Fantastic Four #554

Bryan Hitch’s cover for FF #554 doesn’t excite me at all.  It’s a bad movie poster, stiffly posed and uninspired.  On the issues oversize promotional poster, Sue and Johnny both have obvious misshapen and lopsided eyes.  Sue looks like a mildly attractive librarian.

Then I opened the book.  Inside, I discovered dynamic and cinematic art that creates flowing scenes with barely a hitch (sorry!).   Every character has a different, recognisable appearance with natural looking facial expressions, postures and body language.  The characters aren’t just striking a pose, they’re doing something in every panel that helps to tell the story - even the extras.  During the scenes in the Baxter Building and at Ben’s old school, you can almost figure out what’s going on by reading the facial expressions and panel designs alone.

Bryan Hitch tells the story without Mark Millar’s words.

But Hitch isn’t just good at drawing people.  He renders machines and backgrounds equally well.  The “Back to the Future III�-style train featured in the opening scene is so well constructed that it seems drawn from the real thing.  The rooms in the Baxter Building and Ben’s old school are dressed up with tiny, lived-in details.  There are no minimalist backgrounds here.

(During the train sequence Reed refers to the time the FF “rescued Ben from Sixteen-eighty-two�.  This is, of course, a nod to FF #5 way back in 1962, in which Ben is sent by Doctor Doom back to the time of Blackbeard.  I miss the editor's note box for references like this.  As a kid I loved the editor’s notes, even if I hadn’t read the issue mentioned.  They made me feel part of a bigger story.)

(Anyway…enough of that.)

Millar’s script is good.  The character pieces are charming and nicely paced.  I didn’t get bored once during this story.  The characters’ voices sound true to my ears, as does the banter and humour.  The dialog isn’t overdone or forced.  The plot is evenly layed out and ready to move along.  The high-concept, super-science ending is classic Fantastic Four.  Sure, like many other people, I’ve had some doubts about Millar’s work, but he hits all the right notes with this story.

I do, however, have a niggle or two.

First, there’s Sue’s new charity for “victims of super-human incidents�.  OK, Mark, we get it!  Super-humans are sometimes hazzardous to we normal folk.  Move on.  Nothing to see here.

And second – in a more general way - we have Val and Franklin Richards.  Won’t someone please age these kids a couple of years, already?  They’re stuck in “Archie comics� land, where time stands still forever.  Franklin was born somewhere around FF Annual #6 for crying out loud.  Wasn’t that 1968?

OK, I admit it, these are fairly pathetic niggles.  I really liked this book.

Millar and Hitch have started their run confidently with this issue.  I’m sticking around to see what happens.

After all, Bryan Hitch’s art is worth the admission price on it’s own.