Fantastic Four #556

I agree with almost everything Neb said in his review, except for his condemnation of Hitch's art. I don't think it's bad, just average. To me Hitch has always been the definition of average. When he as a fill-in artist back in the mid-90s he was a nondescript and average talent to me, and he's the same now. (When I was 13, though, I think he drew a fill-in issue of X-Men once that had a HOT Rogue in a yellow tank top, so that will always endear him to me.) If you give an average artist 3 months to overpencil something he used to draw in 1 month, you just get more detailed mediocrity, in my opinion--which is fine! It's just weird for me... I took about a ten-year break from comics, and I returned to find Bryan "Average" Hitch being praised like he was some sort of revolutionary artist. Think of your favorite sports team; imagine one of the most nondescript third- or fourth-year players on it: it's as if you took a decade-long break from watching sports and returned to find this player getting MVP awards. W-T-F.

Anyway, yeah, this arc started out for me being good and enjoyable, now it's just "eh". Everything about Johnny is eye-roll worthy--you'd think Millar would throw in something about Perez Hilton or TMZ posting pictures of Johnny, y'know just to throw in even more contemporary pop-culture gobbledegook references. But I've never liked Johnny that much anyway. The dynamic between Sue and Reed's former girlfriend seemed like it could hold some promise a few issues ago, but they haven't done anything with it. Next issue I hope they explore that.

The robot villain was initially interesting, at least conceptually, when we first heard the characters talking about it. And then we saw that it inexplicably looked like Captain America, which was... okay. Now we find out that it's approximately as powerful as every superhero on earth, COMBINED. This completely shatters my suspension of disbelief. It seems also childish of Millar to throw all of these dozens of other heroes in, just as if to say "See, my creation can beat 'em!" It reminds me of playing with action figures as a kid--there's always some other kid who doesn't play fair, shatters the imaginary world you're all creating, and pretends that his action figure is absurdly strong and can beat up everyone else's action figures combined. You want to scream at the kid, "Dude, you're holding the State Puff Marshmallow Man--he ain't THAT strong and he looks goofy looking." Well, "Hey Mark Millar, I can see a robot Captain America being a cool match for the FF, but not for all of the earthbound Marvel Universe combined. And the design of this robot looks more goofy every time I see it."

In short, overall, I had liked the idea of this story, and the set-up of it, a lot more than I'm liking the execution. I am interested to see how this arc resolves, though. If nothing else, this arc has held my interest and the best is yet to come. Reed has been the focal point of this entire arc and he's on his way now. Wish he appeared more in this issue.