Fantastic Four/Inhumans: Atlantis Rising

Comic Info

Fantastic Four: Atlantis Rising #1

Reprints Namor (1) #60-62, Fantastic Four (1) #401-402, Fantastic Four:  Atlantis Rising #1-2, and Fantastic Four Unlimited #11 (March 1995-September 1995).  When Morgan Le Fay is reborn, the underwater kingdom of Atlantis is pulled from the ocean depths to make her new kingdom.  As Namor, the Fantastic Four, and Fantastic Force try to stop Morgan and undo the damage caused by her actions, the Inhumans’ city of Attilan is taken from the moon.  With Morgan’s powers growing and the death toll rising, the Fantastic Four, Inhumans, Fantastic Force, Namor, and Thor must band together to try to save a city.

Written by Glenn Herdling, Tom DeFalco, Tom Brevoort, Mike Kanterovich, Roy Thomas, and Paul Ryan, Fantastic Four/Inhumans:  Atlantis Rising is a Marvel Comics event series.  Featuring art by Geof Isherwood, M.C. Wyman, Dante Bastianoni, Paul Ryan, Doug Braithwaite, and Herb Trimpe, the collection also features small excerpts of Namor (1) #58-59 (January 1995-February 1995).

The 1990s were pretty rough.  I had a couple issues of this collection when it was released (as a multi-title comic, you sometimes couldn’t avoid a random issue of a crossover).  I never understood what happened in the series and even now having read it, it feels a bit vague on all the events that occurred.

Fantastic Four (1) #401

The title was during kind of a revamping of the Inhumans and as the boom of Marvel’s comics were beginning to struggle.  The collection features the final issues of Namor and the middle of the rather maligned Fantastic Force.  While I liked some of Fantastic Force, it wasn’t very good, and the Fantastic Four itself was also struggling with lots of membership changes and Mr. Fantastic being “dead”.  In a lot of ways, it feels like Atlantis Rising was supposed to kind of codify some of the issues all the titles were having…but it just feels bland.

The other problem with this collection is the art.  The split from Image created a big vacuum in the comic artist market and as people tried to fill that vacuum, it feels like they were trying to imitate a lot of Image artists rather unsuccessfully (and you can debate in the long run whether some of those Image artists were good or not to begin with).  The art for this collection is often over-inked and doesn’t flow well with the storytelling…leading to more confusion.

This collection is a tough sell.  While the overall events were kind of important, at this point, it feels like there were few lasting ramifications from this storyline.  The collection itself was released as Marvel was trying to boost the Inhumans profile with the X-Men being tied up with Fox and not part of the MCU…which also didn’t work very well.  I can’t recommend this book and advise just reading a summery or steering clear.