In the best way possible, “FF” can be compared to Seinfeld. It’s the Marvel Universe’s book about nothing.
Written by Matt Fraction
Illustrated by Joe Quinones• Darla vs Yancy Street! ‘ NUFF SAID!
In the last decade or so, comic books have leaned more and more toward long, decompressed story arcs. Instead of Spider-Man fighting Doc Ock in one issue and then turning around to fight The Vulture in the next, we started to get 5-6 issue long arcs with one major plot or villain. Brian Michael Bendis also ushered in an age where superheroes started sounding and acting like regular people. We got to see how the Avengers interact with one another as friends and partners more and more, with their super-human identities taking a back seat more often than ever. For a while this was refreshing, but the repetition of these slice-of-life sequences started to dilute those “Avengers” titles with less and less payoff. In “FF”, Matt Fraction has found a way to absolutely inundate the pages with minutia, tangents, and jokes and still finds time to create a one-off enemy or conflict that wraps up nicely by the end of the issue.
The key to what Fraction is doing lies in how every single panel in his “FF” stories is completely character-driven. He’s using a bunch of scantily-used Marvel characters and re-introducing their identities through moments that celebrate the mundane. Though it has little to do with the conflict at the center of the issue, when we see who is participating in a yoga session with Darla, or who is sitting alone in a dark corner of the Baxter Building, we get a very unique insight into these characters personalities. And they’re personalities that we are not extremely familiar with yet, which makes it all the more refreshing. There’s even time for one of the most honest, sly, and heartwarming nods to the LGBT community that you’ll ever see right here in the middle of this issue.
But Fraction also does a tremendous job at creating a big conflict (the one that’s promised by the solicitation and the hilarious cover) and essentially resolving it before the 20 pages are over. The punks on Yancy Street don’t take to kindly to someone impersonating the Thing and what results is a hilarious plotline of pranks and button pushing. Great character moments abound as this is a problem that the current “FF” can uniquely handle better than anyone else. At this point in time, nothing has really been an Earth-shattering challenge for this rag-tag team, which to be honest is kind of undermining the role that the regular “Fantastic Four” played in the Marvel Universe, if you think about it too much. But the conflicts have been as fun and irreverent as the Seinfeldian minutia has been, so it’s easy to ignore the fact that no one is taking advantage of the fact that a bunch of C-listers are occupying the Baxter Building.
Joe Quinones seems like a dream option if you want to rotate a guy in for Mike Allred. These two could alternate and nothing would ever feel out of place. Quinones typically uses a simple, clean style, but it doesn’t immediately remind you of Allred. On “FF” #6, it seems a conscious decision was made to morph his style a bit more toward Mike Allred’s signature look. It helps that Laura Allred’s wonderful color palette keeps continuity through the art change. You might mistake it for Mike Allred’s pencils, if you aren’t careful. It’s usually a pale imitation when one artist apes another, but Quinones hits all the right notes just perfectly. One page showing a multitude of selfies taken by Darla mimics a page from an earlier issue. Quinones captures the humor and feel of that scene (and many others) in the same way that Allred did earlier meaning that we’re thinking of this as another stellar issue of “FF” rather than a fill-in job.
If you aren’t a fan of quirk at any level, then this book won’t satisfy you. For literally everyone else, this book is about as likable and good-natured as comic books get in the year 2013. Matt Fraction and Mike Allred have something eccentric and special going on here. And if Joe Quinones is in tow for art fill-in duties, then we are all the richer, as “FF” #6 very clearly proves.
Final Verdict: 8.0 – An absolute buy, dummies!
