Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Fantastic Four #557 Review

FANTASTIC FOUR #557
Written by Mark Millar
Art by Bryan Hitch

The short and dirty of it all is that the current Millar / Hitch Fantastic Four is just plain fun. It's not mind blowing or even highly original. He applies tried and true methods with a small bit of high concept, stirs in some family dynamics and spits out some classic style Fantastic Four stories with the right amount of modern twist to make them work. We won't be remembering these stories in 20 years time like we do the Stan Lee era stories, but they're definitely fun stories in their own right and I'm more than pleased with their work, even if it's not Ultimates level quality.

This issue, however, sees a rather passe ending to the CAP robot storyline. After being built up with its defeat of Sentry, Iron Man, all the Initiative and even the anti-Registration heroes, Reed slaps together a giant, "referenced" movie Optimus Prime robot, which he claims is a Galactus killer, switches it on, at a billion dollars per second cost, and waits for CAP to come stop the most powerful weapon on Earth, as is its current programming objective.

Not to bad, I guess. I like giant robot action and this could be interesting, right? Well, Reed also guessed that his ex-flame would have built in the same safeguard that kept her off the naughty list of targets for CAP, seeing as he knows she still has feelings for him, and the robot, unable to attack Reed, just stands there as Reed destroys him in seconds with his giant Galactus killing robot, ending a much ballyhoo'd threat that turned into a paper tiger in the end.

All was not lost, however, as we did have some fun moments, like Reed's, "the robot's helmet makes it look cooler", reasoning for the design or Reed's blowing off his old girlfriend and then having a date in the past, on the day they first met, with Sue for their anniversary.

So, while not a great issue and probably the worst of their run, it wasn't a complete loss. Oh yeah, did I mention Dr Doom shows up on the last page, his armour hanging off him and looking like he was nearly beaten to death, as he screams for them to bring Richards to him now? Ya, that's awesome, too, but not enough to make this a great issue. Can't wait for next month's though.

Verdict - Check It


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