Marvel 2005 Week--Fantastic Four #530!!

Well, we've done a number of Marvel Weeks over the years, but we haven't really touched upon the 21st century...until now.

Well, let me get the surprise out of the way up front: I didn't hate JMS' run on Fantastic Four. Heck, I actually enjoyed it, for the most part.

Now, I know I've been pretty critical (editor's note: understatement) of his DC work, which has been, well, amazingly terrible. But, with the caveat that I haven't read much of his Spider-Man stuff, I was down with most of his Marvel output, and Rising Stars, while wildly overrated, was at least a good read.

JMS had the misfortune to come right after Mark Waid's heralded one and just before Dwayne McDuffie's all too brief stint, which had the effect of making his one run seem less by comparison. But despite some flaws with pacing (3 issues for a Hulk-Thing donnybrook? Really?), and plotlines that just sort of vanished (The Thing is rich!), JMS clearly seemed to get the balance between real-world and cosmic that the FF needs.

Yes, the creeping lateness that seems to plague many a JMS title crept in (only 9 issues of the FF published in 2006). Yes, his treatment of Reed during Civil War was terrible--but it's not clear how much of that was forced on him, as others had apparently decided Reed would be Tony Stark's unquestioning lapdog. That doesn't excuse JMS' hamfisted "my uncle was wrong" characterization, but he was dealing from a deck stacked against him.

But all in all, JMS's 15 issue run is nowhere near the worst ever on the FF...hell, it was nowhere near the worst of the century.

On with our story:

Ahhh, good old cosmic rays. Our creators?

Let me just say, I think Mike McKone draws purty:

To help out Ben's recap: the government has discovered that the exact same conditions of cosmic rays etc that created the FF is happening again, and they want Reed to help re-create his rocket and send up a team of soldiers so they can become cosmic-powered soldiers.

Reed thinks that's a pretty damned bad idea, so while he pretends to play along, he secretly sabotages the government project, while running home to take the FF up into the storm.

You see, he has intuited that the cosmic ray storm was actually a message (!), and if the same people who received the first one go up to answer the second one, that will prove to the sender that they're intelligent, and they can have a heckuva first contact. Hey, that's why Reed is smarter than all of us.

And it seems to be working...although JMS can't resist making a 21 year old pop culture reference to help explain it:

And then they find a big-ass thingie:


Which deposits a visitor on the ship:

And after Johnny and Sue engage on some purty flame-and-force-field heroics to save the crashing ship...


...we meet our hitchhiker.

Of course, the military shows up, as the FF landed on a military base AND the government is pretty cheesed about that whole sabotage business:

Of course, there's a panicky soldier who accidentally fires:

And:




Which unleashes a a firefight, which unsurprisingly, the advanced alien is winning:

The military withdraws, and Ben reveals that he's been in telepathic communication with the dude, and the soldiers aren't really killed:


Why Ben?

Awww...and for the record, I'm not the chucklehead who came up with that hard to read white-text-on-black-background word balloon concept for our cosmic guy.

Anyhoo, the alien proceeds to reveal his origin, which plays a bit like Krona's:






Yeah, yeah, scientist seeks forbidden knowledge, abused by his people, accidentally becomes all-powerful. He got away, but his people pursued him "on a religious crusade to keep [him] from telling others what [he] knows." Of course, the story is frustratingly vague about what he discovered, why is was forbidden by his peeps, and why they're so hell-bent to suppress it...but then again, it has to be, with that of story. But the end result is the same:

Alien invasion. Great.

This is only issue 4 of a 6 issue arc, but long-story short--Reed and the alien end up in hyper-omniscient-ville, travel back to the beginning of the universe, their "inquisitiveness" was the "spark" that launched the Big Bang, and that Reed's presence there was what shaped the cosmic rays to have their particular influence on the Four. Oh, yeah, and Reed was able do some tinkering to reboot events so he wouldn't have to sabotage the government program and become a traitor. Oh, second yeah, all he experienced restored his faith in humanity, or some such. And we discussed the difference between the search for knowledge of the search for truth. And...

I simplified that all a bit for you. You're welcome.

Yeah, kind of pretentious and silly, but in a fun and harmless way, and purty as all get out to look at.

So, JMS' FF run: not as bad as I had remembered. Not bad at all, actually.

To bad about that Civil War nonsense, though. At least it lead to Ben's wonderful adventures in Paris...

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

You know it's odd, but while the X-Family has had multiple titles forever, and while the Avengers is an ever-growing empire, Marvel's first family has almost never had multiple titles, except for this brief little period:

You know, I never understood why this was a "Marvel Knights" title, as opposed to just another Marvel Universe title. It didn't seem to me to particular involve the "more mature themes" that were the raison d'etre of the imprint. I'm sure there was some reason...maybe the just needed to publish a certain number of titles to justify the imprint...

Anyway, I enjoyed Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's run on the title, although most people never seemed to have noticed it...