FF #2

Fantastic Finger-Flippin’ Good Fun

The hesitant endorsements of the initial issue of FF metamorphosed into strong confirmations with the installment. Why read comic books recurs as a query from others as well as myself with common frequency; FF #2 contains a partial answer to this question.

While different comics are read for different reasons, an aura of serious whimsical super-hero fantasy remains a realm that comic books handle better than the medium of the novel, poems, films, or television shows. FF #2 provides laughs and superhero antics that shape lips into smiles instead of sneers all while continuing an intriguing story without taking itself too seriously. It offers a fun escape that blends fantasy and laughs to relax the reader yet still excite the imagination.

Kids in comics, while more are needed, can dull a tale when handled ineptly and crash a plot faster than Icarus’s plummet. Yet in FF#2, kids know their place, or rather Fraction knows where to place the kids, and Allred how to draw them. On page two, the Mole children Mik, Korr, Turg, and Tong become the first to realize for sure (and which every reader and character in the comic [with the exception of Scott Lang] also knew) that the Fantastic Four aren’t coming back in forecasted four minutes. Perceptive, and unhesitatingly voicing the obvious, the simple “uh-oh” from Turg wilts the antennas of hope on Ant-Man’s helmet.

Page three contains the moment that confirmed my continued pulling of this issue. A six panel page shows the media reaction to the FF taking over for the Fantastic Four. Panel three depicts Onome reading a newspaper and querying “What is an ex-con?” to Scott Lang as he’s walking across the floor in the background eating cereal. Panel four gives a close up of Lang, helmet off, munching cereal attempting to explain his criminal past to a child. The halting speech; the puffed cheek full of cereal; the tousled hair; the desperate, tired, and conflicted expression of Scott Lang (wanting to be honest and not honest simultaneously) remains a great melding of art and text. The panel captures a true moment of an adult trying to explain a complex and unpleasant idea to a child, while simultaneously dealing with larger world issues. The balance between serious, true, and amusing moments, and super-heroics coalesce on this page, and Fraction and Allred maintain the precarious balance throughout the entire issue. 

Pairing adults unused to dealing with children forever promises a reservoir of laughs (unless you’re the adult). Page seven has She-Hulk giving a law lecture to children. A touching character-defining moment of Darla with Leech and Artie Maddicks follows.

Mole-Man’s attack (just like in Fantastic Four #1) provides some Marvel comics continuity, or at least a reverential homage to Kirby and Lee and we get to  see the FF in action for the first time in the series, complete with fisticuffs and witty banter (“This was supposed to be my day off!” the giant green monster says (the editor kindly translates the “NYARGH*” for readers who haven’t kept their studies of Gigantes) while having Ant-Man knock about in his eye socket and getting strangled by Medusa in a negligee. The only other place (I imagine) one can find such combinations are in magazines better left hidden under the mattress.

All these antics conclude with a genre-demanding cliff hanger ending…some dark form of Johnny Storm flying through a space warp declaring “The Fantastic Four are DEAD! And no one can ever go through that gateway again…”

Fraction and Allred created and delivered a fun comic, a welcome edition to a host of books that are good in a different way (more serious, more experimental, more satirical ) than FF, but FF#2 generates and holds and offers an amusing light-hearted competent romp through the world of super- heroics.