Volume 1: Wolf At The Door (issues #1-7)
The first volume was the best of the series. I bought and read it in 2005 and couldn't believe just how good this new writer was. He brought a special tenderness to the book and filled the time-worn Lee-Kirby characters with bright human personalities not seen since the days of... well... Lee and Kirby! Aguirre-Sacasa wisely avoided the big-action science epics that Waid was already doing so well on the main title and instead concentrated on the daily family lives of Reed, Sue, Ben, Johnny, Franklin and Valeria. In fact, they didn't feel like Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, The Thing and Human Torch so much as everyday folks who faced problems like bankruptcy, joblessness, parenthood and misunderstandings.
The series began with the FF being evicted from their home and facing bankruptcy. Reed had to get a job in the corporate district, Sue became a teacher, Ben worked construction and Johnny joined (of all things) the fire-department!
My favourite issue was #4 where Reed convinced a suicidal man not to jump off the ledge. The man was dying of cancer and was terribly afraid of dying alone in a hospital ward. Reed made him a promise that he'll be there to hold the man's hand when the time comes for him to face the grim reaper. This story, more than all the stories showing Reed warding off alien attacks, showed Reed at his very best. It was therefore not surprising that this issue was also reprinted in the hardcover collection, "The Best of the Fantastic Four", that was released to coincide with the movie at the time.
After that, we got a three issue arc that mixes "Aliens" with backwoods horror. I read it several times and thought - this story shouldn't work. Really it shouldn't. But it did work. Reed, Sue and Ben took Franklin and his schoolmates out camping and they met some aliens. Seriously. But Aguirre-Sacasa wrote it with such charm and warmth along with some genuinely creepy moments that you can't help but enjoy it. Best thing in this arc was the amount of confidence that Reed had in Sue to save the day. During the Lee-Kirby days, female characters like Sue were written off as bubble-headed shopaholics. Thankfully, Byrne and later writers fleshed out Sue's character somewhat and for my money, Sue hasn't been better written by anyone else than Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. It's obvious that the writer loves Sue and that passion could be felt in every panel that featured her
I should also mention the artwork of Steve McNiven. This was pre-Civil War and pre-Old Man Logan. Nobody knew who McNiven was. This was before he gave us thundering images like Hercules smashing in the head of the Thor-Clone (otherwise known as Clor among fans) or the Spidey-unmasking. This was a young art teacher getting his first jab (after his work at the now defunct Crossgen) as a comicbook artist on a mainstream book and drawing his pages with aplomb, flair and not a small amount of confidence. When I first saw his artwork, my eyeballs popped out. It was clean but not in the cartoony Alan Davis manner. It was modern and slick but not in the computer-assisted Adi Granov manner. It had a touch of the indie and just the right amount of old-skool Marvel to make it work for a mainstream book. Furthermore, it was subtle in capturing human emotions and facial nuances - something that was essential for a "human-perspective" book like this one. Up to this day, I still tell anyone who'd listen that McNiven did the best work of his career on this book. Perhaps it was because he wasn't on so strict a deadline as "Civil War". Perhaps he wasn't facing the sort of pressure like drawing the historic moment of Spidey's unmasking. We'll never know. But the truth is, McNiven hasn't done such tender, sensitive and emotive artwork since "Marvel Knights 4".
Volume 2: The Stuff of Nightmares (issues #8-11)
The second volume suffered somewhat because of the departure of Steve McNiven as the artist for the book - although he stayed on to do the covers. Jim Muniz took over as the new artist and it was obvious that he tried to ape McNiven's style. Sometimes, he came close to McNiven in terms of angles and perspectives but it soon became obvious that he couldn't capture the slick pencils of the original artist.
Thus, the book was carried along solely on the strength of the writing. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa continued giving us human-centric storyarcs beginning with an examination of the Reed-Sue relationship. What better way to do that than by bringing in the Shakespeare-quoting, arrogant Atlantean Prince Namor to stir things up for them. I loved it when Reed went totally berserk. We are so used to the cerebral Reed that it's very refreshing to see him using his fists to settle a dispute. We read that and smile but we also have to admit that this characterisation is perfectly in-line with what was established previously about Reed's personality (chiefly during the much missed Tom DeFalco - Paul Ryan run). Reed may be the smartest person in the Marvel U but he's terribly inept when faced with matters of the heart. Logic doesn't work. So how did Reed react when he saw Sue and Namor out on a date? Well, he simply shifted a large portion of his body mass to form a gigantic fist and used it to pummel the living daylights out of the wife-stealing Namor!
Following this story, Aguirre-Sacasa shifted gears and started giving us more superhero-centric tales. The second arc in this volume featured the Psycho-Man manipulating the nightmares of NYC citizens. However, Aguirre-Sacasa kept things fresh and interesting by revealing that this was simply the desperate last act of a dying villain.
Volume 3: Divine Time (issues #13-18)
The third volume continued with more superhero-centric stories written with the special Aguirre-Sacasa twist. Jim Muniz continued to serve as penciller for the series and his artwork departed even further from McNiven's. However, we could see that he was trying his best to capture the look of Ioan Gruffudd and Jessica Alba for Reed and Sue in many panels. That was hardly surprising as the 2nd movie had just been announced at the time.
I was watching the 1990s FF cartoon series on boxed-set DVDs at the time when I picked up this book. Therefore, it was refreshing to see how Aguirre-Sacasa picked up many elements from the cartoon series as well as the original Lee-Kirby run to use for his own stories. For example, he noted that Sue and Alicia had identical looks (but different hairdo). This was an element in the series that hadn't been touched on for decades. Lee-Kirby did it and the 1990s cartoon did it but apart from that, this element was largely forgotten. I found this to be particularly interesting because we always saw the Ben-Alicia relationship from Ben's perspectives. After all, Stan Lee was particularly fond of all the self-loathing monologues that the Thing became justly famous for. Ben always wondered whether Alicia loved him as Ben Grimm or as the orange-rocked Thing. The real question that readers should be asking, in fact, was whether Ben loved Alicia because for herself or was it because she looked like Sue. Later writers revealed that Ben had a huge thing for Sue but gave up his pursuit after she chose his best friend, Reed, over him. Aguirre-Sacasa picked up on this theme and used it masterfully in a genuinely creepy story featuring the Puppet-Master who was trying to find redemption by stealing Sue's eyes for Alicia!
The second arc in this volume was a masterful time-travel/alternate timeline storyline featuring Reed's dad and Dr. Doom. I had just reread Doom's first appearance (at the time) and how that tale also involved time travel. However, you know that you're reading a modern-day comicbook when the time travelling is so much more sophisticated and had far larger implications for the lives of our heroic protagonists. Johnny and Valeria were particularly effective in this arc as the duo against Doom's empire in the alternate timeline.
Volume 4: Impossible Things Happen Every Day (issues #19-24)
I can't explain it but for some reasons I lost interest in this series after the third volume above. It was for this reason that I picked up the fourth and fifth volumes 4 years after I'd read the first three volumes. I was walking about in the mall last Saturday after studying "Equity and Trusts" for about 3 hours. Decided to drop by the local comic store. I saw the entire set of FF: John Byrne Visionaries TPBs. As I was about to make off with one or two of the Byrne TPBs, I saw Volume 4. Then I started looking around for Volume 5. Was very glad to see it on the shelves as well. Then I remembered how much I loved the first 3 volumes from way back in 2005. Decided to pick up the remaining two volumes just to complete my collection.
I read both volumes in one sitting and the magic came back. Honestly, I was very sleepy after a day of studying. Also took my family out to celebrate my daughter's birthday. By the time we reached home, it was bedtime. I also had six hours of lectures the following day. But I picked up the books and couldn't stop reading until I finished them.
Volume Four actually contained four separate arcs. The first one featured the Inhumans and was a nice, bittersweet tale about teenage romance, politics and the caste system. It was somewhat like a sci-fi version of "Romeo & Juliet" with the FF thrown in for good measure. It was also a ball seeing H.E.R.B.I.E. kicking Gorgon's @$$!!! The second arc was my favourite. It was really a tale of marital infidelity - between Sue and the Black Panther! Think "Unfaithful" starring T'Challa and Jessica Alba and you get the idea. Ron Frenz lent a hand on the flashback scenes featuring the FF's first meeting with the King of Wakanda - and the previously unrevealed midnight skinny-dipping scene featuring T'Challa and Sue! Aguirre-Sacasa came very close to aping Stan Lee's scripts but, of course, Lee was never this *suggestive* in his romantic scenes in the 1960s. It was overall a sweet piece of near-tryst tale that reminded me of the near-romance of Batman and Wonder Woman during Joe Kelly's run on "JLA".
The third arc featured the Thing going back to Yancy Street at the request of Ben Urich and Jessica Jones to fight the Golem. It was another introspective look at Ben Grimm's struggle with his man-monster dual identities and how he saw the Golem as another reflection of that selfsame struggle. Finally, we got a tale featuring the most ridiculous villain this side of Mister Mxyzptlk - the Impossible Man! Aguirre-Sacasa wrote the whole thing in a tongue-in-cheek meta-fictional style featuring HIMSELF as the main protagonist of the tale. I think that at this point Aguirre-Sacasa still couldn't believe the fantastic luck that landed him the job of a lifetime - chronicling the everyday lives of his childhood heroes, the Fantastic Four. Therefore, he gave us a story where the impossible happens every day featuring HIMSELF going to the Marvel Offices, meeting Joe Q and Warren Simons, getting the FF job, meeting the FF themselves and helping them to solve a conundrum involving the Impossible Man and the Impossible Woman. I found myself laughing out loud at the self-referential humour throughout. The thing was silly but worked far better than Greg Rucka's take on Mister Mxyzptlk during his run on the Superman books.
Valentino DeLandro signed on as the regular artist of the book and he was helped by Mizuki Sakakibara. In other words, no-name artists working on a mainstream superhero book that felt more like an indie take on Marvel's first family. I loved it!
Volume 5: The Resurrection of Nicholas Scratch (issues #25-30)
The final volume was a bittersweet farewell to a run by an excellent writer on a book that will remain very close to my heart for years to come. However, I think it had to end here before the book started to deteriorate in quality because of editorial interference. In fact, it was quite obvious that the editors tried to tie this series to the goings-on at the time (i.e. Civil War, World War Hulk, etc.) that they even renamed the book "Four" with issues #28-30. Also, they probably thought that the whole controversy with Aguirre-Sacasa replacing Waid was long over anyway since J. Michael Straczynski was the writer of the main title at the time. Big mistake. This series worked because it didn't give a damn about the Marvel U at large. It was its own tiny little world of quirky family dynamics, pseudo science and superheroic action-adventure.
Therefore, the final "real" arc of MK4 was the one featuring the Salem Seven and how they were led by Agatha Harkness (actually, Nicholas Scratch in drag - go figure!) to imprison Dr. Strange and Wong, while deceiving the FF into invoking an ancient spell to unleash SHUMA-GORATH - my favourite Dark God this side of Cthulu! It was fun seeing Reed's discomfort with magic and the occult. Also, any FF tale featuring Diablo and Dr. Strange teaming up against the gigantic eye with tentacles called Shuma-Gorath is worth any price in my book! I found myself cheering the heroes on and when I finally saw a beaten-and-battered but victorious Dr. Strange, I cheered even louder. Old skool superheroics updated for the 21st century.
Then came the downgrade. No, the stories were still very engaging. We have Reed at an Illuminati meeting. We have Reed getting the FF to help cover up his sins (namely, the Godeye satellite that he invented in order to lure the Hulk to outer-space and then blast him to the Planet Sakaar) while Sue started to have her suspicions about Reed. I said downgrade because while I enjoyed "Civil War", "Secret Invasion", etc. I'd much rather have this book remain separate from the mainstream continuity. Aguirre-Sacasa worked best as a fresh new voice with an indie twang. He shouldn't be dragged into the mess that is continuity.
Thankfully, we got a wrap-up of the series with Reed making good his promise to be in the hospital for the dying man (from Vol. 1 above), Sue helping out a battered-wife and the Inhumans teen couple finally finding love on another world. Those scenes made everything worth it and wrapped up beautifully a comicbook run that will not be known by many in time to come but will always be cherished by the few whose hearts it captured by its honesty, tenderness and fun. This was a series with heart and wasn't afraid of being exactly what it was. Kudos to Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa for this wonderful run. :)
