The Infant Terrible
Oh dear. Remember when I expressed concerns over where the attention was being given back at the Marvel house of ideas? Well it's quite obvious now thatThe Fantastic Four were being put on the back-burner at this point seemingly because they had already made the company a lot of money and attention, and so, naturally they wanted to try make something similar out of their other stars. Sure, we got The Amazing Spider-Man out of this, but seeing a once consistently great series sink to such lows as The Infant Terrible is just, well, terrible. Hell, even Stan's infamous hyperbole gets some doubts thrown in there; "Our slightly sensational tale..."; "we kinda think..."
And he's right in doubting this one. While it's not exactly unredeemable per se, the vast majority of the story is so ridden with holes and implausibilities that not even the usual well it's a Silver Age comic excuse can hold much ground. To Stan's undying credit, he does try to work in some moralist themes here and there, mostly dealing with the ego of humans that for all intents and purposes are probably severely primitive, even to a child of an advanced alien race. Such small moments are nice, but can't completely redeem the iffy storytelling that relies way too heavily on long stilted dialogue and patchy criminal motives that never really gel in the manner that they ideally should. At least The Impossible Man was kind of funny and entertaining. But yeah; this is a definite contender for the worst Fantastic Four issue to date.
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