Fantastic Four #1: A Promising but Flawed Start

Another round of reboots and relaunches and we find ourselves with another first issue of Fantastic Four, this time written by Starman and Detective Comics veteran James Robinson with art by Star Trek and Witchblade alum Leonard Kirk.Following the well-regarded run by Jonathan Hickman and the mixed bag that was the (mostly) Matt Fraction-helmed run overshadowed by its sister series FF, how does this hold up? Pretty well actually.Billed as “The Fall of the Fantastic Four,” Robinson seems to be taking this story down the path of deconstructing its protagonists through extreme hardship. A writer of extreme creative highs and unfortunate lows, it was with some trepidation that I looked forward to reading this comic featuring my favorite superhero team. Robinson’s relative unfamiliarity with the team in a professional sense only added to the sense of uncertainty that I felt when anticipating this book’s release.

• Show an inspiring image of the Fantastic Four evoking their history and everything they will lose in this fall
• Show an ominous image of the Fantastic Four hinting at the nature of this fall or really solidifying that the we mean business here
• Show something hinting at the reason for the costume change
• Show the Impossible Man making waffles

That being said, there is little in this book that deserves outright negative criticism and that brings me to…The Questionable…Where we talk about things that are neither good nor necessarily bad, but at least are a little head-scratching.This issue does not actually read like a #1. It reads like an issue #0 or #½ to be perfectly honest. I still subscribe to the school that says that if I’m being asked to pay full price for a comic on a monthly basis, then the basic unit of enjoyment for a comic book is the single issue. As such, this single issue serving as little more than prologue is slightly less satisfying than it could be and were it a few pages less could easily have just been part of one of Marvel’s Point One preview anthologies.