Review by Karl Verhoven

It’s astonishing to consider The Fantastic Four hit 175 issues under only six writers (to give Jack Kirby the credit he didn’t receive at the time). It only took another fourteen issues for the next four to try their hands, all reprinted here. The cover listing indicates sixteen issues, but fails to mention only the covers are supplied from two fill-in reprints during the run from October 1976 to February 1978. Be warned, there’s not a lot to cheer beyond George Pérez finally transitioning from accomplished and attractive pages into a superstar artist with the full visual arsenal at his disposal.

The best material opens the volume, with the Impossible Man rampaging through the Marvel offices demanding his own comic followed by the Frightful Four having the audacity to audition for new members in the FF’s Baxter Building HQ. Both are written by Roy Thomas as light comedy rather than superhero threats and succeed as such, elevated by Pérez, who knows not to force the jokes. The Frightful Four story begins what’s intended as an epic, returning to the theme of alternate worlds Thomas introduced in Volume 16, but it very quickly flounders as Thomas leaves the writing to assorted others who drag it on interminably. Among them is Bill Mantlo writing the likes of “You still haven’t told us how the android wrested power from you in your own kingdom Annihilus”.

Len Wein is responsible for most of the remaining material, and to his credit introduces newly created foes rather than reviving the usual suspects for another go-round. The Eliminator and Salem’s Seven haven’t become legends, but Nicholas Scratch made the WandaVision TV show, and as designed by Pérez they’re visually distinctive and interesting. In fact they flatter to deceive as Wein’s plots of a mad cyborg and the witch community of New Salem are standard page fillers even if they offer more background to the mysterious Agatha Harkness. Despite a loss of super powers being pure melodrama Wein’s last story returns the Molecule Man effectively, splits the FF and turns the team over to Marv Wolfman for the final issue reprinted here and to take the team into Volume 18.

Beyond Pérez, too little here is memorable, and unless you’re a completist this is a volume to skip. However, the content is also available in black and white in Essential Fantastic Four Volume 8 and Volume 9. Everything is also available in the Epic Collection Counter-Earth Must Die.