Fantastic Four #3 Review
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The first arc of the Fantastic Four relaunch comes to a climatic, star-studded conclusion as every hero who has ever a member of the FF come together to take on the destructive cosmic being known as The Griever, the goddess of entropy and heatdeath. Brought to us from the creative team of Dan Slott, Sara Pichelli, Nico Leon and Marte Gracia. Very quick recap and review following the jump.
So... a whole lot goes down in this issues, and I only have a small window of time to try to summarize it. So apologies in advance if I breeze through it a bit too quickly.
The Griever is a cosmic force, a being on par with the In-Betweener, Galactus and The Living Tribunal: an anthropomorphic embodiment of the galactic constants that govern the universe. Reed seems to understand this right from the get go and as such knows that she cannot be fully defeated. Their best bet is to delay the inevitable and figure some means of escape.
First things first, Reed has Johnny and Ben destroy the Griever’s teleportation device essentially keeping her trapped and preventing her from either escaping or bring in reinforcements.
Of course the others, Medusa and Luke Cage are not exactly enthusiastic over the prospect of being trapped lightyears away from their families. But fear not, the ingenious Reed Richards surely has a plan.
The original foursome gather around for huddle to go over the finer details of what Reed has devised. Which is nice in that we get to see an actual panel where Marvel’s First Family are together and truly reunited. Sue is not going to let it pass without holding on to her younger brother as tightly as she can.
Also, it’s revealed that whist their absence has only seemed to be a year for Ben and Johny, for Reed, Sue and the kids, they’ve actually been going for about half a decade. As such, both Johnny and Ben cannot wait to see the kids.
The various heroes battle the Griever while The Thing and Spider-man try to psych up young Franklin to face off against the villain for round two. Franklin is pretty frightened. He’s powerful as all get out, but the Griever cleaned his clock the first time out and he’s apprehensive to go at it again. Yet Ben and Spidey do a good job of pumping up his confidence.
So imbued, Franklin and The Thing go up against The Griever, Clobberin’ style fashion. They manage to keep her occupied whist the remainder of her teleportation pods are destroyed by the others.
Angered, The Griver sends her monsters to dispatch the Future Foundation kids. But fear not, Medusa, Black Pother, Crystal and AntMan are there to to protect them.
There’s also a quick aside where The Torch asks Iceman what the heck his he doing there. Iceman replies that he has indeed been made a member of The FF, only perhaps at a time that has yet to be told (a story to be illuminated upon at another time). Another aside finds Val coming across The Hulk. Those following ol’ Jade Jaws in the pages of The Immortal Hulk know that green-jeans is not exactly ready to make amends with the hero community, so he asks that Val keep his presence a secret. Always happy to harbor secretive knowledge, Val eagerly agrees.
Well, It isn’t long before The Griever realizes that all save one of her teleportation pods have been destroyed. It forces her to choose between victory or a quick escape to ensure she is not trapped in this strange realm for all of eternity. She chooses to flee, spouting insults at the heroes and promising that this will not be the last they will see of her.
The threat has abated, but now there is the new problem of all these heroes being stuck in this weird realm so far off from home. Yet it isn’t really all that much of a problem. Between Reed, T’Challah and Val, they have all the knowhow and skill to build their own transport device and plenty of raw materials to utilize from the wreckage of the FF jump-ship and The Griever’s various destroyed teleportation pods. They should all be home in short order. T’challah notes looking forward to getting the chance to introduce Val to his similarly ingenious sister, Shuri (yes! make this happen ASAP).
As work gets started on building the heroes’ way home, Ben takes the opportunity to inform Reed and Sue of his engagement to Alicia. They are all overjoyed. Yay!
The threat posed by The Griever is wrapped up rather quickly, but that is just as well in that I was much more interested in seeing the extended Fantastic Four interacting and fighting off bad guys. Pachelli and Leon share art duties and do so in a seamless style. So much is jammed into each page that there is a couple of instances where the character’s facial expressions have to be compressed into rather simplistic lines. Gracia’s color pallet is vibrant, underscoring the manic action without letting us forget all this is going down in some sort of grim cosmic setting.
The story sets that stage rather well in terms of what we have in store for us in this latests iteration of the Fantastic Four. Mr. Slott et al. seems to have planned for us a lot of high concept sci-fi weirdness, but with the family dynamic front and center throughout. And I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where the story goes from here.
My only complaint of course is the elongated delay between this issue and the two that proceeded it. I don’t have huge problem waiting for good comics, but I also know that delays can be hugely detritus for a book’s health in terms of sales and reader interest. I just want this book to be a success, only because it’ll ensure I get lots and lots more FF books to enjoy. And to this extent I’m frustrated that just two issues in we should see an extended delay. Granted, this is a minor and not story-oriented complaint. Still, after seeing so many truly fantastic Inhuman books fizzle out due to low sales, I’m kind of left extra anxious about such matters.
But whatever, this is a fun, quick tale with great art and lots of long awaited reunions. Definitely recommended. Four out of five Lockjaws!
