Drunken Comics Rage

What….a piece…..of crap.

I was really enjoying the Fantastic Four before the new group took over. It was fun, lots going on. This new run though I think has just been bad so far. Let's run down the list, shall we?

1. The covers. This is a pet peeve of mine. Give me art, or something to do with the story. Not some teaser cover that has nothing to do with what happens in the comic. That's just cheap.   

2. Johnny Storm is the coolest guy in the universe! Hot criminal chicks throw themselves at him! He's the lead singer of a band! He has his own reality TV show! Gimmie a freaking break!

It's a little over the top. I'll give you that it's not totally unrealistic. I'm pretty sure that if there were super heroes in the world, they'd be pretty high profile celebrities and all, I just really don't want to read about it. If it's in the background to sort of make them real people, or part of some sub-plot, ok. I'll suffer though it if there's a payoff. Right now though, it seems like it's just there to show you how cool he is, and it doesn't need three pages devoted to it per issue.

Plus, if you're going to go on the whole "real" kick, riddle me this. How much time does The Human Torch really spend in his apartment anyway? How many band gigs is he going to make? If there's 50,000 people waiting to hear him sing, and Doom is about to take over the Universe for the 40th time, is he really going to go sing? Seems kind of silly to me. Of course for anyone that just thought to themselves that I was taking it to the extreme right there, and it's just a comic book, my question to you would be "Then why the hell do we need it in the book in the first place?"

3. Mr. Fantastic to the rescue! Now, he's saved the world/galaxy/universe/multi-verse/realities more times than most people could count. I don't care what the situation is, you want the guy there. I'm giving this issue a cheeseball award though. They talk about needing Reed the whole issue, and just as all is lost, someone gives the little "we're screwed" speech, and Mister Fantastic, literally, comes riding to the rescue. Ugh.

4. The art. Some of it I liked. The fight in the snow I think could have been scripted out a little bit better, but some of the visuals were cool. On the opposite end of that, you get this: 

That's the Human Torch. Really. It's not a 45 year old guy that's been hit in the face with a baseball bat a few times. It's the guy that women think are so hot that they throw themselves at him the first chance they get. Look, I don't need perfection or anything, but at least make the people look normal.

5. The safety mechanism Alyssa Moy-Castle put in so that it wouldn't attack her works just fine, but the thing can override every other shut down safety thing it has programmed into it. What the hell?

Alright, I had a few more points that I was going to throw in there, but I'm on a bit of a rant, so I'll stop before I go off on some tangent. Needless to say, the Fantastic Four has about one more issue of this crap for me, before I stop picking it up.  I'm sure the next cover will be the Earth exploding, and the book will be about Mr. Fantastic finding some way to shut it down. If it goes as cliche as it has been so far, I'm sure he'll talk to it, make it feel bad, and it'll just stop wailing on things and shut itself down. If that happens, I might need to burn issue #557 to rid myself of it totally.

On the upside, I did just get Annihilation volume 1-3, so I've got all of that to read, and then I can jump into Annihilation: Conquest. I also have a Thor, Hulk Red, Hercules, and a Mice Templar to read also. Might have to fire up some wine tonight and start working through all of that. 

Filed under: Ghostshark's Rants