Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett reviews Fantastic Four #574 and talks about kids' comics and how to sell them:

Usually I recuse myself from reviewing comic books, but last week I praised Jonathan Hickman and Dale Eaglesham's work on Fantastic Four, cited it as an example of a good all-ages superhero title and suggested everyone should check out the latest issue, #574, which had just shipped.  So imagine my surprise when I finally got the chance to read it… and found it to be a major disappointment, primarily due to the pencils of fill-in artist Neil Edwards who clearly wasn't up to the assignment.

Edwards does ok with the superhero stuff but since there's very little of that (this being mostly just the story of a young boy's birthday party), the fact that Edwards' characters suffer from a severe lack of subtlety of expression puts him at a definite disadvantage here.  Like, from the context I'm guessing in the final panel of the story Franklin is supposed to be experiencing a moment of absolute wonder, but given the art that's only a guess on my part.

Edwards' art also suffers from a striking lack of details.  There are a couple of strangely wordless panels.  In one Mr. Fantastic unmasks the party's faux Spider-Man to reveal long-time supporting cast member mail carrier Willie Lumpkin--or it could just be some generic old bald guy with glasses and I'm just wishful-thinking.  And in the other one Reed looks like he should be saying something, making me wonder if some word balloons didn't make it onto the final art.

Anyone picking up this issue on the basis of the striking Alan Davis cover (who as always excels at capturing triumphant human joy, something that's sadly not much called for in today's comics) is bound to be disappointed by the contents.  That's a genuine shame since the art mars what could have been not just a really good story but also that rarest of things, a good stand alone story.

Since I'm already picking this issue apart while I'm not completely comfortable with Hickman allowing little Valeria  to use the term 'retard' as a term of affection for her brother I do applaud Franklin for inviting The Dragon Man to his party.  Like Prestor John he was one of those great Fantastic Four walk-on characters who easily could have gotten their own titles but instead wandered off into obscurity.  Not that the character ever made much sense; Professor Gilbert decided to create artificial life so naturally thought that a gigantic humanoid dragon was exactly what humanity had been waiting for.

Still it would be nice if the Richards let him hang around the Baxter Building; it's only fair, after all, it was the F.F. who let him get away decades ago, allowing him to get into all kinds of trouble wandering around the Marvel Universe unsupervised.

All signs indicate the all-ages Marvel Adventures will go the way of all of their previous attempts at doing a line of all-ages superhero material.  A lot of people suspect soon there'll be the launch of a similar line with a different brand name though others seem to think it has something to do with the Disney merger.  I'm hoping it's the latter because I think it's long past time everyone began to rethink both the delivery system and method of production for creating comics for kids.

Maybe it's just because it's the lull between Christmas and New Year's, the ultimate slow news week, but thanks to the World Famous News room website I've watched a fairly minor story, essentially 'Disney Looking to Minor Marvel Characters for Money' popping up on all sorts of sites (i.e. "Disney betting on less famous Marvel superheroes" at the Springfield News-Reader, etc.).  So far they've all featured a statement from Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger saying the company may initially develop new characters on television rather than in movies.

Of course we're still working under the assumption Disney has any interest in comic books, hopefully we'll know more once Marvel shareholders officially approve Disney's offer on Thursday.  But if they are interested in them The Disney Channel and Disney XD are perfect platforms for putting comic books in arms reach of actual kids.  Like, if they wanted to test market the appeal of a Power Pack TV series what better way to do it (cheaply) than by producing some motion comics, run them between programs then direct kids to the actual Marvel comics that are posted on the channels website.

And speaking of Disney and Valeria Richards, someone with her kind of wish fulfillment for girls would make the perfect leader for my theoretical team of fully dressed female superheroes I've begun calling The Marvel Girls.  The only thing I liked about Black Widow and the Marvel Girls was the title, but I really liked that.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.