Monthly Archives: June 2026

“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!” Fantastic Four No. 221

25 Thursday Jun 2026

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Fantastic Four 221
“Tower of Crystal … Dreams of Glass!”
Published: May 1980
Writer: John Byrne
Pencils: Byrne
Inks: Joe Sinnott
Letters: Jim Novak
Colors: Carl Gafford
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Cover: Bill Sienkiewicz and Joe Sinnott


Synopsis

Last issue, the FF rushed to the North Pole to examine an alien ship that threatened the Earth by reversing its magnetic polarity. As the Invisible Girl investigates, the rest of the team is attacked by strange alien robots that can change form. Sue reaches the aliens and discovers they simply want to return to their home planet. The aliens call off their robots and Reed fixes their ship so they can leave.


What’s going on here?

Thanks to reader and comic blogger Ben Herman (you can check out his comics reviews here), I’ve learned I was basically correct in my hypothesis that issues 220 and 221 were one story split in two. As John Byrne wrote on his Byrne Robotics forum, the story was written as a single issue to be a giveaway as a part of a promotion for Coca-Cola. According to Byrne (who should always be taken with a grain of salt), after approving the story’s plot, Coke rejected it as “too violent.” Marvel decided to salvage it by turning it into these two issues, which required Byrne adding a few pages, likely last issues’ flashback. And as predicted, all the fighting takes place in this issue.

Overall, it’s a solid and satisfying story that feels a bit like a throwback to the golden age of science fiction. If I had to guess, Byrne read somewhere about the earth’s magnetic polarity reversing half a million years ago and saw the kernel of a fun story. The issue does re-introduce to the Fantastic Four the trope of misunderstand aliens that first appeared in FF 24 and reoccurs several times over Byrne’s later FF run.

The ho-hum cover is by Bill Sienkiewicz and Joe Sinnott, leading to this fun signature:


What I liked

As we shall see, empowering Sue becomes one of Byrne’s projects during his run (picking up on the work begun by Len Wein and Marv Wolfman) and we get the first glimpses of it here. There is still too much hand-wringing from Sue for my tastes but in this issue she is the level-headed driver of the narrative and the one who resolves the conflict.


There are some nice touches throughout the comic. I liked this bit of comedy with Ben and the alien robots:


This was a very cool panel from Byrne and Sinnott which reminded me of the cover of Atlas Shrugged:


I always like it when we get fun credits (and note Jim Shooter is now appearing regularly in them, the first editor-in-chief to do so):


What I didn’t like

The aliens’ “oopsie” seems a bit too pat an answer to explain their actions. Over 500,000 years transpire and they didn’t think a civilization might have evolved in that time?


And unfortunately another Byrne-ism makes its FF debut here: really pretentious titles for his stories.

Anything else?

The letters pages of these two issues included a lively discussion of Sue and her direction as a character. The letters page of issue 220 consisted of five letters in response to a longer letter by Carol Strickland published in issue 216. Issue 221 had another long letter from Strickland and a response from Roger Stern (for some reason). It’s a reminder of how central letters pages were to comic book fandom. Back then every letter had the writer’s full name and complete address so they could correspond with each other. Today we have anonymous message boards and fans trading insults on social media. Also of note, a message from Jim Shooter about a Stan Lee appearance at a comic con. He advises fans to write the organizer for more info. Life before the internet, kids! (OK, I’ll now stop yelling at clouds).


Overall

Another solid proto-Byrne issue

“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!” Fantastic Four No. 220

15 Monday Jun 2026

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Fantastic Four 220
“…And the Lights Went Out All Over the World!”
Published April 1980
Writer: John Byrne
Pencils: Byrne
Inks: Sinnott
Letters: Jim Novak and Irving Watanabe
Colors: Bob Sharen
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Cover: Byrne and Sinnott

Synopsis

Members of the Fantastic Four are scattered around New York when all mechanical devices shut down. After saving lives, the team regroups at the Baxter Building, where they learn from the Avengers that it was a world-wide phenomenon. To investigate, the team boards its ICMB and heads to the North Pole. After a crash landing, they discover a huge alien presence.


What’s going on here?

So remember in my last post where I said FF 219 was the first issue of a Doug Moench / Bill Sienkiewicz run that would take us up to the first John Byrne written issue? That wasn’t entirely true. This comic is the first John Byrne-written issue (he writes the next issue as well), and it’s a pretty good one.

I don’t know the story behind why Byrne wrote and drew these two issues (Joe Sinnott inked), and why they appear after the first Moench / Sienkiewicz issue. My guess is the Byrne stories were once intended to be one longer story, likely an annual, and it was broken in two and used as inventory issues due to some deadline problems. Notably, there isn’t a single fight scene in this issue, which is almost unheard of for a standard Marvel comic of this era and which suggests it was a longer story chopped in two (assuming the fighting happens in part two). The issue also recaps the team’s origin at length, more evidence it was intended as a stand-alone comic that might be picked up by new readers. And there’s a pin-up at the end, which indicates the page count didn’t come out evenly when they cut the story in two.

Byrne has a long history of co-plotting the X-Men with Chris Claremont, and had written comics for Charlton, but this is just his second Marvel writing credit (following Marvel Two-In-One 50). Yet it has many of Byrne’s familiar fingerprints, including cameos of other Marvel heroes (the Avengers, Vindicator), something Canadian, callbacks to the Lee/Kirby run and cool alien stuff. In all, an auspicious Fantastic Four debut for Byrne.


What I liked

Furthering the case that this story was intended for new readers, Byrne introduces each of the FF members in turn, and gives them a chance to show off their powers. First up is Ben (who helpfully tells new readers he’s not as invulnerable as the Hulk):

Then comes Sue:

… Johnny …


and finally Reed.


All of these vignettes are elegant little snapshots into the four, and I suspect not a little influenced by a similar sequence in Fantastic Four No. 1.


I liked the inclusion of the Avengers and especially Vindicator (this is before he changed his name to Guardian), which weren’t really necessary for story-telling purposes but serve to weave the FF into the rest of the Marvel universe:


Some fun Ben/Reed banter:



The alien installation at the North Pole looks impressive, and reminded me a lot of the Master of the World story in Alpha Flight 3-4 (also by Byrne).


What I didn’t like

Despite taking up two pages, the retelling of the FF’s origin looked pretty lackluster and wan.


Reed’s plan for investigating a world-wide power outage is … just go up in a spaceship and hope you see something suspicious? Some scientist.


Also, every car, plane and mechanical device around the world suddenly switches off and no one dies?



Anything else?


This pin-up by Joe Sinnott seems pretty obviously an unused cover for FF 214. I think the design is more dynamic than the Byrne cover they used, but you can judge for yourself here.

A cool house ad. I can’t identify the artist and the signature is hard to read, but maybe it’s James Sherman, who was active around that time.



Overall

A fun surprise

“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!” Fantastic Four No. 219

07 Sunday Jun 2026

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Fantastic Four 219
“Leviathans!”
Published March 1980
Writer: Doug Moench
Pencils: Bill Sienkiewicz
Inks: Joe Sinnott
Letters; Jim Novak
Colors: George Roussos
Editor: Jim Salicrup


Synopsis

As the Fantastic Four squabble in the Baxter Building, the Sub-Mariner is attacked in Atlantis by Barracuda, a flamboyant pirate who steals the horn Namor uses to command sea creatures. Back on the surface, Barracuda summons sea monsters to attack Manhattan so he can rob a bank. The Fantastic Four battle them while Namor and Johnny take the fight to Barracuda’s submarine. Eventually Sue uses her force field to separate the horn from Barracuda, who is knocked out by Namor and spared from worse by Sue’s entreaties.


What’s going on here?

Fantastic Four 219 marks the debut of the new creative team of Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz, with Joe Sinnott remaining on board as inker. Fittingly for a new start, this comic is very much a back-to-the-basics story, with deliberate echoes of the first FF issues and a relatively simple premise. These days, this issue would probably start another volume as a new No. 1, and be billed as a starting point for new readers.

Moench is probably best known for his runs on Batman and Master of Kung Fu, but by 1980 he had almost a decade of writing experience with dozens of credits on various horror comics. Moench and Sienkiewicz has previously worked together, mostly on Moon Knight stories that appeared in The Hulk magazine, but Moench had far more experience. Astonishingly, FF 219 was just Sienkiewicz’s 10th comic credit, and by far the most high-profile assignment for the then 22-year old. It was clear the powers that be at Marvel recognized his talent, and they would be richly rewarded in the years to come by some of the most innovative and ambitious comic art ever published in mainstream comics.

My first exposure to Sienkiewicz — and to be clear, it’s pronounced sin-kev-itch —was his groundbreaking New Mutants 18 from 1984, which shattered what I knew about comics. He quickly became one of my favorite artists, and many times I was crushed to find that a comic he provided the cover for was penciled by some lesser artist. In retrospect, it’s remarkable that in just four years Sienkiewicz went from this:


To this:


I had the pleasure of talking to Sienkiewicz at New York Comic Con a few years ago and I asked him if he felt hemmed in or cramped by Joe Sinnott’s inks on his FF run. I had assumed Sinnott was somehow holding him back, but he surprised be my saying that as a rookie artist, it was a great comfort in being inked by a legend like Sinnott, and he viewed his time on the FF as a valuable learning experience. Here’s a photo of the two of us (I’ll let you guess who is who):



To be clear, Sienkiewicz’s skills with his pencils and layouts are still embryonic, and on many pages, it looks like he’s trying to stuff to much on the page, making everything look small and cramped. Here’s an eight-panel page, which, to be fair, few artists besides George Perez can pull off:

But Sienkiewicz’s considerable abilities are also on display, such as in this quasi-comedic sequence:

Or in these dramatic panels:

What I liked

This issue featured a fun call-back to Fantastic Four 4, in which Namor summoned Giganto (a monstrous whale with arms and legs) to attack New York. The FF was able to defeat it when Ben carried a nuclear bomb into its gullet (art below by Jack Kirby and Sol Brodsky).


In FF 219, Ben wonders if the new monster is Giganto’s son.

Moench does a nice job drawing an arc from the FF squabbling in the Baxter Building (a classic Lee / Kirby opening), with first-rate Reed as Jerk material …

… to a warm, feel-good resolution.


I also liked this quip from Johnny:


And this reminder of the never quite resolved Namor-Sue dynamic:


What I didn’t like

Not much. I was prepared to be annoyed at Reed’s behavior but Moench played it off skillfully.

Barracuda’s pirate lingo is a bit much:


Overall


A promising start