FF #5

Review by: froggulper

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Avg Rating: 4.0
 
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Story by
Jonathan Hickman
Art by
Barry Kitson
Cover by
Mark Bagley, Skottie Young

Size: pages
Price: 2.99

This is a totally average/mediocre Fantastic Four comic.

Hickman’s run as received a lot of praise, and to an extent I think the praise is justified: there are a lot of great ideas in this run. But so often I find that the issues are hit and miss, with the relevancy being very spotty. It’s not so much that this is a “filler” issue, but it just seems that Hickman’s overall plot frequently includes very bland, boring issues, and this is one of them. I wouldn’t even say that these issues are necessary in order for the overall storylines to “build”, because nothing is really “building” here. Hickman’s moving the characters around, but none of the movements feel very exciting to me. That’s probably because so many of this series’ many, many characters seem to appear out of nowhere. With every issue, we have no idea which characters deserve to be focused on.

The solicit for this issue says that this is part two of the “War of Four Cities” and that it’s “heat[ing] up”. But it doesn’t really feel that way. The idea of the “Four Cities” has been languishing in this title for over a year now. I couldn’t tell you if the “war” is almost over or if the battle’s just beginning. An even greater conflict could arise in part four of this arc, or hostilities could go downhill from here. I have no idea. Nothing is cohesively connected enough for me to understand or care about the specific strengths, weaknesses or cultural identities of the four cities in play. Hickman’s past “info dumps” about these various civilizations actually served to distance me from from them emotionally: they were just factoids on a screen. Why am I supposed to care about any of this? Because the people look neat? That’s not enough reason to make me to feel engaged in what’s happening here. For a storyline that’s supposedly been “building” for a year and a half or more, I just want this “Four Cities” business to be over so we can pick up other threads.

This isn’t a bad comic, but it reads as blandly as any hum-drum Fantastic Four comic from any other era. Pick out a random FF backissue from the late 80s or early 90s, and it’d probably be of comparable quality. Maybe readers who are quite new to the book would still be impressed with this, but I’m not. (I do envy those readers whose first FF run is the Hickman run, however. You guys are getting a pretty solid introduction to a lot of these characters and concepts.) Hickman HAS been able to construct wonderfully interesting issues of FF in the recent past, and I expect he’ll write more in the future, but interspersed between them are some very dull passages. This is one of them. I love the FF, and I love Hickman’s writing, but in this issue the story and the characters both seem BORING. There’s no other word for it.

Story: 2 - Average
Art: 2 - Average

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