A vibrant, wild ride that will bring joy to devoted comic book readers.
Acclaimed artist Ross presents this breathless transdimensional adventure featuring the superhero family the Fantastic Four.
In 1961, The Fantastic Four #1 introduced the superpowered quartet of stretchy mega-genius Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards), elusive force-field wielder Invisible Girl (Sue Storm), her hotheaded and highly flammable brother the Human Torch (Johnny Storm), and lovable stone-skinned curmudgeon the Thing (Ben Grimm). This new graphic novel summarizes their long-ago origin in its first two pages then sets off on a brand-new journey that is nevertheless heavily indebted to events that occurred outside these pages. A mysterious stranger infiltrates the home of the Fantastic Four, who realize the stranger has a complicated history with the team. After the stranger unleashes a swarm of shadowy creepy-crawlies, Reed deduces Earth faces an incursion from the antimatter dimension known as the Negative Zone. The team takes the fight to the enemy, entering the Negative Zone through a portal of Reed’s design. From there, they face a series of threats connected to past adventures, navigating a psychedelic realm populated by an armored insectoid tyrant, a superorganism of negative energy, and a last bastion of positivity. As ever, Ross’ art is stunning, beautifully marrying the pop-art sensibilities of 1960s comics with photorealism. His depictions of everything from the Human Torch’s walls of flame to the epic releases of interdimensional forces crackle with energy, and his inventive paneling fully engages the reader’s gaze. The story starts quickly and never lets up, which makes for an energetic read, though the reliance on the team’s history might alienate the uninitiated even when put into context through exposition. A post-adventure chat between Reed and Ben attempts to apply thematic cohesion to the preceding events, but it feels brief and shoehorned.
A vibrant, wild ride that will bring joy to devoted comic book readers.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4197-6167-6
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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