Ultimate Fantastic Four is a title on the bubble. I'm really closing to dropping it. The recent zombies storyline did nothing for me and now we're in the middle of introducing Ultimate Namor, who, shocker, may not actually be identical to Regular Namor.
Part of the problem right now is Greg Land's art, which is stunningly good. It's far too good for this sort of work, which sounds like a stupid "comics-is-lower-art" type of condemnation. The issue is that, because of his soft, photo-realistic style, the characters never seem to interact on the page. Everybody looks like he used an issue of Cosmo for photo reference. They're all pin-ups. Land is an excellent pin-up artist, but not a convincing sequential art artist. His characters are all impossibly beautiful (even Reed!), so beautiful that you get lost in a sea of good-looking faces that reduces down to visual static. Drawing gorgeous faces all the time makes it difficult to portray a wide variety of expressions, which is where Land's skill truly falls short in a comic format. His characters look great when all they have to do is pose for a cover. For comparision, Alex Ross paints in a photo-realistic style using plenty of live human references, but he can pull off the subtle characterization that Land lacks. Not that I'm putting Ross on a pedestal, because I think that guy is criminally over-exposed these days. All things being equal, I'm glad to have two such gifted artists working full time for "our side," rather than doing commercial art hackwork in a greeting card chopshop somewhere.
But take a look at Dr. Storm, supposedly Sue and Johnny's long lost mother. Does she look old enough to have raised (partially) the two children flanking her? More importantly, do Sue and Johnny look like children if we accept the MILF there as the age/looks ratio baseline? To further dissociate the reader's reality from the comic's reality, Young WB Namor refers to Dr. Storm as a "wrinkled old trout." Not on this artist's watch, she isn't.
My other problem with Ultimate FF is that it's not different enough from Boring Old Marvel U. Now, I don't mind that the entire title has been an excuse to "update" the entire FF pantheon without treading on the sacred continuity of the original series, since that one is still being separately published. (Which is, more or less, the mantra of the entire Ultimate Marvel line... great for new readers and all that.) It's not like I particularly care about the Ultimate Universe; I'm not following any other Ultimate book. I just like the Fantastic Four and it is kinda cool to revisit the classic Kirby/Lee concepts. Are all the Ultimate titles just an ongoing retread of 40-year-old storylines hipified for OC fans?
The original concept of the Ultimate FF was to turn them into Power Pack. IE, they're all considerably younger than the "real" Four. And a lot of how they set up the title in the early issues makes a lot of sense... as compared to all the junk science of the 1960s FF origin with space planes and cosmic rays. But, bottom line, the only character changed for Ultimate purposes was Reed. You could take artwork of Ben, Johnny or Sue from any issue of UFF, place it side-by-side against art from regular FF or Marvel Knights 4 (the two canon FF titles) and nobody would know the difference. Because, as shown currently by Greg Land, those kids is damn hot. He's not entirely to blame, because the supposedly older versions running around in the other books are always drawn damn hot as well, especially Sue, as is the lot of female characters in comic books. Doesn't matter how many children she has or how many wedding anniversaries she and Reed celebrate, Sue will remain untouchably hot.
But Reed? Ultimate Reed is a geeky, gawky teen, glasses and all. And unlike the other three, he is definitely drawn to look different from classic Reed. They are, visually at least, two distinct characters. I'm sure this was done to try to make Reed Richards interesting... because as writer Peter David astutely noted, no one ever likes Reed.
I'm equally as sure that when UFF was born, the book was under strict orders to keep the Thing looking like the Thing. When it started, the big Fantastic Four movie was well underway, and today's comics are very keen to avoid confusion between characters and their licensed, merchandised and adapted counterparts. Why do you suppose DC re-launched the Titans book with almost exactly the same team as the Teen Titans cartoon?
One thing is keeping me on Ultimate FF: Galactus. They're coming around to doing an Ultimate Galactus story very soon and I have to assume that UFF will be a big part in it.
