Rampage (UK) #20

Background

Rampage was a UK-only magazine for the teen market. Each issue featured a couple of short out-of-continuity stories with Marvel comic characters. The remainder of each issue contained a few pages of puzzles, posters and fact files, but was generally bulked out by an overly generous helping of comp-ad-titions and promo-mercials for DVDs, video games, sports, movies and other commercial products - some of which was Marvel, but much of which was not.

The creative team from Rampage seems to cycle through the same basic list of UK creative talent that produces the Spidey stories for Spectacular Spider-Man (UK Magazine), as well as being responsible for most of the stories in Marvel Heroes (UK Magazine) which picked up when Rampage was cancelled.

Readers are somewhat short-changed this issue, as it features only a single six-page story instead of the pair of six-pagers that is normal for this title. The story is part two of a Fantastic Four "saga" which began last issue.

Story 'Lost'

Last issue, the Fantastic Four were captured by The Collector who held them prisoner and infected them with a alien spores which are gradually replacing their human flesh with organic metal plates. When that happens, at least they won't have to worry about eczema any more. On the minus side, I guess rust will become a serious problem.

Having escaped the Collector, The Fantastic Four are now adrift in deep space, protected only by a force field bubble projected by Invisible Girl. And with the oxygen running out, their only hope is for a rescue, and given how huge space is, the odds of that are ten to the power of nineteen thousand to one against, which means...

Oh, wait. They just got rescued by a Skrull pirate space ship.

The Skrull pirates had planned to pick up the strangers and sell them as slaves, but the Fantastic Four aren't keen on that plan. So our heroes kick some Skrull butt, before making a rapid departure in an escape pod.

So once again the Fantastic Four are cast away in deep space, but this time at least they have a tiny spacecraft. So maybe they have a chance of finding their way home safely, since the odds of running into anybody in deep spare are ten to the power of nineteen thousand to one against, which means...

Oh, wait. They just got spotted by a Kree Imperial space ship. And the Four are in a space pod built by the Skrulls, sworn deadly foes of the Kree. This can't be good.

...to be continued next issue...

General Comments

Six pages of silly space-hopping adventure, with lots of yelling and fighting. Did I expect anything more? No, not really.

Overall Rating

Pretty generic stuff here. The story achieved its aim, but only by setting its sights pretty low.

Two webs.

Footnote

As mentioned, there's only six pages of original story in this issue. To wrap up the 44 pages (including inner and outer cover pages) there are a couple of "letters pages", an index page, a couple of puzzle pages, and four pages for a double-sided pull-out poster. But the entirety of the remainder consists of promotions for video games, toys, DVDs, books, movies and upcoming sporting events (football and pro wrestling).

That's basically six pages of story, eight pages of other content, and 30 pages of advertising - all yours for only £1.99. What a bargain!