Scenes from the Life of an Amateur Comic Book Collector--(17)--Search for the Fantastic Four

Recently I completed my collection of Marvel Essentials reprint volumes of the Fantastic Four. Volumes 1 though 8 go up to issue number 183. So rather than wait for volume 9 to come out, I decided to catch up to the present with as many back issues and other collections as I could find. There are color reprints of the FF works of George Perez, John Bryne, and Walter Simonson but they don't cover every issue. There is a gap between issues about the 190s about 214, then 215 to 220 is covered by a John Bryne collection. Bryne picks up for issue 232 and continues way into the upper 200s, but I have only gotten as far as 230, with a few sporadic issues in there. So my mission was to find the missing issues.

I went to Cosmic Comics, Time Machine, Midtown (which had no early ones), Metropolis Collectibles--really a mail order house, but I found their address on the web--and St. Marks Comics which was having a half-price sale on back issues. I went to Metropolis before work and found a few good issues for reasonable prices. I managed to find almost every missing issue. Now I just need 195, 197, and 213. A lot happens. Reed Richards loses his stretching power, but regains it just in time for a final showdown with Dr. Doom in the 200th issue. Then the FF engages in a gigantic intergalatic battle with the Skrulls which goes on for several issues and involves recruiting Galactus, the devourer of planets, to save the world from a super-powerful being called the Sphinx. It gets very distracting when a bunch of other heroes from a defunct comic called Nova into the action in a wild attempt at crossover. It's almost like a continuing episode of Doctor Who with endless space battles, a beautiful alien queen, a battle between the Skrull general and his treacherous wife, and a planet split into four separate parts.

Byrne's work starting with 232 is way too stylized for me. Everyone looks so cartoonish. I prefer the realistic earlier issues which resembles the art of Dick O'Neal at DC. In the early John Bryne series, the Human Torch finds a female equivalent, but later falls in love with Alicia Masters, the blind sculptress romantically involved with the Thing. but it turns out she's a Skrull in disguise. I hate when that happens.