Blast from the Past #2: Terraz the Tamer and Silver Surfer!

This figure brought back memories for me :) memories of a time when I was into comics and one of my favorite comic artists was John Bryne. I was first hooked on Bryne's work on a copy of X-Men (but that's for another post) and picked up Fantastic Four when he took over the reigns.

John Byrne's better-known work has been on Marvel Comics’ X-Men and Fantastic Four and the 1986 relaunch of DC Comics’ Superman franchise. Coming into the comics profession exclusively as a penciler, Byrne began co-plotting the X-Men comics during his tenure on them, and launched his writing career in earnest with Fantastic Four (where he also started inking his own pencils). [source: wiki]

I had bought Fantastic Four issue #242 (way back in 1982) - picture taken from my comic stash - and thoroughly enjoyed the art and story. Funny thing is, I'm a pretty visual person and it was the artwork that got my attention more than the script but all's well that ends well, as they say :)

So when ToyBiz Toys released action figures from the Fantastic Four including this Terrax figure, I had to get it :) Based on the Marvels original superhero team, this line consists of the original FF members, friends and villians, all of which are 5 inches in scale and fully posable and articulated.

This was a time when I wasn't focusing on 1/6 scale figures (at that time, there just wasn't that many companies producing 1/6 scale figures as there just wasn't enough demand for them) and collected carded figures instead.

In the comic, Terrax the Tamer (Galactus' second herald after the Silver Surfer) had come to Earth and attacked the Fantastic Four in their Baxter Building headquarters, to try and get them to destroy his master Galactus! But guess what? Galactus came a-calling and it was a battle royale.

In the 2007 superhero film "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer", the Fantastic Four first confront, and later ally with, the Silver Surfer to save Earth from Galactus. I was a little letdown by the film's depiction of Galactus but Doug Jones as Norin Radd / Silver Surfer was awesome :)

Here's ToyBiz carded Silver Surfer figure

Comics back then were FUN & enjoyable. Nowadays a lot of them have plots and sub-plots and crossovers and are most confusing SIGH I long for the good old days of simple comics.