I know it’s really too late to announce something like this, but FF is really the best new series of 2012. It’s Matt Fraction’s take on a back-up Fantastic Four and it has amazing art by Mike Allred. Really, why aren’t you reading this?
The premise is pretty straight forward; in the recently relaunched Fantastic Four is going on a short-term journey into another dimension and they need someone to look after the Future Foundation (Marvel Universe’s brightest bunch of genius youngsters) and any other fantastic problems in the interim.
Each of the members is picked by a member of the real Fantastic Four, and most powerful scenes are the ones where Mister Fantastic is trying to recruit the recently returned to the living Scott “Ant-Man” Lang to be his substitute, hitting on the fact that Lang is really unsure if he is up to the task. This is in comparison to She-Hulk and Medusa, who have previously helped out.
The new member of the team is Darla Deering, a pink haired woman who Johnny Storm had hooked up with and coerced into helping out. Although she has no powers, she is wearing the Thing’s robotic armor from when he lost his powers.
In the second issue, the team has its first public outing as they fight a large monster under the control of Mole Man, a sort of tribute to the first issue of the original Fantastic Four. It ends with the new team saving the day and dealing with various Human Torches from other realities appearing.
It’s a lot of fun and well written, like most of Fraction’s books. But what I really love is that Allred (and his wife Laura who is a super colorist) has created a dynamic and bright world. Really, this is something that has been missing from super hero comics and it works especially well on this. I would love to see the Allreds on Daredevil.
But yes, this is highly recommendeded It’s one of the most fun Fantastic Four stories I’ve read in some time, and it doesn’t even feature the proper characters! How cool is that?
Ridiculously Awesome 