Gen13/Fantastic Four

Background

Gen 13 meets Fantastic Four. Wildstorm meets Marvel. Stan Lee meets Jim Lee (no relation). Hey, Spidey did met them a while back. What harm could this do?

At least it looks pretty. Square-bound, glossy cover, top quality pages. Hey, for $5.95, I should hope so! Kevin MaGuire is credited as the "StoryTeller", with Karl Story as Inker.

As for the contents? Well, we're fairly warned on the back blurb. "Will two of the greatest teams in comics history have to duke it out to learn the answer? Hey, it's a crossover - what do you think." (End Quote). How's that for truth in advertising?

Story 'Everybody Loves Franklin'

Gen13 are really cute. There's this Grunge guy, with long hair. Then there's this uptight blond guy, who does fire. But that's nothing - wait 'til ya see the chicks! There's a big redhead musclegirl who wears this little green dress, an Asian babe with this big side-split dress, and the mega-babe who wears one of those schoolgirl outfits, with stockings. Badda-boom!

Anyhow, they're having a day out in NYC, so they're still in jeans and stuff. But they stay at a hotel. They head out to dinner, and leave their little green furry friend in the room.

When they head out for dinner, the girls dress up real nice! Whew! Check that out. Awesome! Makes the glossy paper seem really appropriate. Did I mention the schoolgirl outfit?

Anyhow, another green creature appears in the sea, a few miles off-shore, and starts swimming into town. Reed Richards spots it on the monitor. Hey Reed, way to spend Friday night!

He heads out to meet it. In the meantime, Queelocke, the green guy, starts getting agitated, and breaks out of the hotel room, causing a bit of a fuss. Spidey and Johnny Storm are floating around the city, and they run into him. Spidey and JS help capture they guy, and head back to FF headquarters. That's basically why I'm reviewing the book - spidey gets to appear on four or five pages. A fairly decent effort from him.

Well, Gen13 get back and find Queelocke gone. They track him down at FF headquarters, but the problem is, he's growing - as is the other green guy, who's just about hitting land by this point. Both the green monsters are now getting seriously large, and looking real mean.

Gen13 and the FF decide there's no time to do anything useful, they have to have a fight, involving the FF's handy entrance to the negative zone. How bizarre. It's fairly ordinary, as scraps go.

But as the two monsters tear through town (fortunately, nobody is hurt), they head to a massive show-down in Central Park. Can Gen13 save the day? What about the FF? Heck, they defeated Galactus. How hard can this be? Buy the book and find out.

are floating around town.

General Comments

This could have been terrible. Many of the other cross-company one-shots have been just aweful. But in this case, there's enough humour to make it work relatively well. By the standards of its predecessors, this is very palatable.

Overall Rating

By itself, it's worth three webs, but check out the stockings on that purple-haired girl! Whew, thats'a worth at least a half-a-web bonus!

Footnote

BTW, all the super-chicks in this comic are over 16. The schoolgirl outfit is just a costume. Honest.