Everything Is Cyclical

Picture it: The Fantastic Four have been missing from the Marvel Universe for a little while, but now they’re back!

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It’s enough to warrant a new #1 issue, and they’re bringing one of their biggest, most fan-favorite creators to work on it.

No, not Dan Slott. I mean Alan Davis.

Let’s go back twenty years, where “Heroes Return” is bringing Marvel’s first family back from the grip of Jim Lee, and the new direction is bright and cheery and classic.

Plus, Alan Davis is drawing it. Did I mention that? Because that’s an instant sale to me every time….

Let’s Bring ‘Em Back

Clearly, the purpose of “Heroes Return” was to restore the grandeur and majesty and heroism of the Marvel characters who had just spent a year with Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. There, new stories had been told that were slightly darker and more serious in tone. Marvel wanted to bring back the original good clean superheroics.

The Kurt Busiek/George Perez “Avengers” did that job the best, but Scott Lobdell and Alan Davis did a good job kicking off this new brighter “Fantastic Four” run, as well.

The issue begins on a fun non-sequitur. Deep below the earth’s crust, the Mole Man is ranting to himself about how much he hates the Fantastic Four and how much he wants to destroy them. He’s also a bit of a Greek chorus and exposition dump. He’s the one that tells the reader that they’ve been out for a while, but that they’re back now.

And he’s happy they’re back, because now he can triumph over them once again. Huzzah!

That’s it. That’s all you’re getting of the Mole Man. It’s good to see him, but he has nothing to do with anything else.

The First Family

The rest of the issue has the Fantastic Four going through all their usual motions. Reed is too smart for his own good. Ben Grimm is playing the test pilot for a new device of Reed’s design that looks like a classic 70s Jack Kirby design.

Thing and Johnny don’t get along too well, threatening Reed’s test and the family’s safety with their squabbling.

Sue Storm, mother figure and protector and all-around badass, has to keep everyone safe when those two have their cute little sibling-like spats.

The Thing is still grumpy and upset about his appearance, wearing a trenchcoat and fedora in the shadows in Paris. Meanwhile, heartthrob Johnny is hitting on the locals and having a fun old time.

Lobdell’s script smartly shows us all these characteristics with specific events and scenes. He’s not throwing a bunch of text on one page to give you everyone’s dossier. And while some of the dialogue is a bit on the nose, you’re getting dramatic examples of each of these personalities at work.

It helps that this is a longer comic. It’s a 44 page giant of a first issue, with very limited ad breaks. The first one comes seven pages in and only to help with the pagination so a two-page spread could follow.

The Main Plot

To be honest, this part is kind of forgettable. Some developers discover something underground. Some protestors get a chance to look at it. A glowing door open, everyone turns into possessed versions of themselves. There’s a monster fight in Paris.

It has fun moments and a beautiful backdrop, of course, but is mostly forgettable and works only in service to having a big fight sequence at the end of the issue.

Ben Grimm trashes the bad guy with I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid from The Louvre, for example. That’s pretty cool and a good use of a local landmark.

The best part of this F4 trip overseas, for me, was the inclusion of Tintin as a character. I didn’t get that reference in 1998 when I first read this comic, but I know it now!

Art and Colors

This is Alan Davis drawing Marvel characters with a classic feel to it. It works well. You can never go wrong looking at more than 40 pages of his stuff in one sitting. Complete with Mark Farmer on inks, it has the smoothest line and most attractive characters you could ask for.

One thing that stands out here is the coloring work of Liquid! They were early stars of the computer coloring era. Their bold, saturated colors with specific cut-in highlights stood out in every book they did. They worked a lot with Joe Madureira, which also helped their star to rise.

The funny thing is, by today’s standards, the Liquid! technique, technically, is probably simple. Whatever they were doing with Photoshop in the early days was not easily replicated, but you can see bits of that style all over comics since. Both the airbrushed shadows and the cut shiny sections are kind of standard fare today.

Judging by their ComicBookDB.com entry, it looks like Liquid! disbanded in 2005, with the Claremont/Larroca “X-Treme X-Men” being their last work. Its founders have since moved primarily into video games, where there’s actually money. I don’t blame them one bit.

Juggling Creators

Scott Lobdell and Alan Davis would do three issues together. The new creative team of Chris Claremont and Salvador Larroca started with issue #4. Lobdell had some plotting credits on issues #4 and #5.

In “Modern Masters: Alan Davis,” Davis says that Adam Kubert was originally scheduled to draw this series but had to drop out. Davis offered to do three issues of the series, because that’s all the time he had available while working on “The Nail” over at DC.

I don’t know what led to Lobdell’s quick departure, but it’s all too bad. Lobdell and Davis produced three solid issues that did bring the Fantastic Four back into the Marvel Universe with flair and classic heroism.

It’s a small and likely overlooked bit of Fantastic Four’s history, but a fun one to look back on.