Just when you thought you were out they GOOP YA back in Fantastic Four #30. Written by Dan Slott, drawn by Zé Carlos, colored by Jesus Aburtov, and lettered by Joe Caramagna, Fantastic Four #30 (LGY #675) finds the First Family still struggling through Knull’s invasion. Separated, down two members, and trapped on Yancy Street, can The Fantastic Two push back the dark? Let’s find out…
Fantastic Four #30 is an event tie-in comic.
Right up until the moment it isn’t.
I honestly can’t decide what’s more frustrating.
Picking up directly after issue #29 (give or take a few months since this issue was weirdly postponed a few times, but the reason why eludes me in the text), Fantastic Four #30 at least tries to mine some pathos out of the Goopifying. Separated largely thanks to Knull’s attack on New York, Sue and Reed work to shore up Yancy Street’s defenses to keep the tenants and their live-in extended family safe. But how can you keep your family safe from members of your OWN family? Those come in the form of a gooped Johnny and Ben, who attempt to storm Yancy Street and add the collective brains of Yancy into the hordes of Knull.
And some of this stuff works! Unbridled by the Goop, both Ben and Johnny get a chance to level some choice criticisms at their family members. Criticisms like Sue’s need to control them all, explicitized by her constant tracking of the family through their suits and Reed’s cold distance from his loved ones in support of his research. While I still have problems with Slott’s characterization of them (which includes here a wild moment in which Sue tosses infected New Yorkers out of the relative safety of Yancy Street and frames it as “necessary”), this scene in particular at least reveals a teeth to the ‘Knullified” versions of Ben and Johnny that I can truck with, at least for a little bit.
And I say little bit because as soon as it starts, it’s basically over, with Reed and Sue erecting an electric fence to the only open pathway into Yancy Street and sending Johnny and Ben packing toward the finale of King in Black. The issue’s “b-plot” doesn’t fare much better either. Pinned down at the Forever Gate in the ruins of the Baxter Building, Val, Franklin, Bentley-13, and Dragon Man are locked into a defence against Johnny’s new squeeze, Sky. Who, naturally, is covered in slime and screaming villain dialogue.
Again here, Slott gets really close to some good ideas. As the kids scrap and fight and try to activate the Gate, Sky lobs some truth bombs about the sustainability to the Richards’ new found family roster and snaps up Val along with it. Causing HER to start chiding Franklin about his new power set problems.
Not the most groundbreaking of takes in both of the set pieces, but at least it’s enough grist for this character mill amid the trappings of a needless event tie-in. But like the scene with Reed and Sue, it basically just stops only to then awkwardly cut to the aftermath of the King in Black as if barely anything had ever happened at all. And once he does, more of the trite and frankly plagiaristic version of the Fantastic Four he’s been working with starts to rise to the surface. I say the latter because the final exchange between Reed and Ben, them both coming to terms with the “unforgivable” things Ben said under Knull’s thrall, sounds an awful lot like a barely reworded version of The Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald’s famous “Did you think I cared so little for you that betraying me would make a difference?” scene. Which isn’t going to assuage the growing evidence toward Slott’s, let’s say, “borrowing” from his admitted favorite TV show that has “inspired” a number of his works.
Also this scene is in a bar that seems to be called Kavanagh’s? Not…great, Bob.
It isn’t ALL this frustrating however. The artwork of Zé Carlos and Jesus Aburtov (one of my personal favorite colorists) brings a real expression to Fantastic Four #30. One that leans into the now grounded, but often insanely scaled up action that the FF is used to dealing with. Carlos and Arbutov’s take on the Knullified Johnny and Ben are also quite striking as well, providing a neatly twizted mirror version to the kinetically drawn versions of the rest of the family.
But not even some more keen art can make me really excited again for this era of Fantastic Four. Which seems to be topping out at just “frustrating” for me at the moment, even with the high pulp of a goofy event comic (that is now finishing AFTER the event it’s tying into).
Oh, well, at least we have a Wedding to dread now.
Justin Partridge has loved comics all his life. He hasn't quite gotten them to love him back just yet. But that hasn't stopped him from trying as he has been writing about them now for a little over a decade. With bylines at Newsarama, Shelfdust, PanelXPanel, and more, Justin has been doing the work and putting in the time! Comics have yet to return his calls. Usually he can be found on Twitter screaming about Doctor Who.
