Fantastic Four in the 90s
Walter Simonson continued as creative lead on Fantastic Four in the early 90s. Just in time for the Acts of Vengeance saga. He writes an oddball story about the FF protesting a super-human registration act in Washington that leads to battles with various z-grade villains and even fighting the United States Senate.
That's when Simson gets murky. He spins a drawn-out yarn involving a Time Bubble in an alternate future, as well as the introduction of a multiversal bureaucracy known as the Time Variance Authority. The only notable stories are a three-part tale drawn by Art Adams that presents a goofy story about a "New" Fantastic Four which consists of Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, the Hulk, and Wolverine. It was a tongue in cheek commentary on these characters who were absurdly popular at the time. Outside of that, the Thing is restored to his mutated form and Sharon Ventura is cured.
There is also a quickly disposed of plot where it is suggested that Doctor Doom hadn't fought the Fantastic Four as often as they thought, instead of the majority of their battles being with various Doombot impostors. This was quickly dispatched very very soon. After Simonson’s convoluted time travel adventures, Tom DeFalco took over writing the title with issue #356, wit Paul Ryan taking on art duties. The pair worked on the Fantastic Four until the first volume ended with issue #416.
I think I might need my head examined because Tom DeFalco's run on Fantastic Four is actually pretty good. It was the 90s an era rife with shitty stories, horrible crossovers, huge ass guns, cyborgs, and all other kinds of awfulness. These elements are present in DeFalco's run, but it is all done ironically.
DeFalco shook things up, by revealing the woman that Johnny Storm had been married to all this time was not really Alicia Masters but a Skrull spy named Lyja. This creates some awkward moments when they rescue the real Alicia and try to get their lives back to normal. Llyja tries to keep her romance with Johnny alive even though she is a pawn being used to kill the Fantastic Four.
Then there is the "death" of Reed Richards, which leaves the team shattered. Sue picks up the reigns of leadership (in an awful skimpy outfit, because it was the 90s after all) and hiring Ant-Man to be their resident scientist. Young Franklin is replaced by a cybernetic teenager from an alternate future (which again, it was the 90s) and the Fantastic Four have to deal with the threat of a foe named Hyperstorm.
It's not the strongest run of Fantastic Four, but it is the most consistent, as most issues are drawn by Paul Ryan who is a fairly decent penciler. Things kind of take a downturn near the end as it turns out that Reed Richards is still alive and DeFalco appears to be rushed to finish his storyline so that the stage is set for the Onslaught saga. The last two issues of this run of Fantastic Four are parts of that event. Other than presenting a story where the Fantastic Four are battling constructs of a lot of old villains and teaming up with many of their allies, there's not a whole lot to talk about here.
Downsides to this run include constant crossovers with events with the Infinity War, Infinity Crusade, Starblast, and Atlantis Rising. All stories that don't really have any relevance or lasting impact. Another bit of meh is a story where Wolverine slashes the Thing in the face. For a while, the Thing wears a mask and has a scarred face, but this is quickly made a non-issue thanks to the aforementioned rush to the finish line.
After the Onslaught event, the Fantastic Four title was part of the Heroes Reborn event. Marvel rebooted the Fantastic Four, starting with a new issue #1. The art and scripting was done by Jim Lee for the first six issues before sourcing it out to other artists under the Wildstorm Entertainment wing.
It was an attempt to make the Fantastic Four more like the superheroes over at Image Comics. They succeeded, but not in the way they had hoped: It had the look of an Image book, and also the sloppy writing as well. If you ever wanted a Fantastic Four team that was as one dimensional as the paper it was printed on, this is the series to read.
What I find really disturbing about this series is the fact that this is a universe that was created by their son Franklin Richards. Everything that existed was dictated by this little boy. That's pretty troubling when you consider how sexualized and adult everything was in the Heroes Reborn arc. When you consider everything that goes on you realize that Franklin might not be right in the head.
Most of these stories recycled old Stan Lee/Jack Kirby stories. What makes this worse is the fact that Heroes Reborn quickly became a sinking ship and what was intended to be an ongoing thing was suddenly crunched into 13 issues. Also, if you think the Invisible Woman has had it rough when it comes to children before, what with the miscarriage and all, get ready for issue #11, when Sue tells Reed she's pregnant, only for the plot thread to be dropped as soon as Heroes Reborn ended. So did Franklin use his imagination to abort this baby or what?
Heroes Reborn came to a climax where the Fantastic Four and the Avengers teamed up to stop Galactus from destroying the Earth. This was a god awful mess because it was spread across all four Heroes Reborn titles and it involved time travel, but the plots to each story were incredibly different. Then there's the 13th issue of the run which was part of a storyline called World War III, wherein the Heroes Reborn universe was merged with the Wiildstorm Universe. Which was kind of an interesting concept, but the story was awful. Also unless your local comic book shop has an extensive back issue collection you'll probably never read it. That's because Wildstorm Entertainment was purchased by DC Comics, and reprints of that storyline are hard to come by.
Marvel’s Heroes Reborn experiment was doomed to failure and the Fantastic Four and the Avengers were brought back to the Marvel Universe proper a year later.
After the Heroes Reborn debacle, Marvel rebooted the Fantastic Four title again. The first three issues were fantastic., mostly thanks to the always beautiful artwork of Alan Davis. It brought the Fantastic Four back to basics again. It also introduced some interesting new villains, the mystical beings known as the Ruined, the strange other-dimensional being known as Iconoclast, and an interesting twist to the age-old "battle with Red Ghost and the Super-Apes" wherein the Red Ghost is the mindless primate and his apes are super-smart.
Sadly, Lobdell and Davis' run was short lived. With issue #4 the art duties went on to Salvadore Larocca, who isn't a slouch at the drawing table himself. This also started Chris Claremont's run at the title. You'd think that would be a good thing but, it’s not really.
Whenever you mention Chris Claremont's name, people naturally remember him for breathing new life into the X-Men franchise in the 1970s. He worked on that title for sixteen years. However, this run of Fantastic Four was not great. Reading it, you'd think that Claremont was a one trick pony with all the derivative storylines that borrowed from his longtime X-Men run. Particularly with the Fantastic Four going to Genosha, dealing with Roma and the Captain Britain Corps, and other elements that the guy just can't seem to let go of.
Claremont also introduced Valeria von Doom, the daughter of Susan Richards and Doctor Doom in an alternate future. Which, if you read his X-Men run, it is incredibly derivative of his Rachel Summers storyline. Claremont also uses his work on this title to revisit some of his played out characters: Roma, Saturynine, Technet, the Warwolves and a visit to Genosha. If you want to revisit 80s plotlines that nobody gave a shit about, Claremont’s run of Fantastic Four is what’ you’re looking for.
