Before 1991, each Fantastic Four story built on the one before, to make one gigantic story that lasted thirty years. But that kind of continuity no longer exists: writers are now expected to preserve the status quo, and leave characters more or less as they found them. How did this happen?
The key events
1987: Jim Shooter (editor in chief of Marvel comics) is forced out.
Shooter cared about continuity and presided over the only consistently successful period (both creatively and financially) since Stan Lee. After Shooter, continuity ceased to be a priority and the Marvel Universe ended.
FF 296: a major celebration of the past.
Appropriately, the end of continity began with a giant nostalgia-fest: A triple sized 25th anniversary issue, written by Shooter and Stan Lee, drawn by numerous artists, looking back to the beginning.
FF 300: Alicia and Johnny marry
This milestone saw a major change, one that had evolved over many years: Johnny's marriage to Alicia. It would only last for as long as continuity lasted.
FF304+ Big developments
Arguably the greatest silver age writer of all, Steve Englehart, was put on the book. In just twelve issues he took the FF into a new era (and of course increased sales): Ben evolved into a new, stronger form, finally defeated the Hulk, and became the new leader of the FF. Reed and Sue bought a house and settled down as they always planned to. Crystal (hurrah!) finally returned, along with a new ember, Sharon (yes, two women in the FF! Englehart also wrote a superb old-style annual that tied together the loose ends with Dr Doom. Things were really happening.
But the new editorial regime wanted the characters as brands, not stories. Englehart was forced to accept disruptive and inappropriate crossovers, to cancel further changes, to return Reed and Sue to the team and get rid of the evolved Thing form.* This was incredibly frustrating for him (as detailed here).
*(The evolved Thing temporarily came back under Simonson so his final end could be more decisive)
FF322-333: sleeping through old stories
Englehart did not want to be associated with this new "going nowhere" FF, so he used a pen name, John Harkness. To show how he felt, his final stories involved the FF being asleep and playing out all their old adventures in their dreams.
These stories - dreaming repeats of old stories - were prophetic. This is exactly what Marvel later did with Heroes Reborn and arguably the Ultimates. In his final two frame Englehart (as John Harkness) admits that the situation is completely broken and it would take a better man than him to fix it.
And that is how FF continuity ends. Simonson has done his job. "The entire run turns out to be one giant time fiddle in order to get back to where they started." Ben is suddenly and miraculously back to his old self. Why? Because somebody up there (the editor) "likes him better that way." Ben and Johnny start to insult each other, mechanically, because that's their role. Everything is "back to normal!" The FF are "back where we belong an' that's just the way it's supposed ta be!" You can hear the editors breathe a collective sigh of relief. All that dangerous character development is history. Who needs it? Welcome to New Marvel.
What did Simonson do next? Like Englehart, he had no appetite for working under these new restraints.
"When I got off the Fantastic Four, I started looking for work outside of Marvel."
- Walter Simonson, in "Modern Masters Volume Eight"
DeFalco's run
What happens to the FF next? After a quick fill in issue we have a bold new era of the FF under Tom DeFalco. And the very first thing he does is to retcon Alicia: who was now a Skrull. Now Johnny will be single forever, Alicia will be the Thing's girlfriend forever, and the story will never progress. Ever.
DeFalco is a really nice guy, and an expert on Fantastic Four history. His writing was fine, and the Paul Ryan art was perfectly good. But his run on the FF is generally regarded as the worst ever. Why? There was nothing in it to make readers care.
The irony is that DeFalso did not need to retcon Alicia's marriage. If he had allowed the story to come to its natural conclusion it would have ended anyway, as a powerful and natural conclusion to an epic thirty year love affair. But instead it became the poster child for bad retcons.
The new Fantastic Four
The Fantastic Four after issue 322 look exactly like the old Fantastic Four before 322, except the story never develops. Literally nothing of lasting consequence ever happens.
The new FF did not entirely forget the old FF. Ben Grimm even visited the old FF in the 1998 annual (where Ben finds himself in real time continuity), but the idea of living in the real world seemed really strange. Real time continuity? That's so old fashioned. So 1960s.
Let's look at what would have happened if the story had been allowed to continue:
The climax to the 30 year saga: the lost stories
After thirty years we never got to see the climax to the story. But the story followed the classic focmula so we can reconstruct what would have happened.
to be continued
1. Reed finally chooses family over work. He had always promised to give Franklin the time he needed, and the pressure to do so became greater and greater. In the end Franklin was kidnapped by Mephisto himself - twice within a few months! It is inconceivable that Reed would have let this slide. FF 305 was not the first time that Reed had tried to put Franklin first, but this time it was permament. Everything in the previous thirty years leads to this inescapable conclusion.
2. Johnny and Alicia's quick marriage would lead to an equally quick divorce. They are following the classic story formula where lovers are separated by tragedy (in this case marrying the wrong people) and this leads to self discovery (Ben accepts himself, Johnny grows up). As in all great stories, the true lovers will end up together:
3. Ben would marry Alicia and
4 Johnny would get together with Crystal.
The proof
We can test these predictions using the one and only published canonical Fantastic Four story from this period: Stan Lee's The last Fantastic Four Story. This is Stan Lee we're talking about! He started it and he finished it. Let's see what the story tells us:
1. Reed and Sue leave to focus on Franklin.
2. Alicia is not with Johnny
3. Alicia is with Ben
4. The final scene: they head for the moon
The Last Fantastic Four Story: the last panel
Crystal
FF Annual 21 (just before 318) - returns to the moon - the infamous butchered text, we don't know the actual story.
to be continued
The Last Fantastic Four Story: filling in the details
When we left the Big Fantastic Four story in FF 322, Ben was leading the team, and it included Crystal and She-Thing. But in The Last Fantastic Four Story it's Reed and the old team. Is that a contradiction? Not necessarily.
The Last Fantastic Four Story begins with an attack on a military facility. It follows that the Fantastic Four are there because the government asked them. The government would want a team that (a) they knew, (b) had high level security clearance, and (c) had expertise in high technology. So they would ask Reed. And Reed would of course say yes: even though Franklin is the top priority, he can still help when convenient.
This adds extra significance to the end if the story where Reed finally owes the government no favors. he can finally turn off the lights at the Baxter Building, safe in the knowledge that the government won't keep coming back for "just one more request."
And what about Crystal?
to be continued
Do they ever really leave the team?
Did Ben plan to do this forever?
Is Johnny happy to do this forever?
What would happen after Johnny and Alicia separate?
Summary: the key issues
FF 305: the last monthly book with the old team
FF 322: the last in-contuinity issue
[never published: maybe 20-50 issues in between]
The Last Fantastic Four Story: the four finally get what they want.
What would happen next?
to be continued
The FF can never end
Johnny always wanted to prove himself, Johnny would come back
More family than ever
More hotheaded action than ever
More fun than ever!
The next generation
At the same time as Englehart was suffering from editorial interference on the Fantastic Four, Walt Simonson was having the same problems on the Avengers:
"I kinda like having a long-range story idea. .... I found very quickly that I kept having to alter my stories in the midst of writing them. I'd have an issue out, be writing a new plot, and they'd say 'Oh, by the way, next issue Thor's out in space. You can't use him. The breaking point came because I put Reed and Sue in the Avengers... I got permission to do this six months in advance. I got to issue #300, where I was going to do a new team, and I was told right about then, "Oh, by the way, we're putting Reed and Sue back in the FF. You can use them for an issue, and that's it. End of Story. I was pretty annoyed. I'd been working up storylines with permission for months, and watched it eviscerated. So I thought, 'This just isn't working out. Whatever you have to have to write this book, I don't have it.'"
- Walter Simonson, in "Modern Masters Volume Eight: Walter Simonson" By Eric Nolen-Weathington, Walter Simonson, Roger Ash
Simonson resigned from the Avengers, then the Fantastic Four immediately became available, so he gave it one last shot. As with Englehart, Simonson was prevented from moving the FF forward in any way, because editors want characters that don't change. So Simonson wrote a series of stories about interference by controlling beings who hate change (metaphors for the editors):
"The entire run turns out to be one giant time fiddle in order to get back to where they started"
- Walter Simonson, in "Modern Masters Volume Eight"
FF334-336: not what he wanted to write
The first three issues used up stories Simonson had planned for the Avengers. He draws attention to the fact that the FF are in no danger from regular villains (how can they be? The FF are now brands, not stories.). every cover says more or less the same thing: "Alone against the deadliest villains in the universe" and the She-Thing is shown easily defeating them, and saying "you're kidding, right?"
FF337-341: the stories cannot move forward
This story is about all-powerful beings (good metaphors for Marvel editors) who prevent the world from moving into the future. It ends with Galactus using the ultimate nullifier to turn everything back to the way it was. To repeat what Simonson said, "The entire run turns out to be one giant time fiddle in order to get back to where they started"
Incidentally, this is one of the greatest FF stories ever. The FF are going out on a spectacular high, fully earning the title "world's greatest comic magazine"
FF343-346: trapped in the past
After a fill in issue (342) the FF are trapped in the past, apparently killed by dinosaurs. Could the metaphor be any clearer?
347-349: what has Marvel become?
Remember Englehart's complaint that new Marvel would like nothing more than empty commercial crossovers with its best selling brands? Simonson was joking about this with Kurt Busiek and they decided "what the heck, we'll actually do it!" They got the hottest artist (Art Adams) and the biggest selling characters (Wolverine, Spider-Man, Hulk and Ghost Rider), called the the "new Fantastic Four" and put these titles on the comics: "THE WORLD'S MOST COMMERCIALEST COMIC MAGAZINE" and "THE WORLD'S MOST COLLECTIBLE COMIC MAGAZINE" with "THE WORLD'S MOST EXPLOITATIVE CAMEO" And sure enough, these issues break sales records.
FF350: the end of continuity.
This is the issue where a new extra-powerful Dr Doom turns up and say that many of the previous appearances of Doom were just Doombots - even the ones we felt sure were genuine. Simonson has said in interviews that his purpose was to give fans a get-out clause. If they find any Doom appearance they don't like then it's OK to say it was a Doombot.
This is the new Dr Doom seen in Heroes Reborn and elsewhere, the bigger shinier Doom who never shows human weaknesses. Not to be confused with the old fallible Doom of Stan and Jack's Fantastic Four or Englehart's Super Villain Team Up. That was the old Doom and was probably a Doombot anyway.
This image is a good metaphor for New Marvel: big and shiny, and continuity does not matter. All that matters is hot writers, and let's face it, by any measure Simonson's writing is hot.
FF353-354: the final end of continuity
Simonson's final arc is a parody of what Marvel had become: a Time Variance Authority that interfered in tiny areas but was unable to have any lasting effect or see the bigger picture. it was all done in good humor: every middle manager in the TVA was a clone of Mark Gruenwald, Marvel's resident continuity expert.
"[The TVA was] a satire of where I thought Marvel was going at the time. They were becoming more corporate, more of an organization. ... [The TVA] were in some kind of null time zone. They had oodles and oodles of desk jockeys... There's no upper management."
- Walter Simonson, in "Modern Masters Volume Eight"
What is the message about Marvel editorial and continuity? The old timelines were too messed up. The only solution is to split into infinite timelines, forget about the old stuff, and stop worrying. All the old timelines are destroyed. In the final Simonson arc the FF literally drive an extress train thriough contunuity (and yes, I do mean literally)
The next page boldly states that the FF are going to begin again. So technically FF 333 is the last Marvel Universe FF. But the FF are too important to end on such a down beat. The next writer gave the FF a spectacular and unforgettable farewell.
Preeeesenting: Marvel's greatest living writer artist, the only man to take a core Lee-Kirby title and do it better, Walt Simonson!
FF351: characters as brands
The Marvel Universe was about an ever changing story. Modern Marvel is about static brands that can be monetized through movie deals and lunchboxes. The key to a successful branding is to understand a brand's essential core. If you read Tom Brevoorts's blog you will often see people suggesting change, and he will always come back to what he sees as the essential core of each character. FF351 is all about that. Two higher dimensional beings analyze the Fantastic Four's essential core. What are they and how can they be exploited.?
FF352: continuity is flexible
The next issue continues the New Marvel message that continuity is flexible. The title, subtitle and Dr Doom comments could come straight from a Marvel editor, weary of continuity, who just wants freedom for characters in shiny costumes to hit people without worrying over the details.
To make the metaphor complete - leaving behind the old Fantastic Four - they remove their clothes and leave them behind. We're starting afresh, entering a new and sexy era!