World's Greatest Comic: The Fantastic Four Appreciation 2022

[CitizenXXX]

I’m out of the loop. Who’s drawing the FF book these days, does Slott still write it and are there decent reviews? I have not read since Hickmann is why I ask

1. Different artists, but good artists. There is a mess with artists in general, it happens that two or even three artists draw one issue. It is a pity that this run did not have its own artistic "face", unlike most of the famous runs in the series. For the entire run to this point, the series was drawn by about 10 artists and there are even more to come.
2. Still writing Slott, but it looks like his run will end soon. If he completes it on issue 700, which he most likely will (16 issues left), the entire run will take about 55 issues, not counting off-series one-shots.
3. This has been very mixed and controversial by fans and critics since the start of the run.
There is a lot of good, but there is also a lot of bad.

[danielsan52]

I’m out of the loop. Who’s drawing the FF book these days, does Slott still write it and are there decent reviews? I have not read since Hickmann is why I ask

For me Slott's writing is reminiscent of the DeFalco era which was very controversial and my all time favorite.

[Oberon]

I liked DeFalco too but see that others did not.

He's not my top favorite and that may be Byrne but not necessarily.

I've loved much of the art of the current run/s and overall some story elements intrigued. I think character arcs suffer, with Sue of course but the others in different ways.

I so want to know what is going on with Alicia, and stuff like that.

[CaptCleghorn]

3. This has been very mixed and controversial by fans and critics since the start of the run.
There is a lot of good, but there is also a lot of bad.

I agree. Slott spends a lot of time on the family aspect of the four and often is far less than subtle about it. But I think he hits it pretty well. He has not done well with larger stories though as seen in the Doom/Galactus arc. He also is horrible in his handling of Sue.

For me Slott's writing is reminiscent of the DeFalco era which was very controversial and my all time favorite.

I am a huge naysayer as far as the handling of Lyja is concerned. But I believe DeFalco's handling is probably closest to the feel of anything can happen that Lee and Kirby had back in the sixties. The extended cast harkened back to the days when the Inhumans, Black Panther, Silver Surfer, and Wyatt Wingfoot were hanging around.

[Nomads1]

1. Different artists, but good artists. There is a mess with artists in general, it happens that two or even three artists draw one issue. It is a pity that this run did not have its own artistic "face", unlike most of the famous runs in the series. For the entire run to this point, the series was drawn by about 10 artists and there are even more to come.

I miss the days of steady collaboration, when who was doing the art mattered almost as much as who was writing, and when creative teams really stuck with a book for the long run. Stern and Buscema on Avengers, Claremont and Byrne, Smith, Lee, etc... on X-Men, Simonson and Simonson and Buscema on Thor, DeFalco and Ryan on FF, Busiek and Perez on Avengers, Jurgens and Romita JR on Thor, Michilaine, Bright (or Romita Jr) and Layton on Iron Man, Claremont and Larocca on FF, Waid and Wieringo on FF, and so many others.

For me Slott's writing is reminiscent of the DeFalco era which was very controversial and my all time favorite.

DeFalco and Ryan's run is also one of my favorites, but I really don't see much in common between it and Slott's. I don't exactly deslike Slott's, but, mostly, it really didn't excite me as much as I expected it to do. His previous work with the Thing and the Human Torch was quite good, and his Mighty Avengers was, for me, a ray of sunshine in an otherwise very dark period. But his run has been, IMHO, very uneven. Some good things, others very "meh" or even bad. I liked quite a lot Empyre. IMHO, one of the best cross-overs Marvel has put out in years.

Peace

[CitizenXXX]

My Favorite Slott Stories
1. First Arc Forever
2. Wedding (one of my favorite F4 comics in general)
3. War of the Realms standalone
4Thing vs Hulk
5. Point of Origin (Everything was great until a stupid pointless retcon happened)
6. Iceman and F4
7. Empyre
8. Forever Gate (I love this arc, there are so many cool things going on in it, but again - another retcon that doesn't make any sense)
9. F4 35 and beyond all good

Slott is really very old school inspired in the characterization, in the planning of the stories, in the structure, and there are both positives and negatives to that. The central characters of the run are Ben and Alicia, I am very glad that Alicia is getting attention that she has not received for many years before, we see development, adding new facets of character to her along with the appearance of amazing children in their lives with Ben (another plus for Slott ), fighting her legacy as the daughter of the Puppet Master.
Slott always wrote very well for Ben and Reed, but there was a problem with Sue, and I still don’t understand why this happened - Slott wrote her well in a wedding issue, in Herald of Doom and in Point of Origin, but in general, it seems , throughout the entire run, he did not know at all what to do with her and, unfortunately, could not find an approach to her.
But the biggest disappointment is Johnny, whom Slott writes as an immature, selfish, quarrelsome hysteric. Perhaps Slott sees Johnny's impulsiveness and explosive nature in this way, but these are completely different things.

I like Franklin's storyline. It is, of course, unreasonably long, but, in my opinion, interesting.

In general, I like what Slott writes more than the way he writes. Most of his stories are in the spirit of F4, the family aspect works very well, the stories are quite varied. That being said, the run is very, very bumpy, his big stories suffer from a bad plan, he made some very strange decisions, and his new characters (with the exception of Ben and Alicia's kids and maybe Zora) didn't bring anything really new with them. At the same time, I liked Sky, but I still do not understand why she was needed, she never went beyond the character-function.

In general, I could write for a long time both about the good and the bad of this run, there is a lot of everything (and I didn’t even write anything about Doctor Doom), I probably will never be able to give an unambiguous assessment of this run. Very controversial run.

[CitizenXXX]

I miss the days of steady collaboration, when who was doing the art mattered almost as much as who was writing, and when creative teams really stuck with a book for the long run. Stern and Buscema on Avengers, Claremont and Byrne, Smith, Lee, etc... on X-Men, Simonson and Simonson and Buscema on Thor, DeFalco and Ryan on FF, Busiek and Perez on Avengers, Jurgens and Romita JR on Thor, Michilaine, Bright (or Romita Jr) and Layton on Iron Man, Claremont and Larocca on FF, Waid and Wieringo on FF, and so many others.

To be fair, there are a lot of books these days where the writer and artist have been working for a long time (at least by today's standards).
I hope the next F4 writer will bring back the tradition of long-term collaboration with the series artist that F4 is famous for.

[Ravin' Ray]

Fantastic Four: Reckoning War Alpha #1 preview

Went straight to the rescue pages and skipped the destruction of the Moon I see. Also I think that's Sunfire flying next to Johnny, I think that's the first time I've seen them together.

[Digifiend]

Yeah, that's Sunfire. Makes sense he's there as he's on the current X-Men team.

Though I see an error on the next page - Iron Man says "we X-Men". I'm guessing that was supposed to be Sunfire - there's no X-Men drawn on that panel.

[Frontier]

Will "Oh My Stars" survive Slott?

[Digifiend]

Life Story #6. Sue visits Steve while Carol, Miles and Riri fight some Doombots.
https://aiptcomics.com/2022/01/28/ma...-life-story-6/

[Wat]

Fantastic Four: Reckoning War Alpha #1 preview

Went straight to the rescue pages and skipped the destruction of the Moon I see. Also I think that's Sunfire flying next to Johnny, I think that's the first time I've seen them together.

Lol.Iron Man revealing he has joined the X-Men amidst this global emergency is another sign of the direty of the situation.

[Frontier]

Life Story #6. Sue visits Steve while Carol, Miles and Riri fight some Doombots.
https://aiptcomics.com/2022/01/28/ma...-life-story-6/

I thought this was already over.

It doesn't seem different enough from the current MU. Like at least Spidey Last Story used different costumes.

[Oberon]

I like Franklin's storyline. It is, of course, unreasonably long, but, in my opinion, interesting.

LOL, Franklin was born in 1968 when I was 12 (still have that issue)

My granddaughter turns 16 next month. We're pretty used to the unreasonably long.

[Digifiend]

I thought this was already over.

It doesn't seem different enough from the current MU. Like at least Spidey Last Story used different costumes.

It is different. Most of the classic heroes have aged out, including Captain America, who's grown old naturally. They show what's apparently an Avengers team consisting of Captain Marvel, Ironheart, and Miles Morales. Riri's backstory must be different - no way would she have reverse engineered decades old Iron Man tech. Though not shown, I think we can safely assume that the current Avengers consist of characters who in the 616 universe comics debuted after the year 2000 (Carol's an exception, likely because she became Captain Marvel in 2012). The Champions would probably have no reason to exist, as Civil War II never happened. They were smart not to show Nadia Van Dyne, as she'd almost certainly be an adult (even older than Hope is in the movies) in this real time aging version of the Marvel universe due to Hank's age.