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When I was 12, comic books cost 10 cents. This sum could also buy a candy bar, or a soda, or a rubber ball. I could spend a few hours reading that 10 cent literature. You could buy a house for $20,000 and a car for $2000. Now, I'm much older: comic books cost about $4.00, and the BIG comic books, i.e. graphic novels, cost about $12 new. I can get through the $4 ones in about 10 minutes, so I need the longer form. What I don't need is a $12 price tag. So thanks to e-bay, I can get a graphic novel for a lot, lot less. This one is the first of Marvel's Ultimates Fantastic Four series. The Ultimates series are rebootings of the classic Marvel stories, with glossy paper, good artwork, and minor changes in the storyline. As one can expect, the origin stories are in the first book, and the origin stories have been updated and made more grown up. This time, we are given an origin story beginning when Reed Richards is a nerd kid with an older friend/protector, Ben Grimm. Of course, Reed is a genius, and he is introduced to the Baxter Building at a very early age. The Baxter Building is a kind of school for gifted kids and adults where Reed meets up with Sue Storm, her brother, and Victor Von Doom. These parts of the story were never told in the original comics in the early 1960's, so their inclusion here goes a long way to deepening and strengthening the plot. The accident which makes the characters into the FF and Dr. Doom is changed: no longer is it an outer space jaunt but a multimillion dollar time/space/matter transport experiment. The characters' ambivalent reactions to their astounding physical changes are also explored to good effect. The FF's abilities are the classic ones, still inexplicable by any known scientific principles. There is no attempt to make such explanations, this being, after all, still a comic book. As a comic book, though, it is very entertaining, more mature, well done, and worth a second or even a third read-through.Read full review
Package came slightly damaged, but that's to be expected every now and then. Overall I'm satifised with my purchase.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
I have sold all of my single issues of this comic book series, so figured this would be a good format to have them collected in. Only thing is, do I really want to have this series collected in this format? The FF that I grew up with are NOT this 'Ultimate' FF team. And the series currently seems to be going through a rough spot... Maybe I no longer want to be a 'completist' when it comes to collecting?!! Michael
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