Maximum Fantastic Four- the Ugly, the good, the unfortunate

Review by Bonanzaguy

This and other Bonanzaguy reviews can also be found on the Marvel Masterworks site.

I really don't know where to start with this book other than to just ask the question, "why?"
This is a prime example of a good idea gone badly.
The idea of a large scale, panel-by-panel breakdown of the first issue of Fantastic Four really appealed to me. The solicitation promised" art commentary by Kirby expert Mark Evanier. "I was expecting at least some kind of commentary specific to the actual action on the pages. No such luck, between the oversized panels lurks an awful lot of blank

Evanier's comments are relegated to one small section towards the back. While it does offer some new insights to the books creation, it really doesn't offer up much more than the great introductions that Roy Thomas contributes to the Golden Age Masterworks. Mosley's contributions offer nothing more than he personal experiences and remembrances. While sweet, they aren't enough to justify the package. The cover: After a little origami folding, the cover breaks down into a poster size rendition of the cover of FF #1. Nice, but I bought one of these for $3.99 back in the day and it wasn't folded.

The back side features photos of Walter Mosley's copy of the original FF #1.

See that blue line? When the cover is folded and used as a dust jacket, that band runs across the top of the book. All fine and good. The problem is that it cuts the top off the photographs of pages 15-18 of the comic!

Next time, scoot the pictures down a little and avoid this problem. The reproduction is very nice but there reaches a point of how large you and blow this stuff up and make any sense of it. The comic on the inside of the poster must be so that people can read the story as intended, because the book quickly ignores trying to get everything onto the page and often cuts off dialogue and art making it near impossible to actually read the story.

This is more of a "pop art" book than a nice edition of FF #1. The point seemed to be to fill up 224 pages of paper even if you have to stretch the material real thin.

The wrap up? Well, you can really handle the book much before wear starts to show on the dust jacket and you'd have a ton of fun trying to get a wrapper to protect it. Best have a copy of your Masterwork is near by so you can ooh and aaaah at the dynamic layout and still follow the story. One last thing to the guys at Marvel. You really need to do a better job at telling a potential buy what's inside that darned book. If you read the sparse description on the back, you have no idea of what you are buying. I don't think you have to put it on the dust jacket, but put either a stick or a card under the shrink wrap ala DC, so that buyers know you've been working so hard on.