Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure

So called because Fantastic Four: The Held Back To Use As A Spoiler For Kirby’s DC Debut And Then Mutilated Before Publication Adventure wouldn’t fit on the cover.


Still, I’m glad that Marvel are publishing it. This is the story that Kirby pencilled for Fantastic Four issue 102, but which Marvel held back for publication in issue 108, to coincide with Kirby’s first issue of New Gods (the story that Kirby intended for issue 103 appeared in issue 102 instead). As published in issue 108, however, Kirby’s story was badly cut up and rewritten. John Morrow managed to reconstruct most of Kirby’s pencils (and explain what had happened), and published them in The Jack Kirby Collector. Marvel has since reprinted his reconstruction in volume 10 of Marvel Masterworks: The Fantastic Four, and will be reprinting it again here, along with a version newly completed by Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott.

I hope that Lee manages to recreate more of the feel of his late 1960s scripting than he did for The Last Fantastic Four Story, and that the panels missing from the pencils are filled in sympathetically. But am I feeling maudlin, or does this seem like another case of Stan Lee tidying up the loose ends before he takes his leave?

Cover picture taken from Comic Book Resources

Seminal Sputnik

It was fifty years ago this day that the launch of Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, began that long-ago and fantastical era we called “the space age”. It was a time of imagination, of engineering marvels, and, eventually, of bored disillusionment.

The Sputnik programme would go on to give us exciting new ways of killing dogs, and the United States’ panicked reaction began a space race in which the Soviet Union and the USA competed to produce projects that were often dazzling, sometimes useful and sometimes monumentally wasteful. One such project was led by Dr Reed Richards.


Always remember: no Sputnik, no Fantastic Four.


And no cosmic-powered apes, either.

Panels
Fantastic Four issue 1, “The Fantastic Four!” by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, with inks and letters by Art Simek, Marvel Comics, November 1961, reprinted in Marvel Masterworks Volume 2: The Fantastic Four, reprinting Fantastic Four Nos 1-10, Marvel Comics, 1987

Fantastic Four issue 13, “The Fantastic Four Versus the Red Ghost and his Indescribable Super-Apes”, story by Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby, inking by Steve Ditko, lettering by Art Simek, Marvel Comics, April 1963, reprinted in Marvel Masterworks Volume 6: The Fantastic Four, reprinting Fantastic Four Nos 11-20, Marvel Comics, 1988

Review: The Last Fantastic Four Story

The Last Fantastic Four Story issue 1 (!), “World’s End” by Stan Lee (writer), John Romita Jr (penciller), Scott Hanna (inker), Morry Hollowell (colourist), VC’s Joe Caramanga (letterer) and Tom Brevoort (editor), Marvel Comics, October 2007, 48 pages of strip, US$4.99

There is something distinctly morbid about this comic. It’s not the story, which (SPOILER ALERT!) ends with the Fantastic Four alive and well and flying off into the moonrise. It’s not even the cover, with its funereal black edging and sombre serifed type. It’s the feeling that, taken with the recent Stan Lee Meets … series, we are seeing Lee, at the age of 85, taking his leave of the characters who made his name.

Of course, being an old showman, Lee would probably be as happy to make as many farewell appearances and comebacks as Old Blue Eyes himself. Let’s hope that he gets the chance to do so, because The Last Fantastic Four Story would not be a good note on which to end.

The plot concerns a technologically superior power, the Cosmic Tribunal, who decide, on the basis of faulty intelligence, that the human race is worthless: so they decide to invade and kill us all. This may be a stab at relevance – something Lee used to pride himself on – as the parallel with the US invasion of Iraq is fairly obvious. That may be why Lee refers to the members of the Tribunal as “good guys”; because he sees them as analogous to his own country. But in the context of this story, it makes no sense. Good guys do not commit genocide, let alone unprovoked genocide. Worse, in another stab at relevance, the Tribunal is bringing about mankind’s destruction by accelerating global warming, killing lots of entirely innocent animals in the process.


This is not a good showcase for the Fantastic Four. Ben and Johnny's attempts to fight back are wholly ineffectual, while Sue does, quite simply, absolutely nothing throughout. “Invisible Girl,” indeed.

In an attempt to update his style, Lee has dropped a lot of the polysyllabic bombast. He has also attempted to embrace decompression, by cutting up his captions into smaller blocks, spread across more panels. But this lays bare the lack of sophistication in story and sentiment, and leaves the narrative and dialogue to read like an extended issue of Spidey Super Stories.

In one respect, John Romita Jr was a good choice to provide the art for Lee’s valedictory story. Like some of Lee’s favourite collaborators, his father John Romita Sr and John Buscema, Romita Jr is a consummate craftsman, a solid and accurate draughtsman with the talent and skill of telling stories with crystal clarity. But like theirs, I find his work unengaging: these are the Volkswagens of comic art: well-engineered, reliable, but nothing to get excited about. In a comic which will always stand in the shadow of Jack Kirby, that is a problem.

As the story ends, the Fantastic Four are in unconvincing retirement, and so is Stan Lee. Let us hope that he gets the chance to write The Last Spider-Man Story, and that it provides him with a more fitting swansong.

Panel of the Week

Well, okay, it’s actually two panels, but it’s one image.

And it’s well-staged, with nicely observed postures and facial expressions. But mostly, I just love the fact that, in a retro-styled adventure, Sue Storm’s reaction to the surprise appearance of Electro is not to trap him in an invincible force-field (a power she never had in the Lee/Kirby days, I think), but to sneak up and clobber him with a brick.

If there’d been a panel of Sue actually hitting him, that would have been even better, but Spider-Man fouls that up.

Oh, and isn’t it refreshing to see a super-heroine who knows how to dress up warm?


Panels
Spider-Man Family issue 3 “Electrical Problems”, written by Paul Tobin, art by Pierre Alary, colour by Jean Paul Fernandez, lettering by Blambot’s Nate Piekos, edited by Nathan Cosby, Marvel Comics, August 2007

Reviews: Atom, Simonson’s Fantastic Four, JLU, Superman

The All-New Atom, Volume 1: My Life In Miniature by Gail Simone (writer), John Byrne and Eddy Barrows (pencillers), Trevor Scott (inks), Travis Lanham (letters), Alex Bleyaert (colours), Ariel Olivetti (cover and original issue covers) and Mike Carlin (editor), DC Comics, 2007 (originally published 2006-2007), 143 pages of strip, US$14.99

This collection of the first 6 issues of the new Atom, plus the teaser story from Brave New World is almost as much fun as I’d heard.

Gail Simone throws in one splendidly mad idea after another: an invasion by a microscopic alien race living on the hero’s dog, a Cthuloid monster being worshipped by film-fan puritans, the Atom being swallowed by a naked giantess, foul-smelling ants and chemically-dependent scientists. She holds this all together using some off-beat narrative devices, and deftly sketches in our new hero, Dr Ryan Choi, and his supporting cast at the same time.



So why “almost”? Well, there’s a knife-wielding psycho with a taste for dismemberment who seems to have wandered in from a different story (possibly by Geoff Johns) and doesn’t fit the wacky tone here at all, despite his fondness for poetry. And then there’s the art problem.

Byrne’s stuff is fine: characterful, energetic, action-packed and humorous by turns, and with a fuller finish than I remember from the last comics of his that I read about a decade ago. But half way through, he hands over to Barrows, who provides another argument for DC establishing remedial art classes for its pencillers. He lacks most basic skills, but in particular his perspective drawing is appalling. In the panel below, for example, Choi is supposed to be full sized and sitting on a chair which is level with the feet of Dean Mayland (the character in the foreground). Instead, Choi appears to be minute and Mayland must be on a raised platform. The walls don't match the floor, either. (Amplification added later: The floor tiles appear to be converging on a vanishing point to the left, but the bookshelves and horizontal window frames run parallel to each other.)



There is still enough enjoyable material here for the book to be worth buying, but if Barrows is still the artist on the second volume, and hasn’t managed to learn some draughtsmanship from his assignment pencilling over Keith Giffen’s layouts on 52, I won’t be bothering with the next one.


Fantastic Four Visionaries: Walter Simonson Volume 1 Fantastic Four by Walter Simonson (writer and artist), Rich Buckler and Ron Lim (pencillers on opening stories), Romeo Tanghal and Mike DeCarlo (inkers on opening stories), Bill Oakley and Todd Klein (letterers), George Roussos and Max Scheele (colourists), Ralph Macchio (editor), Marvel Comics, 2007 (originally published 1989-1990), 182 pages of strip, US$19.99

A quick tip: skip the first 73 pages of this book. The first three issues of Fantastic Four that Walt Simonson wrote were part of a long-forgotten, dreary corporate cross-over called “Acts of Vengeance”. In them, the FF go to Washington to testify against a proposed Super-Human Registration Act (yes, yes, how ironic), and are attacked by various C- and D-list villains. Simonson seems bored, and the art is by other hands.

Then, with his fourth issue, everything changed. Simonson took over the art and went cosmic. The FF, augmented by She-Thing, Iron Man and Thor, travel into a future that seems to be vanishing, and encounter a plethora of Kangs the Conquerors, a galaxy-sized Galactus who is devouring the whole Universe, the gigantic armouries of the Shi'ar Empire, guarded by Superman-alike Gladiator, and the ancient implacable menace of the Black Celestial. Wild ideas, artwork so energetic you could plug it into the National Grid and some remarkably daft double-talk from Reed Richards – it's everything you want from the Fantastic Four, really.




Justice League Unlimited issue 33, “Everything Old Is New Again” by Jason Hall (writer), Carlo Barberi (penciller), Bob Petrecca (inker), Robert Clark Jr (letterer), Heroic Age (colourists) and Rachel Gluckstein (editor), DC Comics, July 2007, 20 pages of strip, US$2.25

In this issue of JLU, the League’s oldest member, the Crimson Avenger, and its youngest, Stargirl, find themselves in body-swap comedy territory after they try to stop Morgaine Le Fey from stealing the London Stone and using it to de-age her son Mordred. As is often the case with JLU, our heroes learn a life lesson along the way: constantly sniping at each other for being too old and too young respectively, by the end each has come to respect the other’s viewpoint.

This air of lecturing prevents Hall’s otherwise zippy and well-constructed story from being as enjoyable as it might be. Of course, it is aimed at children, but children can recognise adult propaganda when they see it.

Barberi and Petrecca’s art is efficient and attractive in the animated DC style. The thick outlines they use to delineate characters actually provide something of the feel of a previous generation of animation, when characters stood out more from static backgrounds.




Superman issue 662, “The Weight of the World” by Kurt Busiek (writer), Carlos Pacheco (penciller), Jesús Merino (inker), Sinclair & Loughridge (colours), Comicraft (letters) and Matt Idelson (editor), DC Comics, May 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

I haven’t followed Superman regularly since the days of Byrne, Wolfman and Ordway, but I normally like the work of both Busiek and Pacheco, so I thought I’d see what they are making of it.

Unfortunately, this issue seems to fall in the middle of a longer story arc. Superman is trying to establish the truth of a prediction by the magician Arion that his interventions will eventually lead to the death of humanity, while also investigating the claim by an alien called the Auctioneer that there is another Kryptonian on Earth besides himself and Supergirl.

On the plus side, I could easily work out what was happening, despite not having read the earlier issues. On the minus, Superman doesn’t find the answers to his questions, and nothing much else happens. The artwork is as nice as expected – detailed but clear, fluid and expressive – but otherwise the main thing I found to enjoy was the delightful new style of lettering used for Zatanna’s backward magic spells, which is as stark a case of damning with faint praise as I can think of.



This issue also features a new superhero called Sirocco. He is active in Iran, but had planned to call himself by an Arabic, not Persian, name, before adopting the one suggested by Superman: an Italian (and English) word for a wind that blows in North Africa. His main personal characteristic is that he is easily offended if he thinks his integrity is being impugned. Really, he just needs a scimitar and a camel to hit all the orientalist buttons. It’s good that DC Comics have decided to create a hero from the Islamic world, but it’s a shame that they seem to think that Berbers, Iranians and Arabs are all the same thing.




Not reviewed this time
Also out this last week were Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil issue 3, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 issue 3 and Welcome to Tranquility issue 6. All are running serial stories which I plan to review when they are complete (and since issue 6 did end the current Tranquility story, I’ll have a review of that for you in a few days’ time).



In the meantime, I should advise fellow drooling fanboys (and fangirls) that Willow does not wear that outfit on the inside pages. Is there no truth in advertising?

Reviews: Mr Stuffins, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, Wallace & Gromit

Mr Stuffins issue 1 written by Andrew Cosby and Johanna Stokes, drawn by Lee Carter, coloured by Pablo Quigliotti, lettered by Terri Delgado and Marshall Dillon, Boom! Studios, May 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$3.99

In this, the first of a three-part series, the programme disc intended to control some sort of military/spy robot ends up inside a mechanical teddy bear, which is bought by a small boy. The nasty corporation that created the programme then comes looking for it.

As “high concepts” go, this is rather reminiscent of Small Soldiers, and there are absolutely no surprises in how the narrative unfolds. Having said that, the script is efficient and amusing enough, and maybe there will be some twists in later issues.

The disaster area is the art. Carter’s drawings are OK, if a bit crude, but either Quigliotti has deliberately decided to colour everything with dark brown mud, or there has been an almighty cock-up in the production department. Dead of night in the boy’s bedroom, inside a (presumably) brightly-lit shopping mall, outside a school in the day time: all are plunged into the same stygian gloom.



The effort required to work out what is going on in these over-dark panels brings home one characteristic of the storytelling: there is nothing here that makes use of the unique qualities of comics. The pictures act only to provide information, not to create resonant imagery. There is no byplay between words and pictures, no use of the interaction between panel and page. The cost of an animatronic or CGI Mr Stuffins aside, this could be translated into a script for TV (where Cosby normally works) without much difficulty.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing – an entertaining story is an entertaining story in any medium – but it is one less reason for me to be interested. Ultimately, the most amusing thing about this comic – the very idea of a teddy bear James Bond – can be gleaned just by looking at the cover.


Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four issue 1: “The Arrival” by Jeff Parker (writer), Mike Wieringo (penciller), Wade von Grawbadger (inker), Pete Pantazis (colourist), Blambot’s Nate Piekos (letterer) and Stephen Wacker (editor), cover by Mike Wieringo, Karl Kesel and Pete Pantazis, frontispiece by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Marvel Comics, June 2007, 23 pages of strip, US$2.99

Like many in the blogosphere, I am weary of bloated rococo cross-over events; of gore, angst, prurience and – worst of all - literalism attempting to pass as sophistication; and of the gross distortions of established characters that Marvel and DC’s editors believe are necessary to fit their grand designs.

So this four-issue series should be right up my street. It’s written by Jeff Parker, whose Agents of Atlas and Marvel Adventures Avengers titles have emphasised playfulness, and drawn by Mike Wieringo, a skillful cartoonist who understands composition, panel progression, perspective and facial expression, and whose figure work is signally lacking in the postures of body-builders and porn performers. It is set before Civil War, whose shadow has blighted even such light and nimble comics as She-Hulk.

It doesn’t entirely work. There is a lack of tension in the build-up of the alien invasion which seems to be the main threat in the story. The aliens we have seen so far are unimpressive in design, and even a supposedly shocking event a little over half way through lacks impact (perhaps with reason, if the colour of Johnny Storm’s bed-linen on the next page has any significance – read it and you’ll understand what I mean). Since this is just the first part of four, it lacks as yet the complete structure that makes the one-off Marvel Adventures issues satisfying. And the whole thing is even more lacking in originality than Mr Stuffins: it’s just another super-hero story about long-established super-heroes.

And yet, a large part of the appeal of recurring characters in genre fiction derives from their reassuring familiarity. We want Sherlock Holmes to apply his observation and intellect to solve the mystery. We want Captain Kirk to be as passionate a moralist as he is a brawler and womaniser. We want the Doctor to pit spontaneity and compassion and humour against power and regimentation and death.

And we want Spider-Man to make lame quips while fighting bad guys – whether muggers or invaders way out of his league – because he can, and therefore he must. We want Reed and See-Through Sue to be loving parents, and Ben and Johnny to behave like adolescent pranksters, all the while assuming responsibility for the whole world, because the world needs and is worth protecting. And here they do. It is like meeting an old friend restored to health after a long and debilitating mental illness.



So, at heart, this is just a competent but inessential super-hero story. But I am so glad that it exists.


The Wallace and Gromit Comic issue 21, edited by Ned Hartley, Titan Magazines, May 2007, 21 pages of strip (out of 52), £2.60
Features: “Going Postal” by Andrew James (script), Steve Bright (pencils and inks), Samantha Emms (colours) and Jimmy Betancourt/Comicraft (letters)
“Plots in Space” part 4 by Dan Abnett (script), Jimmy Hansen (pencils), Bambos Georgiou (inks), Andrew James (colours) and Jimmy Betancourt/Comicraft (letters)

These strips are pretty much spot-on adaptations of the Aardman Animations films. Obviously, using any medium other than Claymation is going to rob the stories of some of their appeal, especially to those of us reared on Plasticene, Meccano and Airfix, but the writers and artists get the right feel, with mounting chaos, groansome puns and sly references, and an essentially English, Ealing Studios, mix of satire and cosiness. Even the details are well thought out: a nicely designed font, for example, and the way the page numbers are superimposed on pieces of cheese. The editors have not imposed a single style on the artists, but both Bright and Hansen/Georgiou achieve good matches with the look of the original films without being interchangeable with each other.



And Dan Abnett has remembered the old comics adage that everything goes better with a monkey.



As is usual with children’s comics in Britain these days, most pages are given over to miscellaneous filler: a pull-out poster of the cover, readers’ drawings and photos, quizzes and games, and a couple of text pieces supposedly written by Wallace (which aren’t much cop, although I did like the idea of the TV series Battleship Grimsby in which evil robots pursue the last remnants of humanity across Lincolnshire). But, as the magazine’s name suggests, it’s the comic strips that are the star attraction here, and they left me with a big, silly grin on my face.

See-Through Sue

See-Through Sue! That’s a much catchier name than “the Invisible Woman”. See-Through Sue! That’s what we want. See-Through Sue versus Paste-Pot Pete! See-Through Sue and Rubber-Limbed Reed versus Paste-Pot Pete. With Brick-Built Ben.

But Johnny will have to get a new name if this is going to work.


Panel from
Fantastic Four “Sue Storm in … The Spy I Couldn’t See” by Zeb Wells (writer), Kano and Alvaro Lopez (artists), Lee Loughridge (colourist), Dave Sharpe (letterer) and Mark Paniccia (editor), Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four issue 18, reprinted in Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four Volume 5 All 4 One, 4 for All, Marvel Comics, 2007