One of the joys of comics is how they can excite you on any given Wednesday, which has been the case with Ryan North and Iban Coello’s Fantastic Four. The new series has had a mystery looming over the team since issue #1, breaking up each member and having each of the first three issues devoted to a different character or characters. They aren’t together, and we need to know why! Fear not, Fantastic Four fans, as we learn what happened in today’s issue.
As you can see in the preview, Fantastic Four #4 opens with the team outmatched as they fight against a Negative Zone invasion. Narrated by Thing via captions, it may seem like your usual superhero fight, but it’s anything but. That’s largely due to the whereabouts of Thing and Alicia, who both narrate the story from an entirely different place.
In these captions, you can see the layers North has instilled in the narrative. It’s a clever one that adds to the first-person experience of Thing and Alicia but also adds context to the terrible thing Reed Richards did. Shockingly smart, North sets this issue up so that we learn the terrible thing that happened while also allowing for a believable amount of reflection and time to have passed to get the entire team back on board as a loving family with no regrets are anger. It might sound vague how I’m putting it, but you’ll have to read the issue to figure out how it all works.
Similar to past issues, North introduces two interesting sci-fi concepts. One involves time travel and how it coincides with the planet’s movement. If you go back in time and don’t account for where the Earth will be around the sun, you could find yourself in the vacuum of space instead of your living room. There’s another concept centered on the last issue’s cliffhanger that revealed a giant dome that looked a lot like Thing’s skin. Entirely different, this sci-fi idea is a fun one to unpack and think about.
I think that monster is gonna need some aspirin.
Credit: Marvel
Art by Coello continues to be great thanks to expressive characters that are easy to read. I can’t help but love the weird and wild stuff Mr. Fantastic does with his powers, which always look good. At one point, he turns his hands into saws, for instance, or in another, his eye comes out of his head and presses up against a translucent sack. Thing’s punches look great, with top-of-the-line blur effects conveying speed and force. Invisible Woman pulls off some neat tricks with her powers, like chains to hold down monsters or her protective force field.
Given how smart I’ve said this scripting is, I will admit it can sometimes feel overly wordy. There’s a heavy amount of dialogue on multiple pages and plenty of explanation of the sci-fi ideas. They always say show, don’t tell, and while these concepts would be pretty tricky to pull off visually, a little more of an attempt as far as the dome could have gone far. Much of the nuance of what is going on with the captions and when they were being said requires a decent amount of dialogue, but the pace can feel overly slow.
Fantastic Four #4 does two things great, and they’re the epitome of what makes good Fantastic Four stories. The first is reminding us this is a true family that loves one another, while the other is fantastical sci-fi ideas that add wonderment and spark the imagination. For as complex and interesting Fantastic Four #4 is, simply put, it’s great.
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