Fantastic Four - The End #1

Fantastic Four - The End #1 0f 6 - Alan Davis - Story & Art, John Kalisz - Color

Premise - A six part mini-series that chronicles the end of the Fantastic Four. At the beginning of the series we see a battle with Dr. Doom where Sue and Reed lose their children during the battle. An unknown number of years jump forward and we find that Reed Richards has turned the world into a Utopia, yet all four have gone their separate ways. Reed is on his satellite making new inventions, Sue is doing archeology, Johnny is an Avenger and Ben is married with kids and living on Mars.

What I liked:

1) The art. I'm a big Alan Davis fan and think that his work has a great fluidness to it. I have always thought that he was the heir to Steve Ditko in some ways (although he can draw woman and Ditko was weak in that area). Davis has a great style, solid layouts, can draw crowd scenes and a great sense of design. The color was okay, but a little too dark.

2) The story. Davis the writer is a little hit or miss (Another Nail being a miss), but is usually very good with these type of stories where he is allowed to do anything with these characters. His extrapolations of where these characters are in the future feels right. Reed isolating himself, Johnny continuing as a hero, Ben as a family man. Sue just wondering off to do archaeology does not fit as well, but her trying to occupy herself now that she has lost her children and her husband has buried himself in work feels right.

What I Didn't Like:

1) What seems to be an obvious story element. When Dr. Doom and the Richard's children are killed, we don't see the bodies and the kids are middle school, young high school age. I feel like Davis is setting us up for a typical comic book non-death and the kids come back perhaps as Dr. Doom's allies and the FF reunites or something. If the kids don't come back I will rescind this criticism.

Grade B