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Review: FF #11

By | October 27th, 2011
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Written by Jonathan Hickman
Illustrated by Barry Kitson

A Galactic Empire is born as the war of Four Cities comes to a close. What does it mean for Marvel’s First Family?

Just one more issue until the main Fantastic Four title is back and the world of the Future Foundation is changed forever (or something like that). Mister Hickman has a lot of different pieces moving around the table. Can he work them together to make a cohesive and quality story in this issue?

Find out after the jump.

For the span of Jonathan Hickman’s work with the first family of Marvel, he’s been pushing the boundaries of mainstream comic storytelling while bringing the characters back to their roots. It’s back to being all about a family who just happens to be the greatest space-time adventurers in the Marvel Universe. And it’s worked really well, and has been one of the better Fantastic Four runs I’ve ever read. Once it became FF, it, in a lot of ways, had the shackles thrown off of it and became able to better cultivate the “future” part of the FF name, especially with such a sprawling cast and so many irons in the fire. It’s been a blast to read, so even with Hickman managing both books, I approach the coming change back to the Fantastic Four name (with FF continuing) with much trepidation.

This issue is a solid one, as Hickman does a pretty bang up job of taking the disparate story lines he’s developed through his run (The Other Side of Zero, The War of the Four Cities, Kree vs. Inhumans, The Interdimensional Council, Valeria’s ascent into brainiac/sneaky bastard, the deconstruction/reconstruction of the family, etc.) and balancing them together, getting everything in place for next month’s blow out 104 page issue.

Granted, like any book would with so much going on would, this book suffers a little bit from every aspect being stretched so thin. It’s not bad – everything works and accomplishes what it intends to – but it’s hard not to imagine this issue itself benefiting from a few more pages. With a little more time, some of the moments may have resonated more with me as a reader.

That said, there is some really stupendous moments that rile me up as a long-time FF fan. In particular, the return of an all-time Kree character and Reed and Valeria’s conversation were enjoyable, as the former highlights the improvement on the character of Ronan the Accuser in recent years while the latter is a brilliant exercise in double speak and genuine sentiment between two highly intelligent characters. That’s the thing about Hickman – he’s so great with big ideas (I don’t think anyone is a better fit to the title than he is), but the reason why his Fantastic Four works so well is because he fits into the context of the family dynamic and their role in the Marvel Universe as a whole.

For 3/4 of this issue, Barry Kitson is a perfect partner for Hickman. Impressive character work and clean, powerful lines highlight the early portions of this book, with some excellent and emotive expressions and acting amidst the aforementioned Reed/Valeria discussion being a highlight. It’s a good looking book for the most part, but it suffers later on from some choppy characters and badly inked panels.

This, of course, is no surprised if you look at the credits for the book. One penciler, five finishers. Because of the armada of finishers onboard, the art has a difficult time developing any real consistency. And to me, this was not an active choice. It doesn’t seem one designed to use different finishers to highlight different aspects of Kitson’s pencils, it seems like one that was made simply because they ran out of time to get the book completed. Which is a shame, because in the parts the art looks like pure Kitson, it kills.

It’s another really solid issue from this run from Hickman, and one that has the chess pieces where he needs them going into the milestone return of Fantastic Four. With 104 pages and a slew of top notch artists with him, I find it hard to imagine any of the same problems the befell this particular issue will happen with that. One way or another, with Hickman writing, I’ll be with this book for the long haul.

Final Verdict: 7.0 – Buy


David Harper

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