the vynsane asylum

About 10 issues into Hickman's run & finally the art has sorted itself out a bit. The 4 issues leading up the battle of 4 cities were interesting, but then it ended with the battle begins... then we're into The Heroic Age & another clean start. Obviously I missed something, presumably Siege? I tried to look up a synopsis but it didn't seem to deal with that. I have a couple more to read before the "Three" storyline, the last 2 have dealt with Reed creating the Future Foundation.

Another question - did they retcon the kids to being younger at some point without explanation or did something happen? I seem to remember them both being older....

Don't get me started on the kids ages. Franklin was 6-7 when Val was born. She's now "three"ish which would make him close to ten.
Except they draw them looking like they're twins about five years old. It's maddening.

And then there're the other children of the Marvel U.
Kristoff Vernard was about five when Doom took him in. Now he's twenty something.(that could be explained away by time travel I suppose)
Logan's adopted daughter Akiko was an infant when she was introduced. Now she's sprouting tits.
The Power Pack kids were between 5 and 10. Now Alex is 20, and Julie is 17, but Katie is now younger than Franklin.
Artie and Leech have apparently stopped aging.
And by looking at the latest issue of Nova, Speedball and Vance Astro look about thirteen. Either that or they've become midgets.

Finished 588 & next up is FF1. The "Three" issues leading up to Johnny's last stand were really good - I had not read them before - Reed & Galactus, Sue & Namor, those were some quality issues.

Here's some more FF reading I did over the past week or two.

FF Unlimited 9-12. The last four issues of the Quarterly series from the mid-90s. Famous for having Herb Trimpe artwork that aped Liefeld's style. It's heinous. It might even be worse than Rob's. If that's possible. Also the writing by Roy Thomas was bad as well. I think the low point was when Scott Lang was subjected to a lost machine of High Evolutionary's and turned into Myrmidon the evil Ant-Lord.

FF Unplugged 1-6. A shortlived 99 cent ongoing series (along the lines of Untold Tales of Spidey, Professor X and the X-Men, Over the Edge, Uncanny Origins, etc). It didn't last long, but it wasn't awful stuff. And the six issues had some nice Califiore covers.

Before the FF: Ben Grimm and Logan. A 3 issue series (there were also a Reed Richards mini and The Storms mini) by Larry Hama. USAF Pilot Col. Ben Grimm has to transport Canadian secret agent Logan (and CIA Agent Carol Danvers for good measure) into the Soviet Union on some secret mission and they're opposed by KGB Agent Shostakova (AKA Black Widow). Stupid all around.

FF Domination Factor 1-4. The other half of a confusing 8 issue mini series with the Avengers about some ancient time traveling, dimension hopping Asgardian Queen. By Jurgens and McLeod.

FF: Fireworks 1-3. A "Remix" series by Gerry Jones and Jeff Johnson that "retells" and expands the Stan and Jack issues of the Inhumans meeting the FF. Always been a fan of Johnson's art so I enjoyed it.

FF Marvel Selects 1-6. Back in the 90s, Marvel offered an incentive to subscribers of two 12 issue series. One was a Spidey book and one was FF. But Marvel only produce six issues of each title. They're just reprints of classic FF issues with fancy new Alan Davis covers.

FF: True Story 1-4. A 2008 mini by Paul Cornell. The easiest way to decribe it is Fables with the FF. A man writes a book about Nightmare, thereby making him a fictional character and giving him access to all the worlds of fiction. The FF has to team up with fictional characters like the Dashwood sisters from Sense and Sensibility, Dante, Ivanhoe, etc to stop Nightmare and save The Fountainhead (the fictional embodiment of all creativity.). A quite clever and enjoyable series that acknowledges its riffing Willingham's Fables series.

FF: The World's Greatest Comics Magazine 1-12. Gotta give credit to Quesada for trying different things when he came on board as EiC in 2001. This maxi series is a "love letter" to Stan and Jack where a plethora of writers and artists mimicked their silver age writing and art style. The series is set between FF 100 and 101 and has Dr. Doom stealing various power macguffins like the Cosmic Cube and the Atlantean Horn to become all powerful, eventually stealing Galactus' power and taking over Earth. The series starred the FF, but guest featured every character Kirby worked on, like Black Panther, Cap, Thor, Silver Surfer etc. Each issue had a different writer like Kurt Busiek, Mark Waid, Jeph Loeb, etc. And several artists like Ron Frenz, Kieth Giffen, Erik Larsen jam-sessioned each issue as much like Kirby's art as they could. The entire thing was a lot of fun to read.

FF 2099 1-8. As the 2099 universe was winding down, this short lived ongoing featured a time displaced FF team in 2099. It started out well, but eventually Ben Raab took over writing and the 2099 group of titles was falling apart.

Next up are some Fantastic Five minis, the Fantastic Force ongoing from the 90s, and the FForce mini that spun out of Millar's run.
And then, apart from some Fear Itself books and a Firestar oneshot, the 'E thru F' longbox will be done.

The last of the FF stuff

Fantastic Five. This spun out of the Spider-Girl comic that became the MC2 sub-universe. Books like Avengers Next, J2(son of Juggernaut), DarkDevil, and this 5 issue series. Johnny Storm leads the FF along side Lyja, A grown up Franklin, Reed's brain in a HERBIE bot, and cyborg-Thing.

Fantastic Five. The follow up mini from 2007 has the Five plus Johnny and Lyja's son Torus, Ben Grimm and Sharon Ventura's kids, Kristoff, and Reed and Sue as well. They fight a McGuffin-ly powered Doom. Nice Ron Lim art.

Fantastic Force. A few issues of the '96 series starring the time traveling teenage Franklin, an Inhuman named Devlor, a Wakandan kid named Vibraxas, and Huntara, the dimension hopping warrior daughter of Nathaniel Richards. Typical late 90s rubbish.

Fantastic Force. The 2010 mini starring the New Defenders from Millar/Hitch's FF run. The team sets up shop on Nu-World, and are attacked by Gaea from the future and Ego the living planet. Eventually Future Logan goes back to the future and gets Gaea pregnant. It read like a low-rent Authority. Now I have to go back and reread Hickman's issues to see what happened to them. Didn't they fly back to the future in a gutted dead Galactus Head spaceship or something?


Anyway, that's it. On to the next longbox.

Okay, Rollo, or Foolery, or EP, or whatever your name is today, please tell me I'm not insane here.

I shared a photo on FB that shows some superheroes (and Darkseid) celebrating the holidays. Thing is paired with Hannukah.

Diabolical mentioned he didn't know Thing was Jewish, to which I responded that he'd been Jewish forever. (I kinda alluded to that in another thread here earlier today or yesterday.) He looks on Wikipedia, where it says it was revealed he was Jewish... in 2002.

Now, is Wikipedia wrong here, or am I totally mis-remembering multiple allusions to this in earlier comics, particularly Thing and Marvel Two-In-One circa 1975-1984? I hardly ever read FF new, and most of what I read were old copies of those comics I found in quarter bins at the local used bookstores, because I was never crazy about the FF as a whole but loved Thing? Because somehow I knew he was Jewish. And I can't imagine where the hell else I would know that from.

Now Diabolical probably thinks I'm a lying arse and will never believe me about The Blues Brothers!!

I haven't read my run of Marvel Two-in-Ones yet, it may have been alluded to there.
But yeah, they didn't officially "out" him as Jewish until recently. And since it happened After we started posting here at vynsane, you could probably do a search where I said 'WTF? Ben Grimm is a Jew? Since when??' for the very first time. I vaguely remember having that reaction.
I also remember during Dan Slott's short Thing ongoing that lasted 8 issues that Ben had his bar mitzvah.

There's a bris with a chisel joke there somewhere, but I just woke up and can't think of one.

Heh, not bad.

Wonder if I remembered your comment in the back of my mind, and figured it was in the only Thing books I'd read more than a handful of. Weird.

From the interwebs:

"Lee and Kirby, both Jewish, imagined that The Thing was Jewish from the beginning. The character's name, Benjamin Jacob Grimm, is certainly a Jewish one. But during the 1960s (and for a long time afterward), there was a strong taboo in comics and many other popular entertainment mediums against referring to real-world religious affiliations of major characters. It was not until four decades later that The Thing's Jewish identity was revealed. The revelation occurred in Fantastic Four (Vol. 3) #56, published in August 2002, in a story titled "Remembrance of Things Past"), written by Karl Kesel, pencilled by Stuart Immonen, and inked by Scott Koblish."

So, Marvel might be shitcanning the FF book because of the Fox movie deal. Or low sales or whatever.
But they might not try to reboot it almost instantaneously.

Whatcha think? Any credence to the rumors?

This is just another thing like killing Cap or Wolverine, except its a book. It may take a year or two, but the FF will be back.

Although the timing is odd, I can't see Marvel canceling the book just to piss off Fox.
Marvel still stands to make money off the movie, and if it happens to be a hit, even more potential trickle down money from comics.
Not that Marvel/Disney needs more money, but the comic book industry definitely does.