Fantastic Four #11: A Thing and His Dog

Everything is unpredictable in this Fantastic Four run. The series follows up a strong team adventure with another solo outing focusing on Ben. That probably conjures images of Ben punching his way through bad guys. But Fantastic Four #11 goes in a whole other direction and delivers a clever and well-reasoned comic.

Ben has a new friend in Fantastic Four #11–a very cute dog. Ben isn’t much of a dog person, though, and he does everything he can to chase her away. But the next thing Ben knows, he and the dog are alone in the house which is freefalling down a bottomless shaft. There’s no punching his way out of this situation, so Ben starts planning how he can stop the house falling so he can start climbing up. His work might be for naught, though, as he finds himself squaring off against Miracle Man. And it’s possible that only Ben’s new dog can save the day.

North repeatedly shows a willingness to deliver adventures featuring less than the full team. Fantastic Four #11 does that again with Ben. North also cuts against the grain with the characters, placing them in situations that aren’t necessarily what readers expect. Ben has to think his way out of this situation–first in building the airspeed indicator and later in deducing what the dog’s behavior is telling him. Ben is the big guy who punches people, after all. That’s not his sole trait, but that’s what people often picture him as. But in this series’ Ben-centric issues, Ben isn’t punching anyone. These story choices keep the series feeling fresh and unpredictable.

The series also continues to be a very smart one. Fantastic Four #11 doesn’t deal with a science problem, but Ben’s solutions follow logical reasoning. Obviously there are superhero/supervillain comic book elements at work, but thinking his way through to the resolution doesn’t require any of them.

Adding the dog is very fun. All the better since North ties her into the plot, making her more than just a spice of life addition. And it informs us about Ben’s character–he doesn’t like dogs. It’s nothing Earth shattering, but it’s one more thing to know about him. Just as North writes very smart stories, he writes for characters as much as any plot.

Coello does nice work on this issue, but most important–he draws a very cute dog. You can tell she’s a very good girl.

Fantastic Four #11 opens with a Monday thru Friday structure as the dog comes by each day and Ben chases him off. The first page is a six panel grid, and Coello does a nice stair step layout with the second panel lying above the corner of the first, and the third panel lying across the corner of the second, and so forth. Caramagna’s lettering supports this kind of waterfall look, encouraging the reader’s eyes to flow through each panel on the way down to the bottom of the page.

Coello’s detail on Ben continues to impress. So much of what he thinks is communicated via his expressions. When Ben wakes up on Friday as the house is plummeting, he has an almost “Seriously? Again?” sort of look on his face. Later in the issue, after the dog has helped save the day, Ben is ecstatic to have her around.

The coloring here is bright as usual without being overly vivid. At times there is almost a lush quality. Aburtov’s work stands out for a different reason in this issue, though. The house is in freefall for roughly half the issue, and Aburtov uses changing shades of gray depending on depth and perspective. He creates a definite sense of depth and speed which completely sells Ben’s seeming weightlessness in the house.

There is a lot of dialogue in this issue. Caramagna does his usual good job at keeping everything neatly organized to keep the art central. In this issue in particular his layouts are very effective at keeping the eye flowing both within panels as well as from panel to panel. Caramagna keeps the dialogue bubbles flowing in a way that adds to Ben’s weightlessness in freefall.