Fantastic Four: Antithesis Treasury Edition by Mark WaidMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
When the Silver Surfer arrives on earth, near death, the Fantastic Four find themselves up against a new threat in Antithesis!
When this was solicited, I was on the heels of reading Mark Waid's Fantastic Four run and hungry for more. The Neal Adams was just icing on the cake, I thought.
It pains me to give this two stars but it was only okay. The story was adequate, I guess. Galactus is stripped of his power and tossed into the Negative Zone by Anthesis, another cosmic being that imbues planets with his life force and enslaves them. It sounds interesting but from there it's a paint by numbers Fantastic Four story. Reed's ignoring his family in favor of science, Ben and Johnny bicker, and there's some technobabble solution. Apart from a twist at the end, I'm already forgetting the details. Like most of today's comics, it felt like an issue and a half of story stretched across four.
Neal Adams is pushing 80 but still put out some good artwork in this. Sure, I hate the way he draws Ben Grimm and it seems like he had trouble maintaining a consistent look for Johnny but he's still a damn fine artist. I thought the color detracted from the artwork, though, and the story would look better in black and white.
The volume is padded by an X-Men issue drawn by Adams and the first issue of Waid's Fantastic Four run. It is what it is.
The enlarged size of Fantastic Four: Antithesis didn't do much to make it a more engaging story. Two out of five stars.
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