Top of the Pile 11/14/12

Fantastic Four #1
Written by Matt Fraction
Pencils by Mark Bagley
Inks by Mark Farmer
Color by Paul Mounts
Published by Marvel

I really liked the previous run on Fantastic Four by Johnathan Hickman, and with the renumbering of the NOW! Marvel is doing, this is their restarting of their original super hero group. And it looks pretty good, in a traditional kind of way. It has the same "family" feeling I remember with the John Byrne run on FF years ago.

The story maintains the setting and characters, with all the children from the Freedom Foundation running around the Baxter Building. Also, Johnny Storm still has pull in the Negative Zone after taking over from Annihilus. But the story starts off with Mr. Fantastic getting bit by a dinosaur and starting an irreversible degradation in his unstable, cosmic irradiated molecules. Meanwhile, Franklin Richards is having bad dreams and dreading going into space.

I like Matt Fraction’s work. It’s not quite as far out as Hickman’s, but it has some super sci-fi moments. And so far with the first issue, he has left the narrative wide open allowing for the potential to run the Fantastic Four through some crazy stories. I’m looking forward to where it might go.

And the art by Mark Bagley is fine. His character drawing is very good and his space ships and sciency backgrounds are detailed and interesting. And like I say, as long as the pictures doesn’t distract from the story, it’s a good thing.

I have always thought the Fantastic Four was a good book for any public library. The art and stories are consistently good. And though the Avengers and X-Men might be the big, popular Marvel properties, hopefully this book will find a good audience.