Spoiler Sunday--Fail Itself #5

OK, I'm going to spoil the living hell out of Fear Itself #5 (Don't fret--the issue really, really deserves to be spoiled).

So, if you haven't read it yet, just go away and come back tomorrow.

SPOILERS commence after the 3 pictures regarding the completely unrelated short-lived NBC show Fear Itself...



OK, so things haven't been going terribly well for our heroes in this issue. Their butts have been kicked, New York City is in ruins. So, it being the Heroic Age and all, what do Marvel's greatest heroes do?




Marvel's greatest heroes quit.

Yup, in the summer of the Captain America movie, wherein we learn that Captain America doesn't freakin' give up in the face of overwhelming odds, Matt Fraction...has Captain America give up. And Spider-Man, too.

Look, I'll grant you that the premise of the series is overwhelming fear. I get it. And maybe you can argue that Steve Rogers, the greatest soldier ever, is so afeared that he's given in to despair.

I don't buy it...especially after Bucky has been killed, especially as the Red Skull's daughter is a big player. I simply don't see Cap throwing in the towel and conceding defeat here.

But, even if you do buy that motivation, we're not that far past a previous Marvel Event, Civil War...in which Cap gave up. So this just smells of cheap re-run.

It seems that a lot of folks at Marvel just think that Captain America is the surrendering type. And keep going to that well for cheap melodrama.

Matt Fraction, you are officially barred from ever writing Captain America's book(s).

And of course, Spider-Man theoretically overcame his fears in the Spider-Man: Fear Itself mini. So, again, backtracking for the purpose of padding.

Meanwhile, let's go check out the great deus ex machina of this issue...or, rather, deus ex parvulus.

Ben Grimm was possessed by one of the bad guy's "children" and has been going on a rampage through New York. Thor put his hammer straight through him, just by calling it to come to him...he doesn't even have to swing it! (Of course, that raises the question of why Thor doesn't just jet around the globe and do this to all the other supposedly unstoppable Worthy. Shhh, don't ask that...)

So, the Thing is gonna die, right?





Really.

Again, this risible plot device brings up all sorts of questions. Why didn't Franklin do this when his Uncle Johnny was dying? Why doesn't Franklin heal all the rest of the injured and dying in New York...and Paris...and Canada...and...Why doesn't Franklin stop all the Worthy, and the Serpent, right now??

Oh, I'm sure some ridiculous explanation will be trotted out that Franklin "exhausted his power" by healing Ben, or the Serpent, having seen this, has set up "magic wards" or some such against him.

But that just makes it even worse storytelling, doesn't it? You "kill" Ben, only to pull a magic get out of jail free card out of your butt, and then go through contortions not to have it render your entire story irrelevant.

So, Matt Fraction, you're now disqualified from ever writing the Fantastic Four.

When I think about the flaws of Fear Itself, aside from the mischaracterizations above, and the shamelessly cheap plot device above, I struck about how ineffectual the villains are. For a story like this, you need big, larger than life villains, someone you can get worked up about.

Yet 5/7ths of the way in, our main villain still hasn't got a real name; we have no idea of his true origins or motivations (and Odin says that what we've been told so far is a lie); and he doesn't have a single speck of personality. I defy you to tell me a single thing about the character.

Ditto for his children, the Worthy. Not a single trace of characterization or personality (granted, a couple of the minis have done a bit more with this...but the main series? Nada.) Speaking in runes, walking about nothing like the people they've possessed, yet without a single personality trait of their own...there could be literally anybody holding those hammers. They might as well be 1950s Atlas monsters. Why the effort to pick these particular people, if you're not going to do ANYTHING with them except have them walk around smashing things?

That's a common failing of many recent events--terrible excuses for master villains. Blackest Night suffered greatly from Nekron being nothing more than a colorless (sorry) plot device, without a bit of memorable dialogue or personality. The pull-him-out-of-a-hat-real-behind-the-scenes bad guy in Final Crisis--Mandrakk, the Dark Monitor--was kind of a sad joke. In Brightest Day, the Big Bad turned out to be...a possessed former body of Swamp Thing, without a single line of dialogue, who just turns up out of nowhere at the very end. It's pretty sad, really, when Norman Osborn and the Sentry have been the best villains in any major events lately.

So why the hell can't writers come up with good villains anymore??