It seems that I am in something of a groove this week.
After the post I put up just a couple of days ago, I had expected to get back into a routine, with my reading one trade a week (or at least trying) and leaving the singles from my pull list until the end of the month.
However, it appears that, once again, I've been unable to return to old habits and I had too much to say to just let it wait until the correct time come.
So instead of reading a trade, I pulled from my singles pile Fantastic Four: Life Story #6, the final instalment of Mark Russell and Sean Izaakse's look at Marvel's first family as they lived (and aged) through the decades. This last issue, which sees the team reaches the 2010's, the ramifications from their encounter with Galactus are felt as the Four reach retirement age. But first, before they hang up their jumpsuits, they have to find a way to push back a new threat which the world is now facing as an old enemy re-emerges.
As I moved to read this final issue, I found myself feeling some trepidation about what I was about to get. While it had been a mostly good run so far, I had thought that, from issue to issue, Life Story had been a little bit up and down. As a result I did worry that this finale would be more down than up and not stick the landing, something I especially feared when I remember that recent FF mini's I'd read had also burned me a little as well.
Fortunately, I didn't think Life Story's end followed suit as I found this to be a really enjoyable issue, with Messrs Russell, Izaakse and Co. providing a really poignant and heartfelt story about (in my opinion) a father and husband as he looked back over life and the mistakes he made. As a man who often does that as he approaches his fort ....er, I mean late thirties, this idea of Reed wishing he could have done things differently as he watched the world continue to move on by without him really resonated.
I really thought that, more so than any issue prior, this issue capped off the series really beautifully, imbuing the notion of family within the characters better than any of prior five issues (not that I thought they failed at this). For me, this was best seen in Izaakse's final panel where with Reed and Sue reaching the end of their story and their family having left them (as tends to happen), the background shows photos of their family members in the background showing that they haven't really left. I really loved this panel but that doesn't imply that Izaakse dropped the ball elsewhere because, like the rest of the series and the main series before that, his artwork is phenomenal and makes me think of what I said about the FF art recently in that I wonder where he was before that FF job.
Now, I wont lie, this issue did have its problems. For one thing, while it certainly made sense that the issue be Reed-centric, I certainly do wish that Sue and Ben had gotten a little more focus (even if they got some good panel time). Also, While I certainly loved the plot within this issue, I did get the feeling that the all of the loose ends being tied up in the 'B' plot really made the whole thing feel a little bit crowded issue (which I get but I wish it had offered Sue and Ben a little more even focus) as well as all the tying up of loose ends made it all feel a little crowded.
Still, despite these things, I really felt that the good outweighed the bad quite heavily in this issue. I now intend to go back and re-read the entire series together to see if the whole is certainly greater than the sum of its parts. However, after reading this issue and thinking back, I'm confident that this will be the case.
I won't lie, I hadn't intended to write as much as I have done. I guess I had more to say about this issue than I thought.
Hopefully, on my next post, normal service can resume (whatever 'normal service' actually is).
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