The
Fantastic Four Cinematic Experience has been rebooted more times that my crappy
Commodore 64 computer was rebooted back in the 80s; the era of floppy discs and Q Bert. I don’t why it’s so hard to make a
great FF Movie, seems like all the elements are there for a homerun flick.
Perhaps it’s because every time we’ve seen The Thing in a FF movie we kind of
snort laugh. They’ve never gotten The Thing right, it always makes me think ‘Oh
that’s some sort of wacky polyurethane suit with glued on tchotchkes with an
actor in it’. The scripts have also always been downright bleccch.
So
it was with bated excitement that I was watching this new FF team of actors
come together. So far it looked like they had knocked each one out of the park.
I mean, the dude from ‘The Bear’ the
greatest TV Show of 2023 (Ebon Moss-Burt-Bacharach) was an interesting choice.
Is the Thing just going to be saying Cousin all of the time? Despite his lanky
appearance I can totally see Ebon inhabiting the role of Ben Grimm so at this
point it’s only a matter of them finally getting The Thing appearance right.
And then, there’s Reed Richards…
Oy.
He, for some reason, was the last missing piece and, well, I think they fucked
it up. It is Marvisney, to be expected. Pedro Pascal is not Reed Richards.
Period. I’ve not been enamored by Double P’s work. I thought he was straight up
cheezy in the WW84 film and as far as Mando? He had a helmet on the entire time
and pretty much delivered his lines monotone. But even if he was absolutely
amazing in everything the dude is not Reed. Reed is an emotionally detached
genius of logic and reasoning; a Spock-like character. Pedro is none of those
things. I mean, I’m sure he can act the part, but his Reed will probably clasp
Johnny on the shoulder after a mission, squeeze his trapezius and look him in his
eyes and say ‘You did your best, hey, let’s grab a beer’. There is a warmth and
congeniality of Pedro that I don’t think he can turn off. Perhaps I’ll be
wrong. I hope he proves me wrong. But at first blush my thought is:
Noooooooooooo!!!!
Let’s
get into some books that I dove headfirst into.
Okay, after a mnyeh nothing special first issue this book officially jumped
the fuck off and got wow. Damn, Bendis is a bad ass, what can I say. He just
really knows how to rope you in and make you go ‘Wait, what the fuck is going
to happen here?’ even if the premise isn’t amazing and even if you’re not
invested in the lead. Halfway through the second issue I was pondering whether
or not I should drop the book even though I love the masterful duo of Maleev
and Bendis and before I knew I got hit with, ‘let’s put a fictional squad
together based on some old squad dynamics’ and I got reeled in like a Marvel
suit being offered a mound of coke in exchange for hiring a shitty editor.
A very unsatisfying thud of an ending to what was turning out to be a
really well developed premise, at least for the first 4 issues. I feel like
there’s about 3 or 4 issues left but it’s over. I’ll spoil it for you so you
won’t have to waste your money on this. A chick is like, ‘Yo where my parents
at? They went to this Virtual AI spot or something and now they’re gone’. Some
nerdy tech dudes are like, ‘let’s make an AI Dude and you can control him to
find your Mom and Pop Dukes in AI Land’. She’s like ‘Bet’ The AI Dude travels
into AI Land and it’s wild and wacky and looks like Europe but with no people.
Eventually he finds their parents and the dude they thought was a villain,
isn’t. The chick is like ‘Yo, what the fuck?’ and her dad is like ‘Yo, it’s all
good, we’re working with the AI Villain dude to create some ill ass fonky
shit’. Maybe Issue 6 is where they send what they found from the year 3400 to
Apple and that’s why we have these creepy AF Vision Pro wackjobs wandering
around swiping their fingers in mid air at shit only they can see.
I wanted to pull a Psaki and circle back to Issue 5 of Dubz because it
was nagging at me. So, all the ‘secondary nobody gives a damn about you Wonder
Babes not named Wonder Woman’ are like, ‘Hey we want to help you fight the
entire US Govt and the wacky loser DC characters that were sitting in a iMac
hard drive from 2003 up until last month'. So Dubz is like ‘Okay, challenge my
legit hero ass!’ So the Hot Latina Wonder Babe challenges her to bows and
arrows. Now that’s perfectly fine and makes sense. Then the blonde Midwest
Wonder Chick challenges Dubz to, wait for it, arm wrestling! Now hear me out on
this, what if instead of some boring ass arm wrestling challenge Dubz and Dubz
Jr had a Slap Fight! C’mon! Dude. Two Thunder Amazon Babes slapping the shit
out each other while Redman’s Slap the Shit Out Ya is playing. You know damn
well that this comic would be going for $80 on eBay like that Bat Cock book
that was put out years ago.
Next,
the final challenge is the Gen Z Dubz Doppelganger (I seriously could not tell
who was who her) challenges Dubz, wait for it, to video games! Are you fucking
kidding me??? So she’s challenges her to some Street Fighter game except it’s
Batman vs Superman and Dubz takes Supes. Well of course, Supes wins but if I’m
a Gen Z Gamer and I wanna beat Dubz at video why on earth would I challenge her
to a fight game? Dude, challenge her to something like Madden! You telling me
Dubz knows what a jet sweep is??? A flea flicker? Trips right? A fair catch?
Look, I could beat Wonder Woman in Madden and I’m not even that good at it.
Serious dropping of the ball here by King.
Took this creative team six months to pop out #4 of this 6 issue
vignette series about Jazz. I don’t know what it is with the recent surge in
‘Hey, let’s take six months off of this comic’. It’s been happening in the
industry at an alarming frequency. Usually it means they bit off more than they
could chew, they’re whooped, or they have other shit going on. Maybe it’s like
the NBA and Comic Creators need load management. Whatever the case may be it
doesn’t always result in triumphant returns. More often that not it results in
a mediocre to blah to yuck comic. In the case of Deep Cuts #4 it wasn’t that it was bad by any stretch of the
imagination, but, I dunno, it felt a little off compared to the initial 3
issues. The narrative was a bit disjointed and hard to follow. I get what they
were trying to do with the interviews and timeline jumping, but it was muddy.
Look, jumping around timelines and going back and forth is not an easy task.
Still, it’s beautiful to look at and I appreciate the subject matter so I’m
down for the final 2 issues, but, yeah, this one was mnyeh.
If you’re a burgeoning comic book writer and you’d like a primer on how
to develop a series and hook a reader from the start and at the end of each
issue then I highly suggest you buy up all of the Jeff Lemire comics you can
find. Seriously, you can forgo paying for any MasterClass or online seminar;
just read Jeff. It doesn’t matter what the premise is or how wacky it might
get, and man does it get fucking wacky, he’ll have a hook your brain that’ll
compel you to see what happens next; without fail. Once you get into a Lemire
book you never drop it, ever. He’s the master.
I actually started to write a full on deep dive review of this book. I got it at the
last minute as I saw reviewers were frothing at the mouth over it. I will say,
yeah, the art is really lovely, but when I got to the end – just wasn’t feeling
like I wanted to continue. Same thing happened with the review, I just wasn’t
motivated to finish it. It’s like you go on a date with a chick and she’s cute,
has the same interests, laughs at your jokes, doesn’t seem crazy, yet after you
drop her off you’re already wondering who you’re going to go out with next.
Nothing wrong with her, she just doesn’t give you the ‘Wow’. Now your platonic female friend who wears bandanas, listens to Solfeggio frequency music and has 3 cats will say,
give her a chance, get to know her, let it unfold and I’ll say:
‘Coffee Dates
cost $25 in LA these days, fonk dat!’.
My goodness this was a fucking amazing comic.
Period.
Happy Reading!
- IB
No comments:
Post a Comment