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.

Alternatively, file this one alongside Fantastic Four v1, #454. This issue marked one of the high points of Claremont’s run on Fantastic Four, following several months of rather tedious alternate-universe hopping crammed with villains devoid of personality and a lot of old Excalibur concepts regarding the multiverse thrown into the mix. Not the worst fit for Marvel’s explorers, admittedly, but you only had to look at the F4 fighting a legion of Captain Britains drawn from multiple dimensions to know that things aren’t being handled quite as tightly as they could be. Luckily, with Doom now scheduled to return to the spotlight following a 2-year absence from the Marvel stage, Claremont was free to begin the arc that ended his run, exploring the duality of Reed and Doom.

While Claremont’s run often suffered from fairly two-dimensional characterisation – something deeply evident in Claremont’s hammy dialogue – the plotting in the latter half is (believe it or not) engaging enough to make up for it. Claremont’s take on the F4 is at least consistent, so Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny all stick to their defined personalities just enough to keep you in the story, even if every time a character speaks it feels like they’re overacting.

This particular issue followed a 5th Week event full of comics set on the devastated Heroes Reborn Earth, which had been saved by Ashema in the “Heroes Return” miniseries, but not before it experienced massive environmental and social upheavel following the departure of the Marvel Heroes that had been living there while assumed dead for the past year. Free from (credible) interference, Doom effectively conquered the planet, becoming its champion in the process, and ”Heroes Reborn: Doom”, the final issue of the 5th week event, tied directly into the opening of Fantastic Four #25 as he finally escaped the Heroes Reborn pocket dimension, bringing the entire planet with him.

The Four spend much of the issue fighting Doom and his superhuman allies from the HR Earth, before guidance from Ashema leads them to the real threat – the insane and powerful Dreaming Celestial. With Doom now back on the table, Claremont takes the opportunity to explore the relationship between the teenage version of Valeria he added to the cast, and the man she knows as her father, and these two characters get perhaps the best material of the issue with their interactions. The story climaxes when Reed and Doom unite against the Dreaming Celestial and after the dust clears, only Doom appears to be left standing.

All is not as it appears, however - future issues reveal that Reed is actually trapped in Doom’s armour, with some fairly terrifying consequences resulting from this, and the remaining issues of the Claremont/Larocca run contain some unique and memorable moments. While many elements of the run go unacknowledged, a few have survived, such as “Wilhemina” Lumpkin, niece of the original (now appearing in Cornell’s Fantastic Four: True Story), Alyssa Moy (as previously documented

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) and Valeria, who was eventually added as a permanent member of the cast following some age-regression shenanigans. By no means is this a classic run, but certainly the “Return of Doctor Doom” storyline (encompassing #25) is a hidden gem that, at the very least, deserves to be collected.

Despite all the crossovers going on, it’s somehow a quiet week for comics. That, to you and me, means that it’s time to take a chance on some new series – and this week, we’re in luck. The first of Paul “Captain Britain” Cornell’s new Fantastic Four miniseries is out, and it is, in technical terms, a complete blinder, more than capable of being the best thing released in any week, let alone one as spartan as this.

Not content with quietly turning Captain Britain into one of Marvel’s best-written superheroes, Cornell is now taking on on Marvel’s First Family. Playing up their status as the Marvel Universe’s pioneers and explorers, Cornell finds a new realm for them to visit – the world of fiction. Nods to Jasper Fforde, meta-fiction’s current poster boy, are immediately take care of before the F4 plunge themselves hilariously into the fictionverse. The first book they visit? Sense and Sensibility. One can’t help but feel that Cornell is taking more than a little bit of revenge on numerous BBC costume dramas by throwing the Fantastic Four into that particular yarn.

Much of the issue is dedicated to setting up the immediate threat from a standing start, and the pace of the issue occasionally feels a little brisk. Even so, Cornell brilliantly uses each character to drive the story along – it’s made clear from both the focus and dialogue that Sue is going to be the real star of this series. There’s a great moment where the essence of the Johnny/Ben banter, an integral part of the F4’s family dynamic, is boiled down to its purest formula, and a lovely self-referential nod where Reed wonders why Sue is such a big fan in Sense and Sensibility, a book where girls have to choose between “uptight heroes who have trouble talking about their feelings” and “dashing, moody villains.” It’s the kind of subtle moment the book is crammed with that proves Cornell REALLY knows his stuff – and extra kudos for including the Claremont-created Wilhemina “Billie” Lumpkin.

Artwork comes from Horacio Dominigues, a newcomer to Marvel. He still feels green as an artist, but his expressive body language and storytelling skills are thankfully more than high enough to do Cornell’s work justice. His work brings a sense of fun to what is undoubtedly going to be a fun story, if only because of the one-liners Ben comes up with.

Lastly – when we interviewed Paul at Bristol, he mentioned that the villain was going to be one of Marvel’s older characters, and one that the team has oddly never faced. Then he chastised me for trying to guess who it was. I’m scouring this issue for clues, so I suggest that any and all Marvel nerds pick up a copy and do the same – a shiny penny to the first one who figures it out!

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.

Do you like Starman? Do you like Paul Cornell and the Fantastic Four? If so, there’s probably something worth reading in here, I guess. If nothing else, why not come in and read my latest Alternate Cover column? A must for people who like the Buffy and Angel comic, though an even bigger must for people who don’t like it! And we tell you who to vote for in what nobody calls “the comics industry’s BAFTAs”, the Eagle Awards. (continue reading…)

It’s not often I talk about covers, but then it’s not often that I enjoy a cover concept I have on Fantastic Four. The tagline for the title has been “the world’s greatest comic magazine” for years. Now it actually looks like a magazine – a celebrity lifestyle magazine at that, with the story events trailed as headlines. It’s not like similar things haven’t been done, but F4 is certainly doing the most modern take on the concept, and nicely plays up the Four’s status as celebrity superheroes which is an aspect of the characters that’s almost unique in the Marvel universe.

As you might expect, putting Millar and Hitch on the Fantastic Four means that it’s got undeniably shades of the (real, not Loeb) Ultimates running throughout it. That said, Millar appears to be trying something new. Instead of the damaged, dark look at superheroes, Millar is trying to beat Grant Morrison at his own game, revealing a concept so crazy that the last place I saw it was an episode of Pinky and the Brain. Reed’s ex-girlfriend, the Claremont-created Alyssa Moy (making a welcome return) has been building… a replacement Earth. A 1:1 scale model of our own planet, ready to evacuate humanity to. Now, leaving aside the science of this - surely, if they can build a new Earth, they could repair our own – it looks like there are going to be some amazingly big ideas coming out of Millar’s run. A substantial portion of the issue is devoted to merely discussing the specifics of how such an evacuation might be made to go smoothly – maybe this discussion is telegraphing later plot points, maybe not – it works because it’s simply an interesting read in itself.

While Ben warns Reed about letting Alyssa get to him too much, Johnny is meanwhile having his own women problems, getting rather too close for comfort with a new super-villainess. Johnny’s girlfriends have often provided brilliant source material for F4 stories, and this one looks like it’ll be no exception. I’m not even clear on her powers or name yet, but I’m already interested in who she is, and it’s always a good feeling when someone creates a new character that doesn’t seem tedious.

Hitch’s art is, as ever, nothing short of amazing. Although I find myself disliking his specific character designs for Reed, Johnny and Sue, the detail and storytelling is spectacular. It’s not quite as fresh as it was when he came to the Ultimates, but it’ll never be disappointing. Few artists can carry a double-page spread well, but Hitch is one of them.

The only problem I have with the issue is that Sue isn’t even in it. Admittedly, you can’t always cram every character into an issue of Fantastic Four, but it feels a lot more like it’s being paced for the trade, which given Millar’s insistance that it won’t be collected for at least 18 months, is a bit self-defeating… Still, it’s top-quality comics, as if that was ever in doubt. Millar’s F4 is a refreshing take on the characters, playing down the superheroics in favour of the fantastic. A must-buy.

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

1 2 3 4 is Grant Morrison’s criminally hard-to-find take on the Fantastic Four, originally published under the Marvel Knights banner in 2002 just as the imprint stopped having any actual meaning, though it did involve Jae Lee of Marvel Knights’ Inhumans fame. The series garnered the wrong kind of interest when Morrison spoke openly in interviews about the incestuous undertones he saw in the family dynamic of the Fantastic Four, and Marvel, having dropped the Comics Code, were forced to reassure their more moronic readers that Johnny and Sue would not actually be having sex in this series. Ye gods.

What readers actually got was a quick “greatest hits” character studies of the Fantastic Four, hung around a plot where Doom (of course) is trying to pull the team apart through darkly psychological means. Issue 2 is Sue’s turn through the psycho-grinder, and no quarter is spared in deconstructing out her adulterous tendency to run off to Namor whenever Reed is too busy to deal with her.

The issue opens with a brilliant sequence where an invisible Sue meets Alicia. Obviously, the blind Alicia can still recognise her, and it showcases Sue using her powers in a simple yet inventive way (something Morrison explored with each character in this series) as well as being a visual representation of her particularly psychological torture as something self-imposed. Lee’s art does incredibly well to cope with having an invisible lead, though his talent for darker material is showcased much better elsewhere in the series.

Meanwhile, in issue 1, the Thing was transformed back into Ben Grimm through Doom’s machinations and it’s obviously gone horribly wrong, as we find him waking up in hospital less one arm – Ben has always been the easiest member of the Four to manipulate due to his immense self-pity and lack of any genuine family ties to the rest of them, and Morrison clearly recognised that. Later, Johnny has some scenes to set up his next issue spotlight, one of which involves the particularly hilarious line spoken by an attractive blonde that Johnny is entertaining: “Johnny, I love what you do to me, but these are third degree burns.”

Issue #2 is a nice character piece for Sue – always a difficult character to write in a way that’s both sympathetic and emancipated - though since it ends on something of a cliffhanger, it’s hard to recommend as a single issue. Certainly, Fantastic Four fans eager to see something that cuts deep into the heart of the Four’s dynamic would do no better than to pick up this (well, Unstable Molecules was pretty good at that too) but it’s strictly a work for people who have much more than cursory understanding of those relationships already, because it’s all Morrison-style Big Ideas and small subtext. Definitely worth buying if you see it.