All Hail The Great Marketing Machine – Review Of Ultimate FF #1

I’m going to come clean with you nice people.

I keep going to our local comic books store every week, you know, the one where they know us by name and ask Rob to stop telling the other customers that he’s got an “ultimate ff and it ain’t a comic book, baby! Amiright?! Please talk to me. I’m so lonely.” I go. I get my stack of pulls and pick up whatever other books look interesting that week. Then I go home, fall asleep on the couch watching Arrow, and get up the next morning to go about the rest of my week. It’s a week that often finds me with fewer and fewer opportunities to really sit down and read through the books I’ve picked up that Wednesday. I’ve got stacks of pulls from previous weeks that may have already found themselves cataloged into a long box and brought over to the off site storage that Rob has finally broke down and gotten rented. I feel badly about this, not the rented storage, but that I never got a chance to read the books. I hope to at some point, but the Home Office was beginning to look like it belonged to a couple level 5 hoarders, so the books, read or not, needed to go.

As a consequence, there have been far fewer reviews on the site lately. So, today I made point of sitting down to read a brand new series, Ultimate FF #1, written by Joshua Hale Fialkov with art from Mario Guevara and Tom Grummett. The book takes place in Marvel Universe #1610. Therefore, if you’re like me and have a passing familiarity with Marvel characters from Fantastic Four in the 616, but haven’t had a chance to keep up with anything particularly current in Marvel since Marvel Now! kicked off, in theory, this should be just the book for me, right?

Will I find something that will reignite my interest in publications from the House Of Ideas in Ultimate FF #1? Maybe, but, be prepared for me to spoil the hell out of it, after the jump.

The Future Foundation is an organization that in the 616 universe was founded by Reed Richards to encourage free thinkers to come together for the betterment of mankind. Future Foundation and Fantastic Four – see, both groups start with “F” and share characters, because they’re all related and whatnot. Where Future Foundation diverges is that Reed Richards, or alternate versions of him anyway, are the baddies and Victor Von Doom is one of the good guys. This is seemingly because original creator Jonathan Hickman has never let an opportunity to make Reed Richards look like a dick go unpublished. No. I don’t know why. Ultimate FF appears to be continuing the same idea. In this incarnation, Sue Storm is leading the Foundation. Several references are made to let the readers know that Reed Richards is a megalomaniac hellbent on taking over the world. When Sue and her team can’t seal a dimensional rift that is threatening to destroy the planet, or, at least New Jersey (insert obligatory “…and that would be bad, why?”), Phil Coulson (yes, that Phil Coulson) sends in reinforcements that everyone is afraid will be Reed. However, it ends up being Dr. Doom. Crisis averted. Yay?

The book has a lot to like. Fialkov seems to be having a lot of fun with the dialogue he writes for his characters. His roster currently includes Sue Storm, Tony Stark, Sam Wilson, Machine Man, and Agent Coulson, along with Doom at the end. Tony is exactly the cocky, overly self assured know-it-all a new reader would expect to see from Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of him in The Avengers. Sue Storm gives it back to him with all the sass you might expect from a sister who had to put up with an impulsive hot head of a brother like Johnny Storm, although he’s nowhere to be seen so far in this series. Coulson’s back and forths with Machine Man are also lively. So, anyone who is coming to this book with expectations shaped by current Marvel properties as viewed in the movies will feel right at home. Whedoneque dialogue is a lot to live up to, but there’s some good banter here.

But, that also feel like part of the problem with this book. While the story does set up the premise that the Future Foundation can choose from the most elite of the planet’s geniuses and other talents to accomplish whatever it needs to, sticking Tony Stark and Sam Wilson together in a book feels more like a directive from Marvel editorial to tie the book to prominent characters from the movies. Oh, and Josh, have Coulson be the field director. We need more people to watch Marvel Agents Of SHIELD (Tuesdays at 8pm ET!).

Yes, I’m suggesting that it’s a calculated marketing ploy that dragged me out of the book.

Artwise, I have to admit that it didn’t do a hell of a lot for me. Guevarra and Grummett seem to work in a very fine lined style that honestly looked as though they were asked to turn in a sketch book. While I applaud that they didn’t feel the need to make the characters photo referenced, the panels often vacillated between perfunctory and overly busy.

In a month, will I pick up Ultimate FF #2? Yes, with reservations. I’m willing to look past what seems like a marketing gimmick to see what happens next following the Doctor Doom reveal. Also, I’m a big fan of Machine Man, going back to Warren Ellis’s version of him in Next Wave. Fialkov seems to have a feel for the character that makes me want to see what he does next with him. The two characters that are not high profile in the Marvel movies, Doom and Machine Man, are the reason I’ll come back next month, regardless of what marching orders the creative team were or were not given by the Marvel muckity-mucks. That’s not bad work on Fialkov’s part. So, I’ll give it one more issue. Otherwise, I have enough books that I know I like that I already don’t have time to read finding their way into long boxes on a weekly basis.