Sunday, October 24, 2021

Sunday Splash Page #189

 
"Another Fine Mess Ben's Gotten Himself Into," in Fantastic Four: Grimm Noir, by Ron Garney and Gerry Duggan (storytellers), Matt Milla (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

This one-shot came out just last year, right before the pandemic shut a lot of stuff down. Ben Grimm has been having nightmares, and thinks they might be connected to the disappearance of a neighbor across the street. He ends up having to fight D'Spayre to rescue the neighbor and himself.

I have no idea why this exists, or why it was released when it was. If it ties in to something important from the Dan Slott Fantastic Four run it's concurrent with, or anything like that. Maybe Duggan and Garney just wanted to do a story about Ben fighting his fears. Lot of creative teams have gotten mileage out of that.

Most of the issue is drenched in black. Like there's a single spotlight focused on whatever we're seeing, so everything else is obscured. It's raining constantly. Ben's eyes are either in a shadow cast by his brow, or the white of the eyes themselves is colored black, so that the blue stands out even more. There's a bit of Joe Kubert in Garney's artwork, in the angle of the faces or some of the scratchy lines he uses. Moreso when he gets to draw Ben as a human, rather than when the story focuses on bizarre creatures and body horror (nothing too graphic, depending on how you feel about a rock guy falling to pieces.)

Like I said, seemingly inessential, but as far as random one-shots go, not bad.

No comments: