Fantastic Four Unlimited Primer
Fantastic Four Unlimited was a product of the decade in which it was published. It came at a time when Marvel was churning out numerous unnecessary titles that led it to financial problems when the comic book bubble of the 90s burst. It was an attempt at creating a premium direct edition title that expanded on things going on in the regular Fantastic Four title, yet it delivered nothing but stories of little consequence to the greater scheme of things.
Most of the stories were written by Roy Thomas and drawn by long time Marvel artist Herb Trempe. At the time, Trimpe was inspired to try to style his artwork much like the hot artists of the time, think Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and Todd McFarlane. The result was, in my opinion, some of the most ugly work he has ever done. Characters were horrendously proportioned to the point they looked deformed, especially wen he was rending the female form.
The first issue featured a Black Panther story with Klaw as the main villain and featured a back-up story about the origins of the “first” Black Panther. The only thing noteworthy about this premiere issue is how the back-up story is at odds with later stories about who the first Black Panther was and who was the Black Panther during World War II, a mess of continuity that Marvel has not bothered trying to explain or clarify. The next issue tried to tie up loose ends involving Ahura, the long-lost child of Medusa and Black Bolt, finally reuniting him with the rest of the family where. From here he would go on appearing on the sidelines of stories involving the Inhuman royal family despite being a being of allegedly great power. He would fade into obscurity, not appearing in Inhuman stories until Silent War. The third issue tried to follow up on the Brute, the Counter-Earth version of Reed Richards who was dumped in the Negative Zone back in the 70s.
The only big thing to note about these stories was the fact that they forgot to note that the Thing’s face was horribly scarred by Wolverine in Fantastic Four #374, a disfigurement that character wore until issue #407. This was rectified in the following issue which featured a battle between the Thing and the Hulk and also involved the Mole Man trying to restore the youth of his rapidly aging lover, Kala. Issue #5 featured a new Frightful Four attacking the team shortly after the “death” of Reed Richards in Fantastic Four #381. This story also muddies the continuity as it attempted to tie into issue #384 of its mother series which brought Ant-Man onto the team to replace Reed as the group’s resident scientist. This story is also noteworthy as the one where it is revealed that the Wizard, aka Bentley Whitman, legally changed his name to “The Wizard”, a fact that is never mentioned in story and is a trivial matter left to the handbooks to reference.
By this point, Fantastic Four Unlimited tried to follow more closely with the core title. Issue #6 continued with the Fantastic Four's search through the time stream for Reed Richards, whom Sue refused to believe was dead, landing the team on a world ruled by the Sub-Mariner. The next issue, in memory of the then-recently deceased Jack Kirby, was a tribute to the various monsters that Kirby created in the 1950s. Its too bad this story was horribly rendered by Herb Trempe.
Issue #8 was written by Tom Brevoort and Mike Kanterovich and pencilled by Dante Bastiaoni, it was a nice departure from the awful garbage being pumped out by Thomas and Trimpe. It featured a story where the Psycho-Man tries to get revenge against the Invisible Woman after she gave him a taste of his own medicine following the events of Fantastic Four #280-284 in which he mentally raped her. Sadly, things went back to Thomas and Trimpe the next issue with an even more hideous rendition that also featured the Godpack, one of Roy Thomas’ least inspiring characters and then issue #10 a story that delved deeper into Maelstrom’s connection to the Eternals and Deviants.
Issue #11 was an epilogue to the Atlantis Rising event, a forgettable crossover epic that were over-saturating Marvel books at the time. It contained two stories that dealt with the aftermath of Morgan le Fay raising Atlantis to the surface and the Inhumans return to Earth from the moon. The first story was written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Doug Brathwaite focused on the Inhuman royal family dealing with continued exile and injuries that Black Bolt suffered during the event. While the second story written by Glen Herding and drawn by (ugh) Herb Trimpe dealt with Namor’s struggle to lead his people in the face of recent developments. This story is notworthy in that most of the plot elements were mostly ignored following the Onslaught event that shortly followed this whole debatcle.
The final issue, also by Thomas and Tremp was a sidestory that expanded on issues #406-407 which saw the return of Mister Fantastic and team’s first conflict with Hyperstorm, the big villain that was the center of Tom DeFalco’s epic run on Fantastic Four.
Overall, the title was underwhelming with bad art and terrible stories. Other than a few anecdotal additions to continuity these stories can be outright skipped as they are just terrible.
