Editor's Note: Fantastic Four #556 arrives in stores tomorrow, April 9.

"World's Greatest: Part Three of Four"

After a couple of issues in which not a huge amount actually happened, the Fantastic Four get stuck into a hefty amount of action this issue. Their enemy is "CAP," a robot designed to eliminate all dangerous weaponry from the replica "Nu-Earth," but who has gone AWOL and has decided to try and disarm any and all of the real Earth's inhabitants who show any military aggression whatsoever. However, despite such a juicy premise, the issue proves to be the weakest of Millar and Hitch's run so far.

I can't help but feel that this issue is the victim of the growing trend to pace serial superhero comics in a way that is geared more towards the eventual trade collection than the monthly format. Whilst that's great for readers who tend to buy more collected editions than they do single issues, it can make for a frustrating reading experience on a monthly basis. In the case of Millar & Hitch's Fantastic Four, it means that we've had two issues of exposition with little action to speak of, followed by one issue which is almost all action - all of which have felt unbalanced one way or the other. Whilst that wasn't such a problem for the first two issues, which benefited from scripts that contained enough in the way of grand sci-fi concepts and strong characterisation to make up for the lack of fisticuffs, it's more of a problem here.

With the story's premise already set up in the previous two issues, we don't get much in the way of new ideas or information in this one, and it all plays out fairly predictably. The action that we see feels a little hollow, and the issue as a whole feels overly reliant on "cool" moments, using them as a crutch to make up for the lack of depth in the storytelling. Even more disappointing is that Millar seems to have forgotten the old writer's admonition of "show, don't tell," with secondary characters telling us how destructive and dangerous CAP is but with the issue rarely actually showing us the robot in action. Instead of setting up the FF's latest enemy by giving us a good look at what CAP can do, the writer takes shortcuts to explain how serious a threat he poses, without ever conveying this to the reader effectively beyond a few cliché scenes which don't connect with the reader in the way that Millar seems to intend.

The best example of this disconnect is probably the scene which features a group of fallen Marvel heroes who have tried (and failed) to contain CAP's rampage. It's a scene that is presumably meant to be awe-inspiring and impressive, but in execution it's more reminiscent of the defeat of Alpha Flight in Brian Bendis' New Avengers: it feels as though the reader has arrived late to the party and has missed the really interesting part. Again, we're being told what a fearsome enemy CAP is, rather than seeing it for ourselves, and Millar overplays his hand (all of those A-list superheroes couldn't stop a killer robot? Really?) in an attempt to build CAP up as a worthy villain. There's no natural build up to this "big" moment to give it the resonance that it demands, and it ends up feeling as though Millar has had to rush CAP's introduction to the story, unable to give him the time he needs to develop into the arc's big threat.

Finally, there's a contrived feeling to Millar's decision to keep Reed Richards out of the picture for the majority of this issue. Millar doesn't provide a good enough reason for Reed to be absent for so long other than that the writer wishes it so, and I would have liked to have seen a slightly more convincing explanation provided for why Mr. Fantastic couldn't help out his family in this fight.

The book is redeemed to an extent by Bryan Hitch's artwork, but even his consistently great visuals can't transform a comparatively weak script into a great story. What's more, Hitch's linework - one of the main attractions of the book for many readers - is frequently obscured by an overused snow effect that is so "busy" and distracting that it's often difficult to get a strong sense of the images behind it. It might be authentic to only be able to catch glimpses of the FF's arctic battle between the snowflakes, but it's frustrating as a reader to feel as though better artwork is concealed behind the effect.

That said, there are still some great shots in the book, whether it's the double-page splash of the fallen heroes, the powerful shot of Johnny Storm facing down "CAP," Sue Storm's intricate forcefield defenses, or the delicious Terminator homage of the fourth page. Hitch feels more than comfortable with the world of the FF; in fact, you can sense his enjoyment at being given the opportunity to depict such a wide variety of colourful, imaginative creations after working on the relatively restrained Ultimates for so long, and I'll be interested to see whether he sticks around in the regular Marvel Universe for his next project.

I don't want to sound too down on this issue, because it does have some enjoyable story moments - I'm enjoying the continuing characterisation of Johnny Storm as a dumb reality-TV himbo who cops off with a supervillainess despite his better judgment - and the artwork is still impressive, despite the indistinct quality of some of the images due to the snow effect. However, compared to the first two issues, this issue feels thinner on ideas and far more predictable, and often doesn't succeed in conveying the inherent drama of the story to the reader. Whilst I'm sure it'll feel quite at home in the first collected edition of Millar and Hitch's Fantastic Four as the first storyline's big action setpiece, it just doesn't do it for me as a single issue in its own right.

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