By Ryan Penagos
FANTASTIC FOUR: ISLA DE LA MUERTE sees Marvel's First Family heading to Puerto Rico to tackle both the Mole Man
and the chupacabra, courtesy of Tom Beland (True Story, Swear to God) and artist Juan Doe (X-MEN: THE 198 covers)! Check out a bevy of Doe's behind-the-scenes sketches and designs, and see what the creative duo has to say about the matriarch of the FF, Sue "Invisible Woman" Storm!
It's tough to think of the Fantastic Four without Sue. Possibly the most powerful member, she's also the pillar of the group and often functions on more levels than the rest of the team combined!
"I love Sue," admits Beland. "Completely. She reminds me of my sister, Susan. Much like my sister, Sue has been the caregiver for the team. She's the sister, wife and mother and values each one of those roles with such passion."
Doe agrees. "She plays many roles in this story. She is a mother figure, a big sister, a loving wife and most of all a concerned best friend. This is the dynamic of her relationship with Ben in the
story. I thought Tom did a great job in bringing that to life. There's a couple of sequences in there that run a few pages long, it's just real, intense conversations rife with drama and tension. The way I drew her needed to succeed in conveying that. It was a great challenge to do that with her. In the end, I hope I succeeded in that."
"There's a scene in this book featuring Sue and Ben," Beland elaborates. "It was my favorite scene to write. It shows why their relationship runs deeper than most readers realize. Her relationships are important to her to such a degree, that I think she'd be lost without these people in her life."
"You know admittedly, Sue was probably the toughest for me to get down. There were a lot of factors involved. I wanted to avoid the trap of her representation being too T&A, which in the world of comics is quite prevalent. I just wanted a classic feel for her femininity. She still needed to look like she could handle herself just fine. There's an example in which after an explosion we see Reed stretched around her, protecting his wife. But when you pull back, we see a forcefield around them both. A subtle way of showing she's no damsel in distress."
Join us tomorrow as we spotlight Mr. Fantastic!
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 "Invisible Woman sketch by Juan Doe")
 "Invisible Woman sketch by Juan Doe")
 "Invisible Woman sketch by Juan Doe")
 "Invisible Woman sketch by Juan Doe")
 "Invisible Woman sketch by Juan Doe")
 "Invisible Woman sketch by Juan Doe")
 "Invisible Woman sketch by Juan Doe")
