FANTASTIC FOUR #61

By: Tony Whitt
Date: Tuesday, October 01, 2002

The Yancy Street Gang have done it again, and Ben's hopping mad - or as "hopping" as someone who weighs two tons can get. He finally has a lead on who's been sending those anonymous packages all these years, and Johnny's off to stop him before he does some serious damage...especially seeing as it'll be Johnny who gets damaged when Ben finds out who's really been sending them...

Only Mark Waid would be interested enough in one of the minor ongoing jokes that has been a staple of FANTASTIC FOUR for the past four decades to create a whole storyline centered around it, and only Waid could write a story entertaining enough to justify that attention to detail. The last time a writer on this book did something of this sort was way back when John Byrne, in one of the few runs on a book that Byrne detractors do not demonize, introduced us to Ben's often mentioned but never seen Aunt Petunia. It worked pretty well then, too.

But that's not all this story is about, of course, even though the joke that it's Johnny who's been sending those gag packages all this time (as if you didn't know...don't go complaining that I ruined a "major plot point" for you, for cryin' out loud) is just about good enough to support the entire issue. It's just as much about Ben's continued self-loathing, brought on by the reactions of those whose opinions he really shouldn't care about; it's about Johnny's lack of maturity, despite being old enough in real years to draw Social Security; and it's about Sue's constant struggle to be both sister and mother to her younger brother, with the latter usually having to win out, as it does here. Sue's solution to the Johnny problem is an interesting one, and it allows for one of the funniest "next month" captions that this book has ever seen. Oh, and there's some new menace terrorizing the two babies in a pretty ghastly way... We'll probably see some more of that next month. Yeah, that.

This description should give you a sense of where Waid places the emphasis for the new era of the team. Just as with last issue, the focus is on family rather than on fantastic foes, on interpersonal relationships rather than on interdimensional rifts. The brief glimpse we get of what's in store for the team next month shows that Waid's just as interested in telling a good adventure tale, of course - and what a shocker that is, coming as it does in the midst of an otherwise fully domestic story. Kudos to artists Weiringo and Kesel for introducing a moment of sheer horror into a story which is primarily anything but horrific - it's a preview of just what an issue of this book will look like once the adventuring begins afresh.

There are a few minor flaws, mind you - Waid's sense of humor sometimes verges into Peter David territory, with unpredictable results; and his attempts to give Reed Richards a funny bone after all these years fall all too predictably flat. Otherwise, Marvel's flagship title is worth reading again, after far too many years of being flat, stale, and not fantastic. Even the antics of the Yancy Street Gang can't keep this family down.

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