Since super-stars was actually published in May of 1974 and featured the same F antastic Four lineup as shown in Byrne’s try-out tale, this fit perfectly within the era. It was renamed to GIANT-SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR with its second issue, meaning that no GIANT-SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR #1 was ever actually published.) (The first Fantastic Four Giant that Marvel published was actually titled GIANT-SIZE SUPER-STARS #1. Taylor, and Bill Wiist handled finishing the artwork.Įarly 2005 the project was completed and given the artificial designation of (The imaginary) GIANT-SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR #1. Ron Miller, James Pipik, James Stewart, Darren Taylor, James C. Mike O’Brien volunteered to do the scripting chore, and fellow board members Stephen Bertrand, Bill Dowling, Matthew Hawes, Aaron Leach, F. The inking, coloring, and lettering would be divided up among several board members, but one person was chosen to script the entire tale to make a consistent narrative. Take the pencils and plot and finish the story. board member and Byrne fan Matthew Hawes suggested a challenge to the other artistic fans of the forum, with Byrne’s blessing: In 2004, on the Network 54 website’s message board dedicated to the artist, which Byrne himself frequented, the try-out pages were posted and discussed. Over a decade later in 1985, fanzine COMICS INTERVIEW published the pages along with an interview with Byrne in its 25th issue. The story was never finished in terms of being inked, lettered, and colored.
“ If that’s what they want,” Byrne noted, “I can give it to them.”
The pages featured full pencils done in a style mimicking that of Jack Kirby, as that was the approach being taken by the then-current artist for the title, Rich Buckler. to this end, he produced a 30-page try-out story to showcase his abilities featuring the Marvel Comics characters, the FANTASTIC FOUR.
The first 200 have returned from CGC in late November and you can see those in the New Arrivals section being uploaded daily.Īlthough it has become near impossible to find Golden Age collections in today's market, we are constantly acquiring great Golden Age and 1950's comics to stock on our web-site every month, so for those collectors, keep an eye on the new arrivals as we are uploading over 100 new issues each week.THE IMAGINARY GIANT-SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR #1Ĭirca 1973, comics legend John Byrne was an aspiring young talent looking to break into the industry as a professional artist. To date, over 1000 have gone to CGC for grading and we have put up over 4,000 non-CGC on the site at this point. For the past three months we have been processing these books as fast as we can but are not even half way through the collections. It is the end of 2013 and we are happy to report that we have purchased four collections of late Silver Age to late Bronze Age Marvel and DC comics in high grade this fall. This will mark the first major change to our site since we launched it in 2008. We are feverishly fine tuning it now and are very anxious to get it completed.
In early January we will launch a new look for our web-site with improved search functions, a want list capability for clients and a new color scheme with design on the site.