The First Family of Marvel: The Fantastic Four Appreciation 2019

[Crimz]

Just wanted to say how much I love Marvel Knights 4. While it was missing the wacky cosmic adventures, it had some of the best characterization imo.


Sue was great and it's my favorite depiction of the character. She really held the family together during a tough time and had a personality beyond "mom".

Reed wasn't written as a neglectful dick and an actual good dad. It has one of my favorite Reed moments with him talking to the man about to jump off a building.

Johnny was growing up and acted like an adult. Him being a firefighter makes so much sense.

Most tend to get Ben right imo. I think this page from the book is awesome.

[CaptCleghorn]

Just wanted to say how much I love Marvel Knights 4. While it was missing the wacky cosmic adventures, it had some of the best characterization imo.

The FF has been about the mix of the two. It was originally designed as more real people being super-heroes. DC had three nearly identical casts having adventures in caves, underwater and through time. But the FF blew them all out of the water (in Sea Devils' case, literally, lol). The family aspect was a lot more powerful and we saw some of the less stoic heroic reactions from characters.

The team can have adventures in one of the two worlds they straddle. It works and may even work for a while. But if you don't mix the two and use both of the book's themes, so much is being wasted. Knights 4 was great. It was an editorially driven direction which was controversial in that it was set to replace a current popular run. Marvel wisely had its cake and ate it too with it.

But any writer of FF should be reading this run.

[gurkle]

I picked up the Heroes Return TPB that collects the first 15 issues of the 1998 run, where Scott Lobdell and Alan Davis walked off after 3 issues (Ralph Macchio's introduction doesn't even try to explain why) and Chris Claremont and Salvador Larroca took over and stayed for two and a half years.

It was more enjoyable than I remembered. It does have the usual Late Claremont problems - too much material drawn from his own past comics (Excalibur and X-Men, mostly) and everyone talks about twice as much as they should. But the characterization of the four members is quite good and I thought one plot point lifted from an old X-Men story actually worked better here.

The main thing I liked was that with Johnny, Claremont writes him as a mature, experienced superhero who is an expert on his own powers and knows how dangerous they are if he makes one mistake. Instead of asking whether Johnny will grow up and learn to be serious, he just... writes him as a serious grown-up, and it works fine.

Comicraft's use of a special "fire" font for Johnny and a "rock" font for Ben are very dated, and so is some of the coloring, but Larroca and Art Thibert made a good art team.

[Snoop Dogg]

I have rock font PTSD. The run is like a blur in my subconscious, although that expansion of the Reed/Vic bodyswap is inspired.

[gurkle]

Self-correction: Johnny didn't have a special font, just balloons that were colored and shaped like fire (Iceman also had "ice" balloons around this time).

I don't know why some special balloons and/or fonts work and others just don't, but I just feel like the Johnny/Ben lettering doesn't really have anything to do with the way they would sound, unlike (say) the Vision.

[CaptCleghorn]

The purpose of changing a word balloon font or color or balloon style should be to specify that the sound is somewhat different than a normal voice. If Johnny has one while flamed on, I'd hope his voice while flamed would be different somehow. And whether that's an actuality would depend on his state while aflame. And we're back to comic book science of a lighter than air flaming body speaking.

Conversely, different balloon style could be used to differentiate speakers when we don't see them in the panel. But considering the mess of trying to get different styles for each character, that becomes problematic.

[Iron Maiden]

I picked up the Heroes Return TPB that collects the first 15 issues of the 1998 run, where Scott Lobdell and Alan Davis walked off after 3 issues (Ralph Macchio's introduction doesn't even try to explain why) and Chris Claremont and Salvador Larroca took over and stayed for two and a half years.

It was more enjoyable than I remembered. It does have the usual Late Claremont problems - too much material drawn from his own past comics (Excalibur and X-Men, mostly) and everyone talks about twice as much as they should. But the characterization of the four members is quite good and I thought one plot point lifted from an old X-Men story actually worked better here.

The main thing I liked was that with Johnny, Claremont writes him as a mature, experienced superhero who is an expert on his own powers and knows how dangerous they are if he makes one mistake. Instead of asking whether Johnny will grow up and learn to be serious, he just... writes him as a serious grown-up, and it works fine.

Comicraft's use of a special "fire" font for Johnny and a "rock" font for Ben are very dated, and so is some of the coloring, but Larroca and Art Thibert made a good art team.

I've been saying here for years that the Claremont/Larocca run is underrated so I agree with your post. For the early issues Lobdell is still credited for the plot but after that Claremont gets full credits. His Reed in Doom armor story is one of my favorites. I preferred the way he handled the characters as opposed to the much lauded Waid run. Waid made Johnny into an immature fellow munching on cereal. Sheesh.... He was married at one time and Waid so fit to regress him into teen mode it seemed. Waid also regressed Doom when you consider the status quo prior to his run but that's another story.

[Reviresco]

This is a Christian household. We don't talk about Robinson Invaders without praying for mercy first.

Heh.

Was that published before or after 2005? Because that reminds me of Cassandra from the Doctor Who episodes The End of the World and New Earth (modern series 1 episode 2 and series 2 episode 1).

I'm not sure. I'm thinking after 2005? But since Slott is a big Dr. Who fan, he might have drawn inspiration from that episode also.

[Crimz]

I actually liked today's issue.

I'll go into detail at the proper time.

[gurkle]

Conversely, different balloon style could be used to differentiate speakers when we don't see them in the panel. But considering the mess of trying to get different styles for each character, that becomes problematic.

This may be the source of my problem with the special font for Ben. The guy has maybe the most distinctive "voice" in comics, to the point that almost every writer since the '60s has written his dialogue pretty much the same way. You always know it's Ben speaking just by the words he uses, so a special font seems redundant.

Anyway this ends the long digression on the Rock Font (Comicraft Rock Font, 1997-2002 + those few comics Jeph Loeb wrote later where he had them bring it back, RIP).

[The BaRoN]

Still no merchandise I assume?

Enjoyed the latest issue but it flew by and felt short

It's a bit old school vibe but I'm looking forward to moving past the Doom is a dick story again

I can't wait for their return to a major event in WOTR

[Crimz]

Fantastic Four #9 variant by Terry Dodson.

[Crimz]

Annihilus likely to be next FF related character brought to Contest of Champions mobile game.

[BitParallel]

I was told the fantastic four comics were cancelled or something few years back, it’s good to see them back. I am catching up with marvels recent events, so please recommend me good stories with FF.

Thank You in advance.

[Digifiend]

Yeah, they were axed in 2015 and just came back late last year.

If you plan to read Secret Wars, you might want to try reading Hickman's runs on Fantastic Four/FF and Avengers/New Avengers.