THE IMAGINARY GIANT-SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR #1

Circa 1973, comics legend John Byrne was an aspiring young talent looking to break into the industry as a professional artist. to this end, he produced a 30-page try-out story to showcase his abilities featuring the Marvel Comics characters, the FANTASTIC FOUR. 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. 

“ If that’s what they want,” Byrne noted, “I can give it to them.”

The story was never finished in terms of being inked, lettered, and colored. Over a decade later in 1985, fanzine COMICS INTERVIEW published the pages along with an interview with Byrne in its 25th issue.

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. board member and Byrne fan Matthew Hawes suggested a challenge to the other artistic fans of the forum, with Byrne’s blessing: 

Take the pencils and plot and finish the story. 

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. Mike O’Brien volunteered to do the scripting chore, and fellow board members Stephen Bertrand, Bill Dowling, Matthew Hawes, Aaron Leach, F. Ron Miller, James Pipik, James Stewart, Darren Taylor, James C. Taylor, and Bill Wiist handled finishing the artwork. 

Early 2005 the project was completed and given the artificial designation of (The imaginary) GIANT-SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR #1. (The first Fantastic Four Giant that Marvel published was actually titled GIANT-SIZE SUPER-STARS #1. It was renamed to GIANT-SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR with its second issue, meaning that no GIANT-SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR #1 was ever actually published.) 

Since super-stars was actually published in May of 1974 and featured the same Fantastic Four lineup as shown in Byrne’s try-out tale, this fit perfectly within the era.

On the subject of that lineup, in 1973’s fantastic four comics, Susan Richards, the Invisible Woman, took leave from the team and was replaced by the Inhuman known as Medusa for the next year or so of stories. during this same period, Susan’s brother, Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, had taken to wearing a new outfit with the colors red and yellow. This is the way they are presented in the imaginary GIANT-SIZED FANTASTIC FOUR #1.

The completed version was posted on byrnerobotics.com, the new forum for John Byrne fans which had just recently been launched in late 2004.

Byrne’s synopsis:

“...Altho the High Evolutionary prevented super powers happening on Counter-Earth, he did not interfere with the basic genetics, so the strain that produced Medusa and Crystal as Inhumans produced them as mere mortals. 

"...There is also a duplicate Johnny Storm, who meets and falls in love with Crystal there.

"...Reed has determined that the female Torch is too volatile to be allowed to remain on Earth, so he decides to duplicate what happened on Counter-earth, when (Crystal’s) father launched her into space in suspended animation. Reed swears he will do what he can to find a cure, but offers little real hope. A dejected Johnny (our Johnny) wanders off as Ben observes Johnny is 'the only guy ever to have lost the same girl twice -- on two different worlds!"

The 2004 version of the imaginary GIANT-SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR #1 was a fun project and came out fine, but unfortunately, due to upload and image restrictions on the Byrne Robotics site, the images were never presented in high resolution. Being fan-fiction, there was never any plan to actually publish the finished comic. Also, with so many contributors involved, and so much time having passed since the completion of the story, it is no longer really possible to get all the pages in higher resolution. This has been disappointing, but the only way for there to be a higher resolution of a finished version would be for someone to go back and ink, letter, and color the entire comic again. So... I did that.

I decided I would use Mike O'Briens script, but make some changes here and there. I set about inking the entire thing, even re-inking the three pages I have contributed before in 2004. I re-lettered and colored the story, and even drew a new cover for this 2021 version. Below is the results of these labors, and after those newer pages I also share the original pages from the message board collaboration for posterity. 

Enjoy!