Fantastic Four #19: Alicia Masters, Private Eye

Alicia Masters is at the center of a murder mystery in Fantastic Four #19 as Ryan North takes a swing at yet another genre, this time aiming at a classic hardboiled crime story. It’s a concept that asks a lot, and it’s debatable whether the issue lived up to those demands.

Susie Storm needs help so she seeks out Alicia Masters, private detective. Susie’s boyfriend Reed is missing, and she suspects that Uncle S.H.I.E.L.D. is behind it. Fantastic Four #19 is an old style, black and white detective story. Alicia follows the clues, tracking down suspicious characters like Miss Hill from S.H.I.E.L.D. and Susie’s grease monkey brother Johnny. She is briefly aided by husband and observant detective companion Ben Grimm (at least when he can get a babysitter for their adopted children). But the real mystery is what’s wrong with the world that they all occupy.

Fantastic Four #19 is the series’ most ambitious issue in the sense that it is playing in a genre that has very specific conventions. A haunted house story requires very little in specifics–really not much more than a venue that characters can’t leave and something that is “haunting” it. When North played with that idea in Fantastic Four #10, he was wildly successful. Here he sets his sights on crime fiction, specifically the hardboiled subgenre. North hits on the surface level tropes such as depicting the story visually in black and white, making a private detective the main character and first person narrator, and kicking off the mystery with an attractive woman asking for help finding her husband or lover. But the story never goes below these surface level qualities. There is no real insight into the characters at the heart of the mystery or commentary on how they fit into the world. A large part of that results from Alicia’s narration that is little more than a recitation of events and lacks substance.

The possibility does exist that North is aiming for a parody of hardboiled crime fiction. Certainly using Alicia as a blind detective could be a nod in that direction. There is also dialogue and narration, such as Alicia sending Ben home because they don’t have a babysitter, that further points to this possibility. But if North’s goal is parody, he doesn’t sufficiently commit to the idea–hence the uncertainty in this review.

Fantastic Four #19 does succeed in the same way that most of the series has to this point: it’s fun. Whether playing straight or parodying, there is plenty of amusement to make it a page turner. The mystery’s solution and the story’s conclusion, which connects this off-the-wall story to the series’ current events, is clever and surprisingly simple.

A common trope of hardboiled fiction is that the detective themself is thinly defined as a character both in backstory and emotional journey (this contrasts with noir which is usually turned inward). Gómez’s art plays into this lack of emotion with Alicia whose expressions are largely static compared to everyone she encounters.

Gómez also finds success in backgrounds. The use of 1930-40s cars, for instance, reinforces another hardboiled trope–setting the story in the era of Chandler’s Philip Marlowe or Hammett’s Sam Spade. The success of the art is that it supports whichever storytelling choice North is aiming for, whether serious or parody.

Fantastic Four #19’s black and white style for this kind of story is familiar to most readers, and Aburtov handles it well. Despite having only greyscale shading to work with, he communicates depth successfully enough to make important characters pop off the page.

The choice to use bright color against the black and white at different points in the issue, such as Susie’s red dress and lipstick in the opening scene, is a puzzling one. Almost certainly dictated by North’s script, the use of color sometimes feels significant. Sue’s red dress, the police officers’ blue uniforms, and the yellow-orange of a burning building come across as purposeful. In much of the rest of the issue, though, the choice to color different objects feels random. The end of the issue suggests a reason for this randomization–the world’s built-in imperfections–but it is one that must be entirely intuited. All of that said, Aburtov’s very bright choices suggest from the start that something is not right with this world, reinforcing what the reader will think from the very first page.

Caramagna uses a classic typewriter style font for Alicia’s narration. That in itself isn’t too noteworthy–it’s in keeping with the issue’s overall style. But he adds very subtle shading within the narration captions that suggests slightly distressed paper. It blends into the background and is easy to miss. But it’s a nice detail that further reinforces this classic setting.