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X-Men/Fantastic Four (2005) #1-5
X4: X-Men/Fantastic Four
The X-Men and the Fantastic Four team up in this heart-pounding adventure! Can the two teams put their differences aside to stop a creeping menace from outer space that threatens our planet's very existence? Even as the heroes trek into the stars, the real threat to their mission might just be among themselves! It's the X-Men and Fantastic Four versus... the X-Men and Fantastic Four?! An unexpected adversary turns Marvel's two greatest hero families against one another. Collects X-Men/Fantastic Four #1-5.
120 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
September 12, 2018
Marvel's premiere superhero teams have a 'playdate' (they join forces to SAVE THE WORLD!, one more time) . . . and the end result is this otherwise routine sci-fi / horror story that is at times too derivative of the Alien film series or any B-grade extra-terrestrial invasion plot. Not horrible, but not particularly memorable, either. The one notable moment is Emma Frost's icy (ha-ha) line of dialogue to Sue Storm's Invisible Woman in an exchange about their respective choice of partners.
March 29, 2023
Forgettable at its best, completely out of character at its worst, it has an amazing roster that's put into a plot that loses its way very early on. Aside from one or two standalone lines and panels, it's a largely disappointing experience.
January 19, 2022
Ooooooof.
November 29, 2021
Terrible story, art and characterisation.
May 22, 2024
Some amazing art and touching character moments but i expected more if i’m honest. This is my first time reading about The Brood and i’m just not vibing with it unfortunately. Again, some pretty incredible art in the book though.
July 31, 2024
I have not read a lot of Western comics in my life. There's a big thing about them that I hate, which is that the majority of them are not creator-owned, so most issues are functionally canon fanfiction. Oh, two things I hate, then; the second is that you don't have the same creators working on them forever, as you would with most manga. There are comics outside the Big Two that do adhere to my "standards" (Image namely, but probably a lot of other indies), but there's also a sort of... uh... "knockoff" feeling to them, sometimes, at least that's how I feel occasionally; that is, who the fuck is Savage Dragon compared to Batman or Spider-Man?
My point here is that I read a bit of a review on Goodreads complaining that the players in this book are acting out of character, but... that means nothing to me. I don't know these characters too well outside of movies and dim childhood memories of the '90s cartoons (I actually cannot recall if I've ever seen the F4 cartoon...). Wolverine's claws go "snikt" and Thing says "It's clobberin' time," so that matches my expectations, simple as.
As far as I care, this is a reasonably enjoyable book. But I am reading it in a vacuum of sorts. Like, Charles Xavier is... dead? Retired? Well, he's not here, and Emma Frost runs the school. Apparently the Avengers have disbanded? I don't know what that's about. Is this after "Civil War"? I just don't know. But it doesn't matter much. The main thing is that something has happened to leave us with only a few X-Men plus the F4. Not really different from, like, Phase 2 or 3 MCU solo movies where cameos of other heroes are limited even though why the fuck wouldn't Tony or Thor slap the shit out of Killmonger. What I mean is, this book is called X-Men/Fantastic Four. There's no reason to expect anyone else. And the X-Men representation works well enough for an "outsider" since it's basically just people from the '90s cartoon, plus Emma whom I don't recall from the show. The F4 are just the F4, though I know at some point Black Panther and Storm have stood in for the Richardses, so that team isn't always the same people technically.
Anyway, the plot is that something happened on a spaceship with some astronauts, and Reed Richards wants to reconfigure Cerebra (which is apparently different from Cerebro?) to be able to scan for lifesigns on the spaceship. Unfortunately, Charles Xavier isn't at his school, and new headmaster Emma Frost doesn't want to do it. So instead a plan is finagled to have her go into space and use her telepathy to scan for life more directly, which I guess makes sense because Cerebra can't detect non-Mutants anyway or something. So, whatever, turns out the ship is infested with the Brood, so we get a bit of action. Then a cosmic storm like the one that created the F4 hits the spaceship, and Wolverine, Gambit, Nightcrawler, and Emma respectively develop the powers of Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch, Invisible Woman, and Thing (which... whatever, Emma already had a power like Thing's...). There's a bit of a scuffle between them against the rest of the X-Men (Cyclops, Storm, and Beast) plus the F4. Reed and Hank work to fix the affected Mutants because I guess the X-factor makes it easier to undo the cosmic rays' power (which really just means we don't want to heal Thing in a side-story...). Then the Brood attack an empty Manhattan because we need a climax. I'm a bit disappointed that the final battle doesn't have a strong, singular, named foe, but whatever; the Cerebra hallucination of Phoenix and Galactus was cute, so it's okay.
Did not know Sue Storm could use her force field powers to construct swords, so that's cool. She also has a nice ass on the back cover of the book. Actually, throughout the comic I found her more attractive than Emma. So idk what that's about.
Unless I missed something, only the first issue collected here says "Chapter x." As in, "Chapter 1." Kinda had to guess how the other issues were separated, which was odd.
****
It's a bit awkward to be reading Western "Big Two" comics after so much manga. The tags I'm using are more manga-leaning. I use "Nekketsu" for "hot-blooded" shōnen battle manga; Western capeshit is basically the same thing. Ditto for my "Power of Friendship" tag.
My point here is that I read a bit of a review on Goodreads complaining that the players in this book are acting out of character, but... that means nothing to me. I don't know these characters too well outside of movies and dim childhood memories of the '90s cartoons (I actually cannot recall if I've ever seen the F4 cartoon...). Wolverine's claws go "snikt" and Thing says "It's clobberin' time," so that matches my expectations, simple as.
As far as I care, this is a reasonably enjoyable book. But I am reading it in a vacuum of sorts. Like, Charles Xavier is... dead? Retired? Well, he's not here, and Emma Frost runs the school. Apparently the Avengers have disbanded? I don't know what that's about. Is this after "Civil War"? I just don't know. But it doesn't matter much. The main thing is that something has happened to leave us with only a few X-Men plus the F4. Not really different from, like, Phase 2 or 3 MCU solo movies where cameos of other heroes are limited even though why the fuck wouldn't Tony or Thor slap the shit out of Killmonger. What I mean is, this book is called X-Men/Fantastic Four. There's no reason to expect anyone else. And the X-Men representation works well enough for an "outsider" since it's basically just people from the '90s cartoon, plus Emma whom I don't recall from the show. The F4 are just the F4, though I know at some point Black Panther and Storm have stood in for the Richardses, so that team isn't always the same people technically.
Anyway, the plot is that something happened on a spaceship with some astronauts, and Reed Richards wants to reconfigure Cerebra (which is apparently different from Cerebro?) to be able to scan for lifesigns on the spaceship. Unfortunately, Charles Xavier isn't at his school, and new headmaster Emma Frost doesn't want to do it. So instead a plan is finagled to have her go into space and use her telepathy to scan for life more directly, which I guess makes sense because Cerebra can't detect non-Mutants anyway or something. So, whatever, turns out the ship is infested with the Brood, so we get a bit of action. Then a cosmic storm like the one that created the F4 hits the spaceship, and Wolverine, Gambit, Nightcrawler, and Emma respectively develop the powers of Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch, Invisible Woman, and Thing (which... whatever, Emma already had a power like Thing's...). There's a bit of a scuffle between them against the rest of the X-Men (Cyclops, Storm, and Beast) plus the F4. Reed and Hank work to fix the affected Mutants because I guess the X-factor makes it easier to undo the cosmic rays' power (which really just means we don't want to heal Thing in a side-story...). Then the Brood attack an empty Manhattan because we need a climax. I'm a bit disappointed that the final battle doesn't have a strong, singular, named foe, but whatever; the Cerebra hallucination of Phoenix and Galactus was cute, so it's okay.
Did not know Sue Storm could use her force field powers to construct swords, so that's cool. She also has a nice ass on the back cover of the book. Actually, throughout the comic I found her more attractive than Emma. So idk what that's about.
Unless I missed something, only the first issue collected here says "Chapter x." As in, "Chapter 1." Kinda had to guess how the other issues were separated, which was odd.
****
It's a bit awkward to be reading Western "Big Two" comics after so much manga. The tags I'm using are more manga-leaning. I use "Nekketsu" for "hot-blooded" shōnen battle manga; Western capeshit is basically the same thing. Ditto for my "Power of Friendship" tag.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 31, 2021
Given it's weird place in recent comics' history (Akira Yoshida is actually CB Cebulski, current Marvel EIC writing under an Asian pseudonym which...yeah, and artist Pat Lee is his own can of worms), I kinda wanted this to be either surprisingly good or trainwreck bad. Instead, it's a disappointing pile of other comic book's ideas that feels somewhere between decent fan-fic and a particularly story focused 8 year old playing with action figures.
It starts out so obvious and tropey that, given the fact that I just read GLA, I thought it might be flirting with parody. But no, there is not a hint of irony to be found here. Just boring plot point after boring plot point, that ends with a big fight with aliens. Ben and Logan start out fighting for no reason, it's a space X/FF book so (SPOILER) both the Brood AND Cosmic Rays are involved, and then the last two issues are BIG FIGHT.
I dunno, it would have been nice to sniff even the slightest bit of creativity here. It's at least semi-coherent and there's nothing (outside of the extra-textual stuff involving the Yoshida pseudonym) that's truly putrid about it. But it's basically a silver age style story with no real emotional content that reads like baby's first attempt at plotting a comic so...meh?
It starts out so obvious and tropey that, given the fact that I just read GLA, I thought it might be flirting with parody. But no, there is not a hint of irony to be found here. Just boring plot point after boring plot point, that ends with a big fight with aliens. Ben and Logan start out fighting for no reason, it's a space X/FF book so (SPOILER) both the Brood AND Cosmic Rays are involved, and then the last two issues are BIG FIGHT.
I dunno, it would have been nice to sniff even the slightest bit of creativity here. It's at least semi-coherent and there's nothing (outside of the extra-textual stuff involving the Yoshida pseudonym) that's truly putrid about it. But it's basically a silver age style story with no real emotional content that reads like baby's first attempt at plotting a comic so...meh?
September 20, 2017
Continuing the great x-read of 2017...
(If, like me, you are attempting a chronological x-books read, this one is definitely skippable. I doubt that it will be mentioned again... I could be wrong, but nothing really changes the status quo at all in this one.)
It's a fun old-style comics story, though not one that is particularly memorable.
(If, like me, you are attempting a chronological x-books read, this one is definitely skippable. I doubt that it will be mentioned again... I could be wrong, but nothing really changes the status quo at all in this one.)
It's a fun old-style comics story, though not one that is particularly memorable.
September 26, 2017
This took me forever to get through because it was so weak. Reed Richards and friends are just fantastical… And not in a good way… Meandering, and mundanely boring. Quasi-scientific rhetoric in place of compelling story gets old very quickly
May 24, 2019
This was weird. It was like the X-Men/WildC.A.T.S. book where the two teams acted as though they had never met in a shared universe and they just super-artificially combined them.
Other than that weird tone, this was a relatively inoffensive comic.
Other than that weird tone, this was a relatively inoffensive comic.
April 2, 2017
The Fantastic Four call on the X-Men for help with a space station that has lost contact with Earth. One gratuitous fight scene later, a mixed X-Men/Fantastic Four team are in space, only to find a dual impending disaster: the space station's inhabitants have been affected by Brood, and the space station is about to be hit by the same sort of cosmic storm that gave the Fantastic Four their powers. Much hitting ensues.
It's a reasonable set-up for a story, but it also feels somewhat lazy, in plot and execution. The X-Men and Fantastic Four seem only nominally aware of each other, for example, and Wolverine's willingness to fight for no particular reason just because the Fantastic Four knocked is ridiculous. I guess my biggest complaint is that the plot feels rather predictable--as soon as there's word of the Brood and the storm, then the next four issues play out more or less the way you'd think. (Although there isn't any comic-irradiated Broodlings.) And there's some implications about the FF's powers that I don't think holds up in terms of larger continuity.
The art's a little loose for my tastes; characters are occasionally elongated without reason. But I'll give it credit that it fits with the monstrous transformations and scaly aliens. It's not an awful series, but, well, I'm glad I got it from the library.
Edit: I'll give it points, at least, for trying to focus on what the X-Men and Fantastic Four have in common, an interest in family and adventure.
It's a reasonable set-up for a story, but it also feels somewhat lazy, in plot and execution. The X-Men and Fantastic Four seem only nominally aware of each other, for example, and Wolverine's willingness to fight for no particular reason just because the Fantastic Four knocked is ridiculous. I guess my biggest complaint is that the plot feels rather predictable--as soon as there's word of the Brood and the storm, then the next four issues play out more or less the way you'd think. (Although there isn't any comic-irradiated Broodlings.) And there's some implications about the FF's powers that I don't think holds up in terms of larger continuity.
The art's a little loose for my tastes; characters are occasionally elongated without reason. But I'll give it credit that it fits with the monstrous transformations and scaly aliens. It's not an awful series, but, well, I'm glad I got it from the library.
Edit: I'll give it points, at least, for trying to focus on what the X-Men and Fantastic Four have in common, an interest in family and adventure.
August 13, 2013
The artwork, especially that of the splash pages, is astonishing. Before reading this, I could not imagine a situation that could result in the Fantastic Four joining forces with the X-Men. The character interractions are brilliant, and the witty catchphrases are all in the right places. The X-Men and the Fantastic Four encounter aliens known as The Brood, resulting in changes that occur withing the bodies of four mutants and an alien invasion which brings the Avengers film to mind. If 20th Century Fox is planning on having these teams in a shared universe, I now know how they can be mixed with each other. I very much desire a film based on the events of this story, preferably with all the characters present: Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, The Thing, Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Gambit, Nightcrawler, and Beast. However, given how the X-Men film series has handled the X-Men characters, it seems unlikely that all of these mutants would be present in such a film. But one can dream...
October 24, 2009
Well-crafted and pretty enjoyable.
I've learned however that contemporary, lushly inked, painterly, expressive comics are very difficult for me to follow. I keep having to flip back a page, and go, "what? THAT happened?" because the action sequences are just blurs of color. Even though this style is visually appealing, I prefer the classic strongly-lined approach, because you can actually follow it even when every character is upside down and/or spinning through space.
I'm aware that this may be my problem, not the comics world's.
I've learned however that contemporary, lushly inked, painterly, expressive comics are very difficult for me to follow. I keep having to flip back a page, and go, "what? THAT happened?" because the action sequences are just blurs of color. Even though this style is visually appealing, I prefer the classic strongly-lined approach, because you can actually follow it even when every character is upside down and/or spinning through space.
I'm aware that this may be my problem, not the comics world's.
November 5, 2016
I can't find a review I wrote of this along ago, but suffice it to say, it's a story where the X-Men and Fantastic Four are used extremely well, as two teams-of-families who face adversity and personal pain every day. When the X-Men get turned into distorted versions of the FF, it's amazing, both in writing and visuals. Look for it if you can find it.
January 5, 2013
It was an alright read. Overall the story was something that has been done over and over again. Most of the jokes and puns are cringe worthy. I felt like it was trying too hard to do a lot in it with it's themes. But it does have it's moments but those are very few.
January 3, 2015
Much different then what I expected but never the less a very good read. The characters were all the ones that we remember and some of our favorites. The mutants were a little scary but that's what intrigued me. I give this a 4.0 out of 5.0
May 29, 2011
Xmen and Fantastic Four work together, its quite entertaining.
September 16, 2013
Brood. Xmen go through comsmic radiation in space.
May 28, 2015
Los X-Men y los 4F contra el Nido
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews