Nova Classic, v. 3

Collects: Nova #20-25 and Fantastic Four #204-6 and 208-14 (1978-80)

Released: June 2014 (Marvel)

Format: 304 pages / color / $34.99 / ISBN: 9780785185529

What is this?: The last storyline of Nova’s solo title is diverted into a Fantastic Four plot, then forgotten in favor of something more interesting.

The culprits: Writer Marv Wolfman and artists Carmine Infantino, Keith Pollard, and John Byrne

One of the first superhero comic books I can remember reading is Fantastic Four #208. It was the early ‘80s, and a relative on my mother’s side gave me a stripped copy, without the cover.

The issue didn’t make me a Fantastic Four fan, although years later I was surprised to find the issue was penciled by Sal Buscema, which might account for my affection for his art. What the comic really introduced me to was the Marvel style of story: if you pick up a random issue, you’re likely to be dropped into the middle of an ongoing story that picks up threads from the previous issue and leaves others to be wrapped up by later issues.

Fantastic Four #208 left me with so many questions. First, who the hell were these people who weren’t the Fantastic Four? Will they save Xandar from the Skrulls? Will the Fantastic Four survive their execution by old age? Can they stop the Sphinx? Is Dr. Sun as awesome as he appears?

So I bought Nova Classic, v. 3, to find the answer to those questions. (I would say that last one deserves a definite “yes,” although I needed to consult Tomb of Dracula to answer it.) Despite the name, Nova Classic, v. 3, is not a Nova book, not really; the last five issues of Nova introduce this trade, but Nova (and his supporting cast) appear in only one of the ten issues of Fantastic Four that close out the book.

To back up a bit: Nova is Richard Rider, a character introduced in his own short-lived ‘70s series (collected in the Essential Nova, one of my earliest reviews). He was created by Marv Wolfman and John Buscema (Sal’s brother) as a Spider-Man / Green Lantern hybrid: a teenager, with real teenage problems, who becomes a superhero by getting the powers of a dying space cop. The series lasted 25 issues and was cancelled mid-storyline in 1979. Fortunately, Wolfman, who was still the writer and editor of Nova, was also the writer and editor of Fantastic Four, so he inserted Nova and his cast in the middle of the then-current Fantastic Four storyline — #208, to bring this review back to the beginning.

In #204 through #206, the Fantastic Four had gone to Xandar to help defend it from the Fantastic Four’s old enemies, the shape-shifting Skrulls. The Sphinx, the villain who gathered Nova and his allies and enemies together for a space trip, wanted to use the computers of Xandar to help him end his immortality. Unfortunately, the Xandarian computers showed him how to gain immense power instead, so he headed to Earth to gain vengeance on his home planet. The Fantastic Four switched adversaries with Nova and his allies.

So Nova Classic, v. 3, is split into two halves, which touch in #208. The Nova plotline sputters out after that. Nova disappears from the book, and the story of the Champions of Xandar, as Nova and his allies are called, defending Xandar is taken over in Rom the Spaceknight (#24). Since Rom is a licensed character, that story has never been reprinted, although IDW recently acquired the comics rights to the character and probably nothing will happen in the reprint realm but we can hope?

Nova itself was not a very good series, and #20-25 are representative in that regard. The issues included have Nova outing himself to his family, which is a nice touch — Richard can’t hide it any more, and we see a brief scene of him dealing with his family’s reactions. But after that, he’s quickly roped into the Sphinx’s shenanigans, and then he’s back to fighting forgettable villains, just like the issues preceding this book. (You don’t see Nova villains other than Sphinx very often, and there’s a reason for that. Marvel also killed the rest of the Champions of Xandar — and Xandar — off panel in Avengers #260.) The only interesting bits in Nova other than Richard and his family dealing with his costumed identity are Dr. Sun facing off against the Sphinx, but that’s a brief scene without a real resolution.

The other half of Nova Classic, v. 3, on the other hand, is a decent-to-good Fantastic Four story. The Fantastic Four are called to aid the Xandarians against the Skrulls. This time, the Skrulls gain the upper hand, and three members of the Fantastic Four are captured and executed — in a sense. The Skrulls subject them to an aging ray, which will kill them in three days. It’s a needlessly cruel way to kill, but it fits the Skrulls and their hatred of the Fantastic Four. The executed heroes then escape and meet up with the Champions of Xandar on Xandar.

Once the Fantastic Four starts pursuing the Sphinx, the storyline gets a little flabby; #209 reads like a well-chosen, well-written fill-in, with the team rounding up escaped space convicts in a spaceship graveyard. It has little to do with the ongoing plot, and it introduces Reed’s idiotic robot HERBIE into the comics. After the Fantastic Four reaches Galactus and tries to convince him to fight the Sphinx, Galactus makes them spend an issue fetching him a herald, which should give the Sphinx time to destroy the Earth a few times over. Still, the individual issues are exciting, and they ramp up the tension nicely. (Except for #209.)

The ending of the storyline is a little weak. Galactus uses an ability I’ve never heard of him using to battle the Sphinx, and the solution to solving Reed, Sue, and Ben’s aging problem is to have Reed solve it after Reed has been declared too weak to do anything. The story does introduce Terrax, though, and it also has a nice Terrax-vs.-the-old-FF fight.

The art improves markedly throughout, going from Carmine Infantino’s scratchy, static drawing to the smooth lines of Keith Pollard (#204-6) and the first Fantastic Four issues drawn by John Byrne (#209-14). (Byrne and Pollard match up pretty well, in fact.) Pollard’s a little weak on the chaotic, hand-to-hand battle royales between the Fantastic Four and the Skrulls, but Byrne shows why he would be associated with Fantastic Four for years; his old versions of the team actually look like they are elderly (albeit elderly people with superpowers), and the Sphinx looks like a credible threat to Galactus. Their fight lacks any cosmic touches, but that’s OK, I suppose.

I think the best way to look at Nova Classic, v. 3, is as a Fantastic Four trade paperback with six issues of Nova bolted on. Unfortunately, $35 for a reprint of a bunch of ‘70s Fantastic Four issues is a bit steep, even if those issues do reprint the first appearance of Terrax and some nice Byrne work.

(And the book is even missing a Fantastic Four issue! In #207, Johnny Storm enrolls in New York’s dumbest college — appropriate, given that Johnny’s pretty dumb himself — and is used by the Monocle, the college’s dean who has used his advanced degree to come up with an imbecilic name, to steal Mr. Fantastic’s inventions. With all that stupidity in evidence, it’s Spider-Man who handily saves the day.)

Despite my affection for Nova Classic, v. 3, I really can’t recommend it unless you’re hunting for a Fantastic Four story that you haven’t read. In that case, it’s going to be a pleasant surprise.

Rating: (2.5 of 5)

Fantastic Four: The Beginning of the End

Collects: Fantastic Four #525-6 and 551-3 (2005, 2008)

Released: April 2008 (Marvel)

Format: 120 pages / color / $12.99 / ISBN: 9780785125549

What is this?: Dr. Doom comes back from the future to tell Reed he’s screwed up the future; Diablo annoys the team with alchemy and dreams.

The culprits: Writers Dwayne McDuffie and Karl Kesel and artists Paul Pelletier and Tom Grummett

Fantastic Four: The Beginning of the End is a substantial improvement on Fantastic Four: The New Fantastic Four. Well, at least writer Dwayne McDuffie’s contribution to the TPB is.

Whereas New Fantastic Four is full of unneeded bombast and incessant events of cosmic import, McDuffie chooses a more quiet plot for the finale of his short run on Fantastic Four. Dr. Doom travels back in time to escape a Reed Richards-dominated future. Of course his objective is to avert that future, but are the things he’s saying about Reed true? Is he really a monster who loses sight of the human costs in his efforts to improve the world?

At the time Beginning was written, that wasn’t such a far-fetched idea. After the nonsense of Civil War and the Superhuman Registration Act, Reed looked like a borderline Fascist (and we know how much regard Fascists generally have for borders) who believed he had all the answers. His arrogance had split the team, and The New Fantastic Four had only begun the healing. And of course, if a Doom from the future was looking for a time to prey upon the other members’ uncertainty, this was it. It’s a fantastic, intriguing idea for a story, and McDuffie exploits it to its fullest.

Unfortunately, there are a few flaws to the story. The story takes three issues for an argument with occasional punches, and it feels padded. The arrival of the Fantastic Four from the future, while a logical part of the story, puts the kibosh on the story before it has ended; when they arrive, you know all debate is truly finished. I also did not need more dickering about the nature of time travel. A recap would be fine, but I never need to hear that the generally held model of Marvel temporal mechanics is wrong or even more than mildly flawed.

None of these objections take away from my enjoyment of the story, though. That might have been influenced by my desire to believe Doom was correct and Reed was so incredibly wrong.

Writer Karl Kesel’s two-issue “Dream Fever” story from #525-6, which features Diablo as the villain, seems an odd fit here. It’s included, presumably, because they had extra room to fill at the end of McDuffie’s run and it had been collected nowhere else (it originally fit between Mark Waid’s three-year run, ending with #524, and J. Michael Straczynski’s year and a half, which lasted from #527 to Civil War). “It has to fit somewhere” and “We have extra space” makes sense if you’re collecting the issues, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. It doesn’t fit with McDuffie’s work in tone or continuity; where “The Beginning of the End” is a story that can only take place after the events of Civil War, “Dream Fever” is set well before, with a cheerier team in a story that actually follows up on character development from the Waid run (which I suspect we’ll never hear about again).

“Dream Fever” is a fill-in story that never claims to be more than a fill-in story. It tries to get some mileage out of using dreams to reveal character elements that were rarely or never discussed, and to be fair, Kesel does have some success there. But using dreams in that manner is a frequent prop for real character development, and worse, saying that all the team’s dreams are nightmares, and that having other people’s nightmares rather than your own will kill you … it seems a bit silly. Again, it’s a fill-in two-parter, so wasting effort trying to convince the reader of something that could be glossed over wouldn’t be a wise use of space, but it took away from the peril of the story. Diablo as the villain … well, in this story, he seems more like an opportunist than a credible threat or someone with a strong plan.

What is unusual is that the two essentially randomly packaged together stories both have excellent art. I praised Paul Pelletier’s work from The New Fantastic Four, and his work on “Beginning of the End” is every bit as good. His depiction of Reed’s secret workroom, with notes and equations on every surface, is my favorite visual of the book. Pelletier also gets to design future versions of the team, the Black Panther, and Namor, and although I’m not exactly fond of the changes in facial hair and / or hair length school of aging, I did like his Ben Grimm. Tom Grummett gives the fill-in art for “Dream Fever” and does a likewise impressive job. Although there’s nothing as visually arresting in his work as what Pelletier is given, his artwork is clear and bright, with a good grasp of storytelling.

I find it strange that I would prefer this hodgepodge Fantastic Four book to one that McDuffie wrote by himself. Still, it’s true. I also find it interesting that a Dr. Doom / time travel story would feel less an assertion of self-importance than The New Fantastic Four, but again — true. In any event, it allows McDuffie to end his short run on a high note.

Rating: (3.5 of 5)

Fantastic Four: The New Fantastic Four

Collects: Fantastic Four #544-50 (2007)

Released: May 2008 (Marvel)

Format: 168 pages / color / $15.99 / ISBN: 9780785124832

What is this?: Reed and Sue take off for a honeymoon, so Storm and the Black Panther fill in for a couple of adventures.

The culprits: Writer Dwayne McDuffie and artist Paul Pelletier

In the comments for my review of Justice League of America, v. 3: The Injustice League, I mentioned that I would be reading more of writer Dwayne McDuffie’s work, specifically his Fantastic Four run. (Of course, I said I would be getting to it in a month or two, but it has been more like a year or two; maybe I was speaking in code like Spock and Kirk in Wrath of Khan?) Still, in fulfillment of that promise, we have Fantastic Four: The New Fantastic Four.

McDuffie is a long-time comic book veteran. I remember his work for Marvel in the late ‘80s / early ‘90s, and his work on DC’s Milestone imprint is well-regarded. Despite being one of the guiding forces of the animated Justice League / Justice League Unlimited series, I doubted he would get a chance to write a big comic book title. I was pleased to see I was wrong — and wrong pretty spectacularly, actually, since he wrote A-list titles for both Marvel and DC.

I want to start out with the good things about the writing in New Fantastic Four. Bringing new characters onto the team is an excellent idea, especially if it’s only for a half year of issues or so, and Black Panther has been so closely tied with the team over the years that he makes a natural candidate. I adore McDuffie’s humor in this one: nice character interactions and self-deprecating humor about themselves and about the conventions of the genre. That’s just one sentence in the review, but it should weight a lot more in the evaluation: enjoyable humor goes a long way to smooth over whatever rough spots are in the plotting. And I especially like the use of the Frightful Four as opponents in the issues bridging the two halves of New Fantastic Four; the Wizard’s plan this time was uninspired, but a more grounded set of opponents (albeit in an exotic locale) was exactly what the plot needed between the two cosmic adventures.

The first half of the book was a sequel to McDuffie’s miniseries Beyond. I liked some parts of Beyond, but I didn’t think it needed a follow-up. Gravity is a fun new character, yes, and resurrecting him is a fine idea. But bringing the former Deathlok on the mission to retrieve Gravity was unnecessary — he doesn’t do much, if anything. And using Gravity in the second arc of the book made it seem as if McDuffie was apologizing for killing the character in the first place; when the heroes need someone wielding an elemental force, he’s the first guy the heroes think about? Really? And invoking the presence of the Watcher to make us believe the story was more important than it was is laughable, especially when the story later makes a joke about how everyone except Deathlok has been to the Watcher’s home, and a herd of Watchers show up in issue #549.

The Watchers, more than anything, serve as the epitome of why I feel ambivalence toward New Fantastic Four. On one hand, the book goes for the big stories, the ones with the traditional Fantastic Four cast of supporting characters in them: Galactus, his heralds (the Silver Surfer twice), the Watcher (twice, plus the aforementioned herd), the end of all life. And on the other hand, it does this with a repetition that distracts from the danger involved. McDuffie seems to be really hammering some ideas home — hammering them so hard, in fact, that they are driven about a foot into the plot. Gravity is important, as he briefly becomes Protector of the Universe, holds off Galactus, and helps Dr. Strange perform psychic surgery on Eternity. The Watchers make things important. The Black Panther has an intellect as great as Reed Richards and can defeat Galactus, the Silver Surfer, and Stardust (another herald) … essentially at the same time. Black Panther threatens the Watcher with the Ultimate Nullifier to get information instead of asking … because the Ultimate Nullifier shows up in important comics? (I don’t know.) Black Panther and Storm are in love (no one’s going to be able to convince me of that). Reed and Sue can be really scary — so scary they frighten their teammates, who feel as if they might do something uncharacteristic, even though they’ve known each other for more than a decade.

By using these big events, McDuffie looks like he’s trying to prove something — that he can write the big events, that Black Panther is an A-list character, that Fantastic Four should be about the cosmic challenges. I don’t know if that’s true, and I don’t need to be convinced of the first two. But the success of the issues with the Frightful Four shows that none of that is absolutely true, anyway; McDuffie and the Fantastic Four do well with grounded stories, and the Black Panther, although still pretty badass, can be humbled in battle. More importantly, Gravity and the Watcher doesn’t have to be involved. (By the way, does anyone know how the Trapster escaped the Wizard’s time loop from #519?)

I was worried about the art, looking at the cover by Michael Turner (look at Sue’s waist and how her torso is bent; that has to be painful), but I should have remembered Paul Pelletier’s work is wonderful. It’s attractive, it’s expressive, it’s kinetic, and it tells the story. Really, it’s everything you could want in comic book art without adding on the stylistic flair of, say, J.H. Williams III. Again, this is short praise — Pelletier’s work really does make New Fantastic Four so much better.

I want to like New Fantastic Four, and there are many moments I did like, as I read it. But taken overall, it’s hard to enjoy the repetition and the constant demand for the story to be considered important. If you don’t take it seriously, I think you can really enjoy New Fantastic Four; if you do, however, it may grate.

Rating: (3 of 5)

Fantastic Four, v. 3 (hardcover)

Collects: Fantastic Four #514-24 (2004-5)

Released: November 2005 (Marvel)

Format: 256 pages / color / $29.99 / ISBN: 9780785120117

What is this?: A pair of trade paperbacks — Disassembled and Rising Storm — showing the FF fighting villains and bad PR thrown together in one hardback.

The culprits: Writer Mark Waid and pencilers Mike Wieringo and Paco Medina

I swear I read Fantastic Four, v. 3 (hardcover), but looking through the book days later, not much is jogging the ol’ memory.

Something about Fantastic Four since John Byrne’s run makes all the major plot developments slide through the skull without making contact with more than a couple of synapses. Oh, there are plot developments that grab the attention briefly, but then they fade from the memory until they kill Sue again and you realize you haven’t thought much about what’s happening with Fantastic Four lately. (Or until Reed has an extended run as Mr. Fan-Fascist or the creative team brings back an extra kid or whatever shiny object grabs someone in editorial’s attention.) Other Marvel teams can have drastic roster changes, and the status quo can change for years at a time on titles like X-Men and Avengers. But the Fantastic Four are a family — a static, unchangeable family that won’t let anyone escape.

So that’s what writer Mark Waid is up against here. Poor Waid, I would think; but that’s sort of his strong point. He’s steady. Give him a superhero setup, and he’ll give you a half dozen stories on it. Sometimes they’ll be great, like his Captain America and Flash runs. He’ll rarely have a dud run. The worst that will happen is that he’ll play with the company’s toys in a largely humdrum way, then put them back where he found them. And frankly, comics will always need a lot of those guys, even though they’re not in fashion now.

Waid plays with the standard tropes of the Fantastic Four in a couple of ways. In the first arc, “Dysfunctional” (#514-6), the team fights the Wizard and his new — new, I say! — Frightful Four. New lineups haven’t worked for the Wizard in the past, and they won’t work in the future. It’s not really a spoiler to say they don’t work here, especially since the Frightful Four meets their downfall the way they often do: betrayed by a woman. Wizard does the evil mastermind thing and throws away a loyal minion for no reason. A girl Johnny is interested in has surprise powers (like Frankie Raye!). It all feels done before, which isn’t surprising. Waid and co-writer for the arc Karl Kesel’s big, most original idea seems to be to position the Frightful Four as a kind of family, a dark reflection of the Fantastic Four, but that just feels forced, with family dynamics worse than the original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

In “Fourtitude” (#517-9) and “Rising Storm” (#520-4), however, it gets better. Aliens show up to kill Sue, Johnny and Sue switch powers, and then Galactus shows up to use Johnny as a herald. A very crappy herald, but that’s not anyone’s fault. It’s actually kinda amusing, with general dimbulb Johnny trying to get a handle of Galactus, cosmic powers, and trying not to commit genocide. Waid even gets to work in Quasar, which is nice — it’s always pleasing to see a minor character used in an appropriate role, giving the Marvel Universe some coherency. It even leads to some interesting characterization for Sue and Johnny, although it’s the kind that can easily never be referenced again.

The pencils come from Paco Medina (“Dysfunctional”) and the late Mike Wieringo (“Rising Storm” and “Fourtitude”). I like Weiringo’s art; he certainly could draw some mean monsters and aliens, and his Galactus is sufficiently imposing, if conventional. His depictions of the alien incursion during “Rising Storm” is underwhelming, however; it looks more like someone built tall, fancy pilings than an alien ship wreaking havoc. I never really adjusted to Medina’s pencils, though; his faces and females seemed a little … geometrically off. The inking is strangely heavy at points in his last issue as well, giving it the look of bad reproductions in a few panels.

Still, there’s too much of a feeling of … inconsequentiality. These are relatively interesting stories — well, “Rising Storm” and “Fourtitude,” at least — but when the day is done, the toys are neatly back in their box, and the day’s fun is forgotten.

Rating: (3 of 5)

Spider-Girl Presents Fantastic Five: In Search of Doom

Collects: Fantastic Five #1-5 (1999-2000)

Released: September 2006 (Marvel)

Format: 120 pages / color digest / $7.99 / ISBN: 0785121323

The Fantastic Four is the title in which the generational aspect of the M2 Universe is best served. It’s logical the team would continue with future generations of the Richards / Storm / Grimm families.

And that’s what writer Tom DeFalco has in mind in Fantastic Five: In Search of Doom. Reed and Sue Richards’s son, Franklin, has joined the team in place of his mother, and the team h as added Johnny Storm’s wife, Lyja. Despite these changes to the team, the team functions essential as normal, and DeFalco’s old-school style works well in this title, giving it a sense of connection to the original Fantastic Four series.

On the other hand, DeFalco is a little overindulgent of his own work. Lyja’s creation — revealed as a Skrull who had impersonated Alicia Masters and married the Human Torch — is popularly considered a low point of not only the Fantastic Four but comics in general. But DeFalco created her, and here she is. Sharon Venture, the love interest of Ben Grimm (the Thing) when DeFalco wrote the Fantastic Four, is Ben’s ex-wife. Hyperstorm, another flavorless DeFalco creation, is the villain who causes Sue’s retirement in a change in Reed’s status. None of these are great creations; DeFalco used them well, however. Well — the fight between Hyperstorm and Franklin has little of the energy or sense of import that such a battle should have, and the other fights are somewhat below the Fantastic Four’s cosmic level.

Yet somehow it all works. Despite all the changes, the book echoes the original Fantastic Four strongly, from the shadowing of the Lee / Kirby #1 in the first issue to the use of the Wizard and his new henchmen as the major villains. There is a real sense of family, even if the choice of family members by DeFalco is odd, with the second generation going strong. The title also screams M2, with DeFalco’s voice being the unifying tie between the titles.

Surprisingly, this is an enjoyable title.

Rating: (3 of 5)

Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules

Collects: Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules #1-4 (2003)

Released: June 2003 (Marvel)

Format: 128 pages / color / $13.99 / ISBN: 0785111123

Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules is not the sort of thing Marvel Comics publishes very often — well, not without a theme month, anyway.

Unstable Molecules writer James Sturm tells a story with four protagonists, each very similar to a character from the Fantastic Four. Reed Richards is a physicist, Ben Grimm’s a lovable, gruff boxing trainer, Johnny Sturm is a teenager with an obsession with cars, and Sue Sturm, his sister, is Reed’s fiancée. Sturm the writer uses these characters to tell a straightfaced story about what he claims, in the prologue and endnotes, is the real Fantastic Four. These characters, slightly altered from the first family of Marvel we know, are set in the 1950s, passions boiling against a sleepy Eisenhower-era backdrop.

As you might expect from that set-up, Sue is the focus of the story. She’s also the only character with a story relationship with the other three: Johnny’s sister and guardian, Reed’s “love,” Ben’s flirting friend. Sue feels trapped by the expectations of her neighbors and Reed, unable to carve or discover a role for herself that isn’t defined by traditional female roles. The disappointments of her life lead her to grab for whatever happiness those around her will allow, no matter how disastrous the consequences.

The others aren’t neglected by the plot; they aren’t happy, either. Johnny feels as confined by his hometown as Sue and is dealing with a confusing sexual awakening that veers between inadvertent incestuous desires and hints of homosexuality. (He still loves those cars, though.) Been lives a sleazy life and throws away chances for love because he can’t have Sue, his perfect woman. Reed, whom Sue accuses of treating her as if she’s invisible, seems invisible himself, reserved when he’s on the page but off it for most of the book. Still, in the end, he feels the dagger of Sue’s betrayal.

Kind of depressing, really.

Since this is the ‘50s, there are certain conventions to be observed. There must be beatniks, for instance, and Cold War concerns. Also inserted because they fit the timeframe is a faux proto-Marvel Bullpen; their appearance is worthwhile despite their tangential importance to the plot for no other reason than seeing Ben Grimm verbally dominate a conversation with Stan Lee. (It’s not very likely, but it’s still amusing.) If you like that last one, you’ll like Sturm’s other cute touches: a disgruntled Eastern European former lab assistant of Reed’s named Victor Dunne, a fat, bespectacled friend of Johnny’s who may be the model for the Mole Man, and a list of scholarly notes at the end that takes this fictional story very seriously.

Guy Davis’s art is perfect for this book, a little grubby and having no glamour. Everybody has a weak chin; no one shines. R. Sikoryak provides art for a faux ‘50s comic called Vapor Girl, which is inserted into the story occasionally; Vapor Girl is read by Johnny, who uses it to escape from his humdrum hometown, and is published by Marvel (the artist in the story bases Vapor Girl’s appearance on Sue). The book’s muted coloring by Michel Vrana is perfect — drab colors (without stinting on the palette) for drab ‘50s people.

There is a bit that confuses me, though. Sturm claims the members of the Fantastic Four are real — the four characters featured in Unstable Molecules. That’s fine; Stan, Jack, and the rest of the Bullpenners meet the four characters, and it makes sense that when it came time to create Marvel’s first team superhero book, Stan would pull on their personalities and Jack on their appearances. But Sturm also implies Sue et al. are superheroes or at least that they went up in Reed’s rocket. These four average people going into space in a rocket is absurd — yet that’s what we’re supposed to believe.

That’s a minor flaw, the least of a few small problems; Unstable Molecules is depressing, in that suffocating ‘50s way that so many equate with innocence. It lacks real closure, given that we know the turmoil at the end isn’t he last of the characters. Sturm claims there are plans for sequels, but Sturm also claims Sue Sturm met Betty Friedan.

Still, if the sequels came out (Sturm says part two, The Mad Thinkers, is due next year), I’d probably buy them.

Rating: (4 of 5)