Ultimate Fantastic Four Vol. 5: Crossover

This is it! The Ultimate Fantastic Four finally get to travel to the main Marvel Universe and meet their counterparts. Just kidding, Mark Millar invents the Marvel Zombies universe instead. I guess it's fine, even if Greg Land's art looks like he traced a bunch of pornography.

RATING: 68%

Fantastic Four: Foes

Fantastic Four: Noes.

RATING: 17%

Comic Three-In-One

Daredevil Vol. 6: Lowlife

Daredevil starts dating the blind chick he eventually marries and drives insane, every man's dream!

RATING: 76%




Fantastic Four: Imaginauts

The Fantastic Four find their 'Q' rating dropping, so they hire a new publicist. Maybe we should do that here?

RATING: 93%





Incredible Hulk Vol. 5: Hide In Plain Sight

*sound of me dying in the most excruciating way possible, which is reading this book*

RATING: 6%

Comic Three-In-One

Daredevil Vol. 5: Out

Daredevil comes out of the closet, and we finally learn where his partner Franklin Nelson gets his nickname "Foggy."

RATING: 81%





Fantastic Four: 1234

Jae Lee does to the human form what Grant Morrison does to story, for whatever it's worth.

RATING: 54%




The Incredible Hulk Vol. 3: Abominable

True.

RATING: 15%

Comic Three-In-One

X-Statix Vol. 1: Good Omens

I guess Marvel wanted the X-Force name to stick around for an actual X-Force team, so by the third volume of Milligan and Allred's X-Force, they switched the name to X-Statix. Anyway, it's good I suppose.

RATING: 68%



Squadron Supreme Vol. 1: The Pre-War Years

A Squadron Supreme is just like a regular squadron, but with sour cream.

RATING: 70%





Ultimate Fantastic Four Vol. 1: The Fantastic

Jesus, these kids are whiny. Takes the 20 page origin story of the real Fantastic Four and balloons it into 90 pages. That's progress maybe?

RATING: 65%

Comic Three-In-One

Daredevil Vol. 2: Parts of a Hole

Daredevil is blind, and he meets this woman, Echo, who wants to kill him but she's deaf, get it? It's actually pretty good, in no small part thanks to David Mack's writing/layouts (no part of me can give Joe Quesada praise, sorry).

RATING: 79%





Fantastic Four: Into The Breach

Roll call: Human Torch! Namorita! Scott Lang Ant-Man! She-Hulk! My vomit everywhere!

RATING: 22%





The Incredible Hulk Vol. 2: Boiling Point

Ugh, I bought this for 30 issues, Jesus.

RATING: 19%

Comic Three-In-One

Ultimate Spider-man Vol. 9: Ultimate Six

Hey, here's a great idea for a story where the Ultimates and Spider-man team up to fight a bunch of bad guys: make it seven issues long and don't have any fighting until issue six!

RATING: 31%




Batman: No Man's Land Vol. 4

Continuing the story of Gotham being totally fucked, this one isn't too interesting apart from a classic confrontation between Jim Gordon and Batman.

RATING: 59%




Fantastic Four: Flesh & Stone

Turns out Jeph Loeb actually did jump the shark before Ultimates 3, who knew?

RATING: 45%

Comic Three-In-One

Fantastic Four: Nobody Gets Out Alive

Mr. Fantastic is dead, so Ant Man takes his place, and not even the good Ant Man.

RATING: 22%



Universe X Volume 2

This is better than Volume 1, with a really satisfying conclusion, but it's just so dense that it doesn't have much rereadability.

RATING: 71%


Ultimate X-Men Volume 4: Hellfire And Brimstone

Kitty Pride joins the school, and Jean starts to Phoenix out in a story that's kind of directionless if you ask me and I think you did.

RATING: 73%

Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules

I can't believe that this is a Marvel book. While it does have the words "Fantastic Four" in the title, and the characters are loosely based on the heroes we know so well, this is not a hero book at all, but rather just a complex analysis of these four flawed characters. It feels more like a Fantagraphics book, something like Love and Rockets or Stray Bullets. It's extremely well written (Sturm does a great job making us care about these characters even though they're mostly jerks-- their realism makes up for that), and the art is great. It's weird that neither of these guys really did anything else big afterward. Anyway, just buy it it's great.

RATING: 83%

Ultimate X-Men/Fantastic Four

This is just a two issue thing that was included in some trade with some other useless stories. The plot is this crazy girl (Ultimate Mad Thinker) is trying to get revenge at Reed Richards because she used to like him so she steals Cerebro from the X-Men. Mike Carey is kind of difficult to follow sometimes, because it often feels as though he is rushing through his stories and leaves things out, and Pasqual Ferry's art is my least favorite art in the universe. So this book's not that great, but if you want to pick it up here's a link.

RATING: 37%

Fantastic Four: Heroes Reborn

In the mid 90s, Marvel was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, probably from producing too many foil cover variants that nobody ever bought. In order to try to boost sales, they created the company wide crossover of the Onslaught Saga, which ended with everybody except the X-Men and Spider-man dying. Then, they rebooted these characters in what was known as the "Heroes Reborn" storyline, which was supposed to solve thirty years of continuity gaffes, but instead was just boring and lame. This trade collects the first six issues of the Fantastic Four's Heroes Reborn story, which basically compresses the first 52 issues of old Fantastic Four continuity down. It's rushed and really boring, but Jim Lee drew it so that was a plus for anybody who likes Jim Lee's art, which in the 90s was everybody, and today is almost everybody I guess.

RATING: 38%