I'm glad I pushed through!
8:14 pm 25 October 2015
Ultimate Fantastic Four, Vol. 9: Silver Surfer - Justin Ponsor, Pasqual Ferry, Mike Carey
I'm glad I pushed through the so-so story arcs, because this was a lot of fun! While Silver Surfer felt fairly true to his original character, there were some changes, explained by the fact that his origin story was slightly different, and in a way that made it impossible to write him as he was on Earth-616.

That being said, I was involved with this story line and I felt emotionally invested: I cared not only about the main characters, but the Silver Surfer - called the Silver Searcher in this volume - as well.

I cared about what happened, and I was excited about where the story was going, and that had been lacking in the past couple of volumes. I"m excited to move onto the next volume now. ( )

While Reed Richards attempts to find a suitable power source for the cosmic cube (the cosmic cube was first introduced a few trades ago), he unwittingly draws the attention of the Silver Surfer - or, in the Ultimate Universe, the Silver Searcher - to Earth. I know little about the 616-verse character, but I can see differences. The Silver Searcher is not a herald of Galactus (who was already introduced into the Ultimate Universe by this time), but instead a king who wishes to find another people suitable to be his subjects, to replace the kingdom that was destroyed. And Earth's people look to be perfect.

I thought that this story was very middle-of-the-road. It wasn't boring, but it wasn't terribly interesting either. The art was good. Justin Ponsor's colors really stood out to me; he gave the book a very dream-like quality to it. I'd like to see more of his work in the Marvel Universe. ( )