{"id":21213,"date":"2024-05-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-02T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=21213"},"modified":"2022-09-06T19:37:24","modified_gmt":"2022-09-06T23:37:24","slug":"ff-vol-3-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/05\/02\/ff-vol-3-9\/","title":{"rendered":"FF Vol. 3 9"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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\u2019d 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\u2019s original flagship book only made it 3 months. But now we\u2019re well into the Claremont\/Larocca period, and look who\u2019s shown up to visit. Art Thibert inks and Liquid! Colors. As we get going, some people have turned up on the FF\u2019s doorstep super early, and Sue has opened the door. As we have seen, The Thunderbolts were given the FF\u2019s building when they were presumed dead, so the FF have a new, more accessible base at this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is a Claremont comic, if course they did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Unsurprisingly, Claremont\u2019s take on the FF feels good. Alyssa there is apparently an old friend of Reed\u2019s and a fellow genius. I wouldn\u2019t 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\u2019s to stop it from happening again? The Heroes Reborn thing must\u2019ve 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\u2019s trying to determine if it\u2019s inhabitable. And, in its basement levels, we find\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oh boy. Back at the FF\u2019s place, Johnny\u2019s 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\u2019s from Alan Davis\u2019 ClanDestine series, and a fashion designer, who\u2019s shown up with an entourage to help Sue out with her wardrobe? Ok\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What? This run is somehow heavily based on a Dr. Who reference? Also, where is Spider-Man? Inside, Johnny\u2019s attacked by some lady, and flashes back to tell us he saved her on a previous adventure, and \u201csmuggled her home\u201d and now has her living in this endless space? Jeez, this is a lot to unpack. Johnny\u2019s brought her food and is trying to figure out what to do with her, and then, finally\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That lady says she wants to be alone for a while (I have no idea what\u2019s going on), and then Johnny gives us even more continuity about her, and he and Spidey discuss whether she\u2019s trustworthy while she hears the \u201cawooo\u201d from earlier and jumps down a hole in the ground. Are they in the skyscraper? Down on the street? Larocca\u2019s oh-so-clever upside down establishing shot didn\u2019t bother to establish anything. I guess they\u2019re on the roof. So why\u2019d 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\u2019s Day Spider-Man balloon\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If I\u2019m supposed to know what\u2019s happening in the last panel, well, I don\u2019t, and we cut away to the TV people interviewing Ben. Sue is looking for Reed, who\u2019s playing with Franklin, who\u2019s afraid monsters will come when his parents aren\u2019t around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Remember how Kraven freaked out at the end of his previous appearance? I guess we\u2019re 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 \u201cVirus\u201d (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\u2019t seem to be nearby. Horrible storytelling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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\u2019t 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\u2019m glad I didn\u2019t buy the run of comics. I really figured I\u2019d be safe with Claremont. We\u2019re still a couple years out from him regaining control of the X-Men, proving he don\u2019t 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 \u2018til FF 34, at which time the great artist Carlos Pacheco would take over as both writer and artist. I love that guy\u2019s stuff and I still didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[498,175,288,1040,72,45,1856,247,1855,2,1710,663],"class_list":["post-21213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-art-thibert","tag-chris-claremont","tag-fantastic-four","tag-franklin-richards","tag-human-torch","tag-kraven-the-hunter","tag-liquid","tag-reed-richards","tag-salvador-larocca","tag-spider-man","tag-sue-storm","tag-the-thing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21216,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21213\/revisions\/21216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}