It’s would probably be no surprise to many of you to learn I’m a complete X-Men geek, given that I launched this blog specifically to start reviewing Messiah Complex. In my quest to achieve nerd perfection, I have started writing annotations for X-Men Legacy to be hosted on Comics Daily. Issue #208 is up now, and accessible from the Annotations index page. For reference, the permanent link is, on the present template, just above the title banner.

It’s an ongoing project, so feel free to send in any corrections or additions to the little-used Comics Daily e-mail address, ComicsDailyTeam@gmail.com! Any and all feedback will be appreciated.

Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

While Claremont was doing his not entirely horrendous run on Fantastic Four earlier this decade, three companion miniseries came out united under the banner “Before the Fantastic Four.” As the name suggests, they showed the early days of the F4 characters. One was a “Storms” miniseries, focusing on Johnny and Sue’s early days, and the second was a “Ben Grimm and Logan” series, which paired Grimm up with the unit-shifting Wolverine during World War 2.

The third was this one – Reed Richards - which showed the early adventures of Reed and Alyssa Moy – an ex-girlfriend of Reed’s who was part of the F4’s supporting cast at the time, having recently been introduced.

When Mark Millar was conceiving his current Fantastic Four run, he wanted to add someone to his supporting cast, saying in an interview:

It just always struck me that Reed would have had someone prior to Sue, since he’s ten years older than she is. Also, Sue’s so different from Reed and I felt the girl out there would be much more like he was, a female Reed Richards of sorts, and someone he’d have met at university. As luck would have it, Chris Claremont created exactly such a character and her name is Alyssa Moy. Her nickname in our story is Mrs. Fantastic.

Claremont had already established that Reed and Alyssa were involved in all sorts of Indiana Jones-style adventures, and the task then fell to Peter David to write one of these adventures up into a full-length piece. Artist Duncan Fegredo, currently of Hellboy fame, was tasked with doing the artwork.

The story is PURE Indiana Jones, and is more than aware of the fact. You can tell that David had a lot of fun putting together this adventure, and frankly it would’ve been nice if Spielberg and Lucas had this much understanding of what makes Indy fun when they were putting together Crystal Skull. If you can’t tell from the cover, Alyssa occupies a fairly prominent action-heroine role, and David’s mixture of action and comedy make this comic the Indiana Jones/Lara Croft team-up that never was.

During the course of the series, David somehow makes the idea of Reed Richards-as-Indy mesh with the more scientific, considered man the readers know him as – it was never going to be an easy task, but his analytical mind is always visibly at work, even when he’s not talking about science. Alyssa is a strong female presence throughout who can challenge Reed on every level – their relationship actually manages to be more believable than his and Sue’s ever is, and it’s good to see that she’s still being used in the comics today.

Fegredo’s artwork is usually superb, though in this series his style actually suffers under the weight of the colouring, and I’m not entirely sure he’s suited to such standard fare. It looks like a lot has been done to temper his style when he works best when allowed to go absolutely crazy on the details. The book could’ve been improved if he’d been given freer reins or simply replaced altogether, instead of ending up in this sort of halfway house. It’s not his best work, but he services the story well enough and there are some nice pages in there even if it feels a bit rushed overall.

I picked up all 3 issues of this series from a bargain bin at the Bristol Expo for under 20 pence. At that price, it’s impossible to consider this a bad deal – it’s a fun story and might see some renewed interest given the current use of Alyssa Moy in the parent title (and the fact that it’s a better Indiana Jones story than the recent movie). I’m not sure it was ever collected, so you’ll have to go for the individual issues, but if you can ever get all three on the cheap, don’t even think twice.