What happens when a multinational company entrusts an independent writer with the task of writing the past of a major series? This is what happens in the Grand Design collection. Where after Ed Piskor on the X-Men, Tom Scioli takes over the Fantastic Four.
An original size and purpose
Fantastic Four: Grand Design published by Panini comics is a collection as original in its format as in its purpose. Close to a newspaper, these large pages prevent you from looking at the whole thing at a glance, but offer tenfold resources for the layout. For the purpose, Marvel entrusts to an underground artist the keys of an old series, with the responsibility for him to summarize alone the history of a series several decades old.
A recomposed past
It all starts with the accident of a space shuttle. Cosmic rays ravage the bodies of three men and one woman. However, it is not the FF but Galactus then saved by the Guardian. The author chooses to start with the interventions of the FF on the past, before telling the origins of superheroes. In a few boxes, we then move on to ancient Egypt to see how the FF intervened against Ram-Tut in medieval England with Merlin. The fan is delighted but the neophyte is voluntarily lost to approach the abundant universe created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Tom Scioli sorts through this mythical series and the reader enters his world by discovering his favorite boxes or pages. He does not hesitate to use a single box for a minor adventure and then several pages for another. The fan recognizes boards but everything is upset by a different layout. By all these choices, the author proposes a different rhythm of reading. The author enjoys a freedom because the story sometimes becomes ironic in the dialogues. It also leaves terribly kitsch elements. A bold choice to keep Alicia, the companion of The African-American Thing as in the film.
A drawing close to Kirby
Tom Scioli adopts a classic Jack Kirby drawing but he adds a blur or deliberate incompletion. The inking is also barely visible. The third part of the book is very different because it is a mythical episode of Lee and Kirby – Fantastic Four 51 – but colored by Piskor. This modernizes the narrative and brings it closer to pop art. This large book can be disturbing by the format and the drawing but also by the content. However, it is also exciting to see what an author does with the past: what does he keep and what does he highlight? What does he put aside and what does he laugh at?
