Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: Comics, death, fantastic four, marvel, MVL

Tuesday Comics Review: Fantastic Four #587

Karl at Orbital Comics in London, holding the death issue, while supressing a tear.

The one thing I wasn't expecting about the death issue of the Fantastic Four is that we wouldn't see a death in it. Just the reaction to one.

This is a story about last stands of so many people. Reed Richards against Galactus. Sue Storm against the Atlanteans. And Ben Grimm, Johnny Storm, Franklin and Valeria against the billion-strong hordes of the Negative Zone.

This comic is called The Last Stand Of (SPOILER), though it saves that to the final, blackened page.

I've said before that Jonathan Hickman is the new Alan Moore, and I think I'm wrong about that. He feels more like the new Steven Moffat, a writer who creates such strong structure to his work, spreading across years on a title if given the opportunity, like fractal mathematics, represented not in spirals but in plots and character. So we have rotational symmetries, repeated patterns, tied into the shape of drama and here building towards an end that is snatched away from the viewer. The desire to tell almost all of a story, so the reader is always left wanting more is at the very centre of serialised fiction and Jonathan Hickman does this better than anyone right now.

And so we see separate stories, keeping the individuals apart. Together, there is nothing they cannot achieve. Apart, they are still strong, oh so strong, but the price is paid.

Steve Eptings pencils sometimes just don't match up. He is wonderful at creating a scene and portraying scale but individual faces often seem forced and unemotionless. There appears to be considerable photo reference, but that seems unwilling to go into natural folds to the face, creating sketchy mannequins on occasion. And in such a book, with rage, fear, and despair so ready, it seems a shame that a strength of comics, showing more than a still photo could achieve, isn't taken advantage of as much as it could be.

However the final scenes ramp up considerably, the SPOILER aspects of the story give him the opportunity to provide more rounded emotion. At a time when it is needed more than ever.

This is a death issue. Someone dies. No magic gun.

Unless you have a heart of stone, you're going to want to buy the next issue.

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