Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Fantastic Four 235, p 05























Another one for my Byrne obsession… (click for larger image) As a collector of original comic book art, few things are higher up on my want list than originals from John Byrne's run on Fantastic Four. Once I discovered you could actually buy this stuff, I thought "I want some Byrne FF!" It's what started me down that long, terrible road of addiction. I've been looking for great examples for almost ten years, and when I see something special, I do my best to acquire it. I have some pages that I really like, but this one is exceptional. I think if I had been able to find a page of this quality from the start, I might not have looked so hard for others. This one has it all - some great action, a good self-contained page, and all four members of the team. It's also from the early part of the run (only Byrne's fourth issue of his 61 issue run!), which features traditional inking tools (i.e., pen and brush rather than magic marker - a trademark of later issues). These early pages tend to have tighter inks and more detail, and this one has some really cool detail. In this particular story, the FF go up against Ego - "The Living Planet!" The last panel shows some really cool "Daliesque" (as Byrne puts it) details of the surface of this massive monster!