Well, after posting my Best Fantastic Four Creative Runs graph, as promised I finished Mark Waid’s Fantastic Four run, and added it to the total. However since Mark Waid pulled off the impossible: 30 issues, averaging 3.5 stars, I had to create a formula to compare comic runs. (This is different than my retirement project, in which I will plug in all sorts of things like sales, awards, writer rating, artist rating, and era adjustment, etc.) The above graph is the never changing raw data (except when I add new FF run at the bottom). It starts from 1961 (Lee/Kirby) and works its way “down” to the 2000′s. Filler issues in-between runs are not included, and a “run” is defined as being at least 6 issues (usually months) in a row.

My “Comic Book Run Value” formula is kinda based on baseball guru’s Bill James musings when he compared pitchers Roger Clemens to Greg Maddux in the Historical Baseball Abstract; Maddux had the lower Earned Run Average, but Clemens had the innings pitched advantage. So after I read Mark Waid’s great run, I said, “Hmmmmm…Waid wrote 30 issues at 3.5 stars, while Simonson woite 19 issues at 3.89 stars. Now what? Which FF run was better? And which FF run was worse: Tom Deflalco averaging 1.48 stars over 61 issues, or Jim Lee’s run in which he went 1 star for 12 issues? Well, I knew DeFalco’s was worse, because 61 issues of total crap is MUCH more worse than 12 issues of crap.

Here’s the patented Comic Book Run Value formula that actually outputs my real life perceptions, and these match the perceptions of the runs that my creative partner Tony Vahl has read. In other words: there was not a whole bunch of surprises, however this is very awesome data. Each comic I read gets ranked 1-5 stars, with 1 being crap, just like a movie review. I also totaled the number of comics in that writer’s run. I averaged that out to get Average Quality Score (in stars).

Then I averaged the number of issues in all the FF runs (up to Mark Waid’s- I will update all of this when I complete the entire Fantastic Four run) and came up with 27.17 issues per an average Fantastic Four comic book run. [I have no data for the entire comic book run universe, and it is more appropriate to keep it within the FF anyway.) I then divided the actual number of issues from a writer by 27.17. That value is Relative Run Score. If a fake writer called John Doe had a 27 issue run, his Relative Run Score would be 0.99 (around 1).

The next part of the formula has two versions. The first version is the Normalized Comic Book Run Value. Using 2 Stars as the average base for a comic book (in baseball we use the term Replacement Level), this equation takes the Average Quality Score and subtracts two stars from it to get Quality Score Above Base. For example, if writer John Doe also had an Average Quality Score of 2 stars, then his new value (Quality Score Above Base) would be 0 (meaning he is not above or below the baseline of 2 stars).  That value is then multiplied by his Relative Run Score to get Normalized Run Value.

In John Doe’s case, his Relative Run Score of 1 multiplied by his Average Quality Score of 0 equals 0, which means his run was not above or below average in any way. Certainly nothing to boast about.

The benefits of this formula allow me to penalize a run that has a negative (below average) quality score, and reward a run that has a positive score, while the length of the run is compared and weighted against all of the other FF runs (27 issue average).

For example, Tom DeFalco’s run has a fantastic Relative Run Score of 2.25 because he was so productive (61 issues divided by 27.17). Only Lee/Kirby and John Byrne’s runs have greater Relative Run Scores. But was DeFalco’s run of any good quality? No. So why should he get points for writing bad stories? He averaged 1.48 stars, yet the “standard” comic is 2 stars. So he underachieved by -0.52 stars.  Multiply his Relative Run Score (2.25) by his Quality Score Above Base (a negative value of -0.52) and we get his Normalized Run Value of  -1.17. Please note that the NRV is no longer rated in “stars”, it is simply a value to be compared to the baseline of 0 and the other Fantastic Four runs. The Normalized Run Value enables you to compare comic runs across titles and the theoretical “2-star comic”. See these rankings below:

The alternate version of this formula is called Comic Book Run Value, and it does not attempt to normalize the Quality Score Above Base by using 2 Stars as a comic book average. Instead, I averaged every issue of the Fantastic Four through the Mark Waid run to come up with 2.68 Stars. This totally raises the bar for each FF run and confines the ranking to the Fantastic Four title. While the Normalized Run Value compares the quality to a standard comic book from other titles, Comic Book Run Value compares runs to standard FF quality, which happens to be better than 2 stars, it’s 2.68 stars. In other words, it’s kind of like comparing a pitcher’s runs allowed vs League Average instead of comparing his runs allowed vs Replacement Level in baseball statistics. So when comparing the two charts, the Comic Book Value weeds out runs that don’t meet the FF’s average quality, and is a better chart to analyze quality within the Fantastic Four series:

As it stands now:

Top 5 Fantastic Four Runs of All Time (writers and artists):

1. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
2. John Byrne and John Byrne
3. Mark Waid and usually Mike Wieringo, and with around 4 other artists
4. Walt Simonson and usually Walt Simonson, but with assists by Art Adams, Rich Buckler
5. Carlos Pacheco, who headed a creative team with Jeph Loeb III, Rafael Marin, Jeff Johnson, and others

Based on my advanced stats (and the fact that I haven’t read runs passed Waid yet), there is a huge drop-off after #5.

Worst 5 Fantastic Four Runs of All Time (writers and artists):

1. Tom DeFalco and Paul Ryan
2. Chris Claremont and Salvador Larroca
3. Jim Lee and Brandon Choi
4. Roy Thomas’s second FF run, with art mostly by Richard Buckler, George Perez, and John Buscema
5. Gerry Conway, with art mostly by John Buscema, Rich Buckler, and Ross Andru

As I noted in Part 1: no matter how good the artwork of a comic book is, if the other components SUCK, so does the comic book rating- sorry! That’s why the writer gets the glory or the shame. Part 3 will contain stats up to 2010. All values will slightly change if the average FF run of 27.17 changes and if the average quality per issue changes. I will also eventually dedicate a post to each run, and do a breakdown by decades. And since I have read entire runs of Amazing Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, and Green Lantern, I will start plugging numbers one day.

Tags: baseball guru, comic book, Comic Book Artists, Comic Book Reviews, Comic Book Writers, Continuity and History, crap, defalco, fantastic four, kirby, mark waid, quality score, raw data