Delve into Fantastic Four: The Ultimate Guide by Tom DeFalco
Written: Jun 19 '07 (Updated Aug 08 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Interesting information about the characters and some story lines.
Cons: Organization could have been better. No in depth information. Some things left out.
The Bottom Line: Fantastic Four: The Ultimate Guide is a good resource for fans of the comic book or for people who are interested in learning more about the characters.
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| dragonfire88's Full Review: Dk - Fantastic Four: The Ultimate Guide |
I have enjoyed a lot of movies based on comic books over the years. I tend to see most of those types of movies at least once even when I know basically nothing about the original comic books and characters. I have picked up several books like The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Guide, Batman: The Ultimate Guide to The Dark Knight, Ghost Rider Visual Guide, Superman: The Ultimate Guide to the Man of Steel, and Ultimate X-Men that have helped me to learn a lot more about the different characters and comic books. I saw Fantastic Four when it came out in 2005. It was one of the movies that I knew very little about the source material. I do plan to see Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and I decided to pick up Fantastic Four: The Ultimate Guide by Tom DeFalco to help fill in the information I was unaware of.
Dorling Kindersley, the same company responsible for the other guides to comic book characters that I own, published Fantastic Four: The Ultimate Guide. The book was released in 2005. I’m guessing it was connected to the release of the movie though I could be wrong about that. Since another movie was set for release in June of 2007, I thought that maybe an updated version would be released like has happened with the other guides. That hasn’t happened yet and as far as I could tell from checking online, DK wasn’t planning to release an updated version. The cover of my book does look a little bit different from the picture of the cover for the listing here on Epinions. This book is an oversize hardback book like the other DK superhero guides that I own.
Fantastic Four: The Ultimate Guide shared information about the Fantastic Four, the different characters they came into contact with and a few of the story lines they were involved in. The book itself didn’t have an actual plot even though it did share a little bit of information related to some of the plots from the comic books. The information about the different subjects was shared in short paragraphs consisting of just a few sentences. There wasn’t much in depth information about any one thing, something that I’ve come to expect that from these DK guides. I would have liked it if there had been more detailed information.
The book began with a foreword by Stan Lee, one of the men who created the Fantastic Four comic book. He briefly mentioned how he came up with the title for the comic and the characters. He also talked about working with Jack Kirby on the comic. An introduction that I believe was written by DeFalco followed Lee’s foreword.
After the foreword and introduction, the book moved right into providing information about Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm. It was explained how the four knew each other, how they received their powers and then decided to work together as the Fantastic Four to fight crime. The next several pages provided information about each of those four characters as well as some illustrations that featured the characters. There was a family tree that showed people connected to each member of the Fantastic Four and shared a small amount of information on the characters included in the tree. Characters that the Fantastic Four worked with were discussed as well as five characters who had filled in for members of the Fantastic Four at different times. The building that the Fantastic Four used as a base of operations was briefly mentioned as well as some of the hardware that Reed invented for them to use. The building has changed a few times over the run of the comic book. There wasn’t a diagram of the building and there really was very little information about it shared.
The rest of the book was divided into four sections, one for each decade since the comic book was created in the 1960's. Between the sections were two page illustrations that served as dividers. The first two pages of each section included a short overview of important events from each particular decade related to the comic book. There were illustrations of some of the comic book covers from the period shared as well. I believe the covers that were shown were from the issues that were considered more important from the period.
Within each section of the book, there was information about the different characters the Fantastic Four encountered. Some were regular people who the team considered friends while others were actual superhero allies or villains. There were some characters that served as both allies and enemies at different points. Most of the characters were discussed over two pages but some received only one page or even just a small portion of a page. I’m guessing those characters weren’t as important. Galactus and the Silver Surfer were featured together. Galactus was mentioned a few other times throughout the book. It was briefly mentioned that the Silver Surfer didn’t continue working for Galactus indefinitely. There just wasn’t much information of what else he did do.
The book included many illustrations. They would be scattered over the pages and fit in between the text. The illustrations were connected to the subject in some way and looked as if they had been pulled from different issues of the comic books complete with text. Some of the illustrations that I believe were from the earlier issues had more subdued colors and the drawings didn’t look as clean as it did in many of the other illustrations. There were captions for some of the illustrations that served to share a little more information on the subject as well.
Near the end of the book, developments that had taken place not to long before the 2005 publication of the book were brought up. The fact that a new Ultimate Fantastic Four comic book was launched, which from what I can tell changed the origins of all of the main characters, was also included. I have actually read the first few issues of the Ultimate Fantastic Four. I picked them up before the first movie was released in an attempt to learn at least a little about the characters.
Two of the last pages of the book featured a world map which pointed out things the Fantastic Four had done in different countries. The map was followed by the Gazetteer. The pages listed all the comic books that the Fantastic Four have appeared in. An alphabetical list of characters and the first comic book they appeared in finished off the pages. That was followed by an afterword by the author and an index.
I did think that the organization of the information could have been better. It seemed like subjects were arranged in on a chronological order based on when the subjects first turned up in the comic books. There were times when things seemed to be mentioned out of order.
When characters were discussed, some things connected to story lines that they would be involved in were also mentioned. In some cases, the story lines being referred to wouldn’t happen for many years, sometimes even a decade or more later in the run of the comic book. Some of those events were brought up again later in the book as well. That did make it harder to figure out exactly when certain things happened, especially since there wasn’t any kind of time line included anywhere in the book. The information was just scattered around the pages, fit in around illustrations, and it wasn’t always clear to know what order to read the bits of text in. I think I read some things out of order because of that.
The Fantastic Four have been popular comic book characters for years which eventually led to a big budget movie being made in 2005. Before that, there had been an animated show and I think even a previous low budget movie version. I never saw either of those. There really was no information connected to the movies included in this book. There was one or two brief mentions of the 2005 movie that didn’t include any sort of details and that was it. I wasn’t looking for a lot of information on the movies or the cartoon. I just thought it would have been nice if they had at least been mentioned.
When I first saw Fantastic Four, I knew very little about the characters and really didn’t know about any of the story lines that had been covered in the comics. I did manage to enjoy the movie even though I had no clue how close to the source material it stayed. It wasn’t one of my favorite movies based on comic books, but it wasn’t horrible either. Since I thought the previews for the second movie looked interesting, I decided to pick up Fantastic Four: The Ultimate Guide so I could learn more about the characters and I wouldn’t feel as lost. I do feel like I have a better understanding of the characters now. I thought the information was very interesting. I just wish it had been organized a bit better. I also would have liked it if there had been more information on some subjects.
Fantastic Four: The Ultimate Guide was a fast read for me, mostly because most of the pages really didn’t have that much text on them. With the exception of the foreword, introduction, and afterword, the pages only had a few paragraphs worth of text on them, if that. The other guides by DK that I own had the same sort of layout with the information presented in the same style, so I expected that from this book. It just would have been nice if there had been more detailed information.
I did enjoy Fantastic Four: The Ultimate Guide even though I felt the organization could have been better. The information included in the book was interesting and I’m glad I decided to pick the book up. This would be a good book for fans of the Fantastic Four.
Fantastic Four Reviews
Fantastic Four ~ Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer ~
Other Comic Book/Superhero Related Reviews
The Amazing Spider-Man: The Ultimate Guide ~ Batman ~ Batman Returns ~ Batman Forever ~ Batman & Robin ~ Batman Begins ~ Batman: The Ultimate Guide to The Dark Knight ~ Catwoman ~ Daredevil ~ Elektra ~ Flash Gordon ~ Ghost Rider ~ Ghost Rider Visual Guide Hellboy ~ The Incredibles ~ Judge Dredd ~ The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ~ The Legend of Zorro ~ Lois & Clark: The Complete First Season ~ Lois & Clark: The Complete Second Season ~ Lois & Clark: The Complete Third Season ~ The Mask of Zorro ~ Men in Black ~ Men in Black II ~ My Super Ex-Girlfriend ~ Sky High ~ Spider-Man ~ Spider-Man 2 ~ Spider-Man 3 ~ Superman Returns ~ Superman: The Ultimate Guide to the Man of Steel ~ X-Men ~ X2: X-Men United ~ X-Men: The Last Stand ~ X-Men: The Legend of Wolverine ~ Ultimate X-Men ~ V for Vendetta ~ Zoom ~
Recommended:
Yes
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