FANTASTIC FOUR: FULL CIRCLE
In the Zone
RELEASED 15 SEPTEMBER Publisher Abrams Comicarts
Writer/artist Alex Ross
It’s fitting that the Fantastic Four’s origin story frames them as pioneers: their fateful rocket ride aims to conquer space before the Commies, but also opens the limitless frontier of an entire comic book universe.
This new graphic novel by Alex Ross – the first in a line from Marvel and Abrams Comicarts – returns the founding family of the MCU to first principles. Riffing on plot threads from the classic ’60s Lee and Kirby run but unbound by modern continuity, it finds the FF in deep exploration mode, voyaging into the counterdimensional weirdness of the Negative Zone. Sample scientific finding: “There’s a whole universe of stuff here that wants to kill us!”
Ross made his name with the painterly photorealism of Marvels, but this is another experience entirely. Propelled by astonishingly dynamic page design, all splintered panels and kinetic angles, the style is closer to psychedelic pop art. Breathtaking use of dayglo colour makes this multiversal trip authentically trippy without losing the essential chunky nobility of the classic character designs. “It’s like I’m inna head shop!” growls the Thing.
Ross even delivers a riff on Kirby’s trademark photo collages, those experimental pages that sought to capture the reality of cosmic travel. But he also finds the everyday humanity in Benjamin J Grimm’s rock-like mug.
Beyond the head-rush of the visuals there’s an intriguingly existential take on the Negative Zone itself. “You’re over the hill,” its demons whisper. “Your work isn’t what it used to be.” If Ross is channelling his own artistic anxieties he has nothing to worry about on that score. It’s slobberin’ time! Nick Setchfield
Discovered by Reed Richards, the Negative Zone first appeared in Fantastic Four 51, cover-dated June 1966.