“Understudy Rumble” – July 2008
It turns out that Marvel Adventures comics are a real hoot and this issue of their Fantastic Four title is no exception. The line is predicated on the idea of having a line of titles that feature one and done stories with no ties to current continuity and which are accessible to an all ages readership. For a lot of readers, that “all ages” banner automatically kills any series from the Adventures line, but they’re forgetting that “all ages” can mean just that: a book that, like The Batman Adventures, is just as enjoyable to young readers as to adults. That in mind, writer Paul Tobin really takes the ball and runs with the idea of the one and done, light continuity FF story, telling stories that read much more like the best of 70s Marvel and less like an FF version of Spidey Super Stories. This particular issue is a real stand out and features Tobin’s talent for telling action packed, character driven plots with interesting twists on comic clichés. Here, a group of college kids gets zapped by a ray which turns them in an evil Anti-Fantastic Four, a take off on the standard Superman Bizarro story. Tobin, however, takes the idea of an opposite FF all the way by giving us a truly ineffectual team that includes a Human Water Spout, an incredibly rigid Anti Mr. Fantastic, a handsome, but weak Thing, and, best of all, the Visible Woman, whose power is to turn “extra visible.”
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