'Fantastic Four: Grand Design' is the kind of comic book project we need more of. It crackles with energy, love and history. It's a comic book for comic book fans made by an obsessive comic book fan. It's a must-buy if you love this medium. Read Full Review

Fantastic Four: Grand Design takes everything we know and love about Marvel's First Family and presents it in a new way in a book that's just right for new readers and has enough juice in it that long time fans will feel right at home. Read Full Review

"Fantastic Four: Grand Design" #1 is a masterclass in compressed storytelling and scale in visual and narrative aspects. Read Full Review

But while better pacing would enhance the issue, its primarily a visual work. More than that, its a love letter to comicbook history. I doubt youll find a more gorgeous book on the shelf this week. Check out Tom Sciolis Fantastic Four: Grand Design #1 in comic stores now. Read Full Review

If the goal of this comic is to relay the history of the first family of Marvel Comics in one series, I’d say it is accomplishing that goal. The comic has an addictive quality to it. The colors, the pulpy design, and the 60’s sci-fi elements are just so delicious. The overwhelming way it is presented can be off-putting for some or confusing, but, for me, it just adds to the fun. It's like being in the cockpit of a zooming rocket as four-color cosmic rays crackle around you and theremin music plays. Personally, I’m enjoying the ride. Read Full Review

Tom Scioli shows his clear reverence for Marvel's Silver Age comics, especially the work of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, in Fantastic Four Grand Design #1 with his powerful figure work, far out colors, and soap opera on speed plotting. He uses the beginning of the comic to try to place the Fantastic Four in an, er, grander cosmic narrative, but it all falls apart by the end. With its 20+ panel pages coupled with high attention to detail on each panel, Fantastic Four Grand Design is more hyper-caffeinated history level than an enjoyable comic, and honestly, would have worked better as a page a day webcomic in the vein of Scioli's previous creator-owned work than a traditional floppy. Read Full Review

This book is full of pointless, gratuitous, and in some cases inexcusable things that neednt have been so. An homage to the history of The Fantastic Four should be done with love and care. What I see here is someone being allowed to treat it all in a cavalier fashion, in a style that is adolescent at best and juvenile at worst. I dont know whether its more maddening or saddening. Read Full Review

Fantastic Four: Grand Design is dense, lovingly crafted, but ultimately incapable of recreating the magic that inspired it from so many decades ago. Read Full Review

While the art is fun and Scioli's humor is on point, there are fundamental problems with the structure of the issue that make it feel inaccessible. Read Full Review

Fun to read..pull this because I enjoy reading it.

A lot of the wrong things are skimmed over while less interesting things are magnified. And there are some random changes here and there that kind of chip away at the original stories' integrity. This, much like the X-Men Grand Design books, is good for looking at rather than reading through. Especially as things are convoluted immediately by the way the writer/artist tries to get the information across. The X-Men comics at least built up to it.

It's as fun as a pop quiz in Marvel History 101. I've got the knowledge to ace the test, but that doesn't mean that taking it is at all enjoyable.

Also, this comic is going to go down in art history as the prime cautionary example of why making your go-to layout the 25-panel grid (!) is a bad idea.