question wasn’t should we go farther—it was how fast can we get there. Marvel’s cosmic imagination starts right here, with four people charging into the unknown.

And speaking of charging ahead—just look at this page by Jack Kirby, beautifully locked down by Joe Sinnott. This isn’t just a shrinking sequence; it’s Kirby inventing scale. Machines loom like alien vistas, panels crackle with motion, and your eye doesn’t just read the page—it gets pulled inside it. Sinnott’s inks keep all that chaos crisp, clear, and impossibly confident.

I continue to believe the first 100 issues (and especially the marvelous three-year stretch from about issues #39–76) of The Fantastic Four rank among the most important runs in comic-book history—one long creative hot streak where the ideas redefined pretty much everything that came before.

I’m never going to referee who did what between Kirby and Stan Lee, but one thing is pretty obvious: Lee contributed much of the personality, friction, and soap-opera snap that made the cosmic feel personal. The Fantastic Four bicker, joke, and melt down while rewriting reality—and that mix of big ideas and human irritation became Marvel’s calling card.

Happy 65th to the Fantastic Four: Marvel’s original first family, and a wondrous revolution in comic books.

The Silver Surfer splash from this issue is so striking and iconic that it was later selected as one of Marvel’s classic licensed blacklight posters.

Superman & The Fantastic Four — Double Feature

Original Art and The Artists

Superman & Fantastic Four Art Pages, Various

Who would’ve thought that Superman — the true beginning of the DC Universe, and the ignition for the fire that became the world of modern superheroes— AND The Fantastic Four — the first superheroes in the modern Marvel Universe — would hit the silver screen with major reboots at the same time? Definitely an unlikely coincidence.

So…

Here are all the Superman posts on the blog the last five years…

https://greggoldsteincomicartgallery.com/?s=superman

…and here are all the Fantastic Four posts from the same period.

https://greggoldsteincomicartgallery.com/?s=%22fantastic+four%22

Enjoy! I’m off to SDCC; let the madness begin!

Eric Powell — I’d Like To Meet His Tailor

Original Art and The Artists

Secret Wars Too, #1, January 2016

Eric Powell brings his offbeat sensibility to the good doctor in this two-page gag story featured in a Secret Wars parody comic.

I acquired this page directly from Eric at SDCC a few years back, and apparently the other page had just sold to another lucky purchaser.

Missed it by that much.

(Full two-pager presented below.)

The TPB cover by our pal Jim Mahfood is much more interesting than the comic book cover, which is a gag without much art.
Doctor Doom has a terrific legacy in the pantheons of Marvel humor. Stan and Jack did a hilarious send-up of the FF-Doom-Silver Surfer multi-parter in the very first issue of Not Brand Echh in 1967. (The amazing published splash page here is from the actual story of course, not the parody.)

Leo Manco — Plenty Of Time To Die

Original Art and The Artists

Doom: The Emperor Returns, #2, February 2002

Doctor Doom’s greatest fantasy? Murdering Reed Richards, of course. 

And if you have your own planet, you too can make your dreams come true.

Leo Manco nicely illustrates Doom choking Reed on this page from the Emperor Doom mini-series. 

Reminds me of a film moment of a certain costumed villain that looks an awful lot like Doctor Doom. Art imitates art, imitates art, ad infinitum, apparently.

Manco, an Argentinian artist, is terrific, and I wish we’d see more of his work in the comic book space.

The similarities between Darth Vader and Doctor Doom always choke me up. (Ouch.) Per our last post, Lucas owes some public tribute to Jack Kirby as far as we are concerned.

Ron Lim — Army Of Doom

Original Art and The Artists

Fantastic Five #3, October 2007

Doctor Doom — Marvel’s first iconic super villain of the Silver Age* — celebrates his 60th anniversary this year.

And I have a question.

How are the MCU pros going to create a new on-screen look for the character that is true to form, but doesn’t look goofy as hell?  These folks are the best in the business, but that’s a hell of challenge. Lesser talents have failed, not once, not even twice, but three times.**

They could go all black (always a safe choice) and make the costume more technological and futuristic, but… I believe George Lucas already beat them to the punch by about 45 years.***

The comic book Doom costume is one of those that almost makes sense in 2D, but three-dimensional? Oof. 

I’m definitely looking forward to seeing the results, maybe even later this year, if we’re lucky.

And, as always, we digress.

Here, the versatile Ron Lim creates a dramatic splash page with the most Doctor Doom you will ever see in once place. You see, the good doctor has this cool hobby of building robots in his spare time. 

Lots of them, apparently.

Fun fact footnotes:

Ok, Sub-Mariner beat Doom by  a full issue — or more than 20 years, depending on how you count Silver Age vs. Golden Age — but I can’t fully embrace him as a villain. (This despite the fact that Doom and Sub-Mariner later appeared together in a comic book called Super-Villain Team-Up.)

** Two contemporary  big budget film  releases, plus the officially unreleased Roger Corman version. I probably shouldn’t count that, but I do. Sue me.

*** Lucas has yet  to acknowledge that Darth Vader is essentially a mash-up of two Jack Kirby comic book creations, Doctor Doom and Darkseid. C’mon George, fess up.

Clayton Henry’s cover to the Fantastic Five is an homage (swipe?) of Kirby’s FF Annual #2
Doctor Doom’s first appearance features a ridiculous bird for good measure.

Barry Kitson — Negative Space

Original Art and The Artists

Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four #3, September, 2008

We close out our second celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Fantastic Four with a quick visit to the Negative Zone.

The Negative Zone, like so many of Jack ad Stan’s creations, endures. I’m sure one version or another will figure into the MCU when The FF finally receives the proper cinematic respect the team deserves.

In the meantime, we have the talented Barry Kitson, and the equally talented Mick Gray, delivering a dynamic and splashy page of Johnny Storm bursting into flames and out of the Fantasti-Car, leaving Ben Grimm unhappily behind.  (With a cute piece of dialogue to showcase his frustration, as seen in the published page below.)

It’s a terrific piece of art, and if I have any beef with it all, it’s in the published version, because, after coloring, Johnny appears to have a tight crew cut or no hair at all when he bursts into flame. (And stays that way.)

Johnny Storm without his blonde locks? Even on fire? Blasphemy, I say.