Comics : Comic Reviews : Marvel Comics

Last Updated: Feb 7, 2010 - 19:36:35 PM

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Fantastic Four #572 By Zak Edwards Nov 3, 2009 - 14:51:45 PM Publisher(s): Marvel Comics Writer(s): Jonathan Hickman Penciller(s): Dale Eaglesham Colourist(s): Paul Mounts Letterer(s): Rus Wooton Cover Artist(s): Alan Davis, Mark Farmer & John Rauch. Variant by Eaglesham and Mounts $2.99 US

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In an interview in the back of this month’s issue of Fantastic Four, Jonathan Hickman discusses his goals for this series, where he believes it has gone wrong and where it needs to go under his direction.  He talks about the series needing to get back to the team rather than their adventures and also about a bit of nostalgia about the series and, while these notions are all well and good, I feel Fantastic Four is suffering from what I am going to call Happy Days Syndrome.

Happy Days Syndrome is a reference to the TV show Happy Days which ran in the seventies and eighties about a good old fashioned family in the fifties and the show treated the fifties as the good old days with an air of complete ignorance.   Most people now remember the show for its most famous character, the Fonz.  Now, Happy Days was a lot of fun (the few episodes I have seen) but suffers one major flaw: the fifties were never the good old days.  Domestic violence was in its heyday in the fifties as many women, who had gained some ground during the second world war, were forced, sometimes violently, into the traditional roles they had occupied before the war.  This all resulted in the stereotypical notion of the woman at home and the man ‘bringing home the bacon.’  Of course, domestic bliss is a modern myth which this comic book seems to fully subscribe to.  This issue of Fantastic Four has this problem, complete with the emotionally abused Sue Richards who has the vast pleasure of holding her husband in such high esteem she feels her place is rightfully below him.  The issue did not sit well with me for this reason, and here are examples to put it in perspective.  Sue sits outside Reed’s and gives him a monologue while he prepares to go back and fight with the other hims in another dimension.  He does not react at all to this at all, simply packing up and going back to his self-enforced duty.  As for the monologue, Sue says she isn’t apologizing for what she did when she challenged Reed to actually take a role in raising a household, “not because I was wrong or acted poorly” as she says, but of course she ends up doing this anyways.  She argues she will let him do what he wants, ignore his duties in order to fulfill his own selfish desires, doing “what (Reed) thinks is right.”  I would argue his involvement with a council consisting entirely of different versions of himself would be selfish and narcissistic.  But Sue’s diligent spouse worship and proclaiming she’ll be waiting for him because she hasn’t the strength to leave him simply places her in an inferior role and one she seems completely willing to occupy; the proper fifties housewife, subservient, obedient, and without character.  Which means the final panel must be Sue on her knees looking towards a standing Reed looking like a benevolent messiah.  He is ready to do what is right because he has created what is right and wrong and Sue accepts his morality as her own.  And this is why I hated this issue, it takes a perfectly capable character and shoves her into every chauvinist’s wet dream, rendering her completely incapable, dependent on a man, and, worst of all, makes her like it.  At the very end, with the panel of Sue kneeling at his feet, I wonder if Reed, and Hickman, really knows what it is to be a better man, or if he simply will be around to further enforce his position as patriarch.

Variant Cover

This is all really a shame too considering the amazing run Jonathan Hickman has been on since he got out of the gate.  His independent work is incredible and challenging, Secret Warriors is a lot of fun and punctuated with wonderful dialogue and plenty of spy intrigue, and this run on Fantastic Four has been very good until now, when the story collapses onto sexism through the lens of nostalgia.  Fortunately, the future of the series looks as if it will be much better as Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm go on vacation, unknowingly with Reed and Sue’s children.  Amazing, really, right when Reed has decided to be a good dad, he’s lost the children!

As for the art, Dale Eaglesham is very good.  With a cast consisting mostly of a hundred different Reed Richards, Eaglesham has made each look and feel very different from each other, even if almost all of them have the trademark grey patches.  I think my favourite has got to be the extremely fat Reed Richards who looks like the Blob with the grey hair.  All the characters do seem to have furrowed brows for all occasions except for happiness, but this sort of nitpicking takes away from a overall good job.  Also, Eaglesham seems to love Reed Richards looking quite buff and sporting some very sexy five o’clock shadow  His action sequences are easy to follow and well constructed.  I also really enjoyed the shift in colour scheme by Paul Mounts with the flashback sequences.  They do have the romantic, more earthy palette, but work just the same.  I could do without the awful pink of the panel with the caption “a better husband,” being far too stereotypical.  Overall, however, Eaglesham delivered an issue that looks mostly good despite the content.

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