David Blue
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Nov 18, 2005
- Messages
- 228
I'm still buying every Ultimate Fantastic Four trade paperback that comes out, and still happy that my money is well spent.
What I want is trades that are worth three or four stars out of five, not five star and one star trades alternating. I don't mind if the standard's sometimes underwhelming, I just don't want it to fall through the floor.
I think this is three star stuff. There's a lot of room for improvement.
* The art isn't fantastic. It should be fresh, bright and active: an invitation to a world of imagination. It's not, and Reed looks old.
* The story didn't pay off enough. When I looked back to see how the nature of Salem's Seven tied up with what they were doing at the vandalized building and how the nature of Agatha Harkness tied up with the strange narrator, I didn't see enough. Also, the techno-babble solution didn't have enough resonance. It was just a line of patter to justify the fireworks at the end.
* I don't like the evolution of the characters. They've become more boring.
I didn't think Sue fighting on her own was nearly what it should have been. Sue in this universe has a bad trade-off: she has a lot of instant death attacks that I don't think suit her and that she rarely gets time or reason to use, and in return she encounters far too many people with ways around her force field. Her protective ability should be really, really impressive. It's not.
I don't like where Ben has gone either. He started out looking like he had an interest in sports that might take him interesting places, and interesting abilities like his adaptive lungs, and the potential to be super-strong, like "fair match for the Hulk" strong. Making him one of the big-hitting muscle-men of this universe, potentially with the responsibilities to go with it, was exciting. Now he's a permanent second-rater, and always depressed (overtly or not) and justifiably resigned to both conditions, and dead dull.
Reed's aged severely without losing his ridiculous need for glasses, and Sue also has lost her sense of fun.
These people should be explorers of the fantastic. I would like a fresh blast of energy for the series.
What I want is trades that are worth three or four stars out of five, not five star and one star trades alternating. I don't mind if the standard's sometimes underwhelming, I just don't want it to fall through the floor.
I think this is three star stuff. There's a lot of room for improvement.
* The art isn't fantastic. It should be fresh, bright and active: an invitation to a world of imagination. It's not, and Reed looks old.
* The story didn't pay off enough. When I looked back to see how the nature of Salem's Seven tied up with what they were doing at the vandalized building and how the nature of Agatha Harkness tied up with the strange narrator, I didn't see enough. Also, the techno-babble solution didn't have enough resonance. It was just a line of patter to justify the fireworks at the end.
* I don't like the evolution of the characters. They've become more boring.
I didn't think Sue fighting on her own was nearly what it should have been. Sue in this universe has a bad trade-off: she has a lot of instant death attacks that I don't think suit her and that she rarely gets time or reason to use, and in return she encounters far too many people with ways around her force field. Her protective ability should be really, really impressive. It's not.
I don't like where Ben has gone either. He started out looking like he had an interest in sports that might take him interesting places, and interesting abilities like his adaptive lungs, and the potential to be super-strong, like "fair match for the Hulk" strong. Making him one of the big-hitting muscle-men of this universe, potentially with the responsibilities to go with it, was exciting. Now he's a permanent second-rater, and always depressed (overtly or not) and justifiably resigned to both conditions, and dead dull.
Reed's aged severely without losing his ridiculous need for glasses, and Sue also has lost her sense of fun.
These people should be explorers of the fantastic. I would like a fresh blast of energy for the series.
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