Fantastic Four #3

The Fantastic Four (+2) have arrived at their destination and due to Reed Richards’ excitement and minor rush to try and find some answers to his apparent decay, it’s not as much adventure and a little more action than they had planned for.

Writer: Matt Fraction | Artists: Mark Bagley, Mark Farmer & Paul Mounts

Cover: Bagley, Farmer & Mounts| Publisher: Marvel

For those fully invested into Marvel NOW!, writer Matt Fraction has the most touching video on the AR app about family, his own and how it reflects upon the Richards family and to families in general. Basically by the end of the first couple of pages followed by the video if you don’t love the Richards family you have no soul. A little excessive maybe, but it’s touching, it’s cute without being overbearingly sweet. It’s kind of what makes the Fantastic Four so appealing. It’s easy to spot the dysfunction of your own family in their family dynamics as well, and that’s not just Richard, Sue, and the kids, Johnny and Ben are 100% a part of this crazy family as well. It’s not a family unless someone’s pranking the other by trying to ruin a chair calibrated perfectly to hold the weight of a particular member.

There’s something to be said about Fraction’s writing as well. There’s such an ease and simplicity to his words that all their conversations actually feel like real conversations and sometimes they say things that we as non super-powered heroes would say too, casual and sometimes funny. (A personal favourite: “What’s wrong with Uncle Ben?” “Nothing. He’s a rock.”)

The series definitely seems like it’s going to family centered, but come on, it’s the Fantastic Four in space going to unchartered planets that they know next to nothing about besides what Reed ends up telling them, and it’s clear that he doesn’t always tell them everything.

So their first unknown planet adventure on “Zeta Dorito” goes a lot less than smoothly, but everyone on the team gets their shining moment, especially Ben (even though he’s just a rock), and they manage to scrape away. As far as intense plots go, it’s not overly exciting, there’s no giant angry aliens or anything, and most of the excitement is burdened on the art team, which does a great job in executing it all by the way. Action sequences are done stunningly and while there are no aliens, there are great swirls of fire and rock and planet. We’ll just pretend that occasionally the kids’ heads look a little bit too big for their heads, and stop questioning how Reed does some of the things that he does when he’s a little more stretched out entirely (these are little details and overall the art is superb). Actually what’s nice to see from the art though is just how colourful it all is. It’s not dark or grayscale, but it’s not a rainbow either. Maybe it matches with the more family themes that Fraction is trying to put it, but it’s light enough as to not feel gloomy and a little  more fun instead, which is great to see coming from a Fantastic Four issue.