Fantastic Four by Ryan North vol. 2: Four Stories About Hope

Vol. 1 wasn’t quite the home run I was expecting for the start of this talented writer’s run.  However, the promise of seeing North tackle Doctor Doom was more than enough to get me to come back for this volume.  So how’d he do?  Pretty good with an issue that starts off as clever misdirection before having the good Doctor try his hand at tackling the core issue of this series:  Sending Franklin and Valeria Richards, along with an entire block of New York City one year into the future to save it from Annihilus.  Doom thinks he could’ve handled it better and, uh… the results are more interesting for what they say about his character than the story he’s trying to solve.  Which is fine as it’s a great analysis of the character’s ego and gives artist Iban Coello a lot of time-travel craziness to draw.

As for the stories in the rest of the volume?  They’re solid enough.  We get a two-parter focusing on Sue Storm and Alicia Masters-Grimm as they encounter a community with memory problems that has a very sinister cause.  It leads to some clever (arguably too clever) uses of Sue’s powers, and Alicia’s artistic skills that provest to be a better showcase for Ivan Fiorelli’s artistic skills than the previous volume.  The concluding volume is good science-friendly fun as Ben Grimm first has to deal with an annoying dog that has adopted him as her master, and then with his house falling through a bottomless pit.  The resolution to this story won’t surprise anyone, but it’s enjoyable to see the Thing break out his science brain to save the day.

The best story in this volume, however, puts the title characters in a supporting role.  It starts us off on an alien ship as we observe the sole active members of their crew as a new one is awakened once every century.  They’re being menaced by strange creatures from outside the ship, but are they really here to harm this ship?  The sci-fi conceit in this story is the hardest, and arguably most fun to wrap one’s head around in this volume, and it’s graced by some enticingly dark art from Leandro Fernandez.  So while North’s “Fantastic Four” may not be hitting on the level that I was hoping it would be, the good stuff is still enough to keep me onboard with what the writer has in store for future stories.