Wednesday Comics: Fantastic Four (2022)

 

I like when a comic surprises me.

Comic companies are notorious for cancelling a series and restarting it at issue #1 in order to boost sales and bring in new customers.  I regret to inform you that I am one of those suckers who tends to fall for this trick.  

But every once and a while the company takes the opportunity to bring on a new creative team with a fresh take on a decades-long franchise.

And that is what has happened with Fantastic Four.

I am late to the ballgame as this new series has been around for almost a year.  But as I was catching up on my comic reading, I found this first issue and read it.  The next day I travelled to two different comic book stores and picked up the remaining 9 issues.

The Fantastic Four has always been the first family of comics.  One of the things that makes them so good is that you get the strong sense of the family dynamic.  But what you also get are wild adventures.  The first issue started with only the Thing and his wife Alicia.  They enter a small town where every day everything resets to a certain day in 1945.  The first half of the book is a mystery.  The second half is a funny and ultimately heart-warming study about human relationships and time.  To be honest, it felt like a story from Doctor Who.

This gets at the heart of what the Fantastic Four could be.  They are super heroes, but they can encounter any kind of story in space, time, magic land, or mutant power.  Every adventure can be totally different.  One issue involves a town of Doombots and the next the Human Torch is taking on a corrupt business owner with super powers.

Writer Ryan North has very clear voices for each of the members of the family.  You could never confuse Johnny's obliviousness with Ben's blue-collar edge.  He does make Reed speak a bit too much in technobabble, but that is okay.  The reason why is that above all, North is making reading this book fun.

I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to simply read a fun comic book.  So many try to be dark and dramatic or attempt to make some kind of social commentary.  Instead, this book just wants to take you on some crazy adventures for a few minutes each month.  Regular artist Iban Coello and Ivan Fiorelli have some great art that is in the classic comic style, with just a hint of cartoonishness to add some extra humor.

While there is an overarching story arc, most of the adventures are one-to-two issue mini-arcs.  There is one that was incredibly interesting where the FF had to stop an inter-dimensional algae from destroying the universe.  The solution was elegant but also filled with conflict, which gives the story a lot of momentum.  And no Fantastic Four series is complete without an appearance by Doctor Doom.  The over-sized issue with him was a real treat.  North captured not only Doom's power, his voice, and his ego, but was able to incisively bring to light Doom's greatest flaw in a surprising way.

All of this is couched in the wonderful dynamic of the leads.  There is something so tender and perfect about Ben's relationship with the blind Alicia.  There is something so funny about how Johnny's infinitely lower intellect can still deflate Reed's understandable ego.

I don't read a lot of Marvel anymore, but I am making this book one of my top priorities every month.  If you haven't had a chance, try and track down the first issue.  

You won't regret it.