Fantastic Four: Death in the Family One Shot
Author: Karl Kesel
Penciler: Lee Weeks
Inkers: Rob Campanella and Tom Palmer
Colors: SotoColor's J. Brown
I can save you the money, by telling you that the title is a bit misleading. If you want to be surprised save your money and go and read it. If you are on the fence with this one, save your four bucks and just read the review. This is a rather odd one shot; because you figured with a title like that Marvel would try to tie this into Civil War. This one-shot is supposed to be an in-continuity story, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that this one-shot won't amount to anything in the long run. It is 64 pages for $3.99, but it contains a reprint of Fantastic Four # 245 and a Franklin Richards story at the end. I didn't bother doing a spoil-free review because by the end of the story it didn't really matter anyway.
Just as Joe Quesada stated in a past interview, this is not a hoax or a dream, someone really dies in this issue. And that someone was the Invisible Woman; of course with leaked images all over the internet, you may have guessed that one. The death is supposed to feel very real, but it feels rather inane. Sue and Johnny have a little argument because Johnny didn't clean up his room. They then walk into Reed's lab to see if his lab is cleaned, but Reed stuffed all his prototypes behind a door. One of the prototypes let's out a creature that ends up shooting Sue and killing her while her and Johnny were making chili. Johnny goes back in time and fixes everything so that Sue is alive again. Then we get a lesson from Reed, about how time traveling doesn't change anything because there is still a dead Sue out there somewhere. Everyone hugs at the end Full House style!
This isn't a bad story, it’s actually well written and some points of the story were touching, specifically the ones between Sue and Johnny. If you look beyond the hype this book was given you might actually enjoy it. But does it deserve a one-shot if nothing really happened at the end of the book? I mean she died and came back in the same issue? Would that be a new record? It's good to see that Lee Weeks has cleaned up his sketchy art style. He still looks like a Joe Kubert protégé, but finally got around to developing a style he is comfortable with. I'm not sure how to rate it, because in actuality is not a bad read, it would have been a good issue in the current FF run, but its really pointless, because everything is back to normal by the end of the issue. C+
I was really disappointed in this one. I agree that there was some good family bits but the Death of Sue Storm was pointless and badly written.
We have a space squid show up and just sit there, except for firing one death bolt to kill Sue. Otherwise it could be squid paperweight for all it does in the story. So Sue dies, Reed sits there and does nothing. Space squid just sits there, its work is done. Just stupid on sooo many levels. Naturally in this day and age that means that someone is working on a Space Squid That Kills Sue Richards Fan Page even as I type this.
That said I did enjoy the reprints in the issue, there was some amazing hair in that old Fantastic Four Sue Doesn't Really Suck story. Those were the days...