Marvel 2000 - REVIEW: Ultimate Fantastic Four # 1-4

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Dec 27, 2009, 10:46pm

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Topic: REVIEW: Ultimate Fantastic Four # 1-4 (Read 36 times)

Meriades Rai
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REVIEW: Ultimate Fantastic Four # 1-4
« Thread Started on Jun 29, 2009, 5:48am »

Are you reading this series?

A confession. I’ve never read anything by Neil Gow before, and I’m guessing I’m in the minority there; he was around the scene a long time before me, to my knowledge, and on the occasions where I’ve heard his name mentioned it’s always with respect. However, I don’t think I’ve seen Ultimate Fantastic Four get any coverage anywhere and that’s a terrible shame - because whilst M2K Zombies is one of the best fanfic titles I’m reading at the moment (see other review), UFF trumps it.

This series is THE best fanfic series I’ve read in the past year or so.

Part of the joy in reading any title that takes familiar characters and feeds them into the re-imagining engine is that you can never be sure quite what’s going to come out the funnel at the other end. Because UFF is so dependent on the gradual exploration of its four principal characters I’m not going to spoil any of the surprises in this review, I’m just going to say that everything - every single thing - that Neil attempts here comes off, and the characters at the heart of it all are so skilfully and cleverly realised that by the end of issue #4 they’re not just updated ciphers of their traditional counterparts (as is the case with Marvel’s Ultimate line) they’re standalone, three-dimensional figures in their own right. It takes a special kind of writing to be able to take a character like Reed Richards, who has been moulded to a standard template for 50 years, and cherry-pick all the interesting facets and then twist them in such a way that the end result is, bluntly, more interesting than the original version in so many ways. In four issues.

This is a very intricate and reflective series. There’s action, although not a river of it by any means, and there’s intrigue and moral conflict aplenty, but at the core of every issue there’s incredible depth of character. Neil isn’t afraid to write about people rather than superheroes, and I love that. It doesn’t matter what these characters can do, it’s all about who they are and how they got there. Obviously now that introductions have been made I can see the tensions ratcheting up a notch or three but this low-key opening arc is daring and commendable, especially the astonishing delicacy of the Sue Storm introduction. We haven’t seen much of her yet (no pun intended; or, well, okay, maybe there was. Sorry. :-X

) but I’m sure Sue’s going to be my favourite character as the series develops.

All this and I haven’t even alluded to the shrewdness of the plot, and the sub-plots, and the peripheral characters… and I’ve barely touched on the professional and talented writing itself, which achieved the rare feat of absorbing me utterly from start to finish. Most writing - fanfic and books - I can pick up and put down at leisure. Not this time. I was simply enthralled - although I should point out my one and only criticism here, in that issue #4 the dialogue was less polished than in previous issues and probably needed a further read-through to catch a number of lines of stiff-upper-lippishness that would have read better with contractions. A couple of times it was Singaporeans speaking with stilted English, I guess, but Reed was suddenly very ‘proper’ on occasion as well. Honestly, though, I can’t pick holes in anything else.

I know that some readers aren’t fussed with alternate reality or re-imagined titles because their love is for the original characters, and I understand that. However, if you make any exception to that rule, let it be this title. It’s a grand work of fiction in itself, with characters who are remarkably well-crafted and meaningful and with an intelligent, modern plot, and it’s the kind of series that makes serious fanfic such a pleasure to read. Give it a try, you really won’t be sorry.

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neil
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Re: REVIEW: Ultimate Fantastic Four # 1-4
« Reply #1 on Jun 29, 2009, 11:31am »

Gosh!

Well ... thank you for the glowing review Meri. I'm finding it quite hard to find things to say apart from well ...

Gosh!

OK, enough of the false modesty. I'm thrilled that you are enjoying UFF. It was a big departure in style and format for me. Additionally, as I am sure Dave will atest, I was not in a massive hurry to write deep MU fanfic when he groomed/recruited me for the title. So I really wanted to try something radically different from the high-drama, massive subplots, galaxy spanning stuff I have been doing in Green Lantern.

I believe UFF#1 was post-Watchmen movie writing and I definitely had a nasty vibe on when I conceived the series. I didn't just want to Ultimatize the characters, I wanted to twist them until they begged for mercy, and then twist some more. I view the series far more as a MU version of the Doom Patrol in some ways.

I think its traditional at this point to offer up some hints as to what is to come. #5 (which is lying in bits on the laptop at the moment, like a disembowled corpse waiting for animation) will outline the major story arc of the book from the perspectives of Reed and General Storm and provide the epilogue for the first arc.

After that, we will be travelling to Wundagore and Transia and paying a visit to the Circus Maximus, which will be the 'Ultimate Inhumans' storyline and then ... well, we'll see where that takes us, shall we?

Thanks once again!

Neil

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