Review: Essential Fantastic Four Vol. 5; by Stan & Jack (& the Johns)

Essential Fantastic Four, Vol. 5 by Stan Lee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

FACK!!!! I just deleted a whole DAY of review/summary on this. GODDAMNIT!!!!

SHIT FUCK HELL BALLS!

Anyhow…we see all the villains, from Doom to Annihilus.
We see Inhumans.
Space, Negative Zone, finally naming the baby.
Thing gets turned back into Ben Grimm, but quits the team and breaks up with Alicia Masters!!!!
Johnny loses Crystal, who has to return to the Inhumans or die from Earth pollution.
There’s a Magneto/Namor team up against the FF!
100th issue extravaganza!
Kirby leaves after nearly 10 YEARS!!!!and over 100 issues.
Romita Sr. and John Buscema take over, and I love what they do. Buscema’s facial work is great! almost as good as Lono’s at the Strip Club! BOOM!
Lots of cliffhangers, the womenfolk gain a whole lot more respect, and the characters all grow.

Most importantly, Reed transforms from a misogynyst bully dictator into a quasi-pacificst scientific genius family man. This means, I hope, that Stan Lee either grew up, or wrote Reed’s character to change with the times, as the later we get in the FF, the more that Stan’s writing reflects real life worries (space, Cold War, treatment of people who are different, Nuclear Apocalypse, Family life and concerns). Stan grew a lot between the 4 years covered here from Vol 4-5.

This is truly essential. Worth it. Even if you only skim it Mike.

Oh well, my other review was too long anyhow.

Adding cool pics from the book to Shallow Reader’s Group!

I had a bigger review but oh well…concise is better I think.

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Review: Books of Doom, by Ed Brubaker

Fantastic Four: Books Of Doom by Ed Brubaker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a 241 special…FF and Evil Villain.

Ed Brubaker does a solid job giving us an origin story of our favourite Latverian megalomaniac. The art is decent, and definitely focuses on Victor and his transformation to Doctor (funny enough, he never actually earned that degree, because he was booted after the experiment which left his face (and psyche) scarred).
Victor encounters a lot of tragedy in his early years, his mother dabbled in the dark arts, and it cost her her life and soul; his father died saving Victor while they were on the run from the evil Baron in Latveria.

Then, he ends up in the US, at the same school as Reed Richards and Ben Grimm, and also works as a weapon/tech guy for the military. Funny enough, he thinks Reed sabotaged his work, much like Reed thinks Victor sabotaged his own work in Ulitmate FF. That being said, FF doesn’t feature in this at all.

There’s Doom’s love for his mother, and his obsession with saving her from Hell, but the only other thing approaching love is for Valeria, another girl who grew up with him. Even that ends up in heartbreak…and makes me wonder why Reed and Sue’s daughter shares her name with Doom’s only love….? (If anyone knows, clue me in!)

So there’s the inevitable building of the suit to keep himself safe from the power of the Devil’s touch (which is what scarred his face apparently) and the robots, and so forth…there’s more about his conquering people, working tirelessly, and learning to master all.

Eventually we get to how he takes Latveria and becomes ruler, and there’s a twist at the end, as the narration has all been to a reporter who wants to profile him, but the revelation leaves us to wonder…was that the real story? Or just another decoy?

It was solid, 3.5, but I just didn’t connect with it enough to rank it higher than that, and the art didn’t blow me away…but the writing was good, though you can see how Brubaker has grown since nearly 10 yrs ago on this…

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Review: Ultimate Fantastic Four, Vol. 1 – The Fantastic; by Brian Michael Bendis & Mark Millar

Ultimate Fantastic Four, Vol. 1: The Fantastic by Brian Michael Bendis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Better late than never…my library was just a little slow on the delivery, but I now have a stack of 9 FF volumes to get through for our Foursome Shallow Buddy Read…from LAST week…my bad…

Anyhow, here we go! Welcome to the Ultimate Marvel Universe, a place which varies slightly from the normal Marvel U, and which allows us to tell familiar stories with slight twists…

Here, Reed Richards is still a super smart kid, Ben Grimm is a big jock who defends Reed from bullies in exchange for help with Trigonometry homework, and Sue and Johnny Storm are kids of Dr. Storm, the head of the Baxter Building.
Reed’s father (Gary, not Nathaniel) here is a bit of a dick, mad that Reed breaks the blender and other devices…eventually, the Baxter Building program for super genius scientists recruits him at the Science Fair, and off he goes, but even there, there’s not much love from the family still (mom is OK, but dad isn’t).

Sue is a smart one here, Reed is in love from day one, and Victor (Van Damme, not Von Doom – though I hope it means he’s great at Kung Fu and does Volvo commercials!) is his main rival. Mole Man is a professor at the BB who’s fired for doing human DNA work and General Ross (Thunderbolt?) and Dr. Storm fire him for immoral work.

Johnny’s his usual self, a bit younger, and Ben just happens to come visit one day when they’re doing a big experiment…it goes wrong, and they all wake up in different places with variations of their powers (Earth – Ben, Air – Sue, Fire – Johnny, and Water – Reed (makes more sense than Elastic)) However, Victor is still missing…

There’s a Mole Man creature who shows up to attack the city, and Ben and Johnny dive right into ass-kickery, Reed a little less so…they then discover that Sue was found by Mole Man, and there’s some awkward shit there…

We’re left with the whereabouts of Victor still unknown and the army concerned about what the four have become, especially Ben…

So this is a great variation on the origin story, and a fun place to jump into a series that can alienate by being too high concept and science-y for some of us troglodytes, but it also corrects the blatant sexism of the early 60s FF when they weren’t quite sure how to deal with Sue…

I’m looking forward to continuing the series, and cannot wait to see how Victor will manifest himself. I’m also happy to see the comedy and action mix, courtesy of Bendis and Millar, who wrote this together! Now, onto Vol. 2!

This should have been the required read for Foursome Week…great fun read that’s not too fluffy or too heavy.

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Review: Fantastic Four: 1234 (Marvel Knights 4 #1234) by Grant Morrison, Jae Lee (Illustrator)

Fantastic Four: 1234 by Grant Morrison

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

2.5 stars

Beware: LOADS OF SPOILERS IN THIS ONE!
In fact, I’m probably going to end up spoiling the entire story. So.

Our FOURTH week of Shallow Buddy reads is a nod to Marvel’s oldest family, The Fantastic Four!

OH! So close!
This one almost made me get excited for this team. Almost.
At first it seemed like this was a grand What If story, told in Morrison’s schizophrenic style and brought to life by Jae Lee’s art.
Very cool, no?

No.
Midway through, I was convinced that this was going to be THE ULTIMATE Fantastic Four story for me.
Ben goes to see Doom, because he promised to tell him The Truth about something. Whatever he says rocks Grimm’s world, and in exchange for listening…Victor cures Ben.
Meanwhile, Reed has hooked himself up to some machine, and become totally unresponsive to the outside world.

Sue goes to Alicia’s house to escape her brother’s childish behavior, and get some advice on what do do about Reed.
He ignores her for his work, she cna’t take it anymore, blah, blah, blah.

Ding Dong!

Guess who shows up at the door?

Also, it looks like Doom is actually Reed!
OMG! Mr. Fantastic, what have you done?!

I’m literally bouncing around by the time I read that part!
*insert squealing*
Shit is getting REAL!

Oh. Wait. No, it isn’t.

I was drooling all over the place, thinking YES! I’ve found MY Fantastic Four Book!, and that’s when the cop-out happens.
Wah, wah, wah…
Nothing is really real. Reed is still a good guy. Sue still loves him, Ben was tricked (but it can be fixed!), and Johnny…well,the rain shorts out his power, but it’s cool.
Turns out Doom has a giant reality bending Game of Life machine.
Not kidding. I wish I was, but I’m not…

So. Reed somehow figured out that Victor was going to use his Game machine on them, went onto his lab, built a replica of the machine, hooked himself up to it, grew more brains, and outplayed Dr. Doom.
But somehow…there was no time to explain to the rest of the team.

I loved the idea of mixing it all up, going crazy with the personalities, and turning these guys loose. It could have been interesting, but it ended up turning into a boring scoop of vanilla. And since it was Morrison, I not only felt unsatisfied by the conclusion…I was also slightly disoriented and confused.
Thanks, Grant.

First part of the story is great, so I’m grudgingly giving it 2.5 stars.

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Review: Fantastic Four Vol. 6 (Foundation) by Jonathan Hickman

Fantastic Four, Volume 6 by Jonathan Hickman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think the best way to describe the final volume of this collection would be disjointed. It’s all over the place, trying to do way too many things at once, and none of the stories flow. It really is a bunch of individual issues tied together because they were all published in the same 6 months.

There’s good stories, boring ones, some interesting ideas, and some very touching ones.

Feels like this just got thrown together, or Hickman just had a bunch of ideas he wasn’t done with.

1)Reed and Nathaniel go forward in time to see what becomes of the FF, and it actually leads to a rather touching moment.

2)Parallel Universe Reed works for Hitler, who won WWII, ends up becoming all-powerful a-la Doom, and leads into the Council of Reeds…

3)Parallel Doom creates his own universe, and it isn’t quite what he bargained for; is saved by unlikely child.

4)FF performs brain surgery on Willy Lumpkin. (Marvel has now had 3 different instances of shrinking to do brain surgery in less than 2yrs: Hank Pym on Daredevil; Hank McCoy on Broo; Reed and FF on Willy…are they trying to suggest something?)

5) Tie-up of the parallel universe Reed saved being moved to the future or something so they never have to worry about not having somewhere to be…

All in all some interesting ideas but just so much going on…

I do like Hickman’s attempts to make things cosmic large, and I do like that each member becomes stronger as individual characters.

Not the place to start with FF though, and I do feel like Fraction’s Marvel Now stuff isn’t quite as good.

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