The Marvel NOW! madness continues as Matt Fraction attempts to follow up one of the most critically loved “Fantastic Four” runs of all time. Switch some names around, and that sentence could be used for a good amount of these new titles.
Written by Matt Fraction
Illustrated by Mark BagleyMarvel Now! begins for Marvel’s First Family! Four adults. Two kids. One “car.” The Fantastic Four take a journey through all of infinite time and space!
After wrapping up his run on “The Invincible Iron Man,” it probably seemed a natural choice to assign Matt Fraction to the relaunched “Fantastic Four.” If his Iron Man run told us anything about Fraction as a person, it is that he is a futurist, someone who can make science fiction seem like reality. After Jonathan Hickman focused his run on the role of science in a world where near-godlike beings walk the earth, a mind like Fraction’s was perhaps the perfect choice to tap for doing that thing that superhero comics [try to] do so well: change everything while staying on the same track. In this first issue, we some of this, particularly in Reed’s planned re-tooling of Johnny’s ship from ‘Forever,’ the promise of adventure over action is perhaps the most reassuring bit in this first issue. Unfortunately, it is not without reason that action has become a dirty word, as it is often an excuse for writing a story without any real substance, but in this issue Fraction almost literally assures us that he’ll be giving us something more. Talk is talk, though; in this first issue we have yet to see anything that pushes the envelope. Rather than starting with a bang, Fraction starts with the promise of excitement to come. This isn’t a bad thing at all, and perhaps even supports the theory that Fraction is deliberately trying to avoid the “style over substance” dichotomy of cliched action stories, but it makes for an only somewhat interesting first issue — especially considering we already know the initial twists and turns that the issue presents.
The other problem with this issue is the inconsistent characterization — in the sense that some characters seem well within his grasp while others lay just outside of it. His Ben and Johnny already appear to be the highlights of the book, as they often have been, with Fraction clearly having a blast with them. The big Johnny scene, so to speak, is particularly great, and really smacks of everything we have come to know and love about the character without seeming like the same ol’ same ol’. His Reed and Sue, though, don’t yet get the chance to shine; we don’t really get enough from Sue to make a judgment, and while Fraction seems to have some understanding of Mr. Fantastic (especially in the secrets he keeps), he seems to be more in line with the flatter characterizations of the past, rather than the more dynamic view of the character Hickman presented us with. Finally, there is not much to Franklin in this issue at all, a character who Hickman honed to a razor-sharp point. To any Fantastic Four newbie, he just seems like a sobbing, poorly adjusted kid, when he can be so much more. However, Fraction also seems interested in the larger cast that Hickman left us with, and his even momentary use of minor characters such as the Moloids and his excellent Yancy Street Gang scene give off the impression that this will be a book as interested in those surrounding the Fantastic Four as well as the main cast itself, which Fraction seems well equipped to deal with.
Mark Bagley is an artist who has become stuck in his ways. Perhaps it is just because I have an untrained eye, but when looking at, say, Bagley’s first few issues of “Ultimate Spider-Man” and this newest issue of “Fantastic Four,” it is hard to see any major leaps or even subtle technical developments in his work. It could just be that the advancements he has made are very, very subtle, the sort of thing that you don’t notice until they’re missing, or perhaps he has simply decided that what he has been doing is good enough. Either way, Bagley’s work in this issue is exactly what we’ve come to expect from Bagley: it stylistically suits superhero comics just fine, though it doesn’t really stand out in any exciting way besides simply being recognizable, and it does its job in telling a story through pictures, though it doesn’t wow you in its storytelling. Really, judging Bagley’s art comes down to two points:
Continued below- Do you like Bagley’s style at all?
- Do you think Bagley’s style fits this story?
Personally, I like Bagley just fine, depending on the book; normally, he’s just kind of “there,” but sometimes, like in “Ultimate Spider-Man,” he finds himself in a realm where he is the king of the b-ball court. The last question remains to be seen. There are a few panels of real out-there science fiction — which, again, is what the Fantastic Four should be about — where Bagley somewhat captures the tone, but there’s never a moment where the reader is left reeling. Unfortunately, this is normally the case with Bagley, and this issue is yet another one of his where all that can really be said is that it gets the job done. If you’ve never been a Bagley fan, though, this certainly won’t change your mind.
This is a typical first issue of a new superhero ongoing: a hook is introduced, as well as some of the main characters, but there isn’t really enough to go off of. Could this be a great new series that follows in the crater-sized footsteps of Jonathan Hickman’s run, or could it be a work by a major name that later gets shoved into storage and forgotten about after a year or two passes, a la Grant Morrison’s “1234?” I personally want to believe the former, but that is entirely based on my own pre-formed opinions on Matt Fraction — nothing in the book strongly indicates the series going either way. Still, it isn’t bad, and it does its job as a number one, so there’s no real reason to at least check out this first issue — though it may take until number two to make up your mind, as is unfortunately the typical case in ongoing comics.
Final Verdict: 7.0 – Good enough to check out.
