Staying Current (Audio Review) Fantastic Four #586

(Video Review) Staying Current- Fantastic Four #585

3 Freedoms Plaza?

As we head into the home stretch of the FF's "3" arc, the World's Greatest Comic Magazine seems to be pulling out all the stops. Just today, Marvel announced that issue #587 of Fantastic Four will be polybagged (how come no one in the 90's ever called it "ploybagging"? Seems more accurate), will NOT be sold on newsstands, and will NOT go into extra printings. A variant edition will come out the week after the initial issue's release, with a spoilerific cover (which I assume will show Johnny getting eaten by Galactus) by John Cassady.

Apparently Marvel's rationale for the "no overprint/ newsstand" policy is to drive up demand and keep the issue from being spoiled by the dreaded liberal media. Many of us can still recall comic events such as Captain America's death and Barry Allen's resurrection being first reported on by highly circulated news outlets such as USA Today.

While all of the items above rightfully blew my mind, the biggest part of today's announcements came in the form of the following quote from Marvel's press release: "This January Fantastic Four #587 marks the end of the Fantastic Four and the penultimate issue of Marvel’s longest running series. "

We all know that killing off a member of the FF is a giant publicity stunt, but Marvel is showing a real commitment to the idea of "3" being a complete game changer. And hey, you know what? I believe them now. In an era with 2 Captain Americas, A Bruce Wayne who publicly associates with Batman, A Spidey who sleeps around, and a thriving comic that gets away with having the same name as a restaurant chain ("Red Robin....Yum"), there is the distinct possibility that the Fantastic 3 are here to stay.

And while I am more curious than enraged by the future of the F3, I can't help but feel my blog is going to look seriously out of date. I mean, I don't want to change my banner! Oh well, They'll always be the FF to me. So until the title gets pared down to the "Fantastic One", vive la fantastique!

(Video Review) Staying Current: Fantastic Four #584

(Editor's Note- I apologize for the lack of written reviews in recent times, but I'm finding these videos to be quite quick and easy. I promise to do something of a more literate nature with my next "box" review!)

Staying Current (Audio Review)- Fantastic Four #583

In honor of the "3" arc finally getting underway, I wanted to do something a little special for this month's edition of "Staying Current." With take after failed take on my digital camera (many of them due to my beloved feline friends wanting their 15 minutes of fame on YouTube), I finally switched over to the voice recorder on my computer. Sit back, enjoy, and let me know what you thought of the issue!

"3" Starts this Week

Hey FFans, Kello here with a quick reminder that the year's biggest(and I'm hoping best) Fantastic Four storyline, "Three", is set to begin this Wednesday with the release of issue #583. And as incentive to all you FF holdouts, I will guarentee that this arc will have both Dr. Doom, and absolutely awesome art (by Steve Epting). If that's not enough, then you should probably stop just reading Marvel Comics and go get something from Image.

Check out the cover's countdown below (it says "Countdown to Casualty 4,3,2,1"), apparently death has never been this expected!

Oh, and check out the variant by Art Adams!

So......Who's in?

Staying Current(ish) Fantastic Four #581

Fantastic Four 581:“When Everything’s Lost, the Battle is Won”
Cover Date/Price : September 2010 $3.99 (still bitter about the newsstand price….)
Writer/Artist: Johnathan Hickman/ Neil Edwards
Cover Tagline: “All Hope Lies in Doom”

(Editor’s Note- As the famous line says, “brevity is the soul of wit.” …Well, I just got the memo. So I’ll try and keep this post as short as I can, while still giving you a maximum dosage of FF-related goodness.)

What Happened: This issue starts off with a nod to issue #574 (as well as a glimpse into the future!), which featured Franklin’s birthday party. In that issue, a future version of Franklin visited his younger self and the younger version of his sister Valeria and distributed some B-day “gifts.” To his sister, the older Franklin revealed the war of the 4 cities was coming, and to himself he restored his mutant world shaping powers. I guess Val got the short end of the stick on that one.

We catch up with future Frank and find out he’s in cahoots with future Val. While this reveal isn’t huge in nature, it at least tells us Val lives to see tomorrow(and grows up to be a stunner).

As far as big reveals, the next page shows who’s really pulling the temporal strings…

… it’s none other than Nathaniel Richards, the time-hopping father of Mr. Fantastic (and grandpa to Franklin and Val)!
It appears Grandpa Richards has some scheme going, and future Franklin is creating a pocket dimension for them all to escape into once the plan has been enacted.

We cut to a scene in the distant past at the world famous “State University.” Within a class a lively ethical debate rages between two students, Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom. On the subject of “what is right?”, Reed offers that what is best for all is right, while Doom posits that not all are equal, so what is best for the upper echelon is what’s best.

As Reed leaves his lecture, he meets up with his best friend and possible Archie comic reject (look at that sweater!) Ben Grimm. As Ben and Reed have the cliché “you’re not going to spend all weekend in the lab!” jock-to-nerd discussion, a man suddenly teleports into the room with them. It turns out that it’s everybody’s favorite time altering deadbeat dad, and by-default star of this review, Nathaniel Richards!

Nathaniel reveals that he has been involved in a temporal mishap, which involved an exploding “quantum power source.” Because he was near the source of the power, every Nathaniel Richards from every reality was transported to the same point in time, hundreds of thousands of years in the future. In this time, the villain known as Immortus ruled the Earth.

As the resident “time cop”, Immortus declared that all the Nathaniels in one time period was bad for reality as a whole and that much like Highlander, there could “be only one.” So in other words, it was open season on all Nathaniel Richards, and the “great hunt” began, with Nathaniel Richardses (not a typo) killing themselves off left and right. Shhh..be vewy qwiet, I'm hunting Wichardses! And now we get to the crux of the matter: there are only two Nathaniel Richards’ left, and now they are headed for a showdown.

Reed, being dismayed by the news that his own dad is going to fight himself to the death, says that maybe Victor can help. He goes to Doom for help, and Doom makes him grovel accordingly.

Doom gives Ben Grimm a power suit to wear (a nice nod to his future as the Thing), while he dons a familiar looking piece of protective headgear.

The crew heads to the future and finds the alternate Nathaniel Richards waiting for them….

What I Thought: Since the beginning of the “Heroic Age”, the stories in this book have taken on a much smaller scope. I know Hickman is actually in the middle of a big 30 issue arc that he mapped out, but after last month’s “filler-esque” Arcade issue, this plot feels a bit generic as well. But with this issue tying into #574 (which seemed like filler when I read it in December), and the mysterious quantum power source mishap that Nathaniel mentioned, I have a feeling this story is going to pay off at some point down the road.

Having that said, it was still a decent read. The characterizations of Doom and Reed in college were perfect, if not predictable, with each taking that hard idealist line for his own cause. Hickman writes one smug and arrogant Doom, with a certain sense of charm that makes you want to read about him more. It’s reminiscent of Lex Luthor: the guy’s a jerk, but you love to hate him.

I should just do a “cut and paste” review of the art for every month that Neil Edwards stays on this book, because he is consistently great. With this issue, Edwards officially moved beyond a “fill-in” in my mind, and has my sincere vote for the ongoing artist whenever it is Steve Epting leaves. With increasing shades of Bryan Hitch and Michael Turner, Edwards has the ability to successfully mix realistic character design with a science fiction frame. The one thing I will say against Edwards is that many of his panels have little to no background art, but even this helps to focus on the characters a little more.

Overall, this was pretty standard FF-Fare. But that’s not a slam. With good Doom moments, an easy to follow plot, and a quick sense of pacing, I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing who will come out victorious in the “great hunt.” I’m guessing the winner will be Nathaniel Richards, but don’t hold me to that. So until all my alternate reality duplicates have a fight to the death, vive le fantastique!

Technical Difficulties

Hey everyone,

It's the eternally eager editor of Four Freedoms (and your friend) Kello here, to tell you that my updates are going to be few and far between for a little while. I lost internet service where I live, and so I'm divising a system of typing reviews at home and uploading them online elsewhere (like right now, I'm up at the library). It's obviously not a hard thing to do, but I like to fiddle with posts a lot before I pulbish them, and it's more comfortable to do so at home. I mean, I can't even have iced tea in here. But as always, the show must go on, and I have a "staying current" post to do, as well as some "box" reviews. So until I post everyday, vive le fantastique!

One of the upcoming "box" pulls. There are some dark (albeit hilarious) reviews ahead for this site.

Poll Results: Favorite FF Member

I want to thank everyone who voted on the most recent poll, which asked "Who is your favorite member of the FF?" Out of 9 votes (a record high for this site, I believe), we had a three way "runner up" tie between Ben, Johnny, and Sue.

This of course means that the one and only Mr. Fantastic was crowned the top vote getter. I think it's no secret that Reed is my favorite member of the FF, so I'm considering my vote the tie-breaker. After all, why have your own blog if you can't fix the poll results? I kid, I kid.

Reed has a "Die Hard" moment.

Anyway, thanks again to all the loyal FFans out there for voting. I would be quite interested in knowing which readers picked which heroes and why. Oh, and don't forget to vote on the new poll, which asks about the best "non-Doom" FF villain. So until they release "Live Reed or Die Hard", vive le fantastique!

4 Goals for Four Freedoms

Hey True Believers, FFans, REEDers, Thing-A-Majigs, SUEthsayers, Torch Bearers, etc. It's Four Freedoms Plaza editor (and your friend) Kello here with a magnificent magnitude-shaking memorandum that is memorable in the mighty Marvel manner!

This past week I decided to refine the way I spend my time online. I closed down my twitter, deleted most of my Youtube videos, and made the announcement that I'll be deleting my other blog at the beginning of September. While those sites are being dismantled, I've also been cooking up ways to improve Four Freedoms. Here are some goals I hope to accomplish on this blog in the near future:

1.) Shorter posts- Less is more, right? The problem with having a site that reviews older material is that a majority of the readers don't have access to the actual comics. I hope to give enough background in each post that my reviews makes sense to the casually reader, without making everyone wade through 40 paragraphs of text.

2.) More Updates- More is more, right? I hope to post to this site at least once a week, which may not sound like much, but in reality is a lot more frequent than my current schedule.

3.) More Varied Material- Comic strips, video reviews, lists, as well as the previously established features: "One-Shot Showdown" , "Staying Current", and "Thinking Outside the Box".

4.) Make this a Site that all Types of Comic Fans Feel Welcome to Read -I'm not a die-hard FF fan by any means. I'm just a guy who bought a ton of comics for cheap, and wanted to document the experience of reading them. I think that lack of "blind allegiance" to the characters makes me more objective, and actually helps me find new ways to make fun of some of the material.

If it sounds like I'm just shifting a lot of what I used to do at Hello Kello over here, then you're very astute. But I hope you'll stick with the site and show some love through the comments section. I would be interested in any suggestions or feedback readers have. Want to see more or less of something? Want me to shut my yap and just talk about comics? Want fanfic of Ben marrying Crystal and going to live on Jupiter? Well... 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

So until the whole world reads this blog, vive le fantastique!

Stying Current Annual Edition: Fantastic Four Annual #32

Fantastic Four Annual #32-"A Little Stanger"
Cover Date: Aug 2010 Price $4.99
Cover Tagline: "Annual" (how creative!)
Writer/ Artist: Joe Ahearne/ Bryan Hitch

(Editor's Note- This issue came out about a month ago, but it's "current" in the sense that it's this year's annual. Since it's an extra long issue, it's kind of a long review. Apologies to those who share my attention span, but I implore you to take it all in!)

What Happened: This issue opens in dramatic fashion with a young woman looking for the Fantastic Four at the front entrance of their headquarters, and being scared out of her wits by the deadly security measures she encounters. Reed, Sue, and Ben rush to save the woman, and when Mr. Fantastic angrily enquires about how she was able to get into the building, she tells him she was given a clearance card by Johnny Storm. Apparently the young woman, who reveals her name to be Amy Brys, needs to talk to the Human Torch about some a very serious matter. And of course Johnny, being the giant cad he is, has been avoiding Amy's calls. Reed covers for Johnny, saying he must be in the Negative Zone or something, once again proving that having the world's smartest man for your brother-in-law pays off in new and fun ways all the time!

After Amy leaves, Johnny reappears, having been shielded with invisibility the whole time by his sister Sue (man everybody's helping him avoid this chick! Now that's FAMILY). The Invisible Woman begins to chide her brother's womanizing ways, when suddenly an alarm goes off. The alarm goes off because it detects a special kind of energy. Apparently the signal the alarm detected was a "variation" of the cosmic energy that powers the FF. This "variation" is the same energy that almost killed Sue when she was pregnant, meaning someone who was just in the room is pregnant with a cosmically irradiated Fantasti-baby. Since Sue knows it's not her, the Thing had his tubes tied, and Reed and Johnny are hot blooded super studs who are too masculine for pregnancy, it must be someone who recently visited that set off the alarm. It becomes very evident why miss Brys was had such an urgent need to talk to the Human Torch- she's about to be his baby mama. Johnny flies off and finds Amy down the street, looking to discuss the situation (as well as a weekend visitation schedule I assume). But before you can say "shotgun wedding", the two are attacked by machines with robotic tentacles.



The FF break the robots, save Amy's bacon, and fly off with her in the Fantasti-Car. The team takes Amy to the Baxter Building, and place her in an examination room to do an ultra early paternity test. Since Amy was with Johnny only 2 months prior, the only safe and logical course of action is for Sue to shrink down to a molecular level and get a D.N.A sample from the fetus. Look, I'm no doctor, so I won't argue too much, but really?

As Reed and Sue chat with the mom-to-be, Johnny and Ben have a "man-boy to rock-man" discussion in the other room about fatherhood. The only thing is, Johnny swears he didn't even kiss the girl, let alone get freaky deaky (his words, not mine...ok, you got me!). This leads Reed to send Johnny and Ben back to da club where Johnny and Amy met with a chornal scanner (It's like a viewmaster that shows you what happened in the past) to look into back in time and figure out what happened...Ah, comics.

Reed Sends Sue into Amy's womb, which makes my mind wander to disgusting jokes about both Storm siblings venturing there, and Sue indeed encounters one of God's greatest miracles...life!

Meanwhile, in a less miraculous place, Johnny and Ben use the Viewmaster of Time to see what the Human Torch and Amy were really doing on the night in question. It turns out that both Amy and Johnny were not in the champagne room getting hot and heavy, but instead getting violently ill. Ben uses the Viewmaster of time to scan the residual images of Amy and Johnny's bodies, and finds out a darkhaired woman used some microscopic bugs to infect the two young clubgoers and then disappeared, most likely inside of Johnny. Man, that chronal viewer can do anything!


Sue, still up in Amy's business, finds out that she's is trapped by some kind of force field. It turns out the same tentacled robots from the street earlier are hanging out inside of Amy too. Sue destroys them, and the team reassembles back in the lab. Reed discovers that the microscopic bugs that affected Johnny and Amy in da club had a very specific mission- 1.) Go into Johnny, get some Man juice 2.) Leave Johnny, go into Amy's nether region 3.) Inseminate Amy with the man juice, making Johnny Jr. We find out that the whole ordeal was a great success and that Johnny is in fact going to be a daddy. Unfortunately this doesn't answer who that lady who disappeared into Johnny was. The team decides to go inside him to find out. Do you kind of get the feeling Reed just likes shrinking people and putting them inside other people?

As Sue and Ben explore the inside of Johnny, Reed remarks how there is something familiar about the design of the tentacled robots that have been plaguing them all day. As Johnny mentions that microscopic androids fit the Psycho Man's M.O. quite well, Ben chimes in over the com link and says they have company inside of Johnny. Apparently he has a visitor in his brain--

That's right, it's the Psycho Woman!

The Psycho Woman turns out to be the daughter of the longtime FF baddie, the Psycho Man. The Psycho Woman, who will be known from this point as P-W goes on to use her mind altering powers against Ben and Sue, and they lose contact with Reed. Apparently the P-W wants to use Johnny's baby to create an army of super warriors (????).

Being the all-American husband and superhero he is, Reed shrinks himself and has Amy inject him into Johnny's body (again Reed? You're sick, dude) to find the other members. After Reed is in Johnny's body, ANOTHER set of tentacled robots busts in to attack!

The major problem (besides the fact that there is a Johnny-spawn on its way into the world) is now that the Human Torch can't activate his flame powers, because the intense heat will melt the rest of his teammates inside of him. The Torch and Amy avoid the tentacled monsters, as Reed, Sue and Ben fight against the P-W. Unfortunately the battle inside of Johnny ends up hurting him, and the FF is in a tight spot.

The P-W thinks she has the upperhand by inducing the emotions of fear, disgust, and envy in the 3 members she's up against inside the Torch, but Ben quickly overcomes these emotions and clobbers the yellow faced villain. The battle continues and ends up being so rough that it knocks Johnny out the window. As he falls, The Thing knocks out the P-W and finds the heat shield that she was using to stay inside of the Torch. The three inside of Johnny get in a force bubble and Reed tells the freefalling Johnny to flame on, but he doesn't want to incinerate his family. Johnny eventually turns his flame on, and burns the robots that we're following him, and presumably the Psycho Woman.

Johnny thinks he just burned up his whole family, and Amy consoles him. Just then, the three other members of the team enter the room and reveal they were able to get out in time. The question shifts to what to do about the baby, and the team decides to go back in time and stop the Psycho-Woman before she can even impregnate Amy, effectively giving time and space an abortion (Ben calls it a "morning before pill"). Johnny vetoes the idea, but Amy tells him it's too dangerous for him to have a child, due to all his foes. To protect the child, Amy ganks the time remote control from Johnny's hand and jumps in the chronal portal.
Of course the FF could find her somehow, but Sue says that Amy made her choice. The issue ends with the Human Torch reflecting on the fact that she could have gone anywhere in time and given birth, and that his child could be out there somewhere.

What I Thought: After finishing this issue, I felt...discombobulated. Part of the reason I took my sweet time getting this review out to my adoring public is that I had to reread the comic like 4 times to really understand the main story. I'm still not sure I fully understand the Psycho Woman's motivations. She obviously wants revenge for the FF destroying her father, but why does she need to do all the stuff with the baby? Apparently she wants Johnny's tissue to make super warriors, so shouldn't she just knock him out and experiment on him?

As for the introduction of the Psycho-Woman, I will admit to being shocked by that reveal. I knew going into this book that the story somehow involved Psycho Man, and was a little let down to think the pregnancy scare was going to be another "it's all in their heads" kind of plot. To that end, the pregnancy being real and not just some faux hype Marvel made up to sell the issue was a good step towards truth-in-advertising. Of course, the whole idea of how to undo the pregnancy at the end treads so close to ground that a book like Fantastic Four just shouldn't go. Although Ben makes a somewhat good point that if you stop the Psycho Woman from engineering the ensemination, it's more like preventing a crime than aborting a child, but it still left me feeling weird. I was actually a little relieved that Amy made the choice she did, although it was a really awkward ending.

I guess the other two things that really stick out about this specific issue are the art and the format. Bryan Hitch is one of the best contemporary comic book artists of the past decade, and he really does great work with whatever assignment he is on. I quite enjoyed Hitch's tenure as the artist of the main FF book a while back, but this issue had a noticable difference in quality. While the writer Joe Ahearne gives Hitch a lot of splash pages and great action shots to play out, the inking of Hitch's work isn't as strong as previous outings. I believe it may be due to the fact that Hitch normally works with artist Paul Neary as the inker of his work ,and this time around Hitch himself and fellow artist Andrew Currie are responsible for the embellishments. It's odd to think a penciller could make his own art less dynamic by inking it himself.

Overall, I think this is one annual that deserved more varied material. I'm fairly certain editorial could have cut out some scenes, cleaned up some of the plot threads, and lowered the page count on the first story, opening up more space for another Fantastic Four related tale. While I generally don't advocate for the inclusion of filler material that tends to litter the back pages of annuals (the backups in annuals usually have as much substance as the final 30 minutes of SNL), I found myself wanting the pregnancy story to just get over with . Maybe a "Franklin Richards: Boy Genius" type comic strip or a "future foundation" backup would have been a nice way to offset the other story. I think annuals in general have gotten too far away from tying into the current continuity, and it seems like a missed opportunity with all that Jonathan Hickman has been setting up.

Wow. I'll stop here. Like Valentine's Day, I'm glad annuals only come but once a year! Until Johnny stops scammin on hotties in da club, vive la Fantastique!

God Bless America.

More "3" Spoilers?

In a bit of interesting news to come out of the Spider-Man panel at San Diego Comic Con, a teaser image showed Peter Parker in a rather remarkable new costume:

It's looking more and more like Johnny Storm is going to be the one to leave the team in the upcoming "3" arc.

Staying Current- Fantastic Four #580

Fantastic Four #580-"The Frank-Tastic Four"
Cover Date: 2010 Price $3.99 (because I had to buy the newsstand edition!)
Cover Tagline :"I promise...I've Given Up On Games Of Murder
Writer/Artist: Jonathan Hickman/ Neil Edwards

What Happened: We open the issue with the image of someone holding an invitation to the debut of a new toy line at a local toy store. The toy line features products with the likeness of the Impossible Man, the green skinned Fantastic Four ally with the same shapeshifting powers and annoying demeanor of the DC Comics hero Plastic Man.

We find that the person holding the invite is none other than young Franklin Richards, the son of Reed and Susan Richards. Frankie is sitting with his mutant friend named Leech, one of the filthy wretched Morlocks whom the Fantastic Four recently adopted. The two decide they're tired of waiting to leave for Arcade Toys, and it's time to go.

We cut to Reed Richards, talking to the "Future Foundation", his new think-tank of young super geniuses. The purpose of the group is to solve the world's greatest problems, and Reed and the "FF" are discussing the first issue they want to tackle. Reed mentions that he is surprised that the group chose the subject they did, and before the readers are let in on what this means Franklin enters. Reed, being the world's greatest father (to Valeria), gives his son the brush off in light of the group's work. He tells his son that Johnny will accompany the two, and the following soul crushing scene occurs:

A dejected Franklin meets up with his Uncle, who consoles the child and teaches him to drown his sorrow by spending Reed's money.(Johnny also ominously mentions that he'll never have kids, which is the theme of this month's FF annual) As Johnny, Leech, and Franklin marvel at the size of "Arcade Toys", Johnny is alarmed by the presence of the villain known as Arcade! Arcade, a former X-Men villain whose shtick involved placing heroes in elaborate death traps he controlled like a video game, scolds Johnny for behaving so brutishly. Before Johnny can do any harm, the aforementioned annoying jade alien known as the Impossible Man appears and tells him no to be so confrontational. Arcade explains that he has given up games of murder, and that he and the Impossible Man are out to make some scratch by selling toys. The toys are made with little pieces of the Impossible Man's D.N.A., and have the same malleable qualities as Impy himself. As the kids in the toy store start clamoring for the toys as fervently as...kids in a toy store, Arcade decides that it's time for one more "little" death trap. The play things in the store start coming to life and attacking the patrons, and the little mutant Leech gets knocked out by some debris. Franklin, understandably upset, uses his recently restored mental powers to bring a stuffed dinosaur to life. He tells his uncle to fry the rest of the toys, and Johnny obliges. With the threat thwarted so quickly, the Impossible Man tells Johnny that he'll wrangle up Arcade. Case closed, I guess....

We cut back to the Future Foundation, who have invited Ben Grimm to come and join them. They tell the ever lovin blue eyed Thing that their first order of business is to solve the one problem Reed Richards never could: being able to change him back to his human form. The members of the foundation go on to scientifically explain the reasoning, but the gist of it is that the Thing will be able to change back, but only for one week out of every year. The Thing decides that one week out of 52 is worth it, and decides to take the cure.

(I should add that this issue had another two page interlude featuring the history of Nu-World, but I have no idea what the scenes mean to the story yet.)

What I thought: This issue was fun, but it's a bit of a detour from the high concept work Hickman has been doing. I liked seeing Arcade, a villain I've never really read about, but the reasoning for him attacking his customers as well as the resolution to the story are left unexplained. And as far as the Thing being able to transform....we've seen this story many times before.


This issue, much like December's 574, seem like stops along a much bigger road. For me, the most interesting dynamic I see coming to light is the sibling rivalry between Franklin and Valeria. As a super genius, Valeria is taking a lot of her father's attention, while Franklin is more of the nurturing type like his mother. Unfortunately, with Sue spending so much time as the human ambassador to the Old Kings of Atlantis, poor Franklin is getting the short end of the stick.

And I would be remiss not to mention that Neil Edwards did a great job with the art in this issue. Although he only has one more issue left, I wouldn't mind if he stayed on the book for good. He reminds me of a mixture of Scott Eaton and Bryan Hitch.

Well, now you're current with the FF. I made it in on time this month! Until I start getting these reviews done on the same day the issues are released, vive le fantastique!

"3"-The Mystery Deepens

I feel as if I should retract something from yesterday's post, entitled "what is '3?'". While Marvel Did release teaser images showing possible combinations of the new Fantastic 3, I failed to find and post ALL of the images. I incorrectly reported that it would be the Invisible Woman or Mr. Fantastic who would be killed off. As you can see from the images below, no one is safe from speculation:

Option 1- No Reed

Option 2- No Johnny

Option 3- No Ben

Option 4- No Sue

I originally thought Sue would be the one to die, but after pondering it a while, it's hard to say. I keep thinking that if Sue does indeed die, no one will be left to care for the children. But with Reed recently enrolling the kids in his own personal "Future Foundation", he may be there to pick up the pieces. Also, with Sue's death, the grief may drive Reed to ask the Future Foundation to do some questionable (a.k.a fun to read about) things. Call me a pessimist, but I just see the Future Foundation blowing up in Reed's face.

Anyway, I apologize for misinforming the masses (all 2 of you) about the possible outcome of this story. But look at it this way, with 2 more people who could possibly die, the story just got twice as interesting.

Until my math related jokes become funny, vive le fantastique!

What is "3?"

(Editor's Note- The following post contains spoilers...and fun!)

Spoiler images and solicitations for the Fantastic Four's next big storyline, simply entitled "3", have been popping up in interviews, at conventions, and online for months now. At first it was assumed (mostly by the editor of this distinguished weblog) that the storyline had something to do with Ben Grimm, the superhero known as the ever lovin blue eyed Thing, joining the New Avengers team. But now that the arc is drawing nearer, Marvel has unleashed some more cryptic warnings.

After reading an interview on ComicBookResources with writer Jonathan Hickman, it is revealed that the story will feature the war of the four cities, the resurgences of Galactus and Dr. Doom, and that through it's course one of the members of the team will die. Hickman went on to say that unlike previous times the team has lost a member and found a replacement, he will approach this loss with more of a "family-oriented" attitude. The approach makes sense, because if someone's little brother dies, they don't just go and get the neighbor kid to take his place. Marvel released these teaser images accordingly:

So it would appear that either Reed Richards or Susan Richards will no longer be on the team after issue #587. As it is comics, there is a good possibility that the change will not be permanent, and could just serve the story for a short time before being reversed. After all, there have been plenty of issues where one, more, or all of the cosmic quartet have died and been revived. The above images were done by the incomparable Steve Epting, who will be joining the book for the "3" arc. Many know the artist as the man who helped kill Steve Rogers, illustrating the now classic Captain America #25. Ifanboy had both those teaser images, as well as some preview pages, one of which can be seen below:

Things are certainly looking up for the "World's Greatest Comics Magazine." Until the book becomes Fantastic One, vive le fantastique!