Quick Rating: Fantastic
Title: Part 1

Writers: Brian Michael Bendis/Mark Millar
Pencils: Adam Kubert
Inks: Danny Miki
Colors: Dave Stewart
Letters: Chris Eloipoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio

There were long car rides. They lasted for hours and seemed like days.

There were drug stores with carousels filled with comic books. There were small shops that sold food and candy and, above the ice cream where no child could reach them, comic books.

My father walked into the store and pointed up at the distant shelf and offered to buy a couple of comics. It was going to be a long car ride, after all, and a man would do anything to limit the number of times his seat was innocently kicked in the back.

There was an issue of Superman where Lois Lane tossed herself off an airport observation deck in order to force Clark Kent into revealing himself as Superman. She kept up those shenanigans for the entire issue. I loved it. Then, I turned to Fantastic Four Annual #3. It had to have been a reprint. I’m only so old. The original was published in 1965. Maybe you’ve seen it. You’ve probably heard of it. It’s the issue where Reed Richards and Sue Storm married.

I had been to a couple weddings. I was still very young. Weddings were about a lot of people showing up who gave you a lot of attention. Also, you ran around with your cousins acting like a pack of maniacs- generally terrorizing the employees of whatever establishment hosted the nuptials. (Note that this predates the teen years when you spend your time tormenting the wedding band and the twenties when people begin to notice the amount of time that you’re spending at the open bar.)

The Fantastic Four wedding was perfect. Millions of superheroes and villains were there! How awesome is that! And they all acted just like my family! –except for the whole superpowers and fighting thing… I poured over that issue repeatedly. It was the greatest thing that I had seen since Yertle the Turtle. Iceman actually sent the Mole Men back to their underground domain with a huge chunk of melting ice! They knew just how I felt in the back seat of that car every time someone slid their front seat a little further back.

No more Superman for me! Make mine Marvel! (except for the occasional Justice League or Batman annual.) I found that by leaving that married couple alone on my bookshelf they would mate and produce other comic books. Soon, I had a collection.

So, I have a certain fondness for the Fantastic Four. You do not mess with them. I say this with full knowledge that I have read almost none of their comics in decades. (You Can’t Go Home Again would be an apt reference here, but it was only the title ofThomas Wolfe’s book. Then again, the protagonist probably did regret going home as much as he had discovered that home had changed in his absence.)

So, there I sat with the Ultimate Fantastic Four in my lap. The cover is attractive. I opened it and read, apprehensive. Rapidly, it became apparent that this issue was a prologue. That’s okay, but I knew, positively knew, that we would get our cosmic rays on the final page. (Forty years ago, the Fantastic Four were born of cosmic radiation when their spaceship left Earth’s atmosphere.) That had to happen, didn’t it?

But it didn’t. The entire issue is foreword. And yet I didn’t care- because it ends with one of those wonderful Pete Townsend-crescendo moments. You could just hear Roger Daltrey screaming in the background.

Do I dare quibble? The artwork was both great and yet… Marvel seems to have locked into this look for the new century that feels odd. I can’t put my finger on it, but it just seems odd. Give me time. I’ll either grow to like it or figure out what the problem is. Maybe it just feels blocky and fragile at the same time.

December, 2003

Quick Rating: A swing and a hit
Title: The Day Tom Strong Renegotiated the Friendly Skies

Writer: Mark Schultz
Artist: Pascal Ferry
Colors: Wendy and Carrie of WS FX
Letters: Todd Klein
Editor: Scott Dunbier

The entire world’s aircraft crash to the ground and Tom Strong must find out the reason. Packed into a neat environmental lesson, this tale also considers the early history of manned flight in Tom’s world.

I have not been thrilled by every tale told in Tom Strong, mostly because they felt just a little too… something or other—I only wish that I could put my finger on it. Top 10 and Tomorrow Stories (other seemingly defunct titles put out by America’s Best) always seemed to display that mastery of color and tone that defines most of Moore’s work. Promethea constantly walks the tightrope of comprehensibility over the net of entertainment. And then there has been Tom Strong, which gives all the appearance of being a pile of good ideas that was exhausted after a year.

Mark Schultz steps up to the plate to take his swing at the meandering life of Tom Strong. I loved Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. I even liked the cartoon show. The whole concept was an amalgamation of so many disparate elements and yet it worked somehow. I believe that was due to Mark Schultz’s talents as a storyteller more than the fact that the dinosaurs looked incredibly cool. Somehow he gets Tom Strong just right.

And the art is just right. Did I mention that there are sky creatures? And they look lovely. Here the story combined with the art raises my rating for both, which has not happened before. That’s an accomplishment that we don’t see often enough.

May, 2004

Quick Rating: All Right
Title: Moonday

Moonday? Is that a riot or what?

Writer: Peter Hogan
Pencils: Chris Sprouse
Inks: Karl Story & John Dell
Colors: Dave Stewart
Letters: Todd Klein
Editor: Scott Dunbier
Assistant Editor: Kristy Quinn

I’ve heard it said that you could judge a great song because it still sounds great no matter who sings it. Somewhere I have a recording of Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop doing Cole Porter’s Well Did You Evah? which demonstrates this point. It’s a great song that shines even through their rough edges. I don’t know if this evaluation is analogous for fictional characters. For the most part, Sherlock Holmes has survived a lot of authors. Tarzan has suffered a bit more. Comic book superheroes seem to fall into the Tarzan category. More often than not, they provide shorthand for what the current author is trying to signify. Tarzan represents the triumph of the modern man over his environment. Spiderman is the struggle with responsibility. The X-men are victims of prejudice. Without these brief sketches, it can be difficult to tell what an author is getting at in a story. I think Tom Strong may signify other superheroes or the power of superheroes or superhero comics or…. I wish I knew because this one-off tale just does not have much meat on it.

Tom Strong has volunteered to help rescue the friend of a friend who has gotten lost on the moon. The story opens on the moon in the middle of the search. I’ll avoid telling you what they find, but the tale ends with the search complete and the whole party going home. In the great arc of Tom Strong tales, we are left with one titillating possibility and nothing much else.

Despite its profusion in the past century, narrative art does not get much respect in the art world. So, is it fair to compare comic book artists to old masters? If you live near Boston, you should run to the Museum of Fine Arts and see their Rembrandt show. It’s filled with comic book panels. If he lived now, he’d be the king of European comics. Styles evolve and change. The criteria remain the same. Does the piece of narrative art communicate the information that it is meant to convey? Does it do so in an interesting, entertaining, artful way?

In comics, the art can struggle with the information. Sometimes there is too much to convey. In Moonday, there is too little. The tale moves at a glacial pace. This is the sort of story that Scooby Doo tells in four pages. I’m all for stories that set a mood and build from there. But that is not what is going on here. I like the art in Tom Strong usually, but I can’t point you to something that really thrills me in this issue.

I don’t know about you, but I’m so looking forward to Saturnday. But what story name will they come up with based on that big ball of gas at the center of our solar system? In the America’s Best pantheon, I really miss Tomorrow Stories and Top 10, but I don’t know if I would miss Tom Strong to quite the same degree. I hope they come up with an issue soon that makes me feel like a new reader can jump on and run with it.

October 2003