In this review of Ben 10 #4, a circus has come to town, and apparently has his sights set on Max Tennyson. Can Ben access the right alien in time to the evil ring master?
Ben 10 #4
Writer: Steven Seagle
Art and Main Cover: Robert Carey
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: Aug 8, 2026
This review contains spoilers
Ben 10 #4 picks up some time after the conflict with Kraab and their escape from the military. It first opens on a rainy carnival, where an unknown father and his two kids are heading into a freak show, welcomed by a massive, creepy looking clown ringmaster. The little girl asks if she can wait outside, but a scream has her running inside after her dad and brother, only to meet a similarly grim, albeit unknown fate.
Later on, Ben, Gwen, and Grandpa Max find their own way into the carnival, where Zombozo, the aforementioned creepy clown, seems intent on having Ben join his freakshow, and also seems to possess an ability to hypnotize his audience, specifically inducing fear.
While the original Ben 10 animated series mostly utilized a monster-of-the-week formula, this seems to be a sharp turn from the more realistic adaptation of the first three issues, focusing on the extraterrestrial and military elements as well as the big bad guy, Vilgax, and his progress toward identifying Ben as the possessor of the Omnitrix. Now we’ve got frankly terrifying zombie clowns with thus-far unexplained powers of mind control, unrelated, as far as we know, from any of the plot that has happened thus far. Do I hate it? No. Is it jarring? A bit. Could I be a little more forgiving if the zombie clowns end up having an interesting explanation? Absolutely.
As Ben 10 the comic reboot is planned to be an ongoing series, there’s no need to stick religiously to a single main plot and I’m not completely sold on a “gritty, realistic” take on the series in the first place. A little bit spookier, involving some things that you can’t put on Cartoon Network? Sure. But maybe Zombie Clowns is exactly what’s needed to say hey, let’s not take this too seriously.
I would like it to be taken a little bit seriously that Ben transforms just…everywhere. There are some consequences for this, as he’s recorded by one of Vilgax’s drones and he’s spotted by one of Zombozo’s henchmen, but it really feels like something that plain old civilians would notice as well, as often and as casually as he seems to do it.
There are two things I really liked in this issue.
The first was Gwen and Ben’s established conflict of pure strength/physical ability versus planning and ingenuity. It’s not subtle but it doesn’t need to be. They’re kids having an argument. It’s also perfectly set up both for Ben to learn to respect Gwen as part of a team and to grow learning to control his abilities in his alien forms.
The other is the nightmare he has at the beginning of the issue. The Omnitrix is clearly at least partially organic in this version, and the creature Ben was in his dream seemed to have similar characteristics. I’m wondering what differences there could be regarding its origins in this version of Ben’s story.
Final Thoughts
While Ben 10 #4 ends on a literal cliffhanger, that’s not what’s going to keep me reading. The relationships that are being established and developed between the Tennysons and the way Ben is learning to use the Omnitrix is what’s interesting, and this new situation they’ve been dropped into could yield a top-tier story.
