FANTASTIC FOUR: GRAND DESIGN TREASURY EDITION

At best, X-Men: Grand Design felt like a cohesive narrative that ran through the history of the X-Men. At worst, it felt like a rundown of events without context that don't really relate together. X-Men works because it feels like the former more than the latter. FF fails for the opposite reason. After reading X-Men: GD, I felt like I had a better understanding of the team and characters and a clearer overview of their long history. I don't feel that at all about FF.I like the art, and the format's fantastic, but this book reads like a less informative wiki page.Panel 1: Dr. Doom showed up!Panel 2: Then they beat him! Thing: "Clobbered him up"Panel 3: Fin Fang Foom shows up!Panel 4: Then they beat him! Human Torch: "Hot enough for ya?"It's just like that, for 12 panels a page, all book long. A series of context free encounters that shows little change or evolution of the characters. It gets a little interesting when it takes dips out of canon to explore some of Scioli's own ideas, but these moments are few and far between until we hit the frankly jarring ending.It's a shallow exploration of the FF's classic history with pretty art. I feel like if you are a big fan of classic FF, you might really love this. As a casual fan, I just found it tedious. I respect it for the amount of work Scioli must have put into it, but the end result just isn't a fun read.

I really enjoyed the X-Men Grand Design so picked this up as well.As with the X-Men, there is some re-writing of history from the original run of the comics which I didn't love but it was fine.The big issue was trying to cram so much history in such a short space.A large story line was often covered in a single panel but it didn't make sense if you didn't already know what happened. Maybe that was the goal but it seemed too compacted.

There’s some things that left me scratching my head, like the things I didn’t recall when I originally read some of these stories growing up, some bits were changed around to make it a little more current but it still had a retro feel to it. I’d say it was an overall a fun read, and a nice way to catch it with marvels first family.

Gr8

All hail the King. Kirby & Lee done to a T. Distills FF to it’s purest form and Jacks it into out veins like melted crayon wax. Forces the life back into the original insane characterizations of our fearless freedom fighting Fab4 & never forgets the fantastic fun!

This week travelling for work, I finished reading the FF: Grand Design Treasury Edition by Tom Scioli. Oh my God, this was such a fun book! I totally ate up the odd, snarky & subversive way it portrayed/retold some of the early FF issues. Such a deliciously fun reading! Highly recommended! Spoilers below, of some things I found particularly fun, hilarious, and/or interesting:"Sue Storm, high society grifter" LOL Sue straight up stole a $10M diamond necklace, and ran off invisible. It was hinted this was a Skrull but not overtly clarified.Ben (to Johnny bemoaning the loss of Crystal), "Cheer up, kid, dames like her are a dime a dozen".Ben attacking Galactus in the face: "BASH, BASH, BASH" then over comes Torch and just lights his entire head ablaze.When Doom takes the Silver Surfer's power ... Sue: "Oh no! What will we do now??" Reed (hand covering his face): "Nothing, the world belongs to DOOM now!"Reed is made out to be aloof and absent, and Sue regularly pines for the more normal acting Namor.Franklin is actually Namor's kid, not Reed's. Reed's expression after walking in on Sue/Namor after returning from Battleworld is priceless!Johnny in a 4 way make out session on Galactus' ship with Crystal, Medusa, Alicia/Lyja ... totally priceless!And a million other little things.The book is told in a very dense 25-panel grid page style layout. Some original FF issues' worth of story are frequently told in 1-2 panels ("some alien kid showed up, we beat him"), whereas others (Galactus, the Inhumans, Black Panther intros, etc.) all take up a full page or two. Then finally the last couple of pages of the book cover the FF era from roughly 1987 post-Battleworld thru the end of the series with Franklin in the far future. It was almost like Scioli was like "Oops! Gotta wrap this up, I'm almost out of pages" but it's totally great.Obviously this book is aimed squarely at long time readers familiar with the FF, and any new reader would find the dense storytelling nature of the book a turn-off, but for old school Marvel fans, this book is a must! A+++++++

If you loved X-Men: Grand Design and wanted to see it applied to another franchise then prepare to be disappointed with this one. This book felt rushed and is especially noticeable in the art

I just recently reread a large swathe of the original run via Marvel's Greatest Comics and Triple Action reprints and then I went back and gave Scioli's book another go-round; I liked it even better than my first read. He captures the imagination machine that was the Kirby Lee book but he also weaves in some great story elements that give the whole piece some needed shape to function as one cohesive work.