Fantastic Four series timeline
2011 February 21
This week will see the publication, by Marvel, of what is billed as the last issue of The Fantastic Four.
Setting aside the plausibility of such a claim for the future, over the course of nearly 50 years we’ve already seen more than one “last issue of The Fantastic Four.” And more than one first issue, as well. And when one counts ongoing spin-off and tie-in series we’ve seen quite a few of both. Which you can see for yourself in…
The Fantastic Four series timeline, 1961 – 2011:
Click to see a pretty big JPEG version!
I’ll be back later this week with some remarks on creating this, for the design (and other) nerds who might enjoy that sort of thing. In the meantime, if you liked this you might also like this, this or this.
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Hey Matt,
Great stuff as usual! I hope it’s okay if I make mention of this in the Yeti blog as well. This was cool to see all of the series spread out like this in this format.
A few nitpick-y notes:
– Marvel’s Greatest Comics was originally Marvel Collectors Item Classics
– Fantastic Five and Fantastic Force both had second volumes
– There are a few series missing, like Fantastic Four: 1234, FF: The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine and FF: Dark Reign, not to mention annuals and the like
Even so, this was awesome. Good job!
And would it have killed Marvel to put out four more issues of MGC? It’s stupid that something like that annoys me, but…it does.
Thanks for the comments, Jeff!
I think most of the books you mentioned were limited series, whereas my chart was meant to be just “ongoing” series. Of course, many were only around as long as a typical limited series…!
As for the annuals, Sean suggested that also, as they were sort of an ongoing, and I did consider it. I’m working on one or two “commentary track” posts in which I’ll address all the details of many such arbitrary decisions which I made. 🙂
The first title of Marvel’s Greatest Comics, however, was just an oversight on my part, so I’m glad that you brought it up! I think it was pretty cool, too, along with a number of such now-forgotten reprint series. It was kind of odd to pull the plug on that when they did…
I really enjoyed your F4 timeline and felt free to feature it on my blog. Hopefully there is more to come.
Hi Jeff, came here from Sean’s blog post, might add this to my blog as well. I’m feeling nostalgic and misty-eyed right now because before reading Fantastic four #588, I deliberately went out and bought the Essential Human Torch which collected Johnny’s run in Strange Tales #101-134 and Annual #2. You added the two Thing solo titles; couldn’t you have added that as well? Aside from that, a well-laid out timeline!