Fantastic Four #4

[arbre_rieur]

Comments

[razsolo]

I was gonna break my lurking streak and post these pages tonight myself, so I'm glad you did it! I...don't really get what Reed did here. I mean it's pretty obvious WHAT he did, but I don't get WHY he did it? The story elements don't really fit into place as well as they could for me.

Also...I actually really like Bagley's art in general, but others have made the point that he can't draw different faces to save his life, and that panel with Franklin shouting "DAD, LOOK!" in the cave is a perfect example. I honestly thought that was Johnny the first time I saw it, and couldn't figure out what was going on at first glance.

I think I am gonna drop this title if it doesn't pick up in the next couple of issues...its sister title seems to be on a definite upswing, whereas this is already kinda floundering? And I'm not really in love with how Fraction writes Ben or Val either...

I will say Reed trying to get through to Val and Franklin that 'there will be no ghosts or treasure' was pretty funny though. :)

[nomadicwriter]

I kind of feel like Fraction's ditched all recent developments in characterisation and reverted everybody to their 60s and 70s versions. (Except for Sue, but honestly his Sue is pretty generic so far.) Coupled with the fact that he's writing Franklin as if he's really young and Val nothing at all like Hickman's version... I'm really not feeling it so far. It's not offensively bad, but it's super bland, and after the Hickman run I was hoping for something a little bit better than this kind of seen-it-before averageness.

[arbre_rieur]

It's a classic predestination paradox. Seeing the cave painting, which captured his feelings for Sue, reminded him of how much his family truly means to him. So now he needs to go back in time and make the painting, so that it's there to remind contemporary him millennia later

[lieut_kettch]

Wait.. 616-Sue has a PhD? I know Ultimate Sue does.

[bjornwilde]

I was wondering that myself. I swear this is the first I've heard of it but I like it.

[donnblake]

Often, Sue is depicted as running the business side of the Fantastic Four, so it's not impossible that she might have a doctorate in business administration.

[icon_uk]

Though, in fairness, they've even had Johnny running the business side for a while, until the next writer decided to hit the personal development reset switch.

[donnblake]

That's interesting- the only story along those lines I recall was Sue putting him in charge as a kick-in-the-pants attempt to get him to grow some responsibility, and him dealing with some shady people who wouldn't to mass produce unstable molecule clothing.

[nomadicwriter]

According to Matt Fraction's tumblr:

in the next FANTASTIC FOUR, I pretty radically update and upgrade Sue’s backstory. For any number of reasons, all of which I presented to my editor and to whom i made my case because it’s he who is, ultimately, the final judge of such things. And it’s flagrant — it’s PLANET OF THE APES this-don’t-make-no-sense-with-the-past flagrant. Asynchronous. Call it a revamp, a reboot, ra retcon, whatever — I thew away stuff that I didn’t feel worked. Because it was more important to me as the writer of F4 right now, and as a reader to be brutally honest, to be true to the core of the character rather than the specifics of her backstory as it had been (barely) shown.

[salinea]

[mrstatham]

I think that's fair enough. She does get the shortest straw far too often at times, and in fact, before I got to the lower set of pages, I was going to say Fraction was doing the same thing. It's no different than what a lot of other writers do, trimming what they see as the fat in order to use the character as they wish, and if Fraction ends up benefiting the character in doing so, I see no issue.

I just wish that this main book could be as interesting at FF is, to me. I don't know whether it's Allred's art, but there's something about Fraction's writing that seems to suit a set of characters like Lang and co.

[auggie18]

...really? I mean, honestly, you could retcon in her getting her MBA (or, I guess, PHD) and it wouldn't be that much of a stretch. It doesn't feel like that he "threw away stuff that [he] didn’t feel worked" to say "yeah, turns out Sue was also supporting herself and Johnny as she worked her way through business school too." It doesn't seem like that much of a "radical update."

This doesn't seem like a great attitude to have, though.

[bmaryott]

Fantastic Four #1 was published over fifty years ago.

If there weren't backstory changes she would be an airhead that's old enough to be a great-grandmother...

Reed met her in AT THE UNIVERSITY. So, unless y'all want to think that she was there for her Mrs. degree, this makes sense.

[darkknightjrk]

Yeah, I think Byrne's idea of having Sue and Reed meet when she was TWELVE was problematic enough to tinker with.

[curlyjo1]

Wow. When writers do something like that I just wonder why they want to write a certain team or character, if they don't really like or get that character.

[shadowpsykie]

Hmmmm Reed not being portrayed as an emotionless robot... Nice.

And as far as ths retcon, the retcon itself does not bother me.... His comments on the the other hand....

[doomisay]

To be fair, Reed hasn't been portrayed as an emotionless robot in FF for years. He definitely wasn't during Hickman's run.

[icon_uk]

Civil War had him as being prepared to lose his entire family to get the Pro-Registration plans in place.

[bewareofgeek]

No, he's being portrayed as an "ends justifies the means" extremist.

THAT'S NOT BETTER!

[darkknightjrk]

How so?

[rzerox21xx]

So this title is not doing well then compare to Fraction's other title Hawkeye which seem to be doing really good and outselling

[kevinroc]

Fantastic Four is the most ordered of those titles. Probably because "Fantastic Four" is a bigger name than "FF" or "Hawkeye."

[silverhammerman]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned how Reed introduces Ben as his brother. The way he kind of hesitates suggests that he might just be saying that for convenience of understanding for the aliens, but it's still pretty nice.

[icon_uk]

I thought it was a nice moment, he's presumably about to say "friend" or "companion" then realises that if he's being honest, neither of those comes close to describing their relationship, so goes for the much closer familial term.

[arysteia]

I was obviously in a cynical mood today, because on first reading I assumed he was making sure that the strange looking Ben was covered in whatever aura of protection his family is entitled to on this kin-honour-observing strange world. (Clearly not the case from subsequent panels.)