Books : Ultimate Fantastic Four Vol. 4: Inhuman

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Rating:

- Both stories get high marks and are excellently penciled
So far the Ultimate Fantastic Four has yet to loose its flair, and with Jae Lee's artistic genius brought on board in this (the fourth) volume it is even more of a delight. More so than other installments in the Marvel Ultimate line, the Fantastic Four is the most clever when it comes to taking a classic Marvel series and bringing its beginnings into the new millennium while remaining as true to its origins as possible.

In Inhuman we get two stories. The first is taken from issues #19-20, and pits the FF against the Ultimate versions of the Mad Thinker and the Android. As our heroes return from their battle with alien horrors from the Negative Zone in Las Vegas, their helicopter is hit with a focused EMP beam as it heads in for a landing at the Baxter Building. After recovering from their crash landing, the FF and their military escort quickly realize that all is not well at their headquarters. It has, in fact, been turned into a death trap by the Mad Thinker, who seems to have an unhealthy fixation on Reed Richards. Not only must the FF get to bottom of what has gone wrong with the Baxter Building, they also have to worry about the fate of the other residents, the potentially deadly experimental devices housed in the various laboratories there, as well as surviving against the Android's deadly orders to exterminate them all.

In the second story, taken from Ultimate FF Annual #1, we get our first look of the Ultimate Inhumans. (Note: Jae Lee also did the penciling for the utterly sublime Marvel Knights: Inhumans series, so this is not his first work the characters.) The Ultimate versions the Inhumans are quite similar to their core Marvel universe counterparts (although Gorgon is now a woman, which seems more fitting for one named Gorgon, and Medusa has much more in common with her mythological inspiration), but it seems as though the Ultimate renditions are less friendly than their mainstream equivalents. Crystal is the first to show, and as it was in the original FF she and the Human Torch share an attraction to one another. There is a problem, though, in that Crystal is to be married to the King's (Blackbolt) wormy brother Maximus. This story is less of a flashy action sequence and more of a look into the spellbinding society of the Inhumans, dealing with the timeless theme of clashing cultures rather than clashing super-beings.

I highly recommend this to any and all, even if you are not a fan of the Fantastic Four or the Ultimate line (but if you are a fan or either or, you simply must check this out). The stories are very well done and the art is superb. The Ultimate Fantastic Four and the Ultimates are quite possibly the two best comics being published by Marvel at this time, and both share the same approach to the Ultimate-concept as well as a good measure of captivating ingenuity.

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