After the Heroes Reborn stunt ended, the various properties involved returned to the Marvel U with shiny new #1s and good-to-great new creative teams, depending. Busiek and Perez on an all-timer Avengers run. Busiek and Shaun Chen on a pretty good Iron Man run. Mark Waid and Ron Garney restored to the Captain America book they had made fantastic before it was taken away from them for Heroes Reborn. A year later, for some reason, Thor came back thanks to Dan Jurgens and John Romita, Jr., who was absolutely made for Thor. I bought all these books. But I never even considered buying the new FF. The promise of artist Alan Davis was a draw, but it was written by Scott Lobdell, who took over X-Men when Chris Claremont left, and I’d read enough of his stuff to just not be interested in his FF. In a perhaps ironic turn of events, Lobdell only did 3 full issues and plots for 2 more before being replaced by Chris Claremont. David only did 3 issues, too, and then the art on this book downgraded dramatically to Salvador Larocca. One wonders why the much-hyped new creative team on Marvel’s original flagship book only made it 3 months. But now we’re well into the Claremont/Larocca period, and look who’s shown up to visit. Art Thibert inks and Liquid! Colors. As we get going, some people have turned up on the FF’s doorstep super early, and Sue has opened the door. As we have seen, The Thunderbolts were given the FF’s building when they were presumed dead, so the FF have a new, more accessible base at this time.
This is a Claremont comic, if course they did.
Unsurprisingly, Claremont’s take on the FF feels good. Alyssa there is apparently an old friend of Reed’s and a fellow genius. I wouldn’t have known that without the recap page. Thanks, recap page! A weird amount of space is given to a sight gag of Stan Lee selling sausages as Ben, Franklin & Alyssa go shopping, and then Alyssa notes that Franklin is nervous because his family disappeared on him once, and what’s to stop it from happening again? The Heroes Reborn thing must’ve been very hard on him. The trio walk by the former Four Freedoms Plaza, where Thing exposits that the Thunderbolts tried to blow it up when they were revealed as villains, and now the city’s trying to determine if it’s inhabitable. And, in its basement levels, we find…
Oh boy. Back at the FF’s place, Johnny’s explaining his powers and who he takes classe switch the fire department to be safe when the doorbell rings and someone called Kay Cera walks in. Apparently she’s from Alan Davis’ ClanDestine series, and a fashion designer, who’s shown up with an entourage to help Sue out with her wardrobe? Ok…
What? This run is somehow heavily based on a Dr. Who reference? Also, where is Spider-Man? Inside, Johnny’s attacked by some lady, and flashes back to tell us he saved her on a previous adventure, and “smuggled her home” and now has her living in this endless space? Jeez, this is a lot to unpack. Johnny’s brought her food and is trying to figure out what to do with her, and then, finally…
That lady says she wants to be alone for a while (I have no idea what’s going on), and then Johnny gives us even more continuity about her, and he and Spidey discuss whether she’s trustworthy while she hears the “awooo” from earlier and jumps down a hole in the ground. Are they in the skyscraper? Down on the street? Larocca’s oh-so-clever upside down establishing shot didn’t bother to establish anything. I guess they’re on the roof. So why’d she hear the awoo, how could a creature have cleared hundreds of stairs in the time since Ben was here? Spider-Man leaps into action looking like the Macy’s Day Spider-Man balloon…
If I’m supposed to know what’s happening in the last panel, well, I don’t, and we cut away to the TV people interviewing Ben. Sue is looking for Reed, who’s playing with Franklin, who’s afraid monsters will come when his parents aren’t around.
Remember how Kraven freaked out at the end of his previous appearance? I guess we’re papering over that. Kraven sics his lion on the girl, but then it gets webbed, sort of, the panels are hard to follow. Kraven tries to shoot a big gun marked “Virus” (Hilarious), but Johnny melts the dart before it reaches anyone. All these daring heroics are done from off-panel. The action is happening in spite of all the characters. Then Johnny & the girl rush Kraven, who shoots a net that somehow catches them AND Spider-Man, even though he didn’t seem to be nearby. Horrible storytelling.
Bro, what? That was a disaster! Is no one going to explain the dog??? They wasted so much space explaining Spider-Man had a bounty on his head and became other people and now isn’t other people and all this crap no one reading this book cares about, and then a presumably Inhuman puppy turns up and not a WORD of exposition? Where did Kraven go!? Holy crap. Awful! I’m glad I didn’t buy the run of comics. I really figured I’d be safe with Claremont. We’re still a couple years out from him regaining control of the X-Men, proving he don’t got it anymore, being shuffled off to a famously bad spin-off called X-Treme X-Men and slowly fading into obscurity. But I figured a one-off Spidey/Torch romp was well within his abilities in 1998. Good grief! The Claremont/Larocca team would hang in there ‘til FF 34, at which time the great artist Carlos Pacheco would take over as both writer and artist. I love that guy’s stuff and I still didn’t buy this book, although I have often thought about going back and checking out his run. I guess I was just buying too many comics already.