FF #1

With the Fantastic Four planning on taking an impromptu vacation, even if only for four minutes, they’re still going to need a team to take helm of the Future Foundation.

Writer: Matt Fraction | Artist: Michael Allred

Colorists: Laura Allred | Cover: Michael Allred | Publisher: Marvel

Unlike the fractured and jilted flow of Fantastic Four #1 that Matt Fraction had put out only just a couple of weeks ago, FF #1 seems to have much smoother pacing. As far as first issues go, it’s pretty satisfactory. For those who have never picked up an issue of FF before would do just fine picking this one up. Essentially the whole point of this issue is to introduce the new team that’s replacing our beloved Fantastic Four so even for those who aren’t entirely familiar with the characters it’s generically covered in a matter of speaking.

The issue is separated into 5 little segments in which we see each member of the Fantastic Four spending time with their new replacements, and then finally together, which lets us see a little more of who these characters are. They talk a little bit about their lives right before each Fantastic Four member tries to recruit them and it’s pretty reassuring to see why each Fantastic Four member picked who they did, because while there’s a lot of similarities between each counterpart, but there’s also some significant differences. Okay Johnny’s not really recruiting anyone but no one’s really surprised by this.

The choices for the replacements are actually pretty interesting, and while there is a small amount of information established about each of them from this issue, it’s still not clear how well they’ll work as a team because for all intents and purposes, they are not the Fantastic Four and will probably run into some big speed-bumps along the way, trying to run the Future Foundation. And for those who aren’t the most familiar with the Future Foundation, that’s also covered in this issue. In between each of the more major segments, little snippets of the members of the Future Foundation and who they are (sort-of) are touched upon.

That being said the overall style of this was very simple, from the introductory plot to the neat artwork. Everything is crisp, clear and well defined. Maybe a little too laid out even. Naturally as a first issue and introduction to the team is really great but at the end of this issue there wasn’t really and sort of cliffhanger that necessarily gripped a reader into wanting to pick up the next issue. Naturally, Reed Richards does makes allusions to the idea that they might not be back right away, but that’s not much a giveaway as is the founding idea that this is going to be made into a series so they have to drag it out somehow.

So far it seems like the first few issues are going to be a little bit more character based as everyone settles as a team, before some more of the action comes in. Currently the only driving force for picking up the next issue is if someone’s interested in knowing a little bit more about these characters. Though not necessarily a bad thing, it’s also not for everyone. It has great potential, it’s just not fully there yet.