Fantastic Four #2
J.A. Fludd
Recap
It’s been three years of “Real World” time since Reed Richards (Mister Fantastic) and Susan Richards (The Invisible Woman) and “The Future Foundation” disappeared into the fabric of spacetime to begin restoring the shattered multiverse. On regular Marvel Earth it’s been about a year. But for the Richards family and their young charges, enough years have passed that Franklin, now called Powerhouse, is now well into his teen years and Valeria, now called Brainstorm, has just entered hers. On a planet in one of Franklin’s newly created universes, an alien called Arboro is infatuated with Valeria. The seeming similarity between this relationship and that of a given blonde heroine and a given Prince of Atlantis is enough to make Reed want to make a hasty exit from this reality. So off they go into other universes of Franklin’s creation (with input and suggestions from the other proteges). But awaiting them out there is danger of a very awesome and cosmic variety.
Several universes later, when it’s time to leave, they discover that Franklin cannot create another cosmos for them to enter. Reed’s analysis and that of the Molecule Man (whose powers have been rendering the matter in Franklin's new universes coherent) confirm that after willing a thousand firmaments into existence, Franklin has burned out his reality-generating powers. While he is still more powerful than mighty Thor, the Silver Surfer, and the Hulk, Franklin cannot create universes anymore! And no sooner does the Richards family come to this conclusion than trouble of the worst kind comes calling: a being who calls herself The Griever at the End of All Things—The Griever, for short. The purpose of this being is to watch and mourn when universes reach their natural end and hasten them along to oblivion. She is the opposite of The Watcher! And she takes umbrage at Franklin Richards running willy-nilly around spacetime creating new universes left and right. Now that Reed and Sue’s son is no longer capable of upsetting the cosmic order—by her reckoning—The Griever means to expunge everything that Franklin has done and wipe out the lad, his family, and his friends in the bargain. And she begins by annihilating the Molecule Man himself!
In the face of such power, all that our fantastic family can do at first is retreat. And it’s here that Valeria makes a fateful decision outside of her father’s orders to return to Arboro’s world. Once they crash back on that planet, Franklin’s attempt to hurl his entire power at The Griever comes to naught. With a gesture from The Griever, the lad wakes up in a crater to find that the inter-cosmic entity has flattened Reed, Sue, and everyone else. Naturally, Reed does not admit defeat, and taunts The Griever that if she were facing the real Fantastic Four she wouldn’t have a prayer. The Griever, who is facing Earth’s greatest heroes for the first time, does not realize what Reed is doing to her. He has used her vanity against her (as he did to Dr. Doom a couple of times) and caused her to lend him a device with which to summon the rest of the FF—the very device beside which we found Reed and Sue at the end of last issue. Using that apparatus, Reed projects the great glowing “4” into our universe. It appears just as Alicia has accepted the Thing’s marriage proposal and the Human Torch—a “griever” of a different sort—has accepted the loss of his family. The “4” is not just a symbol; it’s a transporter. Johnny and Ben disappear at once from the rooftop where we left them and reappear before Reed and Sue, bringing the Fantastic Four together again at last! But that’s not all that Reed has done. He’s also called over a lot of friends of the family. In a closing-page splash we see Spider-Man, Medusa, Crystal, The Black Panther, Namorita, Ant-Man, and others including even a HERBIE, all standing behind the founders of the Marvel Universe. And the look on Johnny Storm’s face is absolutely priceless! Johnny’s expression says it all: “Suck it, bad guys! THE FANTASTIC FOUR ARE BACK!”
Review
This is a well-thought-out return for Marvel’s original heroes. Notice the theme running through the whole story: different aspects of grief, including an extraordinarily dangerous physical expression of it. There’s a quietly touching scene of Valeria trying to contact Arboro’s universe and Franklin asking her if they can try to reach their home universe as well, and the two kids opening up about how they miss their Uncle Johnny and Uncle Ben. There’s the shock of seeing the Molecule Man—who goes all the way back to Fantastic Four #20 and is an original Stan Lee/Jack Kirby character—being un-created by The Griever on a whim! There’s Valeria’s impulsive action when she fears that Arboro’s universe will be the next one that The Griever un-makes. And the scene when we return to “our” world where we left Johnny and Ben mourning for Reed, Sue, and the kids and preparing to move on. And finally, the whole story may be thought to represent, symbolically, the end of three years spent in “mourning” for the original Marvel comic book, which is finally over. With the last scenes in this issue, we have again our beloved Fantastic Four, who should never have left us. They are the best and they are back.
As for our new villain, The Griever—who says that she weeps for dying universes as they pass from existence, but doesn’t seem too teary-eyed in this first appearance—she is the latest character in the Fantastic Four tradition of villains who are monstrous, cosmic expressions of violence, death, and destruction. The Fantastic Four have faced so many of these, they are a theme and a trope unto themselves. Will The Griever take her place alongside Galactus, Blastaar, Psycho-Man, Annihilus, and Terrax as a cosmic force of terror? We’ll just have to see what Dan Slott has in store.
I’m going to reserve judgment on the new call signs of the Richards kids, Powerhouse and Brainstorm. They’ve been put through a comic book version of what daytime TV and its viewers call Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome (facilitated by the difference in time passage between “regular Marvel Universe” time and their period of jaunting from one universe to another) and are now adolescents, and they had to be called something. I’m not necessarily sure Powerhouse is the right name for Franklin. Then again, if they’re not going to have him willing universes into being anymore but they’re simply going to have him be super-cosmically powerful, perhaps it is. The trouble with Franklin is that for most of his history he’s had the power to do “whatever the writers need him to do at a given time.” His powers are going to have to become better defined now, and the sooner this is done, the better. Gratifyingly, with his universe-creating power gone (and, thanks to The Griever, many of those other universes that he made), we should have no more uncomfortable scenes of him comparing himself to “God” the way he did with Arboro this issue (for which Sue rightly admonished him). Enough of that, already!
Final Thoughts
This ending of this issue also symbolizes what we most need to see right now: The Fantastic Four as leaders of the Marvel cast of characters. Not followers of trends, not a subordinate or secondary presence, not imitators of the sensationalistic things going on in other comics, not riders of the coattails of other characters. This is a disservice to the characters who started it all and are still the greatest. Let's never forget it again: They are still The Fantastic Four.
Fantastic Four #2: Don’t Fear the Griever
- Writing - 9/109/10
- Storyline - 10/1010/10
- Art - 8/108/10
- Color - 9/109/10
- Cover Art - 8/108/10