Customer Reviews

Ultimate Fantastic Four, Vol. 4: Inhuman

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

So far the Ultimate Fantastic Four has yet to loose its flair, and with Jae Lee's artistic genius brought on board in this (the fourth) volume it is even more of a delight. More so than other installments in the Marvel Ultimate line, the Fantastic Four is the most clever when it comes to taking a classic Marvel series and bringing its beginnings into the new millennium while remaining as true to its origins as possible.

In Inhuman we get two stories. The first is taken from issues #19-20, and pits the FF against the Ultimate versions of the Mad Thinker and the Android. As our heroes return from their battle with alien horrors from the Negative Zone in Las Vegas, their helicopter is hit with a focused EMP beam as it heads in for a landing at the Baxter Building. After recovering from their crash landing, the FF and their military escort quickly realize that all is not well at their headquarters. It has, in fact, been turned into a death trap by the Mad Thinker, who seems to have an unhealthy fixation on Reed Richards. Not only must the FF get to bottom of what has gone wrong with the Baxter Building, they also have to worry about the fate of the other residents, the potentially deadly experimental devices housed in the various laboratories there, as well as surviving against the Android's deadly orders to exterminate them all.

In the second story, taken from Ultimate FF Annual #1, we get our first look of the Ultimate Inhumans. (Note: Jae Lee also did the penciling for the utterly sublime Marvel Knights: Inhumans series, so this is not his first work the characters.) The Ultimate versions the Inhumans are quite similar to their core Marvel universe counterparts (although Gorgon is now a woman, which seems more fitting for one named Gorgon, and Medusa has much more in common with her mythological inspiration), but it seems as though the Ultimate renditions are less friendly than their mainstream equivalents. Crystal is the first to show, and as it was in the original FF she and the Human Torch share an attraction to one another. There is a problem, though, in that Crystal is to be married to the King's (Blackbolt) wormy brother Maximus. This story is less of a flashy action sequence and more of a look into the spellbinding society of the Inhumans, dealing with the timeless theme of clashing cultures rather than clashing super-beings.

I highly recommend this to any and all, even if you are not a fan of the Fantastic Four or the Ultimate line (but if you are a fan or either or, you simply must check this out). The stories are very well done and the art is superb. The Ultimate Fantastic Four and the Ultimates are quite possibly the two best comics being published by Marvel at this time, and both share the same approach to the Ultimate-concept as well as a good measure of captivating ingenuity.

Mike Carey writes a brief two issues of Ultimate Fantastic Four, an arc called Think Tank. Jae Lee does the art for these two issues, along with the annual. Think Tank is more of a thriller story, which is something that isn't done in Marvel comics that often. Jae Lee's art is perfect for this type of story. Reed, Johnny, Sue, and Ben end up trapped inside the Think Tank, and a former classmate is playing sinister games with them. They come across freaky inventions and unsettling situations. They'll have to work together to stop this evil individual before they find themselves torn apart. Jae Lee's art is eerie and his gothic style accentuates the horror feeling Carey seemed to be going for. The dialogue is good, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of his run, which takes place after Millar's 12 issue run.
The annual, which is written by Mark Millar, introduces the Inhumans into the Ultimate universe. Jae Lee returns for art and does a fantastic job. Once again his gothic style suits this type of story perfectly. The story opens with Reed, Sue, and Ben trying to stop Dr. Storm's cancer. Things quickly change once Johnny rescues a superhuman girl named Crystal. While the Ultimate Inhumans are basically the same to their 616 counterparts. This annual makes for a fun self-contained story. Overall these two arcs get a solid 4/5.

Rhonda is a terrible villain. The entire Think Tank arc was boring, and the art was bland at best. The best part was Mark Millar's annual that introduces the Ultimate Inhumans. This book is very thin, only holding 2 issues and an annual that's only slightly longer then an issue. Sadly you have to read this to have completely read UFF, but at least it's a short nightmare.

This volume was a good read. I wish they had gone a little more into detail about the Inhuman's society, but the Mad Thinker segment was fantastic.

The "Ultimate FF" series starts to hit its stride here, having finally gotten past all the set-up and exposition, and settles into adventure-oriented stories that take only one or two issues to tell (as opposed to longer story arcs of previous volumes). In this sense it begins to feel like the old, original FF, back in the early days of Kirby and Lee.

The revamped, postmodern Mad Thinker is a real gas -- one of the most interesting, most creepily psychotic Marvel baddies I've seen in years (and a definitely improvement on the old, two-dimensional Thinker...) The second story, introducing the new version of the Inhumans, was less satisfying... the plot whizzed by too fast and things were not well explained; if you didn't already know the whole Inhumans mythology, I'm not sure how much of it would make sense. In both stories, however, Jae Lee's artwork is consistently dynamic and fresh, challenging readers to follow the graphic side of the comicbook equation in new and exhiliarating ways. It was a good read.

(PS - I'm not sure what the other reviewer is referring to when he talks about this series promoting drug use and anti-Americanism. His comments don't seem to have anything to do with the actual content of the book, so take it all with a grain of salt.)

i love the ultimate fantastic four, i think it's the best ultimate book out there (ok tied with ultimate spider-man). the vols. 1-3, and 5-6 are great. but this one sucks. you really don't need to read it at all, i think maybe they were in between writers/artists at the time and just got someone to fill in on issues 19-20. the annual isn't that great either, it just introduces the inhumans (basically johnny meets crystal).

I'm a huge fan of the Ultimate lines of X-Men, Spiderman, Ultimate(Avengers), and of course the Fantastic Four. For that reason, I am deeply upset with how UFF Vol. 4: Inhuman turned out. First off, this cover is way too decieving. Jae Lee, while an obviously talented artist, is definitely not the write person to be drawing for the Ultimate series. It completely veered away from the amazing artwork done in the first 3 volumes, which is pretty much the uniform look for the entire Ultimate universe.
The stories definitely could have been better written and needed to be spanned out more. 2 issues is definitely not enough to fully tell the story with the Thinker. Then you have that UFF Annuals #1 which was even worse than the Thinker story. TOO SHORT, plus the artwork was just wrong. It was all a rare miss in the Ultimate line and having seen the upcoming Vol. 5: Crossover, it doesn't appear to be one that's going to be repeated.

I sincerely hope I wasn't the only one disappointed with "Ultimate Fantastic Four: Inhuman." Because if I was, then I have lost a lot of faith in the human race. This volume wasn't so much a comic book as it was a written turd.

The art sucks, even the cover-page, which others have liked, I have deemed worse than the art I have come to recognize in this series. In the book itself, half the time I couldn't even see what was going on; everyone looked like black blobs talking to one other. Jae Lee needs to drop his art supplies and go back to college to get some lessons. It isn't 'art' if you can't see it!

As for the story...my Lord, I've read stories written by six-year olds that were more compelling than this. The characters made no sense when they spoke, the story was unrelated to the summary (what booby-traps?!), and the villain looked and sounded like a total retart...something you really should watch out for when you have a villain called "The THINKER." If she's so smart, why can't she form a coherent sentence? Or explain herself? Or do ANYTHING right?

I mean, come on. Thus far, I've read pretty much every Ultimate Marvel book out there, and enjoyed most of them. Sure, some of them aren't as good as others, and sure some are just plan sucky. Well...this one fits in the bottom category. Literally. I wish I could go back in time and stop the people from cutting down trees to make the paper used in this book...what a waste of nature.

Overall, I'm more than disappointed with this story (as I'm sure you can probably all tell by now.) I've loved volumes one through three, but this is a dead dog in an otherwise perfect race. The fantastic art and the incredible storylines are completely absent in this book...as is any fun you might have had in reading it.

Don't buy this. Don't read it. Don't hurt yourself

I picked up "Ultimate Fantastic Four, vol. 4: Inhuman," at my local library yesterday, and though many may think what I did was premature, I borrowed it and read it anyway. The paperback is pretty thin thus only containing issues #19 (Think Tank Part One), #20 (Think Tank Part Two - Finale), and #1 Annual issue (Inhuman). First off to get this out of the way: The cover art is probably the biggest missleader for me. Being someone who is an avid follower of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN (who artist, Mark Bagley does some amazing work for the comic book overall) I too one look at the cover and expected some of the same excellent art work. Instead I am welcomed with pencil thin drawn art by artist Jae Lee which was less than impressive. His art technique failed to capture any real emotion displayed in the dialogue of the characters; Most of the time the characters were straight faced or angry-faced for too long, or just deadpanned in one too many scenes (notably Sue).



Johnny's "flame on" scenes were horrible: They looked like computer graphics overlapped over the pencil drawing. And then throughout most of the "Think Tank" storyline, I found myself staring at black blobs that were supposed to be the characters (this art style is carried on into #1 Annual) doing various things in the supposed dark, via incoherent and poorly drawn action scenes that had me re-looking at the panels twice. The storyline for all three issues were weak and uninspiring.




Issue 19 is simply a start up for the FEMALE Mad Thinker, Rhona Burchill who proceeds to capture the soldiers and the teen-Fantastic Four once they reach the heart of the so-called Baxter Building, which is in no way booby-trapped. In issue 20, for some reason the reader is given a horrible excuse for a backstory to Rhona Burchill in issue #20, and then are supposed to believe that she somehow "beat Reed Richards" and Reed has a moment of "Brain Evny," (they insult my intelligence to no end). The first Annual issue is probably the weakest story of them all: It starts off with plot-starter characters who are mountain climbing in a snowy mountain region. The pair barely discover a guarded city which belong to the ULTIMATE Inhumans before being carried off to be mind-wipped. Elsewhere Ben and Reed are somewhere inside Sue and Johnny's father, ridding the old man of Cancer cells and other invading viruses while Johnny is out hopping through clubs, picking up "scanks" as he called the women (who resemble the Inhuman Medusa a little too much). He then proceeds to attempt to rescue a damsel in distress but is pummeled into a broken mess by her perusers' instead. In the next panels: She is suddenly in the Baxter Building (no scene on how she got there or a simple "on the defense moment" from the tiro at the BB), speaking to the UFF-teens. She is introduced as Crystal - one of the Inhumans that control the power of all elements. She complains to the quad-team that she was bored of her perfect life, escaped an arranged marriage and came to NYC for excitement. Ben laments, "Yeah, just what New York needs... more freakin' weirdos," - I concur. Crystal, as well as the other Inhuman's backstories are never explored at all. Instead Crystal is "kidnapped" by her fellow peers and taken back to the secret city. Johnny proceeds to call her "the love of his life" but Sue rightfully puts him straight and quad go after her with the help of her teleporting bull-doggish creature, LockJaw. From there disaster strikes the moment the UFF are found out by a Tien-type character named Tri-clops.



From there The Thing starts fighting and the others follow suit. If anything Annual was a poor attempt at introducing the INHUMANS to the ULTIMATE MARVEL universe; Nothing was properly explained about these characters and if anything, "ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL 1" was a better constructed story. Many people complain about Chris Claremount or Brain Michael Bendis' tendencies to drag storylines out to the point of boredom (I don't think in such a manner, properly explained stories are probably my favorite as long as their not TOO DRUG OUT), but at least they give you time to adjust to the characters/story. Mark Millar (writer for the normal FANTASIC FOUR continuity) and Mike Carey throw them on you and expects you to accept them because they were something special in the normal MARVEL COMMUNITY. Lastly, throughout all three issues Reed is less of a leader -more of a chicken- than he is in the original FF series and behaves to the point why I remembered I didn't like him. He spens most of his time tellng the others to "Look out for Sue! (whose character is non-exsistent in this volume)," and dodging enemy attacks most of the time. Ben grumbles and complains, Sue huffs at the male attention she gets when in a dangerous situation, and Johnny acts pretty much like a brash hothead. Basically, they all act like teenagers to a point only more annoying. All in all, it wasn't horrible, it was great either. I seriously think a change of writers is in serious need for this title series. [a 3 out of 5]