Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four run was always something that I’ve been meaning to get around to reading in trade form, since quite honestly, it seems to be the only way to do so if you want your money’s worth with the story. From the beginning, I’ve tried to delve into this run and quickly got turned off each time by simplistic stories that don’t seem to go anywhere and set pieces that are never acted upon. It dawned on me after reading this volume of FF, however, that the pace for this series just doesn’t translate well into a single issue format. As a long form novel type series where characters and actions are allowed to breathe, though? This series seems to sing.

I first began to suspect this while reading the “Three” arc. People were criticizing the series up to that point with accusations that no/very little story was being told. Jumping on occasionally to see what these people were talking about, I was inclined to agree. With “Three”, though, it seems that a good chunk of those huge loose ends from previous Hickman runs were used to weave a great story that was full of tension and excitement. With the first volume of FF, the cycle is beginning anew. Picking up from the first Hickman storyline involving the alternate reality Reed Richards, a new mega-arc is starting to blossom out of issues that are seemingly dull, but are in fact setting up set pieces for a grand conclusion. The main focus of this volume are the antics of a group of alter-Reeds who have angered the gods of their respective universes by playing God themselves. Their plan to save their own hides, unfortunately, is at the expense of the “real” world. Thus, they start a chess game to play various factions against each other to come out ahead and create a machine that will save them and decimate the “real” one. A cool threat and a basis for a neat story, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that Hickman has a style of writing in which he will introduce a cool concept (like the league of Reed’s worst enemies to take down the alternate Reed’s) in order to have that be a factor in the story, but won’t really utilize that concept until its time for the grand finale. That’s ok, I guess. Elmore Leonard does something similar in his novels.

It’s just that I can’t imagine reading the single issues of this series and being entertained. In fact, the end of this volume happens smack dab in the middle of a story that had a slow-but-steady momentum going for it. It was a bit jarring, and I can’t really seem to judge the story as a whole until I read the continuation. I mean it SEEMS to be going in a great direction, but since the main focus of this volume was to be a beginning, I’ll have to reserve the final judgement of the story until I read the whole thing.

Hickman’s scripts seem to be only as good as their endings. However, judging by “Three”, they’re pretty fantastic. I liked the beginning of the new phase of his Fantastic Four run, but I’m sure that I’ll enjoy the story more when it reaches its conclusion.