Fantastic Four #16
The conclusion to the story...
In the alternate universe, Doom has just become the Annihilating Conqueror, and is wiping the floor with both Fantastic Fours. He takes an interest in why there are two of them, and uses his powers to peek into our universe. Seeing the confrontation between Doom and Scott Lang that's going on in FF, he concludes that our Doom must be a bit feeble and it will be child's play to take over our universe.
He's about to kill Reed when he's distracted by the arrival of the F4's timeship, which he can't sense with his powers because its time/dimension travelling properties cancel them out. Or something. Before he can attack again, there's a big fireball at his base that he has to go off and deal with. The two F4s decide the only way to fight him is to use the power transfer device again and pour all the alt F4's powers into our F4. But once that's done, they'll only have four minutes before they rupture completely.
They go to attack Doom, who reminds them he can sidestep their attacks with his control over time and space. But they were counting on him doing that, and have lured him into a position to be crushed by the timeship, which he can't sense coming. Its chrono-dimensional field causes a chain reaction with Doom's powers and scatters his molecules all over the universe. ...Or something.
The F4 reverse the power transfer, there's a cheap fakeout where we pretend our F4 died for half a page before it emerges they were revived after a minute or so, and then they head off home. Moments after they arrive, Lockjaw shows up with Val, Franklin and old John Storm in tow. Old John heads back to his own universe to sacrifice himself in creating the fireball that distracted Doom at the crucial moment, and our Johnny decides they should honour him by throwing a party.
In a slightly weird scheduling decision, the rest of the issue is then an epilogue-type backup story that obviously takes place after the events of next week's FF. So that's really kind of spoilerly even though it was all pretty obvious how things would turn out.
Hmm. So, all in all, this issue was... fine. (To be damning with faint praise.) It resolves the story well enough, though in a rather anticlimactic, slightly hand-wavy way, since there really wasn't time for anything else. I assume that if Matt Fraction had stayed on it wouldn't have wrapped up quite so fast, but honestly, I don't think dragging it out any longer would have solved much; it doesn't really seem like there was enough to it to justify a sixteen-issue arc in the first place. Maybe things will wrap up a bit better in FF, but the F4 side of things feels pretty empty and pointless.
Ienco's art is still very nice to look at, though with all the dramatic scenes going on I'm once again distracted by his love of drawing people with their mouths open and all their teeth showing. He does manage to make Doom's rather silly Annihilating Conqueror costume look pretty cool though, and once again Paul Mounts ties everything together with a fab colouring job. The backup story is drawn by Joe Quinones, doing a pretty good job of fitting in with Allred's style from over on the FF books.
And that's that. Have to confess I'm very much looking forward to next month's relaunch; this storyline definitely ended better than the draggy way it started, but still, this really has not been one of my favourite F4 runs.
In the alternate universe, Doom has just become the Annihilating Conqueror, and is wiping the floor with both Fantastic Fours. He takes an interest in why there are two of them, and uses his powers to peek into our universe. Seeing the confrontation between Doom and Scott Lang that's going on in FF, he concludes that our Doom must be a bit feeble and it will be child's play to take over our universe.
He's about to kill Reed when he's distracted by the arrival of the F4's timeship, which he can't sense with his powers because its time/dimension travelling properties cancel them out. Or something. Before he can attack again, there's a big fireball at his base that he has to go off and deal with. The two F4s decide the only way to fight him is to use the power transfer device again and pour all the alt F4's powers into our F4. But once that's done, they'll only have four minutes before they rupture completely.
They go to attack Doom, who reminds them he can sidestep their attacks with his control over time and space. But they were counting on him doing that, and have lured him into a position to be crushed by the timeship, which he can't sense coming. Its chrono-dimensional field causes a chain reaction with Doom's powers and scatters his molecules all over the universe. ...Or something.
The F4 reverse the power transfer, there's a cheap fakeout where we pretend our F4 died for half a page before it emerges they were revived after a minute or so, and then they head off home. Moments after they arrive, Lockjaw shows up with Val, Franklin and old John Storm in tow. Old John heads back to his own universe to sacrifice himself in creating the fireball that distracted Doom at the crucial moment, and our Johnny decides they should honour him by throwing a party.
In a slightly weird scheduling decision, the rest of the issue is then an epilogue-type backup story that obviously takes place after the events of next week's FF. So that's really kind of spoilerly even though it was all pretty obvious how things would turn out.
Hmm. So, all in all, this issue was... fine. (To be damning with faint praise.) It resolves the story well enough, though in a rather anticlimactic, slightly hand-wavy way, since there really wasn't time for anything else. I assume that if Matt Fraction had stayed on it wouldn't have wrapped up quite so fast, but honestly, I don't think dragging it out any longer would have solved much; it doesn't really seem like there was enough to it to justify a sixteen-issue arc in the first place. Maybe things will wrap up a bit better in FF, but the F4 side of things feels pretty empty and pointless.
Ienco's art is still very nice to look at, though with all the dramatic scenes going on I'm once again distracted by his love of drawing people with their mouths open and all their teeth showing. He does manage to make Doom's rather silly Annihilating Conqueror costume look pretty cool though, and once again Paul Mounts ties everything together with a fab colouring job. The backup story is drawn by Joe Quinones, doing a pretty good job of fitting in with Allred's style from over on the FF books.
And that's that. Have to confess I'm very much looking forward to next month's relaunch; this storyline definitely ended better than the draggy way it started, but still, this really has not been one of my favourite F4 runs.