includes: Fantastic Four #334-341
the premise: The FF - plus She-Thing? - are called before Congress just as a battalion of c-list superheroes attack them. Then: along with Iron Man & Thor, the FF gets trapped in a time bubble and confronts Galactus.
the lowdown: Mark Millar is a dirty idea thief. And I can prove it. (Well, except for the dirty part. I have no knowledge of his personal hygiene.)
I picked this up because, thanks to Mark Waid & Mike Wieringo, I have a budding love for the FF and wanted to read another classic run. Byrne's run is tempting but is just too long. Simonson's run spans three volumes, which is just about the right temperature of porridge for me. So I picked it up, and by the by it's really good. The back half of this volume has this big story with time travel and Thor and Galactus and it all just feels very Kirby. I dig it and will read more.
But that's not the thing that really got me here.
The first three issues of this collection comprise a tie-in with the old school Marvel event "Acts of Vengeance" (which is available in a $100+ Omnibus if you've already bought a gold-plated commode and want something even more useless in your home). The premise of Acts of Vengeance was that the Marvel villains all attacked heroes other than their usual sparring partners - the old "switch heroes, and win!" gambit first adopted by Dr. Double-X and the Rainbow Raider in the not-quite-classic Brave & The Bold #194. The FF's take on this idea is that they're getting attacked by seemingly random numbskulls like Ramrod, and it's more a nuisance to them than anything else.
In this story, though, the FF has been called to testify before Congress. It seems... bear with me... that Congress is considering requiring superhumans to register with the federal government. The proposed Act is called... wait for it... The Superhuman Registration Act. No shit. Did I mention this was published in 1989? So the FF goes to Washington so Reed Richards can speak out in opposition to the Act, because of course he'd never support anything like that. Does ANY of this sound familiar to anyone?
Anyway, they have this Congressional hearing that keeps getting interrupted because Ramrod and a bunch of other similarly-lame villains keep attacking the FF. And then it's interrupted when all of Congress gets mind-controlled and attacks the FF as well. This is of course completely awesome and should have been the plot of Civil War.
So geez, did everyone just forget about this story when Civil War was published? Don't get me wrong - I'm not taking anyone, even Dirty Idea Thief Mark Millar, to task for re-using an idea - superhero comics are practically founded on re-using ideas. But how was this not popping up on blogs and message boards and whatnot with "meh, it's been done" captions? Did I just miss it? Internet, you fail.
Also worth noting that, in these stories, Ben Grimm has reverted to human form, but still fights crime in a trenchcoat and hat. Except when he wears a giant Thing robot/ armor - which for some reason he doesn't bring along on the trip to the future. Grimm's place in the FF is taken by Sharon Ventura, who calls herself "Ms. Marvel" except she looks like a female version of The Thing. Which is to say she looks like The Thing with a shirt on. Grimm and Ventura are apparently in a relationship, despite the fact that he's spent years complaining about how hideous he is. Maybe I'm just warped and/or too old to be reading superhero comics, but I was driven to distraction trying to imagine how weird it would be for Ben to.. y'know... with a girl who looked just like him. And also: how such a thing could be possible with a girl made out of rocks.
These issues also feature the Human Torch married to Alicia Masters, which is all kinds of wrong. Rich Buckler drew a few of these issues and apparently forgot that Alicia is blind, as he shows her looking up information on a computer. I think she was eventually revealed to be a Skrull.
the verdict: I kid, really. I loved this book despite all the weird dated stuff. She-Thing sucks, but there's something charming about even the silly parts of this book. Plus Simonson's art looks, y'know, like you'd expect Simonson's art to look.
7 comments:
Ahh, She-Thing; another in the Mighty Marvel Tradition of taking a well known male hero, slapping a pair of boobs on them and then selling them as an all new character.
Seriously, not that DC never did female offshoots, but is it just me or are Marvel the prime culprits of "copy/paste with added boobs" deal?
She-Thing doesn't even have boobs! Just a shirt that kind of makes it look like she does.
Rock boobs would never work anyway. Think of the back problems.
The back problems would be catastrophic, for sure. If she has no boobs, though, why is she a She-Thing and not just... I dunno, Thing 2? Actually, that one leads to questions I'm not prepared to ask. Stan Lee talking about rocky genitalia was surreal enough.
The 80s sure put the FF in some weird places...
Alicia with Johnny came out of the Byrne run.
I'm not sure where the She-Thing comes from. I assume that it has something to do with the end of the Thing's solo serie & a resolution to the She-Hulk as a member of the FF that somehow just got away from everyone.
I'm still not sure after volume 2. She reverts to human temporarily in that one. I do recall Ben looking like a porcupine at one point, not sure if that's all connected.
Volume 3 has some of Simonson putting the toys back in the toybox sort of stuff. A resolution of the She-Thing story in Volume 2 just makes sense. I really wonder what was going on between the Byrne and Simonson runs, but I don't care enough to actually look it up.
That said, Volume 3 is pretty awesome. Art Adams + Simonson is just plain fun.
I've got vol. 3 but haven't dug into it yet. Really interested to see the Art Adams issues.
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