“I think a book called ‘Fantastic Four’ needs to be fantastic or else we might as well call them the Realistic Four.” - Mark Millar

It’s ironic the Keeper is forced to quote Millar - author of the dark and violent Ultimates - to critique the bleak and somewhat depressing Fantastic Four: First Family, which was written by Joe Casey - a specialist in larger-than-life cosmic romps such as Gødland and Mr. Majestic.

Set immediately after Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Susan and Johnny Storm return to earth with strange, super-human powers, the first two issues of the mini-series show the quartet struggling with their respective conditions while locked away in a remote government facility.

Initially, Sue uses her power of invisibility to reassure her brother and friends, failing only to reach a catatonic Mr. Fantastic. Reed, suffering extreme guilt from leading his friends on an ill-fated space flight, literally cannot pull himself together.

Complicating matters, his consciousness is invaded by a mysterious - and definitely sinister - presence.

The second issue is more of the same, as the group battles a cosmic mutant gone wild in the complex and negotiates their freedom to act as public “troubleshooters.” Of course, the sinister stranger also escapes into the world and promptly slaughters his wife and two children.

Casey is adept at retaining the characters’ Silver Age charms while providing added layers of depth. Yet, it is difficult to reconcile those portrayals in a story that veers from Modern-Age gore and government conspiracy theories to Silver-Age monsters and mole men.

Is it believable that the squabbling, lovable FF who took down the Skrulls and the Red Ghost also faced an all-powerful megalomaniac who callously murdered children? Could they really stand by and watch an elite SWAT team blow the brains out of a cosmically mutated monster?

The two worlds simply cannot co-exist, ultimately rendering he effort as forced and unpleasant as DC’s attempts to make whimsical characters like Captain Marvel and Plastic Man “more realistic.”

Placing the story in a modern setting - while necessary to mainstream comics’ need to keep characters perpetually young - also presents a few problems. Did Reed really need a Kirby-esque flare gun to summon his team when pagers and cell phones were readily available? How come the FF’s craft couldn’t withstand cosmic rays while NASA astronauts were adequately protected for 30 years worth of missions?

Just how stupid is this Richards guy, anyway? No wonder Doom thinks he’s over-rated.

Chris Weston’s art doesn’t help matters. With the exception of a rather anemic design for The Thing, he creates realistic - if not terribly attractive - portraits of each character. Weston’s drawings lack the dynamics of Kirby’s original foursome, an inevitable comparison given that First Family roughly occurs at the same time as those early FF classics.

Most tellingly, when our heroes quit moping long enough to actually fight a monster, the art does not provide any sense of motion or excitement. No matter what a fan may feel about Kirby, nobody can argue that his action scenes lacked “punch.”

The Fantastic Four are many things. They are a family, a super-hero team, adventurers and challengers of the unknown. They’ve traveled to alternate dimensions, befriended giant dogs and silver surfers, and emerged victorious over armored despots and super apes.

They are not, and never should be, “realistic.” Or else, as Millar stated, why call them “Fantastic”?