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