La Chose et la Torche Humaine sont apparus pour la première fois dans un jeu vidéo en 1985. Questprobe featuring Human Torch & The Thing était le troisième volet d’une série finalement arrêtée à cause de la faillite de son développeur. Marvel avait sorti un comic-book pour accompagner la sortie du jeu (l’épisode avec la Torche et la Chose est écrit par Scott Adams, le créateur du jeu, et David Michelinie, dessiné par Ron Wilson et encré par Joe Sinnott), également annulé après le #3.
À noter qu’un quatrième comic-book avait été produit, une histoire des X-Men par Chris Claremont et June Brigman finalement publiée dans un Marvel Fanfare (et traduite en V.F. dans l’album X-Men 14 de Lug).
Daté de décembre 1982, soit quelque temps après les débuts de John Byrne en tant qu’auteur complet sur la série phare, ce dernier livre un épisode de What If? dans lequel il s’interroge sur ce qu’il se serait passé si les Fantastiques n’avaient pas obtenu leurs pouvoirs.
Il change la continuité au moment où Ben fait remarquer, avec la puissance sonore qui le caractérise, que le blindage de la fusée n’est pas suffisant. Dans la version que Byrne nous propose d’explorer, Reed s’en remet au bon sens de son équipier, et le vol est décalé de deux semaines. Sue et Johnny n’y participent pas. L’équipage atterrit sur une planète lointaine et revient un mois plus tard, en héros.
Bien entendu, d’autres personnages n’ont pas changé leurs plans. C’est le cas du Mole Man, qui entreprend de se faire connaître du monde de la surface. C’est donc sans pouvoirs que le quatuor, sollicité par les autorités, descend dans le royaume souterrain de leur adversaire.
John Byrne, qui s’encre lui-même (pour le lecteur français, l’épisode paraît dans Spidey bien avant la prestation du dessinateur dans la série régulière publiée dans Nova, et c’est un peu bizarre comme impression) sous l’égide de Mark Gruenwald, nous livre ici une aventure qui n’aurait pas dépareillé dans un épisode des Challengers of the Unknown, l’une des sources d’inspiration pour les FF (on dit souvent que les Challengers, ce sont les FF sans pouvoir, et la parenté de ces deux créations du King est évidente).
Il y a d’ailleurs dans l’approche de Byrne une volonté de commentaire, qui se fait sentir à des détails. Par exemple, Richards fait fortune sur ses brevets et sa célébrité, et la présence de casquettes floquées du « R » qui le représente met en avant non seulement le tempérament aventurier des héros, mais aussi le caractère d’entrepreneur de Reed : c’est une marque qui a remplacé un chiffre, dans ce monde alternatif, permettant à l’auteur de remettre en avant un aspect parfois un peu oublié de la série.
Autre détail : il sépare son équipe. Reed se retrouve avec Johnny tandis que Sue tente de s’en sortir avec Ben. Si chacun est valeureux et sait exploiter ses points forts, Byrne fait des clins d’œil en direction de certaines sous-intrigues, notamment l’attrait amoureux que Ben peut ressentir à l’égard de sa blonde équipière (et que cela prenne la forme d’une blague n’y change rien). Il démontre qu’il connaît bien les personnages et qu’il leur offre, le temps de quelques pages, la possibilité d’exister.
Ce faisant, il signe l’un des meilleurs What If? dans cette première série, notamment parce qu’il joue à plein la carte de la divergence, là où certains récits préfèrent mettre en scène une sorte de « résilience » de l’espace-temps (l’intrigue conduisant les personnages à retrouver le statu quo de l’univers central) ou carrément un dérapage incontrôlé conduisant à une sorte d’apocalypse. Ici, Byrne refuse les deux possibilités en laissant entrevoir un monde capable d’avoir son autonomie.
La série What If? (une première version en 1977, une seconde en 1989, et désormais une formule liée à des événements éditoriaux, à périodicité irrégulière) n’a pas souvent donné l’occasion aux auteurs de revenir sur des mondes alternatifs.
L’une des exceptions à cette règle est la saga « TimeQuake », qui prend place dans les numéros 35 à 39 de la seconde mouture, grâce aux scénaristes Roy Thomas et Jean-Marc Lofficier. L’histoire s’articule autour de la TVA (la Time Variance Agency, qu’on peut apercevoir dans la bande-annonce de la série télé Loki) et raconte comment le continuum espace-temps est menacé. Le premier épisode, illustré par Joe Phillips, remet sur le devant de la scène la version des Fantastiques à laquelle Spider-Man s’est associé (dans un épisode de la première série, on y reviendra sans doute dans l’année). De manière claire, les auteurs font comprendre qu’il n’y a pas de grand récit épique avec le sort de l’univers à la clé sans les Fantastiques (qui sont « cinq », ici, plus ou moins).
L’épisode 36 met en présence les Vengeurs et les Gardiens de la Galaxie (ceux du futur, les « classiques ») dans un épisode dessiné par Dave Hoover qui a la particularité de bien mettre en valeur la présence des trois Time Keepers près d’Uatu. Dans le #37, dessiné par Mark Pacella, on voit comment Wolverine devient le seigneur des Vampires. Le récit se branche sur les deux chapitres précédents, tout en faisant référence aussi aux West Coast Avengers de Roy Thomas, qui mettent en scène Immortus, entre autres : confirmation qu’il y a une grosse zoum-ba-zoum spatio-temporelle qui se prépare. Le #38 nous raconte comment Odin est tombé sous la coupe de Seth. Autant de situations terribles, dangereuses, problématiques pour l’agence chargée de surveiller les variations temporelles.
Et donc, le #39 apporte une conclusion à cette saga en filigrane, en faisant intervenir, dans les locaux de la TVA (où tous les agents ont la tête de Mark Gruenwald) une version du quatuor que les lecteurs de la première série connaissent bien, avec un Reed en armure bleue de Doc Doom, Ben avec des ailes, Johnny en acier et Sue au corps malléable. C’est donc une des rares occasions où une continuité est établie au sein de la série What If?
Et si ce quatuor là ne suffit pas, c’est une énième version qui vient sauver la mise à la fin de l’épisode : les Fantastiques sans pouvoir que John Byrne a créés dans la première série. Portant le « R » si facilement reconnaissable, ils parviennent à sauver le Multivers des manipulations d’Immortus et à reconstruire l’Univers Marvel. Dont le sort, une fois de plus, repose sur les épaules de la « Famille Fondatrice ».
232ème post spécial Byrne (puisque le #232 marque les débuts de son run en solo).
John Byrne drawing a page from Fantastic Four #269. 1984.
La contribution de John Byrne au fanzine Fantastic Four Chronicles de FantaCo (1982) :
• Wrap-around cover by John Byrne.
• Two-page B&W center spread by John Byrne of the FF and dozens of other characters, dated « 1981. »
• « The Fantastic Four: A Personal Recollection » (3 pages) by John Byrne.
et son propre article, un texte consacré à sa réminiscence des deux précédentes décennies, par le biais de son rapport au quatuor (de sa découverte des FF jusqu’à sa reprise alors récente du titre de la First Family).
Je me permet d’étoffer l’iconographie pour illustrer ce qu’il évoque :
The Fantastic Four: A Personal Recollection (by John Byrne)
“Cowboy” John Byrne on his 5th birthday in 1955. Edmonton, Canada.
"A wave of nostalgia. People, places, things I haven’t thought in years. All flooding back in a great, seemingly indecipherable jumble when I try to think back to my first encounter with the Fantastic Four .
It was in 1962. I was a few month shy of my 12th birthday. My Parents and I where then living in Sherwood Park, one of those horrible pre-planned communities that began springing up across North America in the 1950s and early ’60s. A different ’60s then. John F. Kennedy was still President, and Camelot was in full vigor. The American way was still something to look up to.
« There were no protests on campus, no riots in the ghetto. « Ghetto » was not a word I knew then. A simpler time. Comic books were simpler. Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, The Justice League of America. DC comics, DC Superman as we called them then, held almost complete sway over a limited market. »
John Byrne (age 9 or 10) and his first dog Frisky. 1960.
"I had a few friends back then. Always a loner, always introverted, the flashy adventures of those gaudy four-color pages were, to me, an escape from loneliness and poor report cards. Superman could always be counted upon to vanquish the bad guys in eight or nine pages, three times an issue. Batman would defeat the Joker and some bizarre alien menace, yet still find space to grow to giant size or becoming a living negative, all with clockwork regularity. There was a certainty to those comics that I would never, in my youthful innocence, have called « formula».
"But then, 1962. My mother’s parents were visiting from England. On a sojourn into Edmonton, the large city to the south, in a newsstand on Jasper avenue, « Mike’s » by name, I saw my first issue of the Fantastic Four . Emphasis on « saw. » I didn’t pick it up, certainly didn’t buy it. My parents restricted the comics I was allowed to buy in those days, and even had they not, there was something…alien about that cover. The red carnival letters in a grey field. I don’t think I had ever seen the color grey on a comic book cover before. And, strangest of all, the great grey face of Doctor Doom was looming over all. »
"It was FF 5. I had not seen the first four issues, had not even heard of the book before. It was a mystery. And worse, it was not a DC-Superman comic. There was, to my 11-year-old mind, something vaguely blasphemous about superheroes that were not from the same stable that housed The Justice League of America . So I didn’t buy it. I went home. I went back to my normal life. Or so I thought.
"That cover stayed with me. I would not be exaggerating to say it preyed on my mind. A few weeks later my parents were again going into Edmonton. I asked my mother to examine that mysterious comic for me, and, if she deemed it suitable, get it.
Then I spent about four hours crawling the walls. In those days, I was what is called a « sensitive » child. Comics upset me sometimes. Movies certainly did. I had nightmares. Bad Ones. And as I awaited my parents return with the verdict, I wonderer if that grim grey face would be the sort of thing that would set me off again. I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist reading it anyway. I worried.
"My parents came home, and there it was. Evidently it had passed my mother’s inspection. To this day I have no idea by what criterion shed judged a comic book suitable or otherwise, but the Fantastic Four clearly met the standard.
I don’t remember where I read that comic for the first time. The living room, my bedroom, the bathroom. Many of the sensations and locations surrounding that first adventure into the neophyte Marvel Universe are crystal clear to me, but not that. I wasn’t anywhere but inside that comic when I read it for thee first time. The artwork, the coloring, the style of writing, and most importantly, the characters themselves, were something totally new. I fell into that comic and, in many respects, never re-emerged. »
"I must have read and reread it a hundred times before issue 6 came out. The concepts astounded me. Here was a group, like my beloved Justice League, and yet none of the characters had, to my knowledge, their own titles. None of them wore masks, or in any other way disguised their identities. Their headquarters building was right in the middle of New York, in plain sight. On top of a conventional office block, in fact. And most astounding of all, the fought amongst themselves. They argued The Thing got into a fight with the Human Torch on page two of that book. And had to be subdued by Mister Fantastic on page three. »
"Top it all off with the fact that it was a time-travel story, complete with one of those wonderful twists of I-came-to-find-myself logic, the like of which I had always loved, and I was hooked. All they had to do was reel me in. And they did, with the very next issue. In something else that was almost totally alien to my concept of comic books the villain actually got away at the end of issue 5. I don’t think I had seen a bad guy escape before, whether or not his best laid plans had gangaglae. »
"But he was back for the next issue, with someone else I had never encountered before, the Sub-Mariner. There was never any doubt for me that it was the Sub-Mariner, not the Sub-Mareener. And there was never any doubt that he was a copy of Aquaman. I had zero knowledge of the Golden Age back then, and it would not be until years later that I learned the imitative process actually ran the other way. »
"But copy or not, the mighty, brooding Prince Namor impressed me every inch as much as had Doctor Doom. And when he, as a supposed villain, turned on his partner to help the Fantastic Four, I was devastated. Had any Superman villain ever done such a thing ? Not in my experience. »
"For a most peculiar reason I did not buy issue 7. I have it now, acquired at somewhat greater expense than its original 12 cents pice tag, but back in 1962, I was governed by strange demons. I didn’t like the Invisible Girl’s face on the cover. That was all. But it stopped me from buying that issue. Clearly I was something less than a completist. Imagine my chagrin a few issues later when that same cover drawing appeared on the letters page. Ah well. »
"I bought the next one. The Puppet Master. (still one of my favorites villains, as witness by his appearance in the 20th anniversary issue.) That issue also contains one of my all-time favorite shots, an eloquently simple, backgroundless drawing of the enthralled Thing hurling an upside-down Johnny Storm across the room. It was also my first encounter with Ben Grimm, the poor soul forced to dwell within the misshapen identity of the Thing. »
"In those days I was gathering information about who and what the FF were a little at a time. Jim Shooter has made the point many times that the characters, their whos, whats and wherefores should be clearly and completely established every issue, and in many ways I agree.
"But those first few issues of the FF were and adventure for me, an almost Holmesian exploit, slowly unravelling the secrets of the group. It was not until issue 9 that I learned Mister Fantastic’s last name was Richards.
"Meanwhile I was becoming a FF pusher. What friends I had I quickly converted. One, a fellow named Richard Finch, even found issue 4 in a second-hand bookstore and gave it to me. I won’t say our life-long friendship was born at that moment, but it didn’t hurt. Issue 2 I found in the local barbershop. It took me three days to work up the nerve to ask the barber to sell it to me. I was willing to offer him cover-price for the slightly delapidated copy. He gave it to me for free, thus ensuring his canonization. »
"Along about now you’re probably beginning to get a picture of a life-time fan, I suppose. One of those readers who stays with a book through thick and thin, through good and bad. Not quite. I stopped reading the FF, and comics in general, with issue 32. That book, as you may recall, featured the Invincible Man in his debut, and a cover blurb that challenged us to guess his identity. I did. By page four. »
John Byrne at age 14 with his father, Christmas 1964.
« My mother had been pestering me to stop reading comics, now at the ripe old age of 14. This event convinced me she was right. After consistently reading comics for the better part of eight years I decided it was time to, as they say, set aside the things of youth, and look onward. »
John Byrne in 1966/67 at the age of 16 or 17.
"Surprisingly enough I managed to go cold turkey. I would not look at another comic book until almost five years later, when my mother started buying Batman to send to my cousins in England. Now the unwritten parameters were passed to me, and it became my duty to decide if a comic was suitable reading for their developing psyches. »
« I was surprised, and a little dismayed to find that things had changed. The books were thinner, the stories longer, often a whole issue. And, during the height of the Batman television craze, the stories had gone campy. »
"I wondered if the same thing had happened to the Fantastic Four. I picked up an issue in the local drugstore and thumbed through it. The Thing was rocky now, and Johnny and Reed had more « heroic » physiques. And Doctor Doom was wearing an outlandish new costume that looked as if Captain (« I like color ») Ultra might have designed it. I put the book back with disgust and departed, feeling as if something important had passed from my life. »
John Byrne (age 22) at his drawing board. 1972.
« Roll on the years. I was in my second year of college when the comics mystic call sounded to me again. In my first year I had done a comic book as an end-of-the-year project, and a fellow who lived in Calgary, where I was then located, took an interest in my career and started showing my stuff around to publishers and fanzines. »
« One of the latter was a little packet called Epoch, a sort of very-distant cousin to the far-fabled CPL. The editor-publisher asked me to do a cover for him of the Fantastic Four battling Galactus. That amounted to a good trick, as I had never heard of Galactus at that time. So I went out and bought the latest issue, just by coincidence issue 132. »
"A hundred issues later, I had returned to the fold. I was interested but not unimpressed. Much of what was going on was a puzzle to me. Who were the Inhumans ? And who was this Medusa character who had evidently replaced Sue ? As I read subsequent issues the mystery cleared only a little. The sense of discovery I had found in those old Lee/Kirby issues was not there. But I read on. Looking back I think this was, perhaps not a good time to return to the FF. The plotting was muddled, the artwork (considering the combination of two of the greatest talents in the industry today, John Buscema and Joe Sinnott) was uninspired. Something, clearly, was missing. »
"To find out what I began buying back issues. Through a stroke of luck I stumbled into our local second-hand bookstore the day a kid liquidated his entire collection. I managed to pick up every issue from 32 (!) to the current issue.
"Then I sat down and read them all in virtually one sitting. A word of advice: don’t do that. I lived in a Kirby world for days after. But I found out who Medusa and the Inhumans were. And I found out who Galactus was. And I found out Doctor Doom’s « new » costume had been a temporary thing he had worn to have his portrait painted back in issue 85. I discovered a lot of incredible cosmic concepts. I discovered villains and vistas that boggled the imagination.
And I discovered what was missing. The cosmic had taken over. The scope had become all important. It was, simply put, no longer the Fantastic Four I had loved as a pre-teen. »
"Not long after this I joined Marvel as an artist. Iron Fist was a book that had captured my attention and, when I started drawing professionally, I was delighted to assume the chores on that title. It wasn’t the Fantastic Four , but then, neither was the Fantastic Four . »
"I drew a lot of titles in those early years for Marvel : Iron Fist, The Champions, Marvel Team-Up , The Avengers, The X-Men. And the more I drew the more I found I was not drawing the Marvel comics I remembered so fondly. I got a terrific kick out of doing it, but there was a sense of transience, the feeling that we were not doing anything that was going to last. I became, alas, one of the doomsayers, predicting the demise of comics within the next five years. On that basis, I’ve been unemployed for about a year, but never mind that. »
"In the later part of my early days at Marvel, after I had been on the X-Men for about a year and a half , it fell to me to draw the Fantastic Four . I was jubilant. I whipped through my first issue at the phenomenal rate (for me) of six pages a day. I was on a high roll, and it looked like nothing could stop me. In point of fact, « nothing » did. The sense that nothing was happening in the book. The sense that it was going nowhere, and I was doing nothing to help. It has been said elsewhere that my first year on the FF did not exactly set the world on fire. I agree.
Teamed with one of the most praised writers in the business, and nigh-legendary inker, I was producing books which were, to me, no more inspired than those bland concoctions to which I had returned.
Marvel playing musical-writers after the departure of Marv Wolfman gave me an excuse to escape. I said that, once a consistent writing credit was assigned I would return to the book. In the industry, we call this « lying ». I was running away from the FF, and I don’t deny it. »
"I continued to read the book. Interesting things happened with the team of Moench and Sienkiewicz. But I still didn’t find much to remind me of the old Fantastic Four. Then, in San Diego, I learned from Shooter that Moench would be leaving the title. I had been developing delusions of adequacy as a writer and asked for the assignment. Shooter agreed, and I submitted several plots to editor Jim Salicrup, who had been attempting to lure me to the book as artist. The first plot was a Human Torch solo story involving an innocent man on death row and Hammerhead. The second involved the Puppet Master and the third, Annihilus. Sienkiewicz was to continue as artist. »
"Then something I would never have predicted occurred. Almost overnight I hit my threshold on the X-Men. I dried up. I lost interest. I found that, suddenly, I didn’t even like them anymore, as people. I felt confused, out of step, lost in a book with which I had become almost totally identified.
"I asked off. I was granted my exit and asked for the Fantastic Four. There was a moment of hemming and hawing. Bill was doing a nice job and nobody wanted to intimate that he was being replaced by a superior talent, which is unfortunately an inevitable conclusion if an artist is removed for a title. I assured Bill this was not the case and Shooter agreed Bill’s time would anyway be spent to better advantage on Moon Knight . The Moench/Sienkiewicz team had found their true place in the sun.
And I was confronted with the Fantastic Four . »
"Now I had no excuses if the stuff was wimpy, weak, or missing that certain something. As a writer I could note blame the artist. As artist I could not blame the writer. By an unexpected sequence of events, I found I would not be able to blame the inker.
"I started thinking what I felt needed to be done with the book. I thought back to those early issues, say the first dozen. I did not reread them, but I sought to reconjour in my mind the feeling that had been there when I read them originally. What has been special about the Fantastic Four ? Their powers were still the same, they had battled many of the same villains. Even the occasional cosmic story had appeared. »
"I began to conceive a larger picture. The Fantastic Four, like all those early Marvel characters created by Stan Lee, had been real people. They possessed outlandish powers, but their day to day activities were solidly grounded in a recognizable reality. Even the villains were three-dimensional people who had reasons for their villainy beyond sheer bloody-mindedness.
"That was one of the things that was missing. The adventures had taken on a scope so broad, so cosmic, that the sense of presence was diminshed almost to non-existence. Villains now attacked the Fantastic Four soley with the intent of defeating the FF. We were no longer threatened. One had the impression that, having destroyed the FF, Doctor Doom would happily retire back to Latveria to leave in peace. So reality, as opposed to « realism ».
"And that reality extended beyond the locals and motivations of villains. When the FF had first gained their powers they had looked like a bunch of folks who suddenly gained superpowers. Now they looked like rugged, muscular heroes. Even the Thing had taken on a rounded, teddy bear look. »
"Their uniforms, which had originally looked like functional jumpsuits, now looked like skin-tight super-hero clothes. In other words, they were starting to look life imitating a comic-book instead of the other way around. So I set about restoring what I felt was missing. To readers of less than five years or so, this turn back to the basics seemed unduly harsh. One even went so far as to tell me I was drawing the Thing incorrectly, and reminded me of how well I had done the Thing before. How handsome he had been. Without intending to, that fan underlined what was missing from the book. »
"So, with Marvel’s, Shooter’s, and Stan’s blessings, I began doing everything I could to recapture what I remembered. Perhaps I am succeeding. The book has risen to somewhere around the third best seller at Marvel, although sales have very rarely governed how a book is being handled. And, alas, the name John Byrne on a comic is guaranteed to increase sales, perhaps artificially. »
"But the book feels right again. Call it conceit if you wish, but I find I can read it again with something of the same feeling I had 20 years ago. Twenty years ! Yes, the FF has just celebrated its 20th anniversary as a comic-book, and in these days of short-lived titles, that’s something indeed. »
"And that little kid from Sherwood Park, he’s still lost in that wonderland into which he wandered in 1962. And these days, he hopes he’ll never find his way out. »
John Byrne wearing a Fantastic Four sweater knitted by his mother at Boston Comic Con. Mid 1980s.
Je peut essayer d’en faire un résumé en VF (moins ardu qu’une traduction) si Soyouz le souhaite (ainsi que tous ceux dont l’anglais n’est pas le fort).
J’ai toujours eu le sentiment, en lisant les What If ?, d’y voir une façon pour Marvel de conforté tout leur choix scénaristique. Si ça c’était passé autrement ? ALORS ILS SERAIENT TOUS MORTS !
Comme je l’ai expliqué sur le forum, j’ai découvert les 4 Fantastiques grâce au dessin animé des sixties diffusé en France au début des années 80. Pour les comics, mon premier contact fut l’album grand format Duo Diabolique , découvert comme tant d’autres dans le coffre de bandes dessinées de mon père. Dans cette revue kiosque publiée au 3ème trimestre 1980, Lug avait réédité des épisodes déjà parus dans Fantask en 1969 : Fantastic Four#5 et 6 et la moitié du #11. Un sommaire qui a fait de moi un fan de l’équipe pendant près de 25 ans…au moins jusqu’au run de Jonathan Hickman…
Le Duo Diabolique , c’est l’alliance des deux adversaires des numéros 4 et 5, le Prince des Mers et le Docteur Fatalis. Et ce qu’on peut dire c’est que l’histoire contient son lot d’action et de visions mémorables (et complètement dingues), comme celle du Baxter Building projeté dans l’espace grâce à la nouvelle invention de Fatalis (superbes cases du King Kirby). Mais le récit n’est justement pas porté que par le spectacle, c’est la caractérisation qui prime avant tout. Lee & Kirby nous font vibrer avec les personnages…ce qui n’était pas vraiment le fort des auteurs de la Justice League à la même période…
La dynamique familiale est importante dans la série et elle passe ici par des moments légers, tels la lecture du courrier (avec la première mention du Yancy Street Gang), et d’autres qui le sont nettement moins lorsque la Torche ne montre aucun scrupule à fouiller dans les affaires de sa soeur et y trouve un portrait de Namor caché derrière une pile de livres. Face à l’animosité des hommes, Sue était la première à se rendre compte de la complexité de Namor. Et après ce qui arrive dans le dernier acte, même la Chose doute : doit-il serrer la main de Namor…ou l’écraser ?
Il est vrai que Namor ne se montre pas menaçant dans les premières pages et c’est Fatalis qui manipule son conflit intérieur à son avantage, avant de se retourner contre le Prince des Mers une fois qu’il ne lui est plus utile (certainement parce qu’il savait que l’atlante ne ferait aucun mal à l’Invisible). Le portrait des protagonistes est vraiment excellent et rend cette aventure encore plus palpitante. Il n’est donc pas étonnant que l’album Duo Diabolique a fait partie de ces lectures qui m’ont rendu accroc pendant très longtemps à l’univers Marvel…
