One of my biggest laments about comic books is that people seem to think that storylines can only be status quo-changing, world-shaking stories. Everything has to be in constantly forward motion, and fun little stories that don’t have some great consequence are relegated to miniseries. That’s the case with Fantastic Four: True Story, written by Paul Cornell, the author of the Captain Britain and MI: 13 series, and drawn by Horacio Dominguez. The premise is interesting: something is fiddling with the realm of fiction, so Reed invents a fictocraft to take them into that realm to figure things out. With the help of Willie Lumpkin, the Fantastic Four’s mail carrier, and his niece, Billie, they travel into the fictional realm.
When they get in, they discover that Nightmare, the evil lord of Dreams, is trying to take over the realm of fiction, since dreams and fiction are very close together. Along with the three sisters from Sense and Sensibility, as well as the character Dante from the Divine Comedy, the Fantastic Four have to figure out how to combat Nightmare’s evil. The most interesting idea is that, because it is the realm of fiction, the fictional people’s ideas of how the Fantastic Four should be shapes them. Ben loses his powers and becomes a soldier, for example. The whole idea is cute, fun, and non-status quo-altering. The whole series is a good read, despite not being “the best FF story ever.” I think that writers should take a cue from stories like this. Not that they will. But hey, I tried. Oh, and for those people who take a look at my blog: go ahead and comment! I won’t bite. Much.
Plot: 8.5 Art: 8.2 Dialogue: 8.8 Overall: 8.6
