Fantastic Four #12 – Review

This issue marks a turning point, as I see it, and a turn for the better. Characters actually make decisions rather than simply react to events as they happen around them, and those decisions are actually informed, rational and momentous. Who would have thought that genuine characterization was so important for making a good story?

There’s also a nice flow to the story, so that Johnny’s portion leads right into Ben’s, and after a brief interlude with Valeria and Doom, the issue is capped by Mr. Fantastic and our villain is finally revealed, ending with an explosive cliffhanger. This is helped, of course, by some nicely flowing art as well. There’s a great use of sequential panels featuring Johnny, both in the three-step page-turn in the first couple of pages and in the double-page spread as Spider-Man tosses him around. It’s admirable just in the sheer variety of angles the layouts use. These use of angles and layout continue throughout the book, even in sequences such as Ben’s conversation with Sandman.

Similarly, the art switches to be very moody and expressive when switching to the final scene with Mr. Fantastic/Eden. The heavy inks/blacks create an eerie underlighting effect and the colors tinge the scene with creepy green and blue lights. When Mr. Fantastic, er, “hulks out” against Eden, he’s drawn as distorted, bloated, and not just a little bit gross, matching the character’s mood and motivations. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a distorted use of Fantastic’s powers such as this, making it all that more unsettling.   

Another interesting artistic element is the use of characters from the Heroes Reborn story, whose design is typical of the aesthetic of that era. The Iron Man’s look is busy and complicated to Kirk/Kessel’s normally clean and simplified linework, which emphasizes the otherworldliness of these characters.

I enjoyed seeing Johnny step up and get out his funk quite easily, since it was an aspect of the  storyline I didn’t enjoy, although I have to admit that, if the alternative would have been a somewhat longer road of redemption, it would have felt a bit more natural. As it is, Johnny’s basically shrugging after his intervention and saying, “Yeah, that sounds about right,” and flipping back into hero mode. Same with Ben’s switch. I’m happy about the end result, so the few panels of “You love me again, Buddy?” “Maybe.” doesn’t balance the issues upon issues of pathos we were subjected to. So much for consequences; let’s just pick up where we left off. (Same thing with Valeria’s scene. A whole Annual is devoted to her explicitly splitting from her mother. Here? She decides to go back to her mother.) At least the art here is very effective, including a silent panel that allows the reader to stay in that moment as long as necessary.

It’s a tricky business, this Fantastic Four stuff. On one hand, we’ve been “promised” high stakes disruption to the familiar Foursome, and when it happens, the readers feel unsatisfied. Here, we flip-flop back into status quo a bit too quickly, and thus the readers will feel unsatisfied. The Ben/Johnny scene in this issue, while somewhat nice to look at, in retrospect it defuses any tension the previous stories (Original Sin) was supposed to set up. How are we supposed to give weight to any story, then, if they are so quickly and summarily abandoned? I hold up Wyatt Wingfoot, as I have before, as a good example– he’s actually thinking through the events, showing care and interpersonal relationship, and building on what’s come before. Except for that gratuitous line about “the sweat lodge in the sky.” Really, Wingfoot? What’s next, greeting with a “How”?

-Danny Wall