Volume 47: Fantastic Four: The End

Fantastic Four: The End

Author + Illustrator: Alan Davis

"No, Victor... please! They're just children!"

I know I'm enjoying a book when it feels like a twenty-minute read. FF's The End felt like a two-hour slog. It started out fine, actually it started out with a lot of potential, but, with the exception of one brief scene, it delivered instead too many cooks and not enough broth.

I don't want to detract from the achievement of Alan Davis, to write and draw a six-issue miniseries alone is an enviable accomplishment, but when the emotional heart of a story is compromised by having characters featured who are there for no reason other than to be seen, if they aren't included for a reason that's unique to them, then it feels like a wasted opportunity. If the books in the collection thus far have taught me anything, it's that I hate crossovers for the sake of crossovers, a feeling that The End compounds.

The highlight of the work comes in issue #1. She-Hulk speaks with Reed about how and why Marvel's first family aren't side by side like they used to be. Drifting apart from friends and family as years go by is something that most people can relate to (if you can't, then consider yourself very lucky). The exchange gives us a brief glimpse into the psyche of the man. How the conversation ends gives us another important glimpse, but we never get a satisfying follow-up, we never see the full picture and the story suffers as a result.

Thereafter we get literally dozens of heroes and villains thrown into the mix, many for no justifiable reason; the Kree, Ulton the asswipe, the Skrull, the Shi'ar, the Avengers, the Inhumans, Utau, and many more, all make an appearance. Even Chekhov would suffer exhaustion while trying to cull the irrelevant elements.

The book collects together Fantastic Four: The End #1-6.

Verdict: