Great! Does anyone know how to get in touch with him? His blog doesn’t list any contact info.

*edit* Nevermind, I got his e-mail.

Still looking for fans!

I’d never claim to be the biggest FF fan (either in actual size or level of devotion) it is my favorite comics series by far. I own every single issue of the main series, and have my comics storage space decorated with a FF theme.

The reason I love them so much? Well, there’s the family dynamic of the characters and the unlimited premise. But mostly, I don’t think any other long-running Marvel or DC series can match the consistency of quality of Fantastic Four. I mean, the sheer talent that has worked on the book and number of classic runs it can boast just can’t be matched (Lee/Kirby, Wein/Perez, Byrne, Simonson, Claremont/LaRocca Waid/Weiringo, McDuffie/Pelliter, etc.).

Fantastic Four was my gateway drug. It was an old issue of “World’s Greatest Comics,” which featured a reprint of the Fantastic Four taking down the Mad Thinker’s Awesome Android (issue #71). I remember the cover split into for segments with each member of the team dealing with the green robot). Soon, I was reading every appearance of the FF that I could get my hands on. I started collecting Avengers…and from there the whole thing ballooned out of control.

Over the years, I have added titles and dropped some, I picked up every issue of the Fantastic Four…even when Tom DeFalco was writing them (personally a low point in my fandom…even worse that when Medusa was on the team and I thought Reed and Sue were going to get a divorce).

I am loving the current Hickman arc, except I am distraught to learn that a team member will die. Ben Grimm and Sue Storm Richards are my favorite comic book characters of all time, but I fear for all four of them. Yes, I realize in time they will return (everyone comes back in comics), but it still rattles me.

I really hope its not Sue. The last few years have been really tough on all my favorite female characters, the Scarlet Witch and the Wasp (I didn’t like the way Bendis handled the She-Hulk either…he dismisses her as being too unstable to stay on the team and then gets the Red Hulk to join…also he used her to comic effect in the last issue of the New Avengers).

By the way, is anyone else getting a kick out of Hickman’s use of Andromeda from the Defenders (she hasn’t been around in years)?

I love the Fantastic Four. The first Marvel comic I read was Fantastic Four #81, which I found in my brother’s back-issue box. I devoured the next issues, and couldn’t understand why they kept hinting they’d be replacing Crystal with some “Sue” person. Soon I realized that the book may actually still be being published in the spinner racks at the drug store where’d I purchased the odd “Justice League of America” or “Superman” book. I was delighted to find FF #157. I now own every issue of the magazine.

I’ve read them through all the great times and the low times, especially that horrible DeFalco run already mentioned. I’ve railed at the discarded way in which Marvel’s treated the team members over the last decade, fooling with their character (Civil War) or making them far weaker than they should be (World War Hulk). They were once the flagship team and the flagship book of the company, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t be again.

They are in the only book at Marvel to naturally surpass 500 issues without getting a head start (TOS 39, Captain America 100, JIM 83, etc.). Nor did they get the benefit of any bi-weekly months. Heck, they even got dinged when their fill-in issues came out under different titles. They led to to the rest of Marvel, and I’ve never left.

The team is a family that argues, breaks apart, and always returns. But they are NOT weak, despite how they’ve been recently portrayed. Johnny Storm would easily defeat most Marvel heroes (and villains) if he were allowed to cut loose. Sue’s combination of invisibility and force fields seemed truly original at the time. Reed’s genius and what he used to do with his stretching powers were unstoppable, and Ben could only consistently be beaten back by the Hulk, and even then the outcome was rarely certain.

My personalized license plates have long held an abbeviation of the team’s name. I’m not claiming to be their biggest fan, since I don’t know all their fans, by I’m up there. And I love hearing from (and about) their other big fans. The team needs them.

Jim

In the words of Rod Serling himself, I submit myself for your approval as The World’s Greatest Fantastic Four Fan.

Another fan earlier nominated my friend Sean Kleefeld. I used to contribute reviews for Kleefeld’s Website, FF Plaza, which met with positive response from readers. Though FF Plaza is no longer in operation, I have plenty of bon mots about “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” on my own Quantum Blog, http://the-quantum-blog.blogspot.com. Go there and enter the words Fantastic Four in the internal search engine and you’ll find copious writings about what has always been at least my sentimental favorite comic book.

I consider The Fantastic Four the most conceptually perfect comic book ever created. The accepted answer to the question of what this book is about seems to be that it is the story of a family of super-powered adventurers. People tend to put the “family” aspect of it first, and while it is undeniably a large part of what makes The FF unique among heroes and hero teams, “family” is half of the Fantastic Four equation. The other half, the half that I find equally compelling, is that The Fantastic Four is a comic book about science, or a stylized comic-book version of it: its ideals, its values, its dreams, and its nightmares. Want to know what The FF is really about? I direct you to one page, just one single page: Fantastic Four #62, page 8. That speech by my favorite character, Dr. Reed “Mister Fantastic” Richards, is probably my favorite piece of writing in all of comics. I find it so inspiring that I keep it on my Palmtop. It is one of several devotions to the FF that I have. I also took pains to collect the Randy Bowen statues of the four lead characters, which I keep on my mantle. When the first FF movie was released, a newspaper reporter came to my comic book dealer asking for a Fantastic Four fan to interview. My dealer directed him at once to me. I am quoted in the feature article, and my picture with the FF statues appears in color to accompany it. (The picture is also on The Quantum Blog.)

While my true calling is storytelling and the arts, the first thing that I “wanted to be when I grew up” was A Scientist. From boyhood, I have always loved the different branches of science: astronomy and astrophysics, extraterrestrial life and SETI, physics, chemistry, quantum theory, oceanography, zoology–all things scientific. Reed Richards is the character in comics to whom I relate best because he is the embodiment of science and all scientific values. It was Reed that I first wanted to be. The Fantastic Four is really about Reed’s unending quest to “challenge the unknown” (to borrow a phrase from elsewhere in comics). Professor Joseph Campbell talked about a tradition in mythology of stories about the hero who goes out into the unknown wilderness, takes on its mysteries and dangers, and returns with the power to bestow boons on mankind. This is a good metaphor for science. It is also an apt description of the Fantastic Four. That’s pretty much who they are.

The best Fantastic Four adventures tell us that the greatest power of all is not a superhuman power, but rather the combined power of human intellect and human compassion. When the mind and the heart are on the same side, we are truly invincible. Dr. Doom can’t defeat us, Galactus can’t eat us.

The Fantastic Four has a lot in common with Star Trek, when you think about it. At its best, it is about a group–or a family–of heroes exploring new worlds, encountering new beings and new civilizations, and boldly going where no heroes have gone before. There are very few people, I think, who have the same understanding of and appreciation for the concept and history of The Fantastic Four that I have. So that’s why I submit myself as their greatest fan. Thanks for listening.