FANTASTIC FOUR 1234 #1

By: Arnold T. Blumberg
Date: Saturday, August 18, 2001

Is this supposed to be a "grim 'n' gritty" take on the venerable Fantastic Four, a sort of backhanded celebration of their 40th anniversary meant to pay tribute to the team by dirtying them up a bit? That's how it appears, and as darker superhero stories go, it's not all bad. It just doesn't quite feel like the family we know and love. There's too much unbridled bitterness on display here, and the family that works and plays together at the Baxter Building comes off as supremely dysfunctional. It's enough to make Stan Lee spin in his grave, and he isn't even dead yet.

Sue is bemoaning the absence of Reed, her super-genius (and super-elastic) husband (make your own joke, they've all been told a million times before), who has sequestered himself in his lab as usual. The Thing is once more railing against the fates for making him into a monster (you'd think he would have found a hobby by now), and Johnny is his typically belligerent self. Well, maybe they are rather dysfunctional after all, but they seem a bit happier in the traditional tales. Here they look as if they're ready to tear each other to pieces, but the dissent in the group has only just begun to rear its ugly head.

The Thing is the focus of this first issue in the mini-series event scripted by Grant Morrison, who evidently has a bone to pick with the way the FF have been portrayed in the past. Offering yet another new spin on the standard Doctor Doom revenge plot, Morrison has Doom contact the Thing with a simple message. He knows a truth about Reed that the Thing does not a truth that reveals how Reed has manipulated everyone and cast Doom as a villain in his own personal drama. The Thing, according to Doom, is an unwitting victim of Richard's machinations, but there is a solution. Doom can cure the rocky hero and make him human again, but when the Thing takes him up on the offer (waaaaay too quickly for my tastes), the result is a somewhat confusing trip sideways to an alternate reality (I think) and a swift car accident that leaves Ben Grimm bleeding in the street, Reed's name still on his lips.

This is a murky story, both in plot and art. Jae Lee's rendition of the characters is decent enough but unattractive, and the entire thing (no pun intended) seems a bit...inappropriate somehow. In the year of the FF's 40th anniversary, a mini-series that deconstructs them and leaves them as muddily-illustrated, griping sourpusses ripe for conquering by a transparent power-hungry megalomaniac like Doom is almost an insult. As I said, it's not that the execution is all that bad; perhaps it's the timing that's wrong.

FANTASTIC FOUR 1234

Grade: B

Issue:No. 1 (of 4)

Author(s): Grant Morrison, Jae Lee

Publisher: Marvel Comics

Price: $2.99