Monday, November 14, 2022

What I Bought 11/9/2022 - Part 2

Winter set in abruptly at the end of last week. High temperature dropped almost 50 degrees (about 25 Celsius for the folks outside the States) between Thursday and Friday. Not so bad, if not for the wind. Oh well, that's winter. I'm curious whether it'll stay cold, or if we'll get the random 75 degree days in December.

Fantastic Four #1, by Ryan North (writer), Iban Coello (artist), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Johnny went and installed a "Groovy" lighting setting in Reed's lab without telling anyone.

Ben and Alicia arrive in a town their GPS says shouldn't be there. A town where people forget they saw them the next day, which leads to more than one attempt by the townsfolk to murder the rock monster. Realizing the town repeats the same day, over and over, Ben and Alicia have to figure out what's causing the time loop.

North and Coello use a page of three panel sequences of Ben or Alicia trying different things to change what people do, in hopes that will break the loop. The third panel in each one has a pinkish glow starting to overtake it from the right side, along with the sound effect that signals the loop resetting. And the panels at the top and bottom of the page are only partially visible, suggesting we're seeing just a few of their many attempts.

They eventually find the person responsible, which leads to another few pages of their attempts to get him not to start the loop. That stuff plays to the similar strengths North used in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, the quick, repeated gags. They eventually succeed, we see how the guy's life progresses from there in another couple of those pages, and the issue ends with Ben and Alicia leaving the town - which didn't vanish after all - and hoping their kids will be back soon. Nice to see that development of them adopting a couple of alien kids didn't get entirely swept under the rug, even if North is sort of sweeping it aside.

North's version of Alicia is more lively than I'm used to. Remember her as being one of the quietly strong types, reserved and calm. This is Alicia makes a few more jokes, her vocabulary is more casual, more modern I guess. It's hard for me to picture any version of her I've read previously referring to someone as "Truck Guy", even if that was what the person called themselves (in this case, it is not.) This is not a complaint. Let Alicia loosen up a bit. She's still good at getting others to open up and able to roll with the strangeness that accompanies Ben's life, so the character is still there, just a different look.

Oh, and also Reed did something that caused a big smoking crater in New York City so everyone is mad at the FF. Wait, is this the same big smoking crater that everyone's mad at Spider-Man for? Isn't that just like Reed Richards, fucking things up and making someone else take the blame for it. That stretchy-armed son of a bitch.

2 comments:

thekelvingreen said...

I'm not reading Amazing Spider-Man or Fantastic Four, but I am intrigued about the big crater and whether it's the same one or two unrelated big craters. Please let us know if/when you find out.

CalvinPitt said...

I'm pretty sure they're different smoking craters, though as far as I know, Zeb Wells still hasn't explained what happened with the one Spider-Man's involved with, or why it made everyone hate him. It's much more important to try and make people believe Norman Osborn's trying to be a good person now, really he is.

But if I stumble across the answers, I'll let you know.