Image Quotation of Past Events to Enforce Storyworld Continuity in John Byrne’s Fantastic Four

This paper looks at the way that the writer and artist John Byrne used ›image quotation‹, in the form of direct and indirect quotation of panels by other artists to disrupt existing storyworld continuity and enforce his own version during his lengthy run on Marvel’s Fantastic Four series. This was done by embedding previous continuity into stories through image quotation, but also by introducing new elements of his own devising within these pre-existing panels, and then reinforcing the ›canonicity‹ of this revised history through further quotation.

First it will define what is meant by ›image quotation‹, before considering the idea of different types of authorship in corporate-owned texts. It will then use three examples from Byrne’s run – This Land Is Mine in Fantastic Four #247 (Byrne 1982), Interlude in Fantastic Four #258 (Byrne 1983) and True Lies in Fantastic Four #278 (Byrne and Ordway) – to show how he skilfully used the practice of image quotation to manipulate and add to the backstory of Doctor Doom and thus assert his own claim to ownership of the character.