What are the best FF runs or stories of the last 20 years?

[Jamie]

Well, the title really says it all. What would you say are the best Fantastic Four stories or creative team runs since, say, 1989? And why would you recommend them? I'm interested in suggestions.

[DeadXMan]

Byrne's ,CC & Waid

[Kirayoshi]

Byrne's ,CC & Waid
Byrne left Marvel in '85, IIRC, to do Superman for awhile.

I'd also nominate Walt Simonson's brief run. Time travel, Death's Head, Stalin-Mecha, dinosaurs, Doctor Doom and the New FF. What's not to like?

[Magneto Rocks]

Waid's is without doubt the best in that period, but I agree with Kirayoshi- Simonson's is excellent as well, it's not up to the level of his Thor or anything but it's still damn good.

Can't agree on the suggestion of CC's though, not big with that run at all.

[Retrodork]

I liked the 'Unthinkable' story arc quite a bit. When Doom 86'd his Valeria in order to gain power from those demons...damn.....

[Iron Maiden]

For the most part, "Unthinkable" is the best FF story for quite some time. It is not necessarily a good Doctor Doom story. :biggrin: IMO, Doom has always had some tribal loyalties... note how he had kept Boris on for many years. I just thought it didn't make sense that Valeria's fate was the most brutal that he had ever dealt to even the worst of his enemies... and she was Boris's grand-daughter. And that he would be trumped by lower level demons like the Haazereth after dealing with Mephisto was a bit hard to take. But that's just my eccentric take on it. "Authoritative Action" was a good follow up to "Unthinkable" but I felt that the whole Jemas debacle took away a bit of the creative team's momentum after that.

The Claremont run did have a rocky start but I thought the Reed in Doom armor storyline was worth reading. Not a lot of what came to be known as FF volume 3 run is collected except some of the Pacheco/Loeb/Marin run. That team turned out some beautiful art but the storytelling was a bit lacking, the worst being the almost incomprehensive conclusion to the Abraxas tale. The Scott Lobddell/Alan Davis run that started FF volume 3 was far too brief and showed promise. As a sort of alternate reality FF, I found the Heroes Reborn FF (sometimes known as FF volume 2) FF an interesting take on the FF's early years. It pretty much compressed the whole FF mythos from FF#1 to the Coming of Galactus, which ended up being a crossover for all the Heroes Reborn titles.

Byrne and Simonson as writer/artist both did well on the book but I preferred Byrne's for being less quirky. Byrne's Terrax/Doom/Surfer storyline was one of the best, along with the FF's excursion to the Negative Zone. But Byrne could turn out some good one shot issues like FF #236 "Terror in a Tiny Town", something that is a bit of a lost art today

[DDM]

John Byrne, Walter Simonson, & Chris Claremont's Fantastic Four. Steve Englehart's Fantastic Four with Ms. Marvel II (Sharon Ventura), Crystal, Thing, & Human Torch is interesting too, although I hate Sharon's transformation into She-Thing.