When Dracula fights Ivanhoe something is seriously wrong in the land of fiction.
GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW PAUL CORNELL THE FANTASTIC FOUR TRUE STORY 2009 Marvel.
A very witty, literate, and ingenious Fantastic Four story that deals with the concept of literally getting lost in a good book.
The heroic quartet find themselves trapped in the land of fiction and imagination, where virtually anything can and does happen.
When people round the World begin to lose interest in reading and indifferent to getting on with their lives, the heroes enter the imaginary realm to find out what is causing the problem. They discover that an entity called Nightmare has taken the Fountainhead (source of all imagination and inspiration), prisoner.
The Four draw on the aide of every literary figure they can find, from Ivanhoe to the heroines of Jane Austin novels to assist them, while Nightmare enlists fictional villains from Dracula to Long John Silver.
There is a very knowing use hereof literary devises and plot puns, as Mr. Fantastic and Nightmare play the game out like chess strategy.
There are lovely touches like Toad Of Toad Hall (from Kenneth Graham’s Wind In The Willows) stealing the Ficto-craft (a fictional version of the Fantasti-Car), for a joy ride.
Cornell sees the story as a tribute to Jasper Fforde, who also blurred boundaries between reality and fiction in his Thursday Next series of books. The Ficto-Car is actually called the Jasper here.
Well humoured with a great finale where pulp fiction characters invade the pitch dominated by the classics, and a knowing sense of the FF themselves being fictional entities.
Cornell is a genius who has worked on Dr Who stories, and other SF too. Hopefully, he will create more comic book stories too.
Arthur Chappell
