Fantastic Four

Marvel's Mightiest Heroes Graphic Novel Collection #4

by Len Wein, George Pérez

As the Fantastic Four part ways, their greatest enemy - the duplicitous Doctor Doom - returns to wreak havoc upon Marvel's First Family. Now witness The Overthrow of Doom in its entirety, a nine issue epic that presents the team in a radical new light, told by some of Marvel's greatest creators. Collects Fantastic Four vol 1 #192-200.

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics, Science Fiction, Superheroes

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Len Wein was an American comic book writer and editor best known for co-creating DC Comics' Swamp Thing and Marvel Comics' Wolverine, and for helping revive the Marvel superhero team the X-Men (including the co-creation of Nightcrawler, Storm, and Colossus). Additionally, he was the editor for writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons' influential DC miniseries Watchmen.

Wein was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2008.

Reviews

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

Mish-mash of a story really. Everyone is separated to begin with (with a mediocre story for each) and then they get back together. Yay! I cannot fathom how or why FF catapulted Marvel into what they are now. They are all boring characters. Not one of them is redeeming for me.

The story itself was bad as well.

[Jose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.
I enjoyed reading the Fantastic Four comics written by Stan Lee, John Byrne, Carlos Pacheco, Mark Waid... This... Well... Not the best I have read.

[Sarah-Jayne Briggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

(This review may contain spoilers).

The Fantastic Four was one of the superhero groups I was able to see in a couple of movies. Having this book arrive as part of my collection was good, because it gave me the chance to see more of the family and their dynamics.

Even though I didn't get to see the Fantastic Four's origin story, I felt that the comics included in this collection gave me a good understanding of the characters and the enemies they faced. It was really good to see Reed and Sue's relationship and how they both had other commitments, such as looking after their son and Reed trying to find work.

It was interesting to see each of the four have to deal with foes individually in separate comics. I especially felt for Ben Grimm, aka The Thing, what with finding out one of his friends had been so horribly changed.

I found it interesting to see Sue and Namor's interactions. Even though I don't think I like Namor all that much, it was good to see him and Sue fighting alongside each other. And I found it good to see evidence of his hot-headed, impulsive nature.

I would have liked to see a bit more of Reed and Sue as parents. I'm not sure what happened to their son when the Fantastic Four were taken... though it was fairly good to see another of the heroes they were friendly with; even though I wasn't really as sure of their history with Mr. Impossible. He did make me chuckle a bit, though, in his appearance and what he was doing.

I think my favourite part of the comics was the rivalry between Ben and Johnny. I could tell that they cared for each other, even while butting heads more often than not and constantly sniping at each other.

I liked the artwork in these comics and I felt the scenes were depicted really well. The violence wasn't quite at the level as some of the Marvel comics I've read... but there was plenty of action in the scenes, as well as enough of the characters to keep me emotionally invested.

I found that the comic with Doom's 'son' was particularly moving. It was an interesting panel to view and I'm sure it must have been so to create.

I also particularly liked the different versions of the Fantastic Four in the artwork at the end of this comic book.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve been reading along with The Fantasticast to get through 70s Fantastic Four, and I hit another section I own! The first was Marvel Two-in-One Epic Collection: Cry Monster. This collection contains the first real climax of the Fantastic Four since while issue #50 was excellent, it was more focused on big ideas than the team itself. 100 was a stupid beat-em-up. 150’s crossover with the Avengers was cool, but the entire team wasn’t even together. This set begins right after the team breaks up, and builds toward a reintegration and confrontation with Doom. It’s coming off a brief run by Len Wein that I really enjoyed for the most part, and in this collection, the Len Wein and George Perez issue was my favorite (and not even the best of Wein/Perez). Unfortunately, the storyline itself spins its wheels far too much. It’s another escape-capture-escape-capture storyline, which happened a lot in the seventies. I’ve seen people defend this by saying that kids these days just don’t get the classic seventies writing. If so, why did I enjoy Wein and much of the end of Thomas? To be fair, it might be that I find Doom’s characterization to be too insane and erratic. He ‘s just too similar the pre-Claremont Magneto. Anyway, here are my issue-by-issue reviews:

Fantastic Four #192 ⧫ 3.5 Stars
This is the silly, fun issue after the rather dramatic break-up of the team. I really enjoy Johnny and the return villain, even if he’s totally obscure. I’m a little sad we didn’t get more Wyatt, but he sure is more relevant than the last few issues of Marvel Two-in-One he was in. I really like Rebecca Rainbow, and I’m sad Len Wein leaves the book in a few issues because I’d rather have seen more of her than the next few guest stars. I really enjoyed this issue, and I think it was a good send-off to George Perez.

Fantastic Four #193 ⧫ 3 Stars
The uninspired Darkoth the Death Demon returns from Fantastic Four issues 142-144 to receive a lame retcon. Diablo shows up to get defeated due to his ego: spoilers? Really, the villains are the worst part. Ben and Alicia’s relationship is good, and that ending cliffhangers is stunning. Pollard gives a great show on his first issue.

Fantastic Four #194 ⧫ 2 Stars
The shocking secret of the death demon is really boring. This is a fighty fight issue with a focus on the boring villains. It’s probably the low point of the book. Not awful, but not interesting.

Fantastic Four #195 ⧫ 2.5 Stars
The first ever Sue issue starts with her pissed off at the Impossible Man and needing Reed… It does move on to some better character stuff with Namor and Sue. Plus, Sue gets to kick butt. However, it’s against some really lame villains, and I just didn't feel like the Namor stuff went anywhere. Enh, it’s a wash.

Fantastic Four #196 ⧫ 2.5 Stars
All the stuff with the group wandering around L.A. is fun, but the Invincible Man stuff was lame, not to mention the capture, escape, capture formula at the end. I like the way the Doom stuff is shaping up, but I hope it gets better than this.

Fantastic Four #197 ⧫ 3 Stars
Okay, this is way overwritten, but the art is pretty good. It has some really cool moments, and some real headscratchers. So, it’s a mixed bag, but I think it comes off as more interesting and fun than the last three, managing to have some solid Reed moments. Just ignore the Red Ghost and Reed’s inconsistent mental control (Is he mind controlled or not? We will never know).

Fantastic Four #198 ⧫ 2 Stars
Reed invades Latveria! Only to be captured again… This storyline spins its wheels for this issue and the next when it could be characterizing Doom’s son to establish the most interesting part of either of these issues. The way Reed starts his invasion starts well, but after he meets up with Zorba, everything becomes stuff that has been in the book before. At least the art is good.

Fantastic Four #199 ⧫ 2.5 Stars
The only really good thing here is the idea of two sides of Doom. If this story weren’t dealing with raving supervillain Doom, then the idea of his nobility vs. his pride would be really amazing. As this story is, it’s a minor point in between the Four escaping and getting captured… again.

Fantastic Four #200 ⧫ 3 Stars
As I said at the start, 200 is the first real climax the series had. Wolfman really does succeed in forging the desperate struggle of Reed versus Doom. Sadly, it fails in just about everything else. The rest of the Four get precious little to do. Doom’s plan is shockingly stupid, literally foiled by the push of a button. Zorba and his revolution go against much of what we’ve seen in Latveria before. We don’t even really see the Four get any repercussions for this. However, the art is great and really gives weight and urgency to Reed’s struggle. An unhinged Doom, as much as I dislike the characterization, is a credible threat and mostly feels it.

In my head, the Doom in these pages is a Doombot. This collection is a very mixed bag with some weak villains leading into an overly generic take on one of Marvel’s greatest villains. It’s worth a read for fans, but this is far from Wolfman’s best work.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great volume. And it's Joe Sinnott's show all the way. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are famous for their work on this title but often inker Joe Sinnott's forgotten. He shines here, making the FF look fabulous. Great story too. This one's a classic, from the FF's best period, the first 200 issues.

[Kirby Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's fun, revisiting something you read as a kid. I remember when these issues came out... they didn't fit my beloved Lee/Kirby memories, but they certainly topped those I remembered from after Stan stepped away from daily writing, and they beat many of today's fare.

[Variaciones Enrojo]

Edición para Argentina, tomo 11 del coleccionable Los Héroes más poderosos de Marvel #11, primero dedicado a los 4F.
Traduce Fantastic Four USA #192-200.

[Dony Grayman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edición impresa en España para Argentina. Tomo 11 de Los Héroes más poderosos de Marvel, primero dedicado a Fantastic Four. Incluye la saga a cargo de Wein, Slifer, Pollard y Bill Mantlo.

[Kris Shaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had this book sitting in my backlog for so long that the Marvel Masterworks line actually caught up to it. This collection butts up perfectly against Vol. 17 in that line. Indeed, the issues collected in this book have been announced as part of the forthcoming Vol. 18, due out this September. I decided to bump this and two other collections up in order to give me a complete run to read going up to issue 214.

This is not the high point of the title by any stretch of the imagination, but these are still solid, well-crafted comics. Building off of the events at the end of issue 191, the Fantastic Four are no more. The four of them have all gone their separate ways, and their exploits are all woven together through scene changes. This almost feels like four separate stories in each issue that become more and more entangled until the team gradually gets back together.

#192 is basically a Human Torch solo story where he tangles with The Texas Twister. I have always had a soft spot for the Texas Twister ever since I encountered him in the West Coast Avengers back in 1985. #193 and 194 are a Thing solo story where he battles Diablo and learns the truth about Darkoth The Demon. #195 is a solo Invisible Girl story featuring the Sub-Mariner.

The threads all being to come together and the foe behind it all is Doctor Doom, all part of a plan to have his son become his successor to the throne of Latveria. This is one of the more satisfying Doctor Doom epics outside of Kirby's run. Like I said before, this was solid and enjoyable stuff even if this era isn't the strongest in the history of the title.

he late, lamented Marvel Premiere Classic Hardcovers were a sort of junior Masterworks line. While they weren't quite the “Blu-Ray” version of these issues like you would see in a Marvel Masterwork, they are still excellent. Marvel made too many of them in too short a period of time, resulting in many of these books being dumped to retailers at liquidation prices, killing the line off.

[Ian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reed Richards has lost his powers and the Fantastic Four has been disbanded. However, when a mysterious individual begins manipulating the former teammates, the stage is set for the return of Reed's powers and the reunification of the four heroes.

The FF have never been hugely interesting to me, mostly because I find them such unlikeable characters. Johnny is the kind of brash, arrogant jock that I loathed at school, Ben is a belligerent moron and Reed is borderline abusive in his treatment of his closest friends/family. Only Sue is in any way engaging, mixing femininity with, as Doctor Doom puts it here, underrated power.
So, to get me invested in an FF story it needs a really strong plot... something sadly lacking here.

Three-quarters of this book is the tiresome 'villain of the week' style of storytelling and it's not even as if the villains on offer are particularly interesting, with the likes of Red Ghost, Diablo and (*ugh*) the Texas Twister. The last quarter has a more iconic villain, the titular Doom, but he spends most of his time in tiresome megalomaniacal rants. There's a brief glimpse of something more interesting when Doom has to fight a clone who represents who he'd be if he hadn't been in the disfiguring explosion, but it's over too quickly to ever develop thematically.

In general this is an inoffensive FF story, but I found it so aggressively bland that it ended up feeling worse than the sum of its parts.

* More reviews here: https://fsfh-book-review2.webnode.page *

[Benja Calderon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Undécimo tomo con la Primera Familia como protagonista, porque sí amigos, antes del MCU, Marvel era Los X-Men y las 4 Fantásticos

Contiene el arco que inicia cuando el grupo ha sido disuelto, y cada uno de los miembros de los imaginautas hace su propio camino, sin darse cuenta que algo más grande esta sucediendo a sus espaldas, que llevará a Mister Fantástico a tomar una de las decisiones más importante de su carrera: poner fin a uno de sus mas temibles enemigos

No es un historia brillante, pero logra armar un buen arco, con un final bien interesante (o sea, ver a Doom así no es algo que cualquiera escribe)

[Francisco Becerra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wein and Perez doing classic F4? Yes please! I really love those good old stories of the F4; the no-holds-barred imagination that brought some of the greatest concepts for the whole Marvel universe, including one of the greatest comic villains ever: Doctor Doom. Of course it's campy compared with today's standards, but it's also incredibly enjoyable and fun.

[Scott E · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pre-1980s comics and The Fantastic Four make for a terrible combination. Horrific struggle to get through

[Mati G. W. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cuando la vuelta a las raíces se agradecen.

[Cody Wilson]

I’m embarking on a massive readthrough of Fantastic Four comics from the late-70s and 80s, and this collection is an odd place to start. Overthrow of Doom opens amid an awkward transition period for the FF title following writer Len Wein’s run. The titular team had disbanded for reasons not entirely apparent (but likely linked to Reed Richards’ loss of powers) so fill-in writers Roger Slifer and Bill Mantlo follow the solo adventures of the Human Torch and Thing. These stories are passable at best, buoyed by great art from George Pérez and Keith Pollard.

The ball gets rolling when Marv Wolfman joins the book as its regular writer. Wolfman is perhaps best understood in comparison to his predecessor on the title. While Wein’s scripting is careful and deliberate, his stories are generally procedural and emotionally inert. Wolfman’s work is the reverse: his stories overflow with passion, but his frenzied scripting could border on rambling and amateurish. Wolfman’s comics are messy for better and worse, and given the nearly unedited nature of 70s Marvel comics, this messiness could get out of hand.

Wolfman’s writing tics are on full display in this collection. To be fair, he has difficult task of tying together old plot threads (reuniting the FF and restoring Reed’s powers) while building up towards a climactic centennial celebration all in the span of six issues. He centers the story on longtime antagonist Dr. Doom, whose nonsensical plan for world domination drives the plot. Doom restores Reed’s powers, so that the villain’s clone can absorb those powers from Reed and his teammates, so that Doom can crown the clone as his successor to the throne of Latveria, so that he has an occasion to gift a statue to the United Nations that secretly contains mind-control rays with which he can hypnotize the delegates and gain ultimate power. So, yes, Wolfman’s plotting is characteristically chaotic, and his scripting follows suit. He engages in minimal self-editing, repeating the same words and phrases throughout each issue with frequent grammar mistakes. These comics are nearly stream-of-consciousness.

The downsides of Wolfman’s approach are apparent, but can the upsides redeem this collection? Not really. The team’s reunion is emotionally underwhelming. Wolfman scatters compelling ideas throughout the plot – such as a Latverian uprising against Doom and Doom’s confrontation with self-hate – but they remain underdeveloped and marginal to the story’s overall thrust. With that said, Wolfman’s Doom is a delight, cartoonishly villainous and absurdly distracted by his obsession with classical music. And despite a rocky flight, Wolfman manages to land the plane in FF #200 by delivering a thrilling, all-out brawl between Reed and Doom.

Penciller Keith Pollard deserves credit for bringing some sanity to this story. Pollard is somewhat forgotten, perhaps because he never developed a distinct style. He has a flair for dramatic panel layouts and a solid grasp on anatomy, but his pencils vary dramatically based on who finishes his work. For two issues in this collection, inker Pablo Marcos renders Pollard’s detailed anatomy in a way that recalls the photorealism of Neal Adams. By contrast, Joe Sinnott inks the majority of the pencils in this volume in a bold, frankly overbearing style. Much of the nuance in Pollard’s figures is obscured by Sinnott’s brush, as characters instead take on a stylized, Kirby-esque look. I appreciate that the title’s longtime inker has the opportunity to work on its anniversary issue, but I feel like his inks keep the book trapped under the shadow of Kirby during this era. Some of Sinnott’s hatching feels rushed, although his backgrounds are lushly rendered. While I’m generally mixed on his inks, Sinnott ultimately delivers when Pollard rolls up his sleeves for the story’s concluding beats.

Overall, this collection is skippable for most fans, although I can easily recommend FF #200 on its own for the Reed/Doom fight.

[Johnny Andrews · Rating 5 out of 5]

An early FF arc but a real good one. The team have disbanded as Reed has previously lost his powers. But that doesn't stop the others from missing out on being heroes or even staying away from each other.
Reed is tricked into helping someone but eventually in doing so he gets his powers back and then some, seemingly stronger than before but in doing so he realizes who is helping him, arch nemesis Dr. Doom, but why and who is the person that was the face between Doom's orders and Reed.
Read on to find out who the mysterious right hand man of Dr. Doom is.
Will Reed stop Doom's diabolical plan, whatever it may be, will the team fully unite?