{"id":31455,"date":"2026-02-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=31455"},"modified":"2024-05-14T18:41:01","modified_gmt":"2024-05-14T22:41:01","slug":"spider-man-fantastic-four-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2026\/02\/26\/spider-man-fantastic-four-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Spider-Man\/Fantastic Four 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We\u2019ve found our way to the last completed Marvel project by Mike Weiringo. He had one more thing in progress when he died, which was completed as a charity thing, but this was finished. As with so many things we\u2019re looking at in this block, it was published during Back In Black despite featuring the red & blue suit, so it goes here. My recollection is it\u2019s not super great, storywise, but it\u2019s 4 more issues of Ringo on Spidey and the FF, and that\u2019s plenty to get my money. Jeff Parker spins the tale. Parker was a cartoonist who did a bunch of stuff around the industry and would continue to after this. This is 2 years after his Agents of Atlas, a comic bringing back the obscure, so-called \u201cAvengers of the 1950s\u201d as a new team. Ringo is inked here by Wade Von Grawbadger, longtime go-to guy for Stuart Immonen. Wade is a great inker, but Ringo not inked by Karl Kesel just doesn\u2019t quite feel right. And Pete Pantazis colors. A perfectly fine creative team. So why do I not remember this being so great? Let\u2019s see if I\u2019m wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spidey just doesn\u2019t seem quite as snappy as with Kesel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s not really the Surfer, tho. As Spider-Man goes to confront him (With dialogue suggesting this takes place sometimes not long after the first Galactus story?), he learns iit\u2019s the Impossible Man. Who\u2019s that? Well\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He\u2019s a very powerful, madcap intergalactic imp, not unlike DC\u2019s Mr. Mxyzptlk, only usually obsessed with the FF rather than Superman. Well, he eventually gets around to saying he\u2019s here with a dire warning for the FF, but forgot where their building is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Impy turns into the Spider-Mobile and drives Spider-Man very poorly through the streets before Spidey tells him to turn into something that can fly, and he becomes a fighter jet. When they arrive at the landed craft in Central Park, Impy calls the lion-faced guy who\u2019s emerged \u201cthe Imperator.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Impy is very upset that his new friend just got zapped, and leaps into the fray. Upon proving much more difficult to injure, he gets hit with some kinda beams that seems to tear him apart, leaving him not much more than a green mist floating over an unconscious Spider-Man. Ouch! Then, finally\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cMade us watch a video\u201d is pretty funny. Reed and Sue have taken the kids on an educational trip, which nukes my guess that this was the past, and we also learn the FF\u2019s usual sensors to detect aliens invading were turned off so Johnny wouldn\u2019t wake up and spoil Ben\u2019s prank. Oops! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ben & Johnny run at the guy again, but are repelled by some kind of force field that puts Johnny out. So Thing goes it alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That seems bad! This one seems like it\u2019s more in the lighthearted realm Ringo wanted to be working in. It may seem light, but it\u2019s a fine first issue. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019ll sustain 3 more, but I guess we\u2019ll see shortly. Maybe I was just so caught up in the hype of this time period that this sort of thing didn\u2019t make much of an impact. Post-Civil War, the Marvel U was so tightly connected, almost every comic telling the same story to some degree (Even the largely self-contained Brand New Day stuff we looked at still had plenty of references to registration and whatnot). And it was, no bones about it, exciting. Even if you weren\u2019t super into the registration\/anti-registration status quo. Everything being connected made it feel big and important. And things that weren\u2019t connected, less so. But it\u2019s been a long time, and I\u2019m not caught up in the hysteria anymore. Maybe I\u2019ll enjoy this more now than I did then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve found our way to the last completed Marvel project by Mike Weiringo. He had one more thing in progress when he died, which was completed as a charity thing, but this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864],"tags":[288,72,2389,2388,2386,21,523,2100,247,2,1710,663,2387],"class_list":["post-31455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","tag-fantastic-four","tag-human-torch","tag-imperator","tag-impossible-man","tag-jeff-parker","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-mike-weiringo","tag-pete-pantazis","tag-reed-richards","tag-spider-man","tag-sue-storm","tag-the-thing","tag-wade-von-grawbadger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31464,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31455\/revisions\/31464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}