Review: Fantastic Four #20

STORY

This comic starts off the Marvel fashion of giving us a page with some info about the ongoing story as well as a baseline understanding of who the FF are. This is always appreciated but in this case not at all necessary. Dan Slott expertly weaves everything you need to know about both the FF and the previous issue into this story. By the midpoint of this comic you are completely caught up with everything you need to know, and its all brought into the story in a very organic way. I must commend Slott of his deft handling of such an info dump without massive amounts of wordy exposition. Another strong point in Slott’s writing in this issue is his handling of character interactions. The dialogue reads and flows naturally and the characterizations feel on point. I particularly liked the husband and wife repartee between Reed and Sue when discussing what to do about Jonny’s soul mate Skye, a winged alien superheroine who has decided Johnny and herself are meant to be. Ben and Alicia’s marriage also feels easy and well worn despite it being relatively new but they have been off and on together for quite some time and it shows here. There are also some nice moments between Johnny and longtime friend Wyatt Wingfoot and there are several funny moments involving there interactions as well as playing on Skye’s fish out of water status and alien nature to invoke some quite humorous moments of situational comedy.

Where the comic falters is not the conflict between the characters but the conflict generated in the action portion of the issue. Wyatt had called on Johnny for help against the Mole Man who wishes to reclaim his moliod subjects who have joined with Wyatt’s tribe, abandoning the Mole Man’s domain. Slott has a little message he wants to offer here about the state and history of the Native Americans but instead of merely slipping it in with the grace I know he is capable of instead message is reiterated again and again in slightly different ways. Unfortunately, by the end of the conflict I felt less entertained and a bit lectured too. Another odd thing is how the battle plays out itself. It honestly feels a contrived. While we learn in this issue in a rather fun scene that Skye can speak with Earth birds it pays off later in a significant way, but not one that makes practical sense. You see the Mole Man leads his assault with a group of T-Rex’s who can somehow burrow…wait, what? Mole Man has an army of giant beasts at his beck and call but a heard of burrowing thera-pods? That’s a new one on me, add to that these particular beasts are able to resist the Torch’s flame )a fact explained in a rather lame brush off comment). Fortunately, we have our brand new hero Skye, who can take to birds and apparently bird ancestors even though the roars of giant retiled likely have no commonality with tweets and birdsong. Its all just to contrived and too convenient to be overlooked or forgiven if you ask me.

ART

For the most part I can’t complain about the art, the majority of the characters look great in both action and everyday activities. Media sells the humor of the funnier scenes with excellent panel layouts or great facial expressions. The colors are bright, bold and dynamic, perfectly enhancing the line art and are thankfully not a palette of pastel shades that has become the staple of many Marvel titles.

Where the art fails is with Franklin and Valeria. I don’t think Medin has much experience drawing kids because their age seemed to vary from panel to panel and I could never tell how old they are.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This is a mostly good comic and worth reading even if it ended up annoying me slightly. The best thing is that the characters feel believable and genuine and that makes then easy to care for.

SCORE: 4 out ofÂ 5

Writer: Dan Slott
Art: Paco Medina
Colors:J esus Aburtiv