By Mark Millar and Joe Ahearne (writers) Stuart Immonen (pencils)Wade Von Grawbadger (inks) Paul Mounts (colors)
The Story: Millar and mostly Hitch’s run of FF comes to an explosive end. The FF take drastic and ingenious steps to survive the Marquis of Death’s assault, while simultaneously fending off scores of FF’s from across the multi-verse. Also, as I predicted, the revelation of the Marquee’s assistant is someone who we are very, very familiar with.
What’s Good: This story is just good old-fashioned Superhero sci-fi, and frankly I love Millar on the FF. Also, this issue is the culmination of his series Marvel 1985 and the main character Clyde Wyncham, a.k.a the Marquis of Death. So, those who have been fans of Millar’s recent work on mainstream Marvel will not want to miss this issue.
With Hitch off this issue for personal reasons (I haven’t been able to find out exactly why he’s off the final two issues of his run with Millar, but I heard rumors that he had some severe personal things going on, to which we here at WCBR wish him the best), Stuart Immonen takes over pencils and does an outstanding job. He mimics Hitch’s style while keeping his own signature as well. It all comes off beautifully.
What’s Not So Good: Look, I loved Millar’s Red Son and the part I loved most about that story was the circular time aspect at the end. I felt like it was a form of poetry and lifted the story to a whole new dimension. That being said, the temporal stuff he’s done on his FF run has been more of a hindrance to the story than anything else. Be prepared: I’m about to geek out big-time here as I complain about this:
In the Death of the Invisible Woman arc, Sue comes back from the future and causes havoc to the current team that exists in the present. Wanting to find his future version of his wife, Reed puts a tracer in Sue’s neck in the present and thus it appears in her future self and the FF are then able to find where future Sue is. So, Millar did some cool cause and effect stuff here, i.e. you affect Sue in the present, her future self is also affected. This establishes internal logic of his arc.
Based on this said internal-logic, in this issue, when a character from the future watches their past self die, it would makes sense that they themselves would die or cease to exist, right? Temporal cause and effect. Well, not really at all. Millar just ignores this particular plot motivating internal-logic in order to have a big reveal of a mysterious character.
All the above logic issues definitely puts a damper on the over all rapture of the story.
Conclusion: Millar’s run on FF has definitely become my favorite of any FF arc or stories. Granted, I’m not a big FF fan as they usually come off as campy to me. I was very pleased to see that the arc rebounded after last month’s weird and poor outing.
Grade: B
-Rob G.
Filed under: Marvel Comics, Reviews Tagged: | Clyde Wyncham, Comic Book Reviews, comic books, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four # 569, Fantastic Four # 569 - Review, joe ahearne, Mark Millar, Marquis of Death, Marvel Reviews, Masters of Doom, Paul Mounts, Stuart Immonen, Wade Von Grawbadger, weekly comic book reviews
Hey, Rob.
The character from the future didn’t watch his/her past self die. There was no true death in the Pliocene Era.
LL
Yeah, and if Doom rebuilt himself molecule by molecule (”until not even a molecule remained to betray me”), then why on earth did he rebuild himself with the horribly scarred and disfigured face?
Pride? Wearing his scars of disfigurement like a badge of honor?
I mean, why not rebuild himself to look like Brad Pitt, or George Clooney (keeping it in the “doctor” family) or Chris Evans (keeping it in the FF family!)
L