Dantastic Book Reviews

347-349: A skrull takes the Fantastic Four out of action and forms a new Fantastic Four with Spider-Man, the Hulk, Wolverine, and Ghost Rider as the members to take on her enemies!

This story was pretty superficial. It read like someone called Arthur Adams, the guest penciller, and asked him what he wanted to draw and had Simonson write a story around it. Skrulls, Mole Man, and lots of monsters. I suspect Wolverine and Ghost Rider were members of the surrogate Fantastic Four solely to drum up sales. It's a pretty good example of a soulless 1990's Marvel story. Shame on you, Walt!

350: Doctor Doom and his doom bots attack Latveria to unseat Kristoff. Things are going well until another Doctor Doom shows up. And Ms. Marvel makes a deal with the devil to regain human form.

And things are back to status quo, not just for the Fantastic Four but for Doctor Doom as well with Kristoff out of the picture. There seemed to be a shot taken at Steve Englehart when Doctor Doom talked about Ms. Marvel's origin.

352-354: As the remainder of the Fantastic Four battle Doctor Doom's defenses, Reed and Doom battle across time in a duel to the death until the Time Variance Authority get involved.

Funny how the top guys in the TVA look like the late Mark Gruenwald, the guy in charge of Marvel's continuity. With all the time travel that goes on in the Marvel Universe now, the TVA could use a monthly title just to clean up after it.

Closing Thoughts: Walter Simonson's run was a return to big stories featuring Marvel's First Family but they didn't really break any new ground and didn't accomplish much more than hitting the reset button. This last volume was a little weak but still gets a three out of five stars.