"You wanna reach the stars?" Fantastic Four Fanfare review

Fantastic Four Fanfare was a 4-issue mini-series released this year to celebrate the release of the film Fantastic Four: First Steps. It's an anthology series with 3 stories per issue. I do wonder why the series didn't feature 4 stories per issue - I mean, why not? What we have here is a mix of stories either featuring the Fantastic Four as a team or a spotlight tale on one (or two) members of the FF. Several of these stories were written or drawn by past creative teams on Fantastic Four. I'll briefly describe the 12 stories:

Fantastic Four: Fanfare #1 spotlights the Human Torch and features "You Realize, of Course, This Means War" by Mark Waid and Ramon Rosanas, "Life's a Gas" by Alan Davis and "Monster Island of Love" by Andrew Wheeler and Sara Pichelli. Waid wrote Fantastic Four 2002-2005; Davis has been a frequent Fantastic Four cover artist, served as penciler briefly in 1998 and wrote and drew the 2007 mini-series Fantastic Four: The End; and Pichelli was briefly the Fantastic Four penciler in 2018.

Waid's story is about Johnny's love of playing practical jokes on Ben, which Waid accelerates to the nth degree; in this story, Johnny had an entire filing cabinet labeled "Ideas for Pranking Ben." Many of the pranks are depicted in the style of a 1960s "Marvel Masterwork Pin-Up," which is a fun joke. Davis' story features the FF on a mission underground where Johnny's flame is bit more dangerous than usual; it's pretty light, but Davis is maybe the finest living FF illustrator, so it's worth a look. The final story features Johnny as a constestant on a reality TV program which turns out to be the favourite program of the Mole Man.

Fantastic Four: Fanfare #2 spotlights Mr. Fantastic and features "Dinner and a Movie" by Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver, "Future Uncertain" by John Tyler Christopher and "Hide and Seeker" by Mark Buckingham. Hickman wrote Fantastic Four 2009-2012; Buckingham drew a few Fantstic Four stories in 2003.

This issue is very mixed; Buckingham's story concerns two of Dr. Doom's underlings trying to recover his robot the Seeker; it looks terrific but it's incredibly slight. The other two stories are simply underwhelming.

Fantastic Four: Fanfare #3 spotlights the Thing and features "Fight or Flight" by Dan Slott and Marcos Martin, "Another Round" by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz and "Universal Appeal" by Chip Zdarsky and Mike Allred. Dan Slott wrote Fantastic Four 2018-2022 and wrote a Thing solo series in 2006; DeFalco wrote Fantastic Four 1991-1996 and the Thing's solo adventures in Marvel Two-in-One 1981-1983; Zardsky wrote the Thing and Human Torch in Marvel 2-in-One 2018-2019 and Allred drew F.F. 2013-2014.

This issue is certainly my favourite, as it features three writers whose work I truly admire. Slott's story - with phenomenal art by Martin - focuses on Ben's experiences as a pilot over the decades. It's a very good character piece. DeFalco/Frenz's story brings back the Sandman, whom they'd done a bit of work rehabilitating into a hero back in the 80s, only for later writers to revert Sandman to a villain; this story tries to thread the needle, restoring his friendship with Ben but suggesting he'll still be a problem in the future. The final story features Johnny heading to an extraterrestrial fashion shoot, only to be upstaged by Ben.

Fantastic Four: Fanfare #4 spotlights the Invisible Woman and features "Ain't No Grave" by J. Michael Straczynski and Cafu, "One Night" by Greg Weisman, Mark Bagley and John Dell and "Clobberin' Time" by Daniel Warren Johnson and Tyrell Cannon. Straczynski wrote Fantastic Four 2005-2006 and Bagley penciled Fantastic Four 2013-2014.

Straczynski's story (which seems to be set circa 1970?) is about the Mole Man on his deathbed - which means this anthology won't read well in a trade paperback as this follows on the humourous treatment of Mole Man in issue #1. Still, it's a very good character piece on Mole Man that takes him seriously, which is not how... well, anyone else in the last 35 years has treated the character. Weisman's story is set around the time of Fantastic Four Annual #5 and features the Circus of Crime; it's appealing fluff. The last story is a kind of embarrassing story about the Sub-Mariner fighting the FF in a tournament but at least the art's appealing.

Anthologies are always a mixed bag; in this case, you might want to just cherry-pick the creators you enjoy the most. Still, taken as a whole, this is a fine collection of stories.

Quadrinhos em Português 1: Private Eye

It's been some time since I last spoke about Brian K. Vaughan & Marcos Martin's digital comic book series Private Eye. During this interval, the series wrapped itself up after ten installments and it's been announced that a print collection is forthcoming - but seriously, when you can purchase the entire book for whatever price you like (even free) from their website, why bother with print?

Besides my adoration for the artwork of Marcos Martin, my interest was drawn to Private Eye by the presence of their Portuguese-language translations. Insofar as comic books did so much to help teach me how to read, I thought a Portuguese comic book would be a fun teaching aid. At this point in my attempt to learn the language I've exhausted all of the material provided by my employer's Continuing Education program and thus must educate myself.

I know some armchair quarterbacks on the internet are offering opinions as to whether bringing Private Eye to print is an admission of failure on the part of Vaughan & Martin. For myself, I spent a long time completely disengaged from the series because I forgot it was being published; that's the only real flaw I can see with the model they adopted - that it requires you to frequent their home page on a regular basis to keep up with the story.

Private Eye turned out to be a pretty simple story. Given the title of the series and the occupation of the protagonist I was led to believe it would be a detective series - but no, not really. There was a question as to what the villain was after, but was not much more than a MacGuffin. The story constantly shifted perspectives to show what the villains were doing so the protagonist basically played catch-up for ten chapters. It's a futuristic crime thriller, not a futuristic mystery.

One odd effect of the translation was that a pair of French assassins whose dialogue was printed in English with in the original were, naturally, translated into Portuguese for that version. However, the few times in which the duo spoke French in the original remained French in the translation. It all works, but it does make one wonder: how would a French version solve that issue?

In this scene above, Marcos Martin gave the lead female character a half-page panel to show off her outfit. The first time I read it I assumed the enlarged panel was intended to establish how taken the protagonist was with her beauty - but later, he turns out to be gay. So why the large panel? For the benefit of male readers? Or the benefit of Martin?

More thoughts about Portuguese-language comic books over the next two days.

"Confie mas confira, como dizia meu pai." Private Eye em Português

Continued from yesterday...

When I began studying Portuguese last year I made an effort to seek out comic books printed in Portuguese which might help me... but the internet failed to turn up many leads. To my immense pleasure, Brian K. Vaughan & Marcos Martin's Private Eye is sold in a variety of languages - even the ever-elusive Portuguese!

Of all the languages I would choose to learn, it had to be one seldom used in North America, sim? Print resources on Portuguese are lacking, especially in the European dialect I'm trying to favour. Although the internet has been very useful to me, very few online comic books offer Portuguese translations - and those Portuguese comics I have located were series I'd never heard of before (they probably originated in Brazil).

Having seen how Private Eye manages their translations, one wonders why every major publisher doesn't offer multiple language versions of their work? Surely the big companies are better able to afford these services than a little creator-owned digital book with a "pay what you like" donation box? As seen above, the finished project doesn't go to the trouble of translating advertisements, book covers and other English-language background details - it's just a matter of finding a decent translator for the dialogue balloons.

Best of all, thanks to the DRM-free nature of Private Eye I can read the English and Portuguese versions at the same time on my computer, running samples side-by-side. I'm certain to be back for more of Vaughan & Martin's series... if only to aid my pitifully poor vocabulário.

"Trust, but verify, my Dad used to say." Thoughts on the Private Eye#1

I may not be the first to climb aboard Brian K. Vaughan & Marcos Martin's Private Eye#1, but at least I'm not the last. Although I was a huge fan of Vaughn at the beginning of his career and for a time collected everything with his name on it, I broke away when he wrapped up his Runaways series. I might not have come back for the Private Eye except for two factors:

1. The compelling artwork of Marcos Martin, perhaps the best adventure hero artist in the business today and
2. A very compelling creator-run distribution method, enticing readers to choose the format, language and price point which they prefer.

Projected to run just ten issues, the Private Eye is sold online here; the series is set in a world where people have rebelled against our present-day lack of privacy by installing intense levels of secrecy and privacy as virtually everyone wears wears masks and aliases; naturally, this is the perfect landscape for a mystery thriller and thus our protagonist, known only as "Patrick Immelmann," is hired to learn people's secrets the old-fashioned way - legwork, surveillance and evading the law. Following the usual pattern of a "typical" escapade, Patrick is hired to investigate the background of his client to ensure he can't find anything incriminating (and thus, hopefully no one else will). Naturally, complications ensue and amongst people this paranoid, would you be surprised to learn a few lies are spoken?

The premise is fine for an excuse to see Marcos Martin unleash his creativity on futuristic cityscapes and fasionable disguises. The concept is not believable, but we'll see how the story itself plays out; if the ride is fun, I won't complain about the suspension.

More about the Private Eye coming tomorrow...