Waiting for the Trade - Fantastic Four

Waiting for the Trade

by Bill Miller

 

Fantastic Four vol. 5: Forever

by Jonathan Hickman, Steve Epting and Barry Kitson
collects Fantastic Four 600-604.

 

Why I Bought This: It promises the return of the Annihilation Wave and I loved Annihilation. It also features the resurrection of the Human Torch, and Hickman’s run in general has been getting rave reviews: although the only other volume of his I’ve read was the Death of the Torch trade, which was indeed excellent.

The Plot:  The Kree send an armada to destroy the Earth while Annihilus makes plans to use the FF’s Negative Zone portal to relaunch the Annihilation Wave and an even larger cosmic threat gathers on the horizon. Plus the Human Torch returns from the dead.

Chapter 1 – The Kree armada has arrived in NYC and the FF and Avengers (including reserves like Firestar and She-Hulk) engage them. Annihilus’s agents on Earth contact him and he decides this is an ideal time to open the Negative Zone portal. The Kree are also attacking Attilan as apparently The Supreme Intelligence is alive and has initiated a coup. (The Inhumans had been ruling the Kree Empire since Realm of Kings). Ronan refuses to join the Supremor (who wants to exterminate the Inhumans) as he has fallen in love with his wife (Crystal of the Inhumans). As the battle rages the bugs invade the Baxter Building where only Zero-G (of Power Pack) is there to hold them off while the weird rag tag kids Reed has taken in retreat. The Kree deploy Sentry robots and quickly take down She-Hulk and Red Hulk, leaving Thing alone to face them. Valeria is able to teleport the Foundation kids away along with the top few floors of the building, which the FF notices from across town. Reed sends Spider-man to check on the kids. The bugs begin opening the Negative Zone portal as Spidey arrives. He fights valiantly but is about to be overwhelmed by numbers when the portal opens revealing the Human Torch alive.

Chapter 1.5 – We flashback to Johnny’s death and finally see what happened when the portal closed behind him, stranding him in the Negative Zone and facing the Annihilation Wave. He went nova and killed a ton of bugs but not Annihilus, who then summoned even more bugs. Torch attempts to go Nova a second time only for Annihilus to strike him down. He interrogates Johnny for the code to open the portal and when Johnny can’t give it to him he cuts him in half. We then flashback to the scene from the Death of Torch trade a few days after Johnny’s death where Reed confronted Annihilus with the Ultimate Nullifier—in the original interpretation it was silent and yet Annihilus was still effectively creepy; here we get dialogue and it’s somehow even better with Annihilus welcoming nullification since he always reincarnates after a normal death. Next, we cut to Johnny waking up dead as bugs, in a scene reminiscent of Alien, are in his torso; only these bugs are sewing him back together. Later Johnny is in a prison and we meet his cellmates, a group of superhumans called the Universal Inhumans, whose seem to include members from various minor alien races of the Marvel Universe. Anyway the prisoners are all forced to fight in an arena for Annihilus’ amusement and those that die will get resurrected over and over again by the sewing bugs. In his first battle Johnny kills the reigning champion with a single fireball then flies over to Annihilus’ throne and nova blasts him point blank. Annihilus is unimpressed and cuts him in half again. Annihilus later contacts an alternate reality evil Reed and gets the codes to open the portal and makes a plan to invade the Earth in two weeks. Johnny gets more desperate and convinces his fellow prisoners to revolt. We cut to last chapter, where Annihilus decides to open the gate early because of the Kree Armada. Johnny and friends attack him and one of the aliens manages to telekinetically steal the Cosmic Control Rod with his dying breath, getting to Johnny who uses its power to take control of the Annihilation Wave.

Bonus Chapters: (a bunch of five page stories from issue 600) Black Bolt apparently married four alien chicks from different races while he was dead, but assures his first wife Medusa he still loves her. In the recent past Galactus gave Reed a summoning device that will bring him to aid Reed in an upcoming cosmic crisis he has foreseen; and he also warns Reed that Franklin’s cosmic powers have returned. Franklin is talking with a mysterious someone, who has been helping him use his powers to make pocket universes again.   

Chapter 2 – The Kree are winning, when Johnny sets off a flaming 4 into the sky, which inspires the heroes to fight harder. The Inhumans arrive on Earth to help, while the Supreme Intelligence orders a Nega Bomb strike. Johnny and the FF reunite, as we learn Johnny is two years older now since time flows differently in the Negative Zone. Johnny then sends the Annihilation Wave thru the gate to engage the Kree armada. Debris from the space battle however is making it through the atmosphere and Reed is concerned this will still lead to the extinction of life on Earth.

Chapter 3 – The fight rages for several pages until the Kree are about to win so Reed summons Galactus. Galactus casually destroys the Kree, while telling Richards this is not the cosmic threat he foresaw. And then the Celestials arrive.

Chapter 4 – Galactus engages the Celestials. The Supreme Intelligence wisely orders a full retreat and the Inhumans pursue them. Reed goes to rendezvous with Valeria, who has recovered some cosmic doohickey from the time council of Reeds. Galactus kills a Celestial, only for three to feed of its energies and then combine into a super celestial that dwarfs Galactus. It then blasts Galactus into unconsciousness. Reed uses the doohickey to kill the super Celestial, but there are still three more regular Celestials remaining. They attack the FF and Sue’s force field won’t last long. Johnny takes the fight to them focusing his nova flame through the Cosmic Control Rod to sever the arm of one of the Celestials but the others blast him from the sky. Sue’s force field shatters and they look to kill Reed when Sue pops up and fights them on her own. They break her force field again and are about to kill both Reed and Sue when adult Franklin and adult Valeria arrive through a wormhole.

Chapter 5 – Adult Franklin seemingly vaporizes the Celestials but he in fact he just teleported them into a star across the universe giving him and Nathaniel (Reed’s father, also a time traveler) time to explain time paradoxes. Adult Franklin was the one teaching young Franklin in the shadows; Adult Franklin then absorbs the pocket universe created by young Franklin to power up. The Celestials return and adult Franklin has to fight them more directly. He decapitates one of them as Nathanial explains the Celestials are out to eliminate the cross time Reeds of which our Reed was briefly a member and we get more time travel mumbo jumbo the gist of which is this is the day Reed is supposed to die in adult Franklin’s timeline. Then inexplicably we learn that Galactus is the herald of Franklin. Franklin revives Galactus, who then kills a second Celestial. Galactus and Franklin kill the last one at the cost of adult Franklin’s life. We get some pithy comments on how Reed’s family makes him the greatest of the cross time Reeds, and then Galactus resurrects adult Franklin and all the time travelers return to the future while alluding that they have successfully changed their timeline. In the aftermath we see Reed teaching young Franklin to use his powers to fly.

 

Critical Thoughts: I liked this but I didn’t love it. While reading it, I enjoyed it. The middle chapters certainly have a lot of momentum so the story builds well; but the finale left me a little flat.

The story’s biggest fault is the central threat is resolved not by the heroes but by time traveling outsiders that show up at a key moment. And yes, the time travelers are related to the FF family but it still feels contrived. I actually enjoy time travel movies and Star Trek episodes quite a bit; but I don’t like the way it’s being used here. Truthfully I’ve always found both Nathanial Richards time-traveling and omnipotent Franklin to be among the weaker elements of FF mythology and this is relying on both of those things as a get out of jail free card for the heroes.

Franklin being Galactus’s master is also so ludicrously out of left of field as to defy description—which is probably why Hickman doesn’t even attempt to offer an explanation. Galactus is long established as a fundamental cosmic force that is older than the universe itself; so even with time travel it shouldn’t be possible for Franklin to have these types of ties to him. I’d add the power levels adult Franklin show in this story, while impressive, don’t really seem to bear out that he is greater than Galactus from the decades of story evidence showing what Galactus can do; and I’ll add this adult Franklin is at twice his normal power because he’s absorbed a pocket universe making it even less likely that his normal power level could make this claim be true. Plus Galactus resurrects adult Franklin at the end. Would we buy it if Silver Surfer just casually resurrected Galactus? I wouldn’t from years of reading stories with those two, so if Franklin is allegedly as above Galactus as Galactus is the Surfer than Galactus shouldn’t be able to resurrect him so easily at the end. (Not that it even matters if he’s resurrected since we are told the heroes just averted his timeline from coming into existence).

This leads to my second major criticism, which is I do not buy that either of the main villain threats should be as imposing as Hickman writes them here. I’ll start with the Kree empire. We’ve seen the heroes of Earth thwart the Kree all the time, with frankly not much difficulty. Maybe it isn’t usually the entire Armada, but then this time the heroes have aid from the Annihilation Wave, which when last we saw it defeated the combined forces of the Kree, Skrull, Xandarians and Galactus. Ditto the Celestials. I’ve seen the Celestials in four stories previously: in all of them they’ve been casually swatted away in a page or two (by the Beyonder, Thanos and the Phoenix Force respectively) so I’ve come to accept them as the low men on the Marvel cosmic totem poll and yet here they are taking down Galactus and shrugging off the Cosmic Control Rod. In both cases the threats do have large numbers on their side, so it’s not a glaring plot hole; it just for my tastes feels a little off. As I said in my “why I bought this” I was most interested in the Annihilation Wave, and they’re playing a subordinate role here to what I would consider inferior villains.

I also hate the idea of a cross-time council of Reeds. As someone who lived through the Cross Time Council of Kangs in the pages of Avengers, which led to several of the worst stories in Avengers history, I admit to being biased here as I just flat out don’t want to a cross time council in a comic book ever again in much the same way I don’t want to see a clone in a Spider-man comic ever again.

That said, there is a lot to like in this story. The Human Torch chapter is great. In that chapter Annihilus is every bit the terrible threat I wanted to see when I bought this book. The Torch resurrection scenes are horrifically creepy in the art. Indeed a lot of times I will criticize a mainstream superhero comic if it goes too far in its depictions of violence; and while you could say that here, context is important. In the context of this story the images work to further the story in an acceptable and non-gratuitous way. I’ll add the art in general is really good throughout the entire story.

Johnny’s return also hits a lot of the right notes when he meets up with Spidey and with his family. Indeed from what I’ve seen in both this trade and the Death of Torch trade, Hickman really gets the familial relationship of this team and writes it exceptionally well. He also writes a really good Spidey. Spidey’s part is small here, but I enjoyed it: from the way he fights the bugs to his concerns for the children to his assuring Reed he’ll get the job done so Reed can concentrate on solving the larger problem. On a related note, while only a few panels, I like that he continued the Ronan-Crystal subplot from DnA’s cosmic stories; as I felt their marriage was the only interesting thing in the mess that was War of Kings and Realm of Kings.

I also liked chapter four a lot, in that while it is mostly an extended fight scene it is the kind of fight scene where the reader has a clear sense of the tactics of each side of the battle. Momentum switches back and forth three or four times and so it really is a fast-paced, well-drawn dramatic read. Plus Sue standing her ground alone over Reed’s unconscious body is a terrific character moment for her.

 

Grade B- : While not exactly the story I wanted, it has a fast-paced dramatic build with a lot of high marks. Unfortunately, the ending a little too tidy and a little too bizarre.