Review: Fantastic Four: First Family TPB

Fantastic Four: First Family TPB
Written by Joe Casey
Pencils by Chris Weston
Inks by Gary Erskine
Published by Marvel Comics. $15.99 USD

I started a longer draft of this review and accidentally exited without saving it. Ah, well. So this will be a bit shorter.

I preordered this book but did so with some trepidation. While I've liked some of the creators work in the past, I was a little leery of this, which I was worried would be just a drawn-out, unnecessary retelling of the F.F.'s origin. And you know? It is lengthy, and it is something of a retelling of their origin, but there's more to it than that.

As far as I'm concerned, one of the interesting things about Joe Casey's writing is that despite a decade in the industry, give or take, he really hasn't found himself yet. I don't mean that in a bad way, other than the side effect of his grasping for a style sometimes results in some out-and-out dogs. But when he looks to Grant Morrison for inspiration, his instincts are right, and I detect some of that here, from the pairing with sometime Morrison collaborator Weston to ideas like the villain who appears to Reed as a white humanoid shape that slowly gains human characteristics from the organs out. Heck, there's even a chimpanzee in here somewhere, which may be a nod to the Morrison/Weston opus, THE FILTH, though of course that could be Weston's doing rather than Casey's.

Influences aside, Casey can't simply retell Fantastic Four #1 in eight chapters of decompressed storytelling and a modern setting, so he gives a good deal of thought to how to freshen up the source material and work in the FF character dynamics that would show up in later issues of the series, as well as address holes such as how the government would have reacted to Reed Richards and Co stealing one of their rockets. Quite sensibly, Casey writes the rocket as a Richards-led project the government abandoned, giving Reed not only the means to get to the rocket but also a motive for stealing it other than curiosity: revenge.

Not only that, Casey and Weston create a very creepy (because he's just a shade off of normal-looking) villain in Franz Stahl, a fellow scientist imprisoned, like Reed and his crew, by the government. Stahl is a good nemesis for Reed as he is the chilling example of a thirst for knowledge and change unfettered by human feeling. Reed is often accused of being cold, but as Casey shows in melodramatic fashion, there's quite a difference between between detached and being a calculating megalomaniac. The external story then becomes how the team can put aside their differences and work together to stop this menace, and Casey gets a "B" for bringing it off. Sue's frustration at Reed putting the team ahead of their previously-discussed marriage plans is a decent subplot and handled competently but without anything really special in the execution, and the ending, which somehow involves choosing love to stop Stahl, is well-intentioned but doesn't quite come off. Points to Casey for giving Reed a friend in the government, then points off for killing him and eliminating a character we could have seen in the regular series. For the most part, Casey does update the origin and early days smartly with only a couple stumbles, keeping a couple bits that should have been retired. It's fine to show Monster Island, but why even mention the name of it? Likewise, why does Reed assemble the team by means of flare gun? Sure, it looks kind of cool, but it seems like a tremendously impractical, unreliable method for a scientist. What's wrong with cellphones?

Weston does good work here, though a bit uneven. Sometimes it's prime Weston, sometimes the art shows a heavier reliance on Erskine to not just ink but finish, and sometimes it's stiffly competent and unpleasantly reminiscent of Paul Ryan. He doesnt bring anything special to the character designs, but neither does he screw them up. His Thing is fine, like a dozen other Things. Good Reed, fine Sue and Johnny, though in Torch form he looks far too grim--this is a kid who loves to flame on, remember. It's a shame that Weston didn't carry through on the promise with Sue of using Cate Blanchett's face like he obviously did for her image on the cover to the first issue (and trade cover), but that's deadlines for ya. It was also a kick to see Ernest Borgnine as Ben Grimm, but he's only Ben briefly in this book and doesn't look that way again. In fact, the cover to #1 is far more interesting than any of the other covers, which are adequate at their best and often just awkward or underpopulated.

There's nothing here that is absolutely must-reading, but it's definitely an above-average reboot and while not perfect, it's a good effort.