JML

August 11, 2013 2:48 am Me too. I love seeing a project that forces Fraction to play it a little bit straight too -- which isn't to say that this comic is humorless, 'cause it certainly ain't. It just feels like as a writer he's getting to stretch muscles he doesn't get to work out on his superhero books or his zany, more metafictional work, and that's always thrilling to watch.

August 9, 2013 12:33 am Damn, I hadn't even thought of that. I wonder.

August 8, 2013 4:00 am This was the first time I realized how much Bendis writes to his artist. Lots of gags and visual stuff in here that he'd never put in for, say, Mark Bagley.

August 7, 2013 11:35 pm This run feels like it was a miscalculation from the get-go by Hickman. Everybody always talks about his wacky, elaborate plots and his charts and his graphs, and it seems like he started buying into that hype. But what's really special about him is all the stuff I feel like he values least about his work: the character moments, the emotions he ends up getting at. I'm missing that here. It's there in his New Avengers book, so it's weird. Don't get me wrong. There have been good issues of this book. And maybe once viewed from a distance it will all have meant something. But his Fantastic Four run seemed so driven by character and so much about Reed and Valeria and Franklin's respective journeys that this just feels a little empty in comparison.

August 7, 2013 9:25 pm Definitely agreed. Every time this book comes out it's very good, so it's hard to get excited about even yet another very good issue. Which makes me feel kind of spoiled. The last one I remember being above even the series' very high average in my opinion was the trip through Oppenheimer's mindscape.

August 7, 2013 1:11 pm In a week of really good books, this was far and away my favourite. Keep the big supervillain fights. Bendis is doing cool, interesting, real teenage emotion here, and it's a breath of fresh air amidst the rest of my pull list.

August 6, 2013 7:21 pm Wasn't there an Image Comics/Sonic the Hedgehog/X-Files crossover back in the day? That confused the hell out of my young Sonic reading self.

July 31, 2013 11:12 pm Riiight, I totally forgot about that conceit. This makes way more sense now. It just seemed a shame to me because I was enjoying the stuff with the kids so much. Every time we cut back to the adventures with the microscopic tiger and foul-mouthed Matt Fraction, I got a little antsy.

July 31, 2013 11:10 pm Here here. I'm okay just hanging out with these characters for as long as Bendis wants to write it.

July 31, 2013 2:53 pm I don't know if this was pick of the week, but it definitely had the best final page of the week.