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Fantastic Four #554
Posted 27 Feb 2008
Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: Bryan Hitch
Letters: VC’s Rus Wooton
Ink: Paul Neary
Colors: Paul Mounts
Publisher: Marvel
5.00 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Adam McGovern
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I really had my laser-cannon pointed at this one. After the
peerless Dwayne McDuffie — steward of the mass-market image of
superheroes for many more people than read comics as former head
writer of the Justice League
cartoon; revolutionizer of the medium as co-founder of Milestone
Comics; etc. — signed on for a memorable year on Marvel’s
flagship book to deliver the kind of classic storytelling and
unpredictable changes that used to make for deserved 100-issue runs, I
was disdainful of it being scheduled from the start to only mark time
until the famously good, famously behind-schedule, and just downright
more-famous team of Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch could get started. I
didn’t like the values involved, but McDuffie knew what he was
getting into, no one can take away (and many will long remember) what
he accomplished, and the value of the new team’s achievement is
joyously high.
“Millar and Hitch judge the
almost-post-Bush moment well by carrying through a can-do,
Lee/Kirby-era kind of optimism to their FF’s tone.”
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After all, while McDuffie (mostly with artist Paul Pelletier) made
the best year for FF readers in the last 30, Millar himself (with
Terry and Rachel Dodson) did the same for Spider-Man in his 12 issues
of the Marvel Knights version, and with the new FF, as there, he and
Hitch pursue a kind of contrarian positivity — often known for
grimmer growings-up of the ’60s superhero model, they’ve
judged the almost-post-Bush moment well by carrying through a can-do,
Lee/Kirby-era kind of optimism to their FF’s tone. There will be
challenges aplenty, and not pleasant ones either (as set up at the end
of McDuffie’s run), but ones which emphasize the pioneer spirit
that made the classic FF
— and its times — the surprising, epic enterprise that it
was.
To match this atmosphere, Hitch employs not just his trademark
spectacle but a neo-Mod aesthetic for settings like the FF’s
living quarters that homages both the swingin’ ’60s and
the retro-hip 2000s and logically extends the look the film
franchise’s designers were moving toward in the second FF movie.
(The magazine-like cover and layout design also nicely departs from
what we’re used to seeing in the way comics tell stories.)
Facially and physically, Hitch’s is also one of the most
age-appropriate FFs seen in quite some time, which would also make a
good model for the movies (sorry, Ioan and Jessica). Hitch’s
charged but unglamorized treatment of the human form (both male and
female) is good too for that rarest of species in comic-book visuals,
sexy yet plausible women; McDuffie wrote one of the best-ever
portrayals of Sue Richards, strong and self-directed, but
Pelletier’s backbreaking booty-centric body language for her was
not among the best depictions, and the only big departure from his
overall refreshing realism.
There have been many detours from the status quo in FF runs, some
inspired (the stand-in mother-and-father figures of Storm &
T’Challa when Sue & Reed left to rebuild their marriage
during McDuffie’s run), some embarrassing (She-Thing, anyone?),
but at their core the best bearers of Lee & Kirby’s legacy
have shown that the interpretation doesn’t have to be radical,
it just has to be magical. And so far, the magic seems back to stay.
—CCdC—
Cover image used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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