Title: Chapter One: First Contact
Published by: Marvel
Writer: Akira Yoshida
Pencils: Pat Lee
Backgrounds: Edwin Garcia
Inker: Rob Armstrong
Colors: Stu Ng w/ Alan Wang & Ramil Sunga
Letters: Dave Sharpe
Publisher: Dan Buckley
There was a time that I didn’t curse the name Chris Claremont. There was a time when I didn’t yearn to ask him to watch a twelve hour marathon of Adult Swim so he may have some aspect of how kids today think. Maybe Adult Swim is a bad idea, but you get my drift… and yes, I’m leading up to a point.
Claremont wrote the first Fantastic Four vs. X-Men. That was what a crossover story was about! Fun, great characterization, and a kick ass story that makes sense to be told in the realm of the Fant 4 and the X-Men. So now, Akira Yoshida (Thor: Son of Asgard) is going to give his spin on what happens when Marvel’s First Family meets up with the folks who live in a world that hate and fear them. Be prepared, because after you read this… YOU WILL NEVER… EVER…BE THE SAME.
(the last sentence was written with an air of sarcasm… thank you.)
Story!
Some folks have gotten stuck on a space station and the Fantastic Four are the guys to get em’ out. There, in complete totality, is your premise. Why do they need the X-Men? Cerebra of course! Reed wants to take Cerebra, reinvert its flux capacitors so it checks out human biosignatures to see if anyone’s alive on the station. Now, every science fiction show ‘I’VE’ ever seen, they’ve had long range scanners and all of that. Doesn’t Reed? Come on, I guarantee if you go back and read through some of those old yarns the man has scanned SOMETHING in his life.
Anyway, this first issue encompasses them heading off into space, and finding out that there are indeed people alive up there. So where does the ‘VS’ come in? You might think it doesn’t, given the story is just plainly called ‘X4’ but it does in ways unreasonable. For some apparent reason, when the Fantastic Four knock on the door (even the X-Men comment that using a phone might have been useful), Wolverine opens the door and he and the Thing start fighting. Why?! You might think that it’s just a playful joke between them, that’s fine until they won’t stop and it seems to be a bit more violent. The ensuing battle is both useless and pandering all at once.
So, are there any merits to the book? Yes.
Art!
I like Pat Lee and Dreamwave. There’s your merit. Sadly, even this isn’t up to their best – as Emma and Sue look like sisters, and some of the proportions of face are off at times. Other than that, excellent stuff that immediately makes you think of an animated cartoon, and I like comics that make me seem them and feel them in a more animated sense. That’s the point to some degree, right? Seeing all that action in the gutters?
Overall!
Akira Toshida is worrying me a bit. I’m not a Thor guy, but I heard it was tepid. This story is below tepid, and in a few months Akira’s handling the Age of Apocalypse crossover (which I am looking forward to a lot.) If this is what he is planning on handing in at the end of a day, he honestly could get away with not. This is just going to go down as a forgettable story, which is its second merit – if the world of comics didn’t have stuff like this that felt forced and boring, we wouldn’t be able to truly enjoy the excellent books that come out occasionally.
