Fantastic Four: Big Town at Couture's

(as seen in the pages of Advanced Iron #55)

BIG TOWN #1-4

- January to April 2001

Story : Steve Englehart
Pencils : Mike McKone
Inks : Mark McKenna

This limited series takes place in an alternate reality. In this world, Reed Richards and Tony Stark have decided to make their scientific discoveries public. The result is Big Town : a new high-tech futuristic city that used to be known as New York.

A lot of familiar faces inhabit Big Town. The FF and the Avengers are there. The team is composed of the Swordsman (apparently the leader), Hawkeye and Mockingbird (married and bickering as always), Black Panther and Thor (at odds with each other because of a white supremacist group calling itself the Odin-Cult), Iron Man and The Wasp (who are sleeping together even though Jan's still married to Pym and weirdly enough, he knows about their affair) and Captain America of course. The original X-Men are also present. Calling themselves "Mutts", they're thugs and thieves living in the dark alleys of Newark burough. As for Spidey, although he's retired, he licensed his name which is being used all over the place by all kinds of companies.

As for the bad guys, they feel threatened by this new golden age of humanity. Many band together to put an end to it. The alliance is formed between Doc Doom, the Red Skull, Magneto (it sounds like Acts of Vengeance so far, doesn't it?), Ultron, the grey Hulk and Namor.

As you probably know by now, I'm a sucker for "What Ifs" so I couldn't stay away from this series. It did have a few surprises in store for me. A few. The fate of Hawkeye at the end of the last book is very cool…

Iron Man's armor in this reality is awesome and it was fun to see him involved with The Wasp again, even though it was the freakiest love triangle I've ever heard of.

It just seems to me like this alternate reality had so much potential and so little is actually exploited here.

This world is too similar to ours! The war between Doom and the heroes is nothing out of the ordinary, it's a story that could have been told in mainstream Marvel (and it has been on countless occasions). It's as if the whole alternate world serves only as a side-attraction, a decor, while the main action centers on characters that are, for the most past, almost exactly the way they are in our reality. The Thing is bitter and feels like a deformed monster who will never know love, Namor's in love with Susan Richards, Hawkeye lectures his wife about killing an enemy… we've all read that stuff before! How about a little bit of originality here?

The story also lacks complexity and depth. The whole thing is too simple, almost childish. And so the story seems to drag on and on for four issues when it could easily have been told in two action-packed comics. The only surprises you'll get (aside maybe for Hawkeye's faith) are in the first two comics… after that it's all rather predictable and hardly exciting. The fights have a lot of potential but again, it remains unexploited. Iron Man versus Ultron? A few panels. Iron Man versus the Silver Surfer? Two panels, not a word said. Where's the fun in that? Most of the dialogues are boring to tears. I tried to read the whole series a second time before writing this review, but I just couldn't do it. I had to skip several pages that were simply too boring.

The story also has several inconsistencies and errors. Like for example, Pym complains to Prof X that he'd like their team of super-cops to have "at least one mutant"… and then on the next page, you see Nightcrawler standing around in their living room. If he's not a mutant, I don't know who is! Later, Wolverine's adamantium claws are unable to pierce the Thing's hide? That's silly, we know he can, he did it easily enough in the past. Then the Black Panther gets hit in his lower back by Namor (we hear his spine crack), in the third issue he's in a coma, said to be in a "critical" condition, gets poisoned by the Skull and then saved by Torch and Thor, and finally in the last issue (hours later at the most) he's in perfect shape and fighting the Odin-Cult like nothing ever happened.

And what's the deal with Stark and Janet Van Dyne? They sleep together, Pym knows it and yet she still calls Hank "my guy" and he still professes "our marriage works, that's the bottom line". Is Pym jealous of Stark? No, it's actually Stark who's jealous of Pym! What the heck? And after calling Pym "hon" and professing she loves him, The Wasp turns around and comes on to Tony. If any of you can make any sense of that, please explain it to me. I've heard about a lot of messed up relationships in my life, but this is just ridiculous.

Color errors also make the action hard to follow, like the "Knights of Doom" (Doc Doom's army) changing color from silver, to green and then back to silver (although with red joints this time) and then in the second comic they're back to green! Hawkeye's hair goes from brown to white in a few hours. It's annoying and distracting.

The Wasp lands on Iron Man's wrist, right in front of Pym, when Stark says: "And since we're optimistic about you and me, Jan - in about thirty minutes?" to which Janet replies: "You know action turns me on, Iron Man!" (does anyone know a good super-hero therapist?)

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