What I Bought 4/1/2025 - Part 3

Between last month's used book sale and Playstation's various deals for cheap, short games, I've got Thursday posts done all the way to the end of May already. It's nice. But I don't have anything for today yet, so let's get the reviews of these two books from March in the can!

Fantastic Four #30, by Ryan North (writer), Cory Smith (penciler), Oren Junior (inker), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Yes, we all see the obvious joke about getting Ben's rocks off. Take it as given and let's move on.

In the main mini-series, Doom cured Ben Grimm of being the Thing, permanently. For real. No foolin'. We're serious this time. This issue is focused on Ben trying to come to grips with it, since he'd apparently stopped being mad at Reed and gotten comfortable this way.

Or maybe he just got comfortable being super-strong and tough, because when his attempt to stop he and Alicia from getting mugged in an alley ends up with him bleeding out a hole in his hand, and the mugger getting caught by a Doombot, Ben decides this can't stand. So he asks the Puppet Master to fix him. Not turn him into the Thing physically, but make him the guy in his head that he thinks the Thing is. Confident and happy and fun. That is not how I would describe the Thing over the vast majority of his 60+ years of existence, but I guess it's how he sees the situation now.

(Which feels like it implies some still unresolved issues about his being the Thing in the first place, that he's either ignoring his extensive past of being angry/bitter/depressed, or retroactively re-framing it.)

Alicia catches on by dinner the first night (nice touch by Cory Smith to show one of the ghost dinosaurs Reed and Johnny released on Halloween browsing on a tree outside their house) and confronts her dad. Who says he molded a Ben Grimm model, but left it to Ben to decide what to do with it. Alicia assures Ben this isn't the way to go about things, there's some crying, some hugging, things of that nature. Also, I didn't realize Alicia used Puppet Master's own clay against him to make him give his blessing to her marrying Ben. That's not great, though I don't necessarily blame her for not trusting him (and neither does he, apparently.)

I guess this is the approach North is going to take for the remainder of the book's run. Doom does something in the main mini-series, the ongoing series dives into the cast's reactions to it. Is it gonna work? Eh, this issue was OK, but "Ben wants to be The Thing again because he thinks that's what Alicia needs," is especially well-worn ground by now.

The Surgeon #3, by John Pence (writer), Stan Yak (artist), Pinkk3r (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - What did he do, make that codpiece from the radiator of an old Buick?

The marauding hordes are inside the walls, what's left to do but fight? The surgeon's doing her part, but she has a little trouble with the wall of meat on the cover there. But the former soldier, Rogers, got to the armory, and with a rifle in his hands, it's the work of a couple of shots to put him down. Unfortunately, by this point, that's just a small skirmish in the battle, so Pence and Yak show what's going on elsewhere, the people of the fort fighting for their lives and homes with whatever skills that got. You got a blacksmith with a big hammer? Swing it. You know chemicals? Make some bombs.

(I was a little thrown that Pence has Hanover shout, 'Come at me, Bro!' during the fight. Not the confidence it shows, but the first two issues had given me a picture of her as the taciturn sort of badass, who quietly goes about their killing.)

The enemy withdraws, but doesn't leave entirely. Which means the locals are pinned inside their fort, with their livestock. Which, as Dr. Hanover notes, is a good way to get a lot of people sick from cholera or something worse. So the locals come up with the idea of having Hanover deliver a case of "opium" (actually warfarin, an anti-coagulant used as rodenticide) to the Hot Animal Machines, as a peace offering? Hanover notes that's kind of dirty, but agrees. Too bad the remaining members of the gang aren't complete idiots, and Hanover's relying on an increasingly strung-out Rogers to cover her with his rifle.

Yak is penciler/inker for this issue, and his style is rougher than Dolan's was. More cross-hatching and light sketch-like lines. Tends to save those details for close-up panels, and simplify things when he backs the P.O.V. away. The thinner lines also seem to make Hanover look younger. Not like a teen, but I'd say early 20s, at least. Face is smoother, lines around the eyes and mouth are gone or less noticeable most of the time. Dolan's art had me thinking she was at least in her 30s, if not early 40s. Didn't seem out of the question if she'd been wandering 15 years after getting out of med school.