3 out of 5

So, credit where it’s due – Waid’s run on FF was one of the first comics that got me back into buying single issues.  At the time (2004?), I was not expecting the upped level of character consequence and social awareness that showed up in his ‘Unthinkable’ storyline, my comparison point the zippy memories I had of 80s Spider-Man.  But this was also my first exposure to a book I would give up mid-run, after my budget ballooned to a basket worth of books per week, I realized I wasn’t really caring about what happened to the family of adventurers, and so I let it drop.  I would be brought back by a winning concluding 4-issue arc featuring Galactus, but even coming back to that, now, it lacks a bit of punch.

With much more awareness of Waid and comics in general, I see this book for what it was – fractured.  It started with Mark and artist Mike Wieringo trying to bring it back to its ‘World’s Greatest Magazine’ fantastic tagline and reinvigorate an aging book into the original pitch of a family of imaginauts.  And it gets off to a good start, very comic booky.  Ringo is perfectly suited to the approach, and Waid loves having a Johnny Storm / Thing dynamic for his puns and gags, plus Waid’s goofy imagination lends itself to the kinds of wackiness the FF should get involved in.  The dramatics – Franklin feels ignored, Reed struggles with guilt – are a bit hammy, but this also goes with the tone as well as with the big two publishers in general, who push soapy drama of that nature and have for yeeears.  But a few issues in, something goes awry.  Now the ‘Unthinkable’ arc is what got me hooked – Doom swaps to magic over science and kicks the family’s patoot and victory comes at the price of ‘permanent’ scarring for Reed as well as a loss of confidence in his ability to protect his family – but when you read Waid’s run from book one, the swap to suddenly serious is, well, sudden.  Still, taken alone, it’s a winning story and makes an ancient villain threatening once more.  But then we have to transition back to being goofballs for a bit (with a sub-in artist), and it sits uncomfortably with Waid’s two issue attempts at moving the family through post traumatic stress in their own ways.   Lingering plotlines?  Let’s bring in the bold and striking and totally anatomically off art of Howard Porter to over-angst a 6 issue story where Reed tries to become president of Latveria.  Again, to immature comic book me, this read as a major event, but now I see the back-pedaling inherent in the writing, Waid trying to bring the book back to a stasis so he can leave it in the same state in which he arrived.  This is common practice, but I dunno, I guess it would’ve worked better if he had just stuck with either being silly or being serious.

There’s a totally 90s arc from Karl Kesel with Waid, and then the Galactus tale, which feels, in part, a tribute to the big man’s origin (Ringo’s art matches Kirby’s almost panel for panel), but then also a goodbye from Waid to rub in our face the fun he could’ve had with the title… Suggesting maybe there were some editorial background decisions guiding plotting (we were interrupted by a pointless Avengers Disassembled crossover for three issues…).  Adding to the overall troubled feeling of the book is the inclusion, initially, of a letters page that disappears as soon as the tone changes.  When things get back to “normal,” the page comes back, but it feels heavily censored, cherry picked just for pointless “I like your book!” e-mails that aren’t responded to with any merit.

Yar.  From start to finish, it’s a better than average run, but it’s also indicative of how hard it is to take over a book and just have your way with it.  It seems that Marvel has been smarter about it over the last few years, but things are always changin’ at the big two, so who knows.  It’s a little more hammy than Waid’s JLA run, simply due to the family dynamic, but stands equal to it in terms of enjoyable comicness.