Fantastic Four #600 review
Well, the 50th anniversary issue is here! The bad news is, Doom only has a brief cameo. The good news is that it's still really awesome, and totally worth the $7.99 price tag. 96 pages of new material, divided up into two extra length stories and three short ones, all written by Hickman and part of the current ongoing storyline.
Part 1: Forever
The first story is 28 pages with art by Steve Epting, and basically the continuation of the ongoing storyline from FF. It opens with a quick double-page spread recapping where everybody is, and then we launch into a pretty epic battle between the F4's gathered allies and the invading Kree warships. Despite efforts to protect civilians, one of the ships crashes down in the city.
The Anti-Priest contacts Annihilus, since the whole battle is interfering with their original plans for opening the gate to the Negative Zone. Annihilus tells him to get the gate open right now, and the Anti-Priest sends some bug monsters off towards the Baxter building.
Cut to Latveria, where Kristoff is sitting on the throne in Doom armour. He tells Nathaniel, evil Reed, and the collared Doom are standing before me, and there's this bit of dialogue:
Aw, Kristoff still loves his daddy. :D But more intriguingly, what's Nathaniel's game here? Is he playing the evil Reed? Are he and Doom in this together? Or is he up to something else entirely? This is implied to be a kinder, gentler, less scheming Nathaniel than the other versions seen through the F4's history, but considering his intro involved getting teenage Reed and Doom to help him kill another version of himself, that may not be saying too much... Guess we'll find out what's going on in next week's FF #12.
Back to the battle: Ronan demands to know why the Supreme Intelligence ordered the attack on Earth as soon as he resurrected it. The SI reveals that its objective is to completely wipe out the Inhumans, since they're the sole survivors of a Kree weapons experiment that was supposed to be exterminated.
Reed and Tony somehow interface Sue's force fields with Iron Man's armour to put a protective dome over the whole city. But ground troops are coming out of the ship that crashed, near where Alicia lives. Ben runs off to save her, and the others follow.
At the Baxter building, the FF kids have just finished connecting up their emergency escape translocator. Good timing, since the Anti-Priest's bug troops have arrived. Alex asks someone to knock Leech out so Franklin can use his powers, at which point it's revealed that Leech has been practising controlling his dampening so Franklin can train (ulp). But it's too late to fight - Val activates the translocator, and the top three floors of the building are teleported... somewhere.
Reed sees them go, and wants to go back and see what's happened, but his brain's needed at the battle, so Spidey goes back instead. The bugs are just setting the device to open the N-Zone portal as he arrives. The portal opens, and on the other side we see the invasion force, led by Annihilus - and a very different looking Johnny Storm.
Part 2: Whatever Happened to Johnny Storm?
The second story is a 48-pager with art by Carmine Di Giandomenico, detailing what happened to Johnny in the Negative Zone. Short version: he died. A lot.
We see Johnny burn himself out with his hottest flame ever, and think for a moment he's won, before discovering Annihilus has a much larger army than the one that he's just destroyed. He almost novas again, but Annihilus stabs him in the back before he can, and when Johnny refuses to open the portal, kills him.
Then we revisit the scene where Reed confronts Annihilus through the portal, seen in the silent post-death issue F4 #588. (Reed calls Johnny "my brother" instead of brother-in-law. Aw.) Then once the gate closes again, Annihilus gives the order "bring him back".
We get to see Johnny's resurrection, which is pretty graphically horrific for a comic as mainstream as F4. Johnny's awake and screaming but his whole body's split open and a bunch of centipede like bug things are crawling about inside the cavity, reconnecting the organs. He asks if he's going to die, and the alien doctors tell him he's died three times already, and tell him off for burning the worms. "Ssstop burning!" Follow by, "Needsss more wormsssssss." It's an amazingly brilliantly creepy scene.
Later, Johnny's up and moving, though he's still covered in masses of stitches all the way down the front of his body. (And it's kind of implied that they're alive and still working and he possibly still has some of the worm things inside of him. Lovely.) He discovers he's in a glass-fronted prison cell, opposite a bunch of Universal Inhumans who call themselves the Light Brigade. They say they were sent here as a sacrifice of some kind, but here in the N-Zone Annihilus keeps resurrecting them: they fight and die in a gladiator arena, get rebuilt and do it again.
A month later, Johnny's facing his own twelfth fight. (Interestingly, the announcer calls him "the human, John Storm", like Ben called him John just before he died, so maybe he's adopted that name and dropped Johnny from here forward.) He flies up and novas the announcer and the 'royal box' where Annihilus is watching from, but while everything else burns, Annihilus doesn't. He kills Johnny again.
Back to the resurrection table. The doctor's pleased: "Lessss wormssss each time... dying ssssuitssss you. You getting ssstronger." Annihilus again tries to get him to open the gate, but Johnny's still defiant. Annihilus drags him off the table by the hair (literally) and Johnny gets to witness the conversation where the evil Reed agrees to open the portal for Annihilus.
Johnny tries to recruit the Light Brigade to help, explaining that to defeat Annihilus they just need to grab the Cosmic Control Rod off him. They in turn reveal that they have a way out of the cages, they just didn't see any point in escaping before. As they emerge, Annihilus is already massing his army as the Anti-Priest prepares to open the gate. They fight, and the Control Rod is knocked away. Johnny and Annihilus both go for it...
And then we see the full context of the reveal at the end of the first story. Johnny's there with Annihilus beside him - but Johnny has the control rod, the Light Brigade are at his back, and Annihilus is in chains.
...Wow. I was spoiled for the general content of this story before I read it and didn't expect that a Johnny Storm action tale would do much for me, but this was just amazingly well done. Never seen Di Giandomenico's art before, but I loved it. He puts a huge amount of emotion into Johnny's reactions, and he draws a great Annihilus. The colouring is great too, really vivid and atmospheric. Brilliant stuff.
Parts 3 to 5:
The three short stories, all 7 or 8 pages are:
3. "Black Queen", a tale of Medusa coming to terms with the idea of Black Bolt now having 'five wives'. The art by Ming Doyle is okay enough for a little story like this, though I'm not sure I'd like it for a full issue.
4. "The Arc", where Reed and Sue visit Galactus where he's waiting on the moon. (This apparently ties in with events in The Mighty Thor, although I haven't been reading that.) The art on this one is by Leinil Francis Yu, who I usually dislike (residual bad will from Secret Invasion; I was fairly new to Marvel at the time, and his stylised way of drawing faces made it even harder to decipher who was who in that incoherent mess of a plot). But he draws a good Galactus, I will give him that.
Galactus gives Reed a device called The Arc that will summon him; he says there's a Galactus seed on Earth that could grow into a replacement for him, and if that's allowed to happen everything would end much sooner. Galactus also asks Reed, given all the chaos of what's been going on, "Have you noticed what your son has been doing?" Cut to:
5."Remember", a story about Franklin and Leech, which is told a bit like a children's story. The art's by Farel Dalrymple: kind of rough and simple, but it works for the nature of the story.
We flash back to the scene in F4 #574, when adult Franklin restored his kid self's powers, and kid Franklin created a baby universe to test them out. Turns out he kept the universe and hid it in his closet. Heh. After Johnny died, Franklin and Leech visited the happier world of Franklin's home-made universe and played at being superheroes, Hyperstorm and Kid Incredible. (Kind of an omnious choice by Franklin, given the history behind the name.) Franklin's idea of an appropriate bad guy, by the way, is a combination of the Mole Man and Doctor Doom.
Then a mysterious glowing white figure appears, and tells Franklin that making mixed up versions of things he's seen before is a bit predictable, and "we can do better than that". He asks Leech what it means that Franklin made everything, and Leech says that makes him "God!" Franklin says he's just a boy with a big imagination; mystery guy says he's "too close to one and not enough of the other", and says they're going to meet there every day and practise.
So who is mystery guy supposed to be? The only detail visible is that he has a beard. He could be the adult Franklin, or it's possible he's Michaelangelo from Jonathan Hickman's S.H.I.E.L.D. series, who also appears as a brightly glowing figure. Or it could be somebody else entirely manipulating Franklin. Either way, ominous.
*
All in all? That was incredible. Best comic I've read all year, by a long way - and this is only the first instalment of the 9-part final act. Luckily, FF #12 comes out next week, and that's when we finally get to the "All Hope Lies in Doom" storyline. I may have to start camping out in front of my comic shop.
Part 1: Forever
The first story is 28 pages with art by Steve Epting, and basically the continuation of the ongoing storyline from FF. It opens with a quick double-page spread recapping where everybody is, and then we launch into a pretty epic battle between the F4's gathered allies and the invading Kree warships. Despite efforts to protect civilians, one of the ships crashes down in the city.
The Anti-Priest contacts Annihilus, since the whole battle is interfering with their original plans for opening the gate to the Negative Zone. Annihilus tells him to get the gate open right now, and the Anti-Priest sends some bug monsters off towards the Baxter building.
Cut to Latveria, where Kristoff is sitting on the throne in Doom armour. He tells Nathaniel, evil Reed, and the collared Doom are standing before me, and there's this bit of dialogue:
Aw, Kristoff still loves his daddy. :D But more intriguingly, what's Nathaniel's game here? Is he playing the evil Reed? Are he and Doom in this together? Or is he up to something else entirely? This is implied to be a kinder, gentler, less scheming Nathaniel than the other versions seen through the F4's history, but considering his intro involved getting teenage Reed and Doom to help him kill another version of himself, that may not be saying too much... Guess we'll find out what's going on in next week's FF #12.
Back to the battle: Ronan demands to know why the Supreme Intelligence ordered the attack on Earth as soon as he resurrected it. The SI reveals that its objective is to completely wipe out the Inhumans, since they're the sole survivors of a Kree weapons experiment that was supposed to be exterminated.
Reed and Tony somehow interface Sue's force fields with Iron Man's armour to put a protective dome over the whole city. But ground troops are coming out of the ship that crashed, near where Alicia lives. Ben runs off to save her, and the others follow.
At the Baxter building, the FF kids have just finished connecting up their emergency escape translocator. Good timing, since the Anti-Priest's bug troops have arrived. Alex asks someone to knock Leech out so Franklin can use his powers, at which point it's revealed that Leech has been practising controlling his dampening so Franklin can train (ulp). But it's too late to fight - Val activates the translocator, and the top three floors of the building are teleported... somewhere.
Reed sees them go, and wants to go back and see what's happened, but his brain's needed at the battle, so Spidey goes back instead. The bugs are just setting the device to open the N-Zone portal as he arrives. The portal opens, and on the other side we see the invasion force, led by Annihilus - and a very different looking Johnny Storm.
Part 2: Whatever Happened to Johnny Storm?
The second story is a 48-pager with art by Carmine Di Giandomenico, detailing what happened to Johnny in the Negative Zone. Short version: he died. A lot.
We see Johnny burn himself out with his hottest flame ever, and think for a moment he's won, before discovering Annihilus has a much larger army than the one that he's just destroyed. He almost novas again, but Annihilus stabs him in the back before he can, and when Johnny refuses to open the portal, kills him.
Then we revisit the scene where Reed confronts Annihilus through the portal, seen in the silent post-death issue F4 #588. (Reed calls Johnny "my brother" instead of brother-in-law. Aw.) Then once the gate closes again, Annihilus gives the order "bring him back".
We get to see Johnny's resurrection, which is pretty graphically horrific for a comic as mainstream as F4. Johnny's awake and screaming but his whole body's split open and a bunch of centipede like bug things are crawling about inside the cavity, reconnecting the organs. He asks if he's going to die, and the alien doctors tell him he's died three times already, and tell him off for burning the worms. "Ssstop burning!" Follow by, "Needsss more wormsssssss." It's an amazingly brilliantly creepy scene.
Later, Johnny's up and moving, though he's still covered in masses of stitches all the way down the front of his body. (And it's kind of implied that they're alive and still working and he possibly still has some of the worm things inside of him. Lovely.) He discovers he's in a glass-fronted prison cell, opposite a bunch of Universal Inhumans who call themselves the Light Brigade. They say they were sent here as a sacrifice of some kind, but here in the N-Zone Annihilus keeps resurrecting them: they fight and die in a gladiator arena, get rebuilt and do it again.
A month later, Johnny's facing his own twelfth fight. (Interestingly, the announcer calls him "the human, John Storm", like Ben called him John just before he died, so maybe he's adopted that name and dropped Johnny from here forward.) He flies up and novas the announcer and the 'royal box' where Annihilus is watching from, but while everything else burns, Annihilus doesn't. He kills Johnny again.
Back to the resurrection table. The doctor's pleased: "Lessss wormssss each time... dying ssssuitssss you. You getting ssstronger." Annihilus again tries to get him to open the gate, but Johnny's still defiant. Annihilus drags him off the table by the hair (literally) and Johnny gets to witness the conversation where the evil Reed agrees to open the portal for Annihilus.
Johnny tries to recruit the Light Brigade to help, explaining that to defeat Annihilus they just need to grab the Cosmic Control Rod off him. They in turn reveal that they have a way out of the cages, they just didn't see any point in escaping before. As they emerge, Annihilus is already massing his army as the Anti-Priest prepares to open the gate. They fight, and the Control Rod is knocked away. Johnny and Annihilus both go for it...
And then we see the full context of the reveal at the end of the first story. Johnny's there with Annihilus beside him - but Johnny has the control rod, the Light Brigade are at his back, and Annihilus is in chains.
...Wow. I was spoiled for the general content of this story before I read it and didn't expect that a Johnny Storm action tale would do much for me, but this was just amazingly well done. Never seen Di Giandomenico's art before, but I loved it. He puts a huge amount of emotion into Johnny's reactions, and he draws a great Annihilus. The colouring is great too, really vivid and atmospheric. Brilliant stuff.
Parts 3 to 5:
The three short stories, all 7 or 8 pages are:
3. "Black Queen", a tale of Medusa coming to terms with the idea of Black Bolt now having 'five wives'. The art by Ming Doyle is okay enough for a little story like this, though I'm not sure I'd like it for a full issue.
4. "The Arc", where Reed and Sue visit Galactus where he's waiting on the moon. (This apparently ties in with events in The Mighty Thor, although I haven't been reading that.) The art on this one is by Leinil Francis Yu, who I usually dislike (residual bad will from Secret Invasion; I was fairly new to Marvel at the time, and his stylised way of drawing faces made it even harder to decipher who was who in that incoherent mess of a plot). But he draws a good Galactus, I will give him that.
Galactus gives Reed a device called The Arc that will summon him; he says there's a Galactus seed on Earth that could grow into a replacement for him, and if that's allowed to happen everything would end much sooner. Galactus also asks Reed, given all the chaos of what's been going on, "Have you noticed what your son has been doing?" Cut to:
5."Remember", a story about Franklin and Leech, which is told a bit like a children's story. The art's by Farel Dalrymple: kind of rough and simple, but it works for the nature of the story.
We flash back to the scene in F4 #574, when adult Franklin restored his kid self's powers, and kid Franklin created a baby universe to test them out. Turns out he kept the universe and hid it in his closet. Heh. After Johnny died, Franklin and Leech visited the happier world of Franklin's home-made universe and played at being superheroes, Hyperstorm and Kid Incredible. (Kind of an omnious choice by Franklin, given the history behind the name.) Franklin's idea of an appropriate bad guy, by the way, is a combination of the Mole Man and Doctor Doom.
Then a mysterious glowing white figure appears, and tells Franklin that making mixed up versions of things he's seen before is a bit predictable, and "we can do better than that". He asks Leech what it means that Franklin made everything, and Leech says that makes him "God!" Franklin says he's just a boy with a big imagination; mystery guy says he's "too close to one and not enough of the other", and says they're going to meet there every day and practise.
So who is mystery guy supposed to be? The only detail visible is that he has a beard. He could be the adult Franklin, or it's possible he's Michaelangelo from Jonathan Hickman's S.H.I.E.L.D. series, who also appears as a brightly glowing figure. Or it could be somebody else entirely manipulating Franklin. Either way, ominous.
*
All in all? That was incredible. Best comic I've read all year, by a long way - and this is only the first instalment of the 9-part final act. Luckily, FF #12 comes out next week, and that's when we finally get to the "All Hope Lies in Doom" storyline. I may have to start camping out in front of my comic shop.