Gravity

by Josh Crawley

Before I get into things this week, I want to mention my friend Zack Kruse’s webcomic Mystery Solved. There’s an old guy with a twirly moustache and a pipe. There’s a new installment every Thursday! And there’re fairies!

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Over the weekend I grabbed a handful of graphic novels to read at home after work. The first of those was Gravity: Big City Super Hero by Sean McKeever & Mike Norton. I liked the book, but in all honesty, there wasn’t enough for me. I wanted more of the fresh-out-of-high school kid from Wisconsin! (Sheboygan, to be exact. It’s pretty up there.) Not that McKeever & Norton are to blame. Sales didn’t warrant any more than the five issues published.

Imagine my surprise when i start reading the next book in my stack, Fantastic Four: The New Fantastic Four by Dwayne McDuffie & Paul Pelletier, and Gravity shows up!

Quick aside: if you follow my lead but don’t want to make my mistake, you may want to read McDuffie & Scott Kolins’ Beyond! between the two, as parts of it are spoiled otherwise; conveniently available in sturdy hard cover or lightweight trade paperbackvarietials.

New Fantastic Four

McDuffie’s New Fantastic Four starts after the end of Civil War. That’s about all you need to know, and you barely even need to know that. The book contains three stories that all move at a pretty brisk pace, which can be a pleasant change of pace when so many books seem padded out for the eventual collection.

Pelletier’s art, while not something I seek out, is solid and clear, and he does great expressions. I think it fits the fun atmosphere the Fantastic Four should (and did, in this book) have.

Paul Mounts’ coloring, however, doesn’t tend to be something I usually care for; not that I think he’s bad at it. It was just fine here, but after reading the volume after this (The Beginning of the End; more on that later), I much prefer Wil Quintana coloring Pelletier’s work.

After reading a while, I wasn’t surprised to see Rus Wooten lettered the book, though there are a few pages where I could swear he didn’t do them. Yes, I really am that much of a lettering geek.

Beginning of the End

The odd thing, though, is McDuffie’s story wraps up in The Beginning of the End. But it’s only three of the five issues in the book. While I understand wanting to get the other story in print (two issues by Karl Kesel and Tom Grummet), I would have much preferred McDuffie’s work in one tome.

I’m sure there’s plenty of other Fantastic Four stories out there that could have been collected with those two issues written by Kesel in another book. After a quick (and admittedly somewhat annoying) search through comicbookdb.com, there were a couple books that had a bit of new material in them written by Kesel with some reprints: The Wedding Special;  A Death in the Family; and they could have tossed in Fantastic Four 2099 (which Kesel also wrote) to round it out! But enough of my yammering about that…

If you’re looking for a fun Fantastic Four read, check out McDuffie’s New Fantastic Four and The Beginning of the End. His love for the characters shows, and I wouldn’t be ashamed to put them next to the John Byrne or Walt Simonson collections of Fantastic Four Visionaries.

Between you and me, after reading these and watching Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, I would love to see McDuffie script a Fantastic Four movie.

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Scott Pilgrim 6

Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour… or is it?

Honestly, I had high expectations. The ante was upped each volume. I liked each volume more and more, but this is what all of those previous volumes were building to. While I felt satisfied with the outcome, as a whole, I wasn’t very impressed. Sure, it looks great, and it’s fun (though not as fun as previous volumes). It just felt more like a rough cut than a final product; scenes that needed be shown to wrap things up, not the end of an epic story.

My recommendation? Get your expectations as low as possible, then give it a read.

(Trust me, if I really didn’t want you to read this book, I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all.)

Josh Pilgrim

Now, for the really fun part!!! Go over to the Scott Pilgrim movie website (be careful; lots of Flash craziness going on), and then go to the lower right hand side of the screen. See that button that says  “Create you own Scott Pilgrim Avatar!” with the beautiful Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Romana Flowers? Click on that! Then, Make you own avatar just like I did!

(Amazingly, I had an issue with that, too. No choices for black or white in the color selections. Arg!)

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Now go read Mystery Solved!

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Josh Crawley is the tenured Master of Disaster at Westfield Comics. He is not the keyboardist for Everclear.

http://www.twitter.com/joshcrawley

josh@westfieldcomics.com

Westfield Comics
ATTN: JOSH
7475 Mineral Point Rd STE 22
Madison WI 53717