Anybody get Maximum FF?

[MWGallaher]

Sheesh, over at the Marvel Masterworks website, this book has gotten really trashed. It sounds like the panel-by-panel commentary suggested by the hype wasn't really there: it's evidently an "art book" that blows up each panel page by page.
I was hoping for something that would at least discuss the Frankensteinian nature of the book; it strikes me as bizarre that Marvel could publish such a close-up investigation of that comic and ignore the cut-and-paste-and-rewrite-and-redraw nature of what was actually published, and instead just pretend "Wow! Here's another great Jack Kirby panel reproduced at giant size! Isn't that great, folks?"

[Sir Tim Drake]

I assume that this (http://p206.ezboard.com/fmarvelmasterworksfansitefrm1.showMessageRange?top icID=4854.topic&start=1&stop=20) is the thread MWG is referring to.

Based on the commentary in that thread, I am very glad I didn't buy this book.

[Scott Shaw!]

Mark Evanier's short essay was fine, but there was nothing in it -- other than a few vintage photo of FF No. 1's creative personnel -- that couldn't be gleaned from Mark's website. Otherwise, MAXIMUM FF is utterly underwhelming. The book feels like $49.95 worth of padding and the rather crude artwork only suffers from being torn apart and enlarged to the point of looking even cruder. I absolutely love the early FANTASTIC FOUR, but if this hadn't been shrink-wrapped, I would have saved my money.

Aloha,

Scott!

[Red Oak Kid]

I was hoping for something that would at least discuss the Frankensteinian nature of the book; it strikes me as bizarre that Marvel could publish such a close-up investigation of that comic and ignore the cut-and-paste-and-rewrite-and-redraw nature of what was actually published, and instead just pretend "Wow! Here's another great Jack Kirby panel reproduced at giant size! Isn't that great, folks?"

I think I know what you are referring to here. I recall something about a theory that parts of FF 1 were originally a short monster story and it was lengthened into the origin of the FF.

But I don't think I have ever read all the details. Is this story somewhere on the web? Was it published in the JKC?

And has it become generally accepted as being fact, or is it still just someone's theory?

Thanks for the heads up on this book, as well as the Marvel Masterworks site. I was unaware of both till your post.

[MWGallaher]

I think I know what you are referring to here. I recall something about a theory that parts of FF 1 were originally a short monster story and it was lengthened into the origin of the FF.

But I don't think I have ever read all the details. Is this story somewhere on the web? Was it published in the JKC?

And has it become generally accepted as being fact, or is it still just someone's theory?

Thanks for the heads up on this book, as well as the Marvel Masterworks site. I was unaware of both till your post.
Yeah, that's what I was talking about. I believe it came up on Scott!'s forum over a year ago, when he mentioned a couple of people researching that. I haven't seen the subject ever mentioned in JKC, or on Mark Evanier's site, or any of the likely places, so I was hoping it would be mentioned in what I imagined this MaxFF was going to be. The book, as solicited, puzzled me, because I can't imagine really analyzing this book without concluding that this theory is correct. As soon as the notion of it was in my head, its correctness became inescapably clear to me the next time I pulled out my Essential FF 1. The seams show. I could do a page-by-page breakdown that would mostly reinstitute a pre-hero monster story ("I Challenged...The Mole Man!", perhaps?), but since I don't have a copy at hand, I'll just point out one of the more obvious "seams": Reed and Johnny go below ground in search of monsters, and for some reason fall unconscious. Next thing you know, the Mole Man has dressed them in hooded Hazmat-type suits--how convenient!--and they spend the next few pages not using any of their powers. Clearly, in the original story, these were just two ordinary humans that went down there in garb to protect them from radiation, not Mr. Fantastic and the Human Torch. And the radiation angle seems to have been dropped; earlier we see the monsters collapsing nuclear plants into the earth, which was probably a major story element in the original version (the radiation making more underground monster-slaves for the Mole Man). But now the Mole Man displays an utterly-pointless pile of diamonds--a pile of diamonds too crudely-rendered to be Kirby's work. I think this was probably originally a pile of radioactive materials stolen from the plants.
Once you see the structure of this pre-hero short, the other seams unravel, and you can see the art corrections, the rewritten ending (which, as published, makes no sense)...there's just no question about it in my mind. The first FF story must have been the origin chapters; when they decided to fill a whole book, they pulled out the Mole Man story, cut it up, rewrote some of it, added some pages of the FF (those with Sue and Ben above ground fighting monsters), pasted in some figures probably not drawn by Kirby, etc.
It's no wonder that figuring out who inked this has been a mystery; the true mystery is why so many people have studied the pages trying to solve that one without noticing (or at least publicly commenting on) the (to me, anyway) obvious surgical inclusion of a previously-created monster story.

[Red Oak Kid]

Thanks. I'm gonna get my Essential and check it out.

It does not surprise me that none of this would be in a book published by Marvel or DC.

Marvel and DC have no interest in the history of any of their properties. They are in the business of selling their properties. Maximum FF is a book selling the FF. IMO you will never read any behind the scenes stories about the creators of any of these properties and/or the manner in which they were created in an official Marvel or DC book. For whatever reason, they don't want you to pay any attention to the man/men behind the curtain.

Just Face Front True Believer and fork over your money for the umpteenth repackaging of these properties.

[Rob Allen]

I think the two-stories-into-one theory originated with Doc V, who occasionally posts here at CBR. He's also the one who has researched the inking question in great depth and has concluded (and has convinced Mark Evanier) that it was George Klein.

[Kid Omega]

At first I was disappointed and underwhelmed with the Maximum FF book... it really looks very cheaply done.

But I sat down and read it, and it actually kinda works in the way they want it to... the purpose is to make you relive the experience of reading the comic fro the first time, with the eyes of a six year old. Where every panel is extremely important, and you study every line on every figure....

It was actually a very moving experience, for me at least.

My biggest complaint- and this is a huge one, is the digital recoloring. The big areas of say, BLUE, rather than a sky of grayish-blue dots mixed with yellow dots here and there on off-white, aging newsprint. They lost a lot of soul when they recolored it as they did.

For a book that takes so much from the sensibilities of Chip Kidd, they really missed the point.

But I have to say, there was something intense about reading it. Even the most throwaway panels have an amazing power....

-a

[scratchie]

My biggest complaint- and this is a huge one, is the digital recoloring. The big areas of say, BLUE, rather than a sky of grayish-blue dots mixed with yellow dots here and there on off-white, aging newsprint. They lost a lot of soul when they recolored it as they did.

For a book that takes so much from the sensibilities of Chip Kidd, they really missed the point.
To me, this is a huge problem with Marvel color re-prints.

I'm an old comics fan from the 70s, just getting back into collecting. I'm buying current comics as well as building up the "wicked cool" collection I would have liked to have had in, say, 1977.

I recently bought the first two volumes of the Marvel Masterworks Uncanny X-men series (i.e. the early Claremont issues) and when I compared the pages side-by-side with my old issues, the color reprints really came up short.

It's like they didn't even try to get the colors to match in a lot of cases (e.g. blue spaceships instead of silver), and the reprinted version came out looking like a Saturday morning cartoon.

I thought at the time "They should have gotten Chip Kidd to do this". While I find his style to be a bit over-the-top at times, he really does capture the essence of old comic books, and for something like a super-expensive deluxe reprint edition, it would be nice if Marvel would make the effort to give you something that actually resembles the original.

It's very disappointing to hear that they've continued this sloppy work on the "Maximum FF" book and kudos to all of you for tipping us off to it.