Fantastic Four #9 Review: Familiar Faces and Typos

Not gonna lie, this issue is a bit of a letdown. It really has nothing to do with the story as James Robinson is still holding up his end of this endeavor admirably. Unfortunately, regular series artist Leonard Kirk is not on this issue and it suffers from his absence. Regular colorist Jesus Aburtov is still onboard and last issue's excellent inker Scott Hanna worked on at least some of this issue, but fill-in artist Marc Laming is not quite up to the task of providing pencils with the polish and panache that I've come to expect on this run.

Referencing Laming brings me to the first typo in this issue and it's a fairly egregious one. His name is written as "Marc Lanning" on the cover. I know who Marc Laming is but when I first sat down to write this review, I spent several minutes trying to figure out who this "Lanning" guy was before looking at the interior credits and seeing his name spelled properly. Oddly enough, this isn't the only name that is misspelled in this comic. In the story itself, Ben "The Thing" Grimm meets the Sandman in prison and identifies him by several of his aliases including "Flynt Marko" when all my research indicates that this alias has always been spelled "Flint." Perhaps Sandman altered the spelling in preparation for a move into pornographic publications… There is one more typo, what I'll be referring to as an artistic typo, in the book but it involves the end reveal so I'll talk about that later on.

Before we get to the breakdown, I'll give a quick spoiler-free summation of my thoughts on this issue. Continuing as it does Robinson and Kirk's excellent run and for the ideas and characters it brings into play, this issue remains a must-read. Unfortunately, the art can only be called "comic book standard" with fill-in artist Laming suffering in comparison to the expectations set by Kirk. Assuming that I understand the notation in the credits page, inker Scott Hanna only worked on pages four through six and if that is correct it's a shame that he didn't ink the rest of the book as I suspect it might have elevated Laming's pencils somewhat. Laming provides solid work but unfortunately that solid work does not quite cut it in a book which has been a visual treat up until this point.

That being said, let's move into the breakdown and brave the SPOILERS…

The Good:

James Robinson is writing an excellent story here. As I stated in my review of #8, he is doing and continues to do a superb job of weaving multiple story threads into a compelling whole. This issue sees Reed "Mister Fantastic" Richards's work with billionaire visionary John Eden progress, Johnny "The Human Torch" Storm sinks further into the doldrums with his lack of powers and employment, Dragon Man is rescued by Jim "The Android Human Torch" Hammond and the Future Foundation kids, and Ben Grimm finds out that his orange skin might end up a new shade of black and blue while in prison.

I really do admire Robinson for the way in which he is able to balance all the disparate elements of a story as complex as this one is turning out to be. I also applaud him for telling a story of legitimate intrigue and human drama which for once acknowledges the secondary cast of the Fantastic Four series. I've heard it said of contemporary superhero comics that one of their problems is that they fail to develop a secondary cast or simply shunt them off to the side in favor of stories that are long on plot and action, but short on human interaction and character development. It makes me very happy to see Robinson bucking this trend. In particular, I'm enjoying the fact that the Future Foundation kids are still very much in the picture and that they and Hammond are trying to solve the larger mysteries of this run.

Additionally, I'm very glad that Ben Grimm is getting some story to himself now that he is in prison. In the last few arcs of this series it has felt a bit too much like he has only been along for the ride while the focus has been placed more on Reed, Sue, and their children. Here though, we get to see him interacting with both the Sandman and Sharon "She-Thing" Ventura. These are characters that I've written extensively about recently as their appearances were teased in the solicits for future issues. Both hold important places in Ben and the team's past and I can't put into words how happy I am to see that they are back in a substantive manner.

In the last couple of weeks, I've read some complaints about this run. Some seem to think it felt like a retread at first or perhaps there isn't enough in terms of action for some readers. Personally, I don't see that. Admittedly, I was lukewarm on the book for the first two issues but by #3 I was firmly hooked. The further this series goes, the more I'm reminded of John Byrne's mythic run on this series. The Byrne run is sometimes described as a "back to basics" approach that reinvigorated the book and re-explored or revisited some of the characters and concepts that originally made it great. I'm seeing shades of that in what Robinson is trying to do here by tearing down the team and building it back up, all the while digging back into continuity to remind the readership of what has gone into making this team and this title what it is. Just to be clear, I do not make that comparison lightly. That being said, I am still very much enjoying this book and look forward to each and every additional issue.

This brings me to the art. As I've already said, Laming is serviceable enough with occasional hints of something more. Starting the issue with a shot of Reed and John Eden almost completely upside-down was a nice touch and the Escher-esque spread that followed was engaging. I'm also pleased to see that he does a pretty decent rendition of Ben Grimm's rocky face and form, giving him more normal height and proportions than Kirk had been which is actually my personal preference when dealing with Ben. According to Marvel's own website, his height is officially listed as six-feet-tall which goes along with his depiction in the first few hundred issues of the Fantastic Four series. Personally, I've never been fond of artists who pump him up to hulk-like proportions seemingly pushing seven feet or so.

The Bad:

That being said, I still can't say that this art blew me away which is really why I'm straddling the Good and Bad sections as I describe Laming's work. His work doesn't feel exciting or truly polished. In particular, the pages after Ben starts to get roughed up in prison feel fairly uninspired. Generally, the panel layouts are pretty bland. Also, characters look copy/pasted from one panel to the next in the page devoted to Johnny at his party. It's a bit lazy not to depict the women on either side of Johnny as moving at all from panel to panel.

That brings me to the artistic typo. In this issue and in the preview images available to the next issue, #10, Sharon Ventura is depicted in lumpy-Thing form. This might be perceived as continuity nitpicking but I'm going to discuss it here because it is legitimately frustrating. In the original Lee/Kirby run of Fantastic Four, the Thing gradually developed from an amorphous orange lumpy monster into a form with the defined rocky scales that we traditionally associate with the character. Later in the John Byrne run (if not earlier) it is established that rather than simply being a quirk of Kirby's art gradually refining the Thing's appearance, in continuity the Thing actually developed from that lumpy look into the more smoothly textured appearance with the angular rocky plates making up his skin.

Sharon Ventura's transformation into a "Thing" further cemented that transforming into such a creature generally results in a lumpy appearance gradually refining into angular plates. As such, she first looked like this:

Then looked like this:

And most recently (more or less) prior to this series looked like this:

I'm honestly not trying to nitpick this to death but I have to put the question out there, is it too much to ask for some basic consistency of appearance? Frankly, even the cover for the next issue seems to depict a She-Thing with a more refined epidermis.

Turning to the writing, I have to nitpick one line from the Sandman. In terms of sentence structure this is wonky as heck and I don't think it even works as dialect, "You think it's a good idea all us are muscle bad guys are out here strolling around?" Saying this out loud or in my head my eye starts to twitch right around the second "are."

The Questionable:

Where we talk about things that are neither good nor necessarily bad, but are at least a little head-scratching.

While I'm absolutely thrilled to see Ben Grimm having a heart-to-heart with Sandman again and to see a reference to his attempt to reform, it's a hell of an understatement for Sandman to say it "didn't take." I'm just going to quote Sandman's Wikipedia page here since it says it beautifully:

In The Amazing Spider-Man vol. 2 #4, Marko turned against Spider-Man and his sometimes ally [the] Thing and declared his allegiance to evil and his former employer, the villainous Wizard. This change proved egregiously incompatible to what many fans had thought Sandman had become, what he had reformed to, a hero. This outcry caused Marvel to rush out a story, in Peter Parker: Spider-Man vol. 2 #12, which retconned The Amazing Spider-Man #4 in which the Wizard kidnapped Sandman and used his mind control machine, the Id Machine, to control him.

Saying his turn to good "didn't take" when Bentley "The Wizard" Wittman used a mind-altering machine to make him evil again just strikes me as odd, especially given that the line isn't obviously played as a joke.

Also, I've never quite understood Bentley-23 as a character. It's great that his ambitions at villainy can be played as a laugh but particularly when they are overtly stated they seem to clash with what I thought was a great moment in the Hickman run and in this character's development. In 2012's FF #18, Bentley comes face-to-face with his "father" the Wizard who basically says that since Bentley-23 is a clone of the Wizard he essentially has no choice but to become evil. Bentley's response seems to summarily reject this notion:

Which is why it always confuses me when he seems to revel in the prospect of eventually becoming a super villain.

Conclusion:

While I have some legitimate criticisms and some nitpicks as well, this issue of Robinson and Kirk's Fantastic Four is still excellently written and continues the intriguing tale that this run is telling. I'm perfectly happy sucking it up in terms of the art in order to keep up with this series. I wholeheartedly recommend that everyone else do the same. I just hope that Leonard Kirk will be back on art duties in very short order.

Edit 8/29/14: The author wishes to clarify his stance with regard to the art in this issue, recognizing that art is perhaps one of the most subjective subjects that exist. The art is good. It more than meets the standard of quality within the professional comics industry and more particularly within the Big Two of Marvel and DC. There is little that is objectively wrong with it and quite a bit right in terms of anatomy and composition.

As stated in the review above, artist Marc Laming does a very good job capturing the look of Ben Grimm and the first few pages of the issue are particularly excellent in kicking the book off as well as depicting John Eden's facility. The art is by no means below the standard expected of a mainstream Marvel title in general or Fantastic Four in particular. The author merely found the art somewhat lacking in comparison to the primary series artist Leonard Kirk and did not find that it was especially suited to his particular taste.