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Fantastic Four: True Story #1
Posted 14 Aug 2008
Writer: Paul Cornell
Artist: Horacio Domingues (interior), Niko Henrichon (cover)
Letters: Dave Lanphear
Publisher: Marvel
4.50 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Adam McGovern
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Something is trespassing on the very source of possibility, the
human imagination as embodied in works of fiction, and the Fantastic
Four – whose focus, as a family unit, has always been as
intimate as their adventures are epic – must enter the mental
dimension of literature and culture itself to free everything back up.
Like the prose works that writer Paul Cornell clearly cherishes
(and are specifically visited by the FF in this first issue),
it’s a dimension of charm and peril alike, from Edgar Rice
Burroughs to Jane Austen – Cornell enjoys how the greatest
fiction can tap both childhood and lifelong hopes and fears, and he
very much includes comics in that founding canon of our personalities.
“True Story is not quite like
anything else being published.”
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The FF are ideal vessels for such an expedition; not only does
their concept admit a lot more humor than most superheroes (which is
in abundance in this often storybook/satire-flavored mini), but they
are among the few Marvel heroes who are truly archetypal rather than
iconoclastic (as a family, they are the primal social unit; other than
that there’s the jester/trickter Spider-Man, so much like the
literary Loki or, hmm, the African god Anansi the spider man; and the
Hulk, locus of appetite/animus and intellect/civilization; and beyond
them not much else). The FF as an idea connect with the type of basics
of our fantasies and self-image that this book’s odyssey will
touch on.
That trip entails an acrobatic system of self-reference and
paradoxes (as the characters become increasingly aware of –
though often surprised by – their shifting position in and out
of reality as they see it and story as we do), and Cornell coordinates
it like a master choreographer – and standup comic;
there’s incredible intricacy under the hood here, but Cornell
keeps your eye on exactly the magic tricks of witty banter and
personal tenderness he wants you to see (and does it much better than
the ten-metaphor-pileup I’ve just written). The eye is also
rewarded by Horacio Domingues’ art, drawing equally from manga,
children’s books and Not Brand
Echh as befits the story’s cultural cross-traffic.
The series stands up with, and maybe sets off, the meta-stories of
Alan Moore, whose characters navigate the closed book of their lives
while Cornell’s FF negotiate a changing ferment of narratives
they thought they knew (literally intervening in the events of Sense and Sensibility; believing
themselves into victory or assuming themselves into defeat; etc.). To
Moore reality seems to be a vast tapestry whose threads are
imperceivable to any one person but are all already in place; to
Cornell it seems to be a swirling ocean of endless possibilities.
True Story is a worthy
companion to Virgin Comics’ Tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma (which
also concerns an assault on fantasy, though in a bit more binary way,
and was originally titled, a-ha, End
of Story), and almost seems a knowing satire of DC’s
“52 universes” (or was that Heinz ketchup and relish?),
with the FF not meeting their What
If? counterparts but entering the realms of Tarzan, Rikki-Tikki
Tavi, Dante (a character in his own fiction), et al. It gives more of
a taste for its sources than Marvel
Illustrated, and is one of the truest signs of the
company’s evolution – the real action-adventure nailbiter
would be one where Cornell himself travels back in time and tries to
pitch this tricky, literate idea in the Bob Harras era.
Stewarding Marvel’s most familiar characters well while
feeling not quite like anything else that’s being published,
True Story is good for you in
every way. It’s only four issues, so don’t wait for the
book.
—CCdC—
Cover image used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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