Fantastic Four: Antithesis Treasury Edition

If Like me you are a long-term Marvel fan then you may have been wishing that Neal Adams had handled the art chores on the FF before "Antithesis". After reading this you'll wish he had never been allowed near it.Neal Adams was a fantastic artist and his work on Batman and Green Lantern remains unmatched but clearly he is now past his prime and his depiction of the FF, particularly the Thing, borders, as others have said, on the grotesque. Whilst there are glimpses of the Adams signature art, adopting a novel perspective and drawing the eye across the page, there are also far too many images which just don't portray Marvel's first family. Overall, the book feels like it packs in too many examples of Adams trying to outdo himself and never really pulling it off. What is intended to be a story of cosmic proportions feels small, pedestrian and ill-judged.Worse still is the writing; Mark Waid is a fine writer but in this story he reduces Galactus to a "bloke in a suit" with no shadow of the incredible "beyond mere mortal understanding" character that Lee and Kirby introduced. What makes Galactus such an interesting and enigmatic character is that he is not evil, not good; he is simply amoral - feeding on planets to sustain his ever-consuming hunger. The Galactus trilogy was a milestone in comics, introducing concepts that challenged the reader. Antithesis reduces Galactus to just another man who can be stripped of his power cosmic and reduced to that of a helpless vessel, requiring the assistance of the FF. There is no grandeur here, no high concepts and nothing that accords with the Galactus storylines that have gone before.This is purely a book for completionists - worth it for a few great Adams images but overall disappointing.

Fantastic artwork (no pun intended!) and a great storyline..especially if you love cosmic artwork!I love this A3 format too, as it creates so many more large page spread opportunities!!

Good but racy in one area. If you're buying this to read to children, there will be one area you'll want to avoid. It's too bad. It's really a shame actually.

A story drawn by Neal Adams and written by Mark Waid in a Treasury Edition size...what more could you ask for? The artwork is amazing in this huge format. Galactus is meant for stories this size! The story itself is fun as an Anti-Galactus creature is revealed and when the two titans go head-to-head it isn't pretty for our purple buddy. It's up to the Fantastic Four (again) to save the day, but this time the answer may be too incredible for the team to ever recover from!Adams' recent work for DC has been questionable at best (Batman: Odessey will go down in no one's book as a classic), but here he is doing the artwork for someone else's story (Mark Waid) and it's a nice combination. Waid is a master storyteller (Kingdom Come) so his coverage of the Fantastic Four is great. There's so much to love in this short 4-issue miniseries that FF fans will enjoy!

The artwork is fantastic and it looks gorgeous with the oversized pages. It’s a stand-alone story that is fun and has some great moments.