Book Review: Fantastic Five: In Search of Doom

Spider-Girl Presents Fantastic Five: In Search of Doom by Tom DeFalco

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This book, like the Spider-girl books was sent in Marvel's MC2 Universe. It's fifteen years in the future and so things have happened to characters and teams. Thus the Fantastic Four has seen some roster changes. Gone: Sue Richards. In: Ms. Fantastic (Lyja) and Psylord (Franklin Richards) with a Reed Richards powered robot called, "Big Brain."

I've gone back and forth between a 2-star rating and a 3-star rating for the book because there are some great features. Spider-girl does show up in Issue #3 in a great appearance. There are some touching and imaginative scenes regarding the fate of Reed and Sue Richards.

However, the book too often zags when it should zig. To be fair, you may get more out of this if you've read the FF for years where Lyja, Franklin Reed and Sharon Ventura (who is portrayed as the Thing's Ex-Wife) have been read. However, as this is targeted to younger readers, that's not much help.

This book collects the complete five issue first set of Fantastic Five.

The first two issues when we should be getting a feel for the team are spent in pointless fights against second rate villains that show us a little of their powers but fail to capture the imagination. Issue 3, hopes were raised, the plot was going somewhere with an exciting climax in Issue 4. However, in Issue 4, instead of a tense action sequence, we get a mostly flashback story that ends up with our heroes not being needed.

Issue 5 wraps up okay, but it's not enough to save the book and we learn that FF may have to stand for "Fantastic Fifteen" with everyone who wants to join including Dr. Doom's not so evil successor. Interesting stuff, but not well-presented at all. Don't know whether this was cancelled suddenly or always supposed to be limited series. Either way,it should have been better planned.



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