Fantastic Four #21: Scientific Creativity

Event tie-in issues for ongoing series can cause apprehension on the part of readers. Sometimes fully understanding the tie-in issue requires knowing what’s happening with the larger event. A Fantastic Four reader, for instance, might wonder how much they have to know about Blood Hunt to to enjoy Fantastic Four #21. Ryan North tries to allay those concerns by delivering not just an easy to follow issue, but a very compelling character story.

Alicia and Reed journey to New York’s Museum of Modern Art in Fantastic Four #21 for an exhibit of paintings that have been translated into three dimensional images that can be experienced by touch. The pair finish their visit just as the vampires that are running rampant in Blood Hunt attack. A pervasive darkness blocks out the sun, giving the vampires free reign. Alicia flees back into the museum along with everyone who is in close proximity as Reed stretches out his body to cover the entrances. But if any of them are going to survive, Reed must find a way to use real world science to defeat supernatural creatures who are only stopped by supernatural means.

Fantastic Four #21 requires no knowledge of what’s going on in the Blood Hunt event. Nor does North change the tone of the issue to something other than what Fantastic Four has been since his run began. Fans of the series who are otherwise uninterested in Blood Hunt can approach these tie-in issues without worry that they won’t understand what’s going on.

Blood Hunt’s vampire attack provides a surprising avenue for a fascinating Reed story. North has never explicitly stated it in the comic, but he did confirm elsewhere that he writes Reed Richards as autistic. Fantastic Four #21 heavily codes him this way. Pairing Reed with Alicia provides significant insight into how Reed approaches the circumstances he encounters. On the surface, Alicia and Reed see the world in fundamentally different ways. Reed talks about how he’s never been emotionally moved by a work of art. Creativity is something that he believes is beyond him.

Reed’s response to the vampires in Fantastic Four #21’s early pages is to push back against what he’s seeing. He brings up his difficulty in understanding a problem that he can’t measure and quantify in some way. In a sense Reed refuses to believe his eyes, and since vampires can’t possibly exist, he doesn’t know how to address the problem. But when Reed (with a little help from Alicia) allows himself to consider that if vampires were real they might be defeated by the means described in folklore. From there, he is able to look for scientific solutions that he does understand. This is behavior that does track with how some autistic individuals process the world around them. Ultimately these events, coupled with Alicia and Reed’s earlier discussion, lead to a wonderful moment between the two characters that should not be spoiled here.

An important component of this examination of Reed is that North again finds a way to approach the dilemma by way of actual science. North doesn’t give Reed some weird technobabble solution. Instead, North does exactly what Reed says he needs to do–take a piece of vampire folklore and make it practical.

One of Fantastic Four’s hallmarks is the inventive use of Reed’s stretching ability. Fiorelli never disappoints where this is concerned. Equal parts logic and absurdity, the creativity behind Reed’s movements in Fantastic Four #21 is a visual delight. Fiorelli very effectively tracks Reed’s movements from panel to panel, keeping them easy to follow even as Reed changes rapidly. This is especially key during the fighting sequences where it can be easy to lose track of Reed while surrounded by so many vampires.

Those same crowds of vampires come across as particularly threatening and energetic. Any time Fiorelli draws several or more vampires together, he includes easy to pick out single vampires that are very clearly on the move, whether jumping, sliding over the hood of a car, biting someone, and so forth. The individual active vampires create a broader sense of movement and action that make all the vampires on the page feel fast and immediately threatening. Reed and Alicia aren’t just under siege by a mass of bodies, they are under constant attack and in danger of being overwhelmed.

Darkness surrounds and slightly precedes the vampires as they attack. Unsurprisingly, there is no sunlight. Aburtov always establishes a clear contrast between the light and dark. It’s not as sharp as one straight line delineating the two–the light and dark do blend together. But like Fiorelli making every vampire feel like an imminent threat, the contrast Aburtov creates between bright light and no light creates the impression that the light itself is in danger of being overrun.

Fantastic Four is not a series given to excessive sound effects. Fantastic Four #21 actually has a few more than usual. There is one in particular that Caramagna nails when Reed is attempting to turn on a building’s lights. A series of three panels sees Reed tracking wires down to the utility panel where he can turn on the lights. He throws the large switch to the sound of “ka-CHUNK.” Caramagna uses a lower case font that looks like handwriting before switching to larger, all caps block letters. It creates a particularly realistic effect. Reading it really does give the impression of the softer sound as a heavy switch is pulled down before it slams into place at the end.