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!

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.

Staying Current: Fantastic Four 576-579

(Editor's Note- "Staying Current" is a feature intended to to let all of this site's loyal readers know what's happening within the newest issue of Fantastic Four. However, as the feature hasn't been "current" for quite some time, today is going to be a summary of the past 4 issues. It is urged that in addition to reading these synopses, you go enjoy these books in their fullness, because they are really jam packed with wonderfully engaging stories.

What is essential to understand is that in issue #574 an adult Franklin Richards came back from the future and told his sister Valeria that there would be a war between 4 cities. In issue #575 the FF came across city #1, the city of the High Evolutionary.... )


Fantastic Four #576-"Prime Elements Part 2- The Old Kings of Atlantis"
Cover Date: APR 2010 Price $2.99
Cover Tagline :"Tell me, who speaks for man?"
Writer/Artist: Jonathan Hickman/ Dale Eaglesham



What Happened- The issue starts with Sue explaining to Ben and Johnny the existence of an Arctic base that she and Reed's science grants help to fund. Because of the base's unique location in extreme temperatures, it was of interest to science when it was discovered that there was a large body of suspended water near the area. According to Sue, this means that any living thing in the area will have been untouched by human evolutionary standards for the last 500,000 years, and could follow a divergent evolutionary path.

The research team stationed at the base then discovered that there was some type of "superstructure" beneath the ice. This structure was also of interest to the terrorist group called A.I.M., who Reed discovers via spy satellite is trying to infiltrate the area. Naturally, the Fantastic Four head to the base to stop A.I.M. and any dastardly deeds they may enact on the area.

The FF arrive at the base and are told by of the research team that there is a thermal vent near the superstructure whose sheer noise will prevent the team from communicating while they are below the water. In a masterpiece of graphic storytelling, the comic goes "silent" for the next few pages as the team dives below the water past the thermal vent and finds not only A.I.M terrorists, but giant eel and fish-type creatures as well. The FF repel the A.I.M. threat, and are cornered by what could be referred to as "fishmen." The fishmen give the FF some telepathic communicators (not unlike the brain slugs from tv's Futurama), and the team is taken before three royal undersea figures.


The main royal figure speaks to the FF and identifies himself as Ul-Uhar. He welcomes the team to Atlantis, to which everyone gives a big WHAAAA?? Reed tells Ul-Uhar that Atlantis has been destroyed, to which the other royal figures reply that the entire SEA is Atlantis. Ul-Uhur then goes on to say that he is confused, because the A.I.M. agents and the FF are both human yet fight each other. He then basically asks the FF to "take me to your leader", wondering who the king of humanity is. Reed tells him that humanity isn't like that, with things like democracy, the U.N, and text voting on American Idol speaking for the best interests instead of one person. Sue then stops Reed, and tells Ul-Uhur that she speaks for humanity. Ul-Uhur tells Sue that she needs to deliver a message: "The old kings of Atlantis have returned."

What I Thought: This issue was very powerful. Although at first I felt cheated by the lack of dialogue, it all came together after taking the time to appreciate Mr. Eaglesham's visuals. And seeing Sue step forward as the voice of humanity gave me chills, because it fits her personality yet promises huge repercussions. But that's what a Fantastic Four issue is supposed to do, right?

Fantastic Four #577-"Prime Elements Part 3- Universal Inhumans"
Cover Date: MAY 2010 Price $2.99
Cover Tagline :"How Does One Best Serve the Universal Collective?"
Writer/Artist: Jonathan Hickman/ Dale Eaglesham

What Happened: This issue starts six months in the past on the blue area of the moon, which is home to the Fantastic Four's allies (and sometimes lovers) the Inhumans. The leader of the Inhumans, the tight lipped and ultra cool Black Bolt, summons his people to head out with him into space. Before they leave, Black Bolt and Medusa bid farewell to a white-bearded Inhuman who will be staying behind. Some ominous words about a "gathering" are spoken, and Black Bolt places a large rod (it's kind of like a citronella candle) into the surface of the moon, and then the Inhuman ship takes off. Time goes on, and as the bearded Inhuman waits, he tells the other inhabitant of the moon, everyone's favorite voyeur Uatu the Watcher, that some crazy stuff is about to go down. Suddenly, a giant alien space ship lands on the surface of the moon.


Reed uses his spy satellite (just like last issue!! Maybe he wants Uatu's job) and sees the ship landing on the moon. He tells Sue, Ben, and Johnny that it appears to be a colonization vessel, and invites them to come investigate. When the team gets to the moon, Reed sensors pick up tens of thousands of heat signatures within the vessel, and the team wonders how to get inside. The white bearded inhuman from the prologue appears and invites the team to come inside. The Inhuman reveals that his name is Gandal--I mean "the summoner", and he welcomes the team to the "universal city."


The summoner shows the team around the ship, and asks Reed if he knows how the Inhumans came into existence. Reed gives the summoner a big "duh" and Reed basically tells beardy to "tell me something I don't know. " The Summoner obliges by telling Reed that the Inhumans the FF have come to know are not the only Inhumans. They are creations of the Kree race, and their mutations are brought on by their skins exposures to the Terrigan mists. But the crazy thing is, there are 4 other kinds of Inhumans, all with different catalysts that change them (included in these 4 kinds are Dire Wraiths, who were last seen in this site's review of issue 277).


Reed, Sue, Johnny, Ben, and I are all blown away by the implications of this wide of a scope of Inhumans, but that's not all. The Summoner goes on to tell Reed that Black Bolt went on his space journey to go and destroy the Kree Supreme intelligence, and that when he comes back, he is going to be the leader of all 5 of the tribes of the Inhumans. Reed asks if they plan to live on the moon, and the summoner drops a final bomb: They are all going to live on Earth.

What I Thought: This issue blew my mind. Pure and simple. Jonathan Hickman took a play out of the Geoff Johns handbook and totally retconned an established property such as the Inhumans, giving them an entirely new purpose in the Marvel Universe. In one issue. See, this is why I tell people to read this book!



Fantastic Four #578-"Prime Elements Part 4- The Cult of the Negative Zone"
Cover Date: JUN 2010 Price $2.99
Cover Tagline :"Here you die. In the Negative Zone, you can live."
Writer/Artist: Jonathan Hickman/ Dale Eaglesham (in his final issue...tears.)

What Happened: This story is narrated by Johnny Storm and begins with him scammin on a hottie in da club. Actually for a club it's really weird, and there's a bald guy calling himself the anti-priest and yelling about "new rules for life."

As for Johnny and the girl, he invites her back to the Baxter Building to see his "rocket ship" (okay, that was my joke, not his), and when the girl finds the opening to the Negative Zone portal, this happens:

Yes, you saw correctly, giant mechanical bugs with bombs jumped out of her back and flew into the negative zone. Johnny follows the bugs inside and finds that there is a battle raging with the N-Zone. The battle is being fought between those who follow Ahnillus, the former bug faced ruler of the Negative Zone, and Blastaar, who used to just be a lowly Negative Zone villain. Johnny then goes on to tell that the "#42 Negative Zone Prison" from the Civil war has been re purposed into a city. We as the audience find out at this point that he has been telling the story to Valeria, who is entering facts onto her computer. She comments that the Negative Zone Prison City, along with the city of old Atlantis and the city of the Universal Inhumans, is now the fourth city that the team has recently come across.

We cut to a scene with Susan Richards visiting Ul-Uhur (the king of the Fishmen from issue #576), along with an envoy of Namor. Namor's envoy tells Ul-Uhur two things: Namor is awesome, and until they're willing to come to the surface, the "old kings" of Atlantis have no say in anything. So just to spite Namor, Ul-Uhur raises the city...


We cut back to Johnny, as Reed comes in to have a heart-to-heart with him. Reed basically tells Johnny that bringing that bug filled flusie back to the Baxter Building was really bad judgment, and that everyone else is changing, so Johnny needs to grow up a little.

And just for good measure we end the issue on a scene of the Inhumans. As they prepare to conquer the earth, they offer a sacrifice: they send 6 of their best warriors into a battle they cannot win. The issue ends with the warriors rushing into the negative zone, and a caption that reads "And so, in the Negative Zone, the war of four cities begins."



What I thought: Another terrific issue. Hickman captures Johnny's voice in a way that Mark Millar only wishes he could. Youthful, humorous, but experienced as a superhero, this is a Johnny I'd like to (and probably will) read more about.

As the end of the "Prime Elements" arc, I will say that there was very little resolution here. I don't think you can really criticize something for having too epic of a scope, but it does depend a lot on presentation (like Final Crisis, with its big ideas but limited space). This arc sets the stage for the future of the FF series, which I knew from reading interviews with writer Jonathan Hickman. The casual reader may be a bit put-off by the scope of these stories, and this might falter when read in a trade, but I appreciate that threads from Hickman's first issue are still paying off eight issues later. I'd liken this book to Green Lantern in the sense that everything eventually serves a purpose, no matter how small it may seem. Rest assured, it's a HUGE story, but if you stick with it, it's very satisfying.

Fantastic Four #579-"The Future Foundation"
Cover Date: JUL 2010 Price $2.99 (Thank you, Marvel!)
Cover Tagline :"The Future of Man is not here...it is out there."
Writer/Artist: Jonathan Hickman/ Neil Edwards

What Happened: Our story starts At the Singularity conference in Golden , Colorado. A meeting of the most brilliant minds from around the world, speakers come to Singularity share ways in which Science will effect the future(apparently it's real), and it's Reed Richards' turn to speak. Well, does he have something to say. After praising the ideals of the keynote speaker (who happens to be the She-Hulk, who talked about the ethics of genetics within the confines of the law), Reed rips into his fellow presenters. I never thought I'd enjoy reading a comic where someone gets a "stern talking to", but watching a smart guy tell a bunch of other smart guys that they've gotten lazy is just plain awesome. Anyway, after Reed tells the audience they've gotten old and their ideas are not bold enough, he resigns from the Singularity council like a total rock star.

We cut to a week later, and Alex from the Power Pack is arriving at the Baxter Building. Alex tells Reed that he doesn't feel smart enough to be included in Reed's new project, but Reed tells Alex his experience as a superhero offer him a unique perspective.

We cut to a scene of Sue talking to Ul-Uhur (the king of the fishmen), and he tells her that her request is unusual, but now that he raised the city, he feels as if he can dream again. He tells her that her wish is granted, and the scene leaves us hanging...

We go back to the Baxter Building, where the super smart Moloids who Ben Grimm rescued from issue #575 are doing equations. One Moloid realizes that there is a curved axis that runs through the 4 cities that the FF have recently been exploring...

We then cut to a two page spread about Nu-World, which was seemingly destroyed in issue #573. I'm gonna be honest, I'm not fully sure what this part of the story means just yet, other than it obviously has huge bearing on what's coming up next.

We then jump back to the Baxter Building, where Franklin is sparring with Artie and Leech (these Morlocks were taken in by the FF around issue #574). Franklin is looking for a catch phrase, while Ben Grimm and Alex from Power Pack watch the fighting. In the corner of the room Valeria Richards tinkers with the brain of the Dragon Man, saying she is trying to make him better, but can't get it right. As Franklin beats up his friends, Artie shows Valeria with his mind what the Dragon Man's brain looks like disassembled. Val then asks him to show her with his mind what her pen looks like disassembled, and she thinks it's really cool...

We then cut to a scene of Reed visiting the "Wizard", a.k.a. Bentley Whitman, in his psychiatric hospital. Whitman asks Reed if he solved everything (referring to Reed's former goal in issues 570-573), and can tell by Reed's demeanor that he tried and gave up. Whitman gloats and tells Reed that it is scientific fact that everything will eventually burn. Reed, unimpressed, tells the Wizard that he is going to raise Whitman's young clone (who the FF adopted around issue #570) to be a good person. As you can imagine, the Wizard is not too happy about this development.

When we cut back to the Baxter Building, we see the coming together of all the elements of this issue into one conglomerate: a group called the "Future Foundation", made up of all the kids Reed has adopted as well as Alex and Dragon Man. Whether this has the makings of a new superteam or the comic book equivalent of the Hitler youth movement remains to be seen...

What I Thought: This is the first issue of Fantastic Four to feature "The Heroic Age" banner at the top, and I can very much see how it is intended to be a jumping on point for new readers. In that spirit of renewed hope and direction, it succeeds. We see the culmination of the fact that Reed has been taking in a lot of stray kids lately, and we see the seeds of their role within the promised "war of four cities." While I think it's time the ball got rolling on the war, I'm still impressed by how good these FF stories are.

Woah. There you have it. My brain is sufficiently fried from all that catching up. And since the newest issue of Fantastic Four hits stands today, we'll be seeing the summary of issue #580 shortly. Until I learn to not procrastinate, vive le fantastique!