The fourth entry in the Ultimate Fantastic Four series was mostly of the ungood. The first half of the surprisingly short book revolved around a character whose plot and disposal were both extremely predictable if you’re familiar with the Mad Thinker from the FF’s original run, but who appeared to be annoying and pointless if you aren’t. And the the second half was even more of the same, as though the only purpose of the series is to hit all the highlights from the 1960s version. And as much as I’ve complained about the Ultimate X-Men run, they’ve never once seemed blandly formulaic. On top of which, the art reminded me of someone who was not very talented trying to copy the character-style of Girls (which style you will no doubt recall I already found unsatisfactory) combined with repetitive backgrounds and heavy reliance on “characters in shadow”, as though the strain of cranking out such minimalistic-yet-bad art got to be too much, and only having to do shaded in outlines on some pages was a rest break from that.
On the bright side, none of the other books have seemed this bad, so there’s every chance that the quality will swing right back up again? (Plus, you know, the art may have unfairly lowered my overall opinion of the volume. If anything, I hope that’s true.)
I found them to get better once Carey took over (the next volume basically). They never get super-great, but they’re pretty good.
I’m completely okay with that, as it’s how I’ve considered the earlier volumes to be as well. Carey did the Inhumans storyline in this, but he’d have to work really hard to destroy the goodwill he’s got with me after two volumes of Lucifer.
Yeah, for me basically the arc is that Warren Ellis did decent but not all that impressive work, then Mark Millar came in and sucked, and then Carey made it feel like an Ultimate version of the Fantastic Four should feel.
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