So in general I usually just stick with the main covers of books, letting the variants stay on the shelves for the customers who want them. But sometimes…sometimes there’s a cover I have to have. Last time it was a variant featuring you-know-who, and this week it was this one:
Marvel’s celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Muppet Show, you see, so we’re getting these swell mash-up covers (as well as the equally-swell Muppets Take the Marvel Universe comic from last week). I couldn’t resist Statler and Waldorf and the Watcher. What an image.
Helping me make the choice was that I didn’t entirely care for the main cover, which looked like this:
…with a big portion given over to a banner identifying the book as part of the “DNX” crossover, sort of in the fashion of previous Marvel crossover events like Civil War. I’m not reading the DNX series, I’m not even entirely sure what it’s about, which is probably a bad thing to admit given I order and sell this stuff, but it’s basically another “event” book I’m not personally following.
Interestingly, the previously provided artwork for this cover for Fantastic Four #17 looked like this:
…with the artwork taking up the entire area. Come to think of it, the Muppet variant image we were provided prior to release did not contain the dialogue balloons:
Frankly, I liked it better that way…far more foreboding.
Now as to the issue itself, since I’m not reading the event, how did I like the book that’s tying into it? Now look, as a verified expert in comic book reading, I’m no stranger to reading a story that ties into another series I’m not reading and have no interest in doing so. I can usually extrapolate what I missed from what I have read, and if it’s a good comic book, the creative team will briefly catch you up under the assumption this book is the only one you’ve ever read, ever.
Needless to say, this is writer Ryan North we’re talking about, and he, along with artists Vincenzo Carratù and Edgar Delgado, presents us a story that requires no (or at least very little) previous knowledge of what’s going on elsewhere. The FF are stranded…somewhere, and none of them have their memories. Thus, it’s a story of them trying to work out who they are and where they’re at, and it is both amusing and exciting. It’s not ’til the end we get the explicit tie-in to DNX, but judging by the next issue blurb, it doesn’t seem like you’ll need to read any other comic to be able to follow part two of this story. Which is nice.
I suppose if you are reading DNX, this will enhance the experience. But if not, you’re good there too.
I did spot another variant this week I was tempted by:
…but alas, I’m not reading any of the X-books. Not even for Pepe the King Prawn.
I wonder if they changed the cover on that issue of FF in an attempt to cash in on the popularity of North’s FF in order to help sales on this DNX event. They made sure it was in big letters and took up half the cover so that fans of North’s FF can’t miss the fact that this series is tying in to something called “DNX”, so they better pick up the DNX mini-series and the X-Men tie-in issues also. The original cover was too subtle, and if the story doesn’t have a great deal to do with the X-Men crossover, fans might decide they’re ok with continuing to only read FF.
I haven’t read the issue of FF yet, but it was upsetting that the outstanding North FF series was being forced to waste two issues for a story that should solely be told in X-Men. I guess it will be fine if the FF issues aren’t outright forced to make the story simply about DNX.
The “Blood Hunt” issues of North’s FF still stands as my least favourite stories from that series. I didn’t care about that event and felt the FF book was shoehorned to fit with a series that did not work with the types of plots being used by Ryan North, even if “Blood Hunt” did end up setting up the North-penned “One World Under Doom” event (another comic I did not care about).