For some reason, the cover of FF #6 keeps making me laugh uncontrollably.
Despite any misgivings I have about what Matt Fraction is doing with Fantastic Four, I’m very much enjoying his FF, if for no other reason than his version of the Yancy Street Gang is freakin’ hilarious. A whole slew of guys wearing Jack-Kirby styled open-mouthed-and-yelling Thing masks is just Laff City. Imagining them all talking in gravelly New Yawk accents yelling stuff like “You ain’t no kinda Thing, dummy!” all the time is just supremely funny business.
Seriously, I keep breaking down and laughing just trying to write this.
Anyway, the Yancy Street Gang has been making life hell for Darla Deering, the pop star who’s been drafted into the replacement Four and who’s contributions come from wearing an old Thing-shaped robo-suit. They’ve barged in on her and splattered her with food, and in FF #6, they hacked her phone and gave the photos to the papers. They even went so far as to hack a fan contest so an entire Carnegie Hall audience for one of her shows is made up of angry Yancy Streeters, who put on their Kirby-Thing masks and start yelling “You suck, dummy!” and “You ain’t da Thing, ya phony!” as they pelt her with vegetables. While the Yancy Streeters tend to harass Ben Grimm when he’s around, they’re even more annoyed at somebody thinking they can replace him. It’s up to Ant-Man Scott Lang to try and fix things.
Meanwhile, as we saw last issue, Medusa seems to be working with her old Frightful Four leader the Wizard, and they’ve absconded with the FF’s young Wizard clone Bentley-23, and now Dragon Man has noticed they’re missing – and thus, the search is on. Oh, and in a surprisingly sweet moment, Tong of the FF’s Moloid quartet decides he’s a girl and not a boy anymore, and her brothers are lovingly fine with that.
Joe Quinones has stepped in for Michael Allred on this issue, but his style is so similar here that I didn’t really notice until I checked the credits. Perhaps that’s helped by Laura Allred’s bright, popping colors that maintain that great, clean and fun vibe that Allred’s brought to the book so far. It’s certainly a bit different from standard comic book art these days, making it an acquired taste, but it works really well for both the happy stuff and the sadder things, such as Scott Lang still mourning the death of his daughter and having unsettling gravesite dreams.
Of the two FF books, it certainly seems like Fraction has a clearer vision of what to do with this series than the main Four. It’s a wild and woolly cast of weirdos, and I really like it that way, dummy! YANCY STREET.
