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Fantastic Four: World's Greatest

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- Susan Richards, while mulling over potential nannies: "Do you think Wolverine would be interested? He seems to be on every other team right now."

Plot SPOILERS, which may spoil the plot.

Okay, there's a fresh new car smell again to FANTASTIC FOUR. Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch, who did big things with THE AUTHORITY and THE ULTIMATES, have landed on this title like the rock stars they are and have very quickly elevated Marvel's first superhero family back to a place of prominence and relevance. Big storytelling, bombastic art, and a sense of fun. I've missed all that in this series.

FANTASTIC FOUR: WORLD'S GREATEST collects issues #554-561 and presents us with two nifty story arcs: "World's Greatest" & "Death of the Invisible Woman," with "World's Greatest" espousing that truism: "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions." Millar and Hitch's run starts with the ominous proclamation that the Earth is doomed, not because of extinction-level supervillainy but because of the imminent ecological collapse which will render Earth uninhabitable within a decade. But there's a plan long in the works, audacious and ambitious, and Reed Richard's old flame Alyssa Moy drops by the Baxter Building to recruit Reed to this project, which is called Nu-World. In a parallel dimension, an artificial planet (complete with its own fabricated moon) is being constructed, a life-size model and mirror image of Earth, down to the graffiti (as Reed gets the spectacular tour, the oceanscapes have yet to be filled with water). The project leaders, the Earth-Trust, have seemingly covered every angle, down to contingencies dealing with illness, the global economy and the safety of Nu-World's future populace. This last concern features CAP (Conserve & Protect), an indestructible robotic watchdog programmed to ensure the absence of weaponry on Nu-World. And, if you're like me, you snort knowingly. Because, jaded cynic that you are and having read a gazillion comics and maybe even seen 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, you suspect it's only a matter of time before CAP goes all berserko.

Alyssa, who is Reed's intellectual peer, tells him: "We don't need the guy in the costume, Reed. We need you to be a scientist again." And off Reed goes to mull it over, even though he's more inclined to take a crack at resolving the environmental issue first, before giving up on his home planet. In Reed's absence, Alyssa's scientist hubbie asks her: "There's a little part of you that still loves him, isn't there?" Alyssa denies it, maybe a bit too fervently, but it's too late - the romantic triangle angle is officially on. Which doesn't go unnoticed by Ben Grimm, who declares to his long-time pal Reed: "She messes with yer head, pal! Every time!" And, if you haven't been following the FF recently, Reed and Sue's marriage hasn't been that rock-bed solid of late, what with the Civil War thing and all. Just another worry to stir into the plot stew.

Meanwhile *gasp* CAP goes all berserko. It escapes into "our" world and begins taking out every weapons-capable installation on his naughty list, along the way killing hundreds of soldiers. An S.O.S. call goes out and forty of Marvel's costumed heavy hitters sally forth to combat CAP, only to get put down in under eight minutes. With Reed having gone gallivanting across the universe, Sue, Ben, and Johnny arrive late to the party but are still on time to get smacked down like a street waif in a Charles Dickens story. Not to get all vague or anything, but things eventually do work out, and the story arc ends with an awesome romantic moment between Reed and Susan and a reaffirmation that Reed Richards is the most Not-To-Be-Effed-With nerd in all of comicbookdom. I admit that the little kid in me jumped up and down when Reed busted out his gigantic honking Anti-Galactus mecha suit.

"World's Greatest" dovetails nicely into the next story arc "Death of the Invisible Woman," which kicks off when a certain Latverian Big Bad comes a-callin' for help, only to be summarily captured by a team of unknown superpowered costumes calling itself the New Defenders. And if these Defenders don't impress you enough, one of them kinda nonchalantly sends Ben flying thru several buildings.

Johnny Storm, the Paris Hilton of the superhero set, boasts a moral compass which has never really pointed towards true north, if you get what I'm sayin'. Dude's latest scheme has him front-manning a rock band, and he's also set to star in his own reality show. Whilst attempting to stop a bank heist, Torch ends up macking with the beautious felon. And, even as the shagging extends past the one-night-fling thing, girl keeps on robbing them banks... As it turns out, there's a sinister reason for her heists.

Not to ignore the last two FF members: the Thing gets a shot at normalcy as he's now dating a schoolteacher. Susan, to help out folks rendered homeless and destitute by the recent World War Hulk event, has founded a charity group with Wasp and She-Hulk. Sue is also looking for a nanny for Franklin and Valeria and seems to have finally found the perfect one (your "uh-oh" radar may now commence beeping). And, lest we overlook a significant event, I refer you back to this story arc's title.

To reiterate: Big storytelling, bombastic art, and a sense of fun. This is what the FF should be like, all the time. This current run takes me back to when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and, yep, even John Byrne were ramrodding the World's Greatest Comics, generating that blend of excitement, high adventure and wild super-science. When those guys were running shiznit, we never knew what kind of crazy cool each issue would bring, except that it would always be well worth checking out. I'm getting that vibe right now. Millar and Hitch have taken the gloves off.

Where else but in the FF could time travel and jaunts across the universe be handled so nonchalantly? As issue #554 casually opens up with the FF returning from a time travelling vacation trip, it strikes me how blase and old hat this must seem to these adventurers and even to the Richards children. And, oh, no big whoop, but Reed's just gonna go thru a wormhole and across the universe to run a little errand, okay?

But, despite the grand opera and cosmic flavor long established in this series, what's always kept things kind of grounded is that, above anything else, the Fantastic Four is a family. Millar doesn't neglect the character dynamics and peppers his stories with personal, humanizing touches, the best example of which is Reed and Sue's anniversary dinner. I also like one throwaway moment which has young Franklin Richards revealing that, every Saturday, his dad has him and his sister practice the emergency villain drill. That totally makes sense.

To quote from [..]s interview with Mark Millar, Bryan Hitch and he plan on "approaching this title like a horror/monster comic with a superhero inflection" and that "as well as being a superhero book, we wanted to make FF kind of creepy." Big words and an interesting approach, and if anyone can pull it off, it's Millar and Hitch (whose artistic mojo, by the way, is stroooong; Bryan Hitch is the illustrating sensei of epic cinematic superhero storytelling). Already Millar has introduced big concepts and elements which I hope future writers will pick up on and run away with. One particularly intriguing twist of which development I'm very much anticipating is the revelation about Valeria. For readers of WOLVERINE, there are ties here to the current "Old Man Logan" storyline, as well as a set-up for the upcoming FANTASTIC FORCE series (due out, I think, in April '09).

The FF has become again a must-see read. But that only lasts as long as Millar and Hitch stay onboard. My fingers are crossed but my faith is weak as I don't think these cats are in this series for the long haul. Eight issues into it and there's already a whiff of greatness. Inhale deep. It'll probably be gone before too long.

This is what a professional comic should look like. The trend in Marvel nowadays seems to be towards photo-realistic images with big storylines. I think that generally, this works for titles like the Fantastic Four.

However, the actual plot and dialogue is a bit of a snowjob. Earth is doomed -thus Reed Richard's ex-girlfriend calls on him to get involved in the Nu-World project. There is a giant robot which breaks loose, decimates a few military bases and numerous big-time superheroes and only Reed in his giant Transformer-like robot can defeat it. The follow-on story features the gigantic robot-like Galactus as a battery charger. See the use of repetitive motifs?

It also wasn't very clear how the new team's idea of moving 8 billion persons back in time requiring lots of energy could be simply shifted to the plan to transfer them to the Nu-World.

Johnny Storm in his new guise as reality actor/rock star comes across as a callow youth. Benjamin Grimm is just dead boring. The focus here is just on Reed, Sue Storm, his ex-girlfriend, with the others playing supporting roles. Without doubt, this is the new trend but it doesn't beat the original Lee/Kirby plotlines.

This work is so head-and-shoulders above the last...oh, 200 issues or so of FF, it's a quantum-leap in Marvel comic books. It just puts Stracynski's and Duffie's work in the absolute shade. I got chills reading it.

On a slightly deeper note, I will say that it is certainly no change from the breezy, "slick" characterizations that are to be found in all of Millar's work. The characters are flawed, even a little repulsive at some moments. The character of Jonny Storm is especially...annoying, as he starts a rock band, beds down girls in the middle of stopping crimes, etc. Ben, Reed, and Sue are a bit more down to earth.

The plotting can be a bit transparent, as solutions for the crises are cleverly provided in subplots long before they are utilized in later moments of "surprise!" (Spoiler-->)At one point in the first arc, we see Reed discussing his "Galactus Fail-safe" or some such contingency plan. Of course, the final battle later turns out to pit our heroes against a gigantic (Galactus-sized!) hulking battle-bot, a perfect time for this Galactus contingency to be whipped together in a matter of moments, just in time to save the day without much fuss.

The deus ex machina solution for the second plot arc just happens to be provided by a subplot that had been running from the first arc...in other words, everything fits together a bit too easily and conveniently, sort of a set-em-up/knock-em-down formula that is ultimately unsatisfying.

That said, there are many moments of brilliance along the way. It is especially exciting to see the FF facing battles and threats that are truly earth-shaking, and not just the silly outer-space goonies (you know, the ones with those heart-warming backstories) that have been peppering the series for the past 5 or 6 years.

The artwork is amazing, especially the battle scenes. The action flows from panel to panel logically. Unlike so many other super-hero pose-downs, in which characters flex and strut, but never really engage each other, (see Lentil Yu's artwork in "Secret Invasion" for an example), the mechanics of these fights feel real. The layouts and compositions are thought-out and and add to the drama and scale of the stories.

The whole project has a very "big" feel to it, a sense of ambition and urgency that plows through the inconsistencies and flaws. One of the best Marvel Comics of 2008.

Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch make this book World's Greatest again.
These guys deliver a good story, and Hitch's artwork is (as always) gorgeous. The story reintroduces Alyssa Moy, Reed's old flame. She needs Reed's help on Nu-World: a back-up plan for when Earth is uninhabitable within a decade. But these plans have far reaching results into the future. This book also includes the New Defenders, Galactus, Dr. Doom. And the mastermind behind all of this will astonish you!

Announced as angels from above set to revivify a dull series, Millar and Hitch proved to be anything but. Uninspired writing was all about shallow plotting and tabloid characterization, hip egotism passing for personality, flash and not much bang [Spoiler: within one issue of meeting a new girl, the Thing decides to marry her; how believable and involving is that?]. Transplanted into the regular magazine, the stories didn't bother to pay attention to what had been going on before them, which resulted in Doctor Doom twice in six months running scared to Reed Richards for help in a "shocking" plot set-up. One more Hulk and another Wolverine were added to the Marvel roster. Yeah, we needed that... Bryan Hitch's artwork relied too much on photo reference, resulting in lovely postcard shots from Scotland and Latveria turning out to be Prague with added turrets and Roman pediments, characters changing faces depending on the photo used. Layout was often confusing, far from his AUTHORITY high mark. A giant robots punchout in a snowstorm without panels borders is a muddled highlight in this very volume.

As the run went on, the by-the-numbers plotting escaladed to ever more gigantic threats, with diminishing returns. Why bother bringing down all the parallel Earths into the plot when you can't make the reader care about the main characters? The whole enterprise fizzled out by the end of the run to the point where Hitch and Millar left the over the top and dull finale to others to fill in.

FANTASTIC FOUR has been sadly lacking in excitement and ideas for quite a long time, but, for all its bling, this brash and ultimately silly interlude was more annoyance than help.

This was a good, fun read -- the FF in all their glory, with epic adventures tempered by a goofy sense of humor. Mark Millar's take on the "regular" FF doesn't seem all that different than his work on their "Ultimate" universe versions, but it's still a nice, fluid story. He does seem to backtrack on a few character developments in years gone by... Johnny is once again a callow, hormonal airhead (as opposed to the business-savvy, becoming-an-adult version of a few years back) and Sue is (wrongly, I think) portrayed as sort of a soccer-mom style plebian (in contrast to one of Reed's old flames, who is a super-brain science babe...) Sue's well-established leadership skills and razor-sharp intelligence are ignored in this new portrayal which seems, overall, misguided. Meanwhile, Millar's take on the Thing is really enjoyable. I like Ben when he's at peace with himself and having fun.

The story is pretty clever and exciting, althogh I have to confess I'm not as wowed by Bryan Hitch's artwork as a lot of other folks seem to be: with this coloring job, in particular, it seems crowded and chaotic. There are some clever design touches, which move the story along well, but the inking is blotchy, faces and forms often seem mildly grotesque, an while the pictures are kinetic and bold, they often seem kind of sloppy... I frequently found myself reminded of Gene Colan's artwork in the 1970s. Anyway, overall, I thought this was a gas -- looking forward to more from Millar in the future. (Joe Sixpack, ReadThatAgain book reviews)

Don't expect a Jack Kirby classical F4 adventure: THIS is the how the Ultimate F4 sould be in my opinion! (if we look at the approach of the creators to the characters, to the kind of storytelling and the art).
If you loved ULTIMATES, you'll love this story arc.

The great One-Two from The Ultimates keeps their A-game going with this series. Great, great stuff.