Fantastic Four #23
J.A. Fludd
Recap
In the opening scene of Fantastic Four #23, the makeshift FF of Franklin, Valeria, Spider-Man, and Wolverine strikes out onto the streets of New York City to meet the invasion of the Cotati. As they arrive at a scene of battle, there is a moment that sums up why I object to the character of Slashy McSlash-‘em-Up. It’s just a quick little passage of dialogue.
Franklin (re: Wolverine): “And go easy on the killing. We don’t do that in The FF.”
Spider-Man: “Don’t look at me. I’m all thwip-thwip. And he’s the one who’s all snikt-snikt.”
Wolverine: “Hey, I’m the best there is at what I do. Trouble is, that’s all I do.”
I’m just going to leave that there to speak for itself, because we have more important things to talk about; namely, how the Richards kids turned it around in the final battle of Empyre.
It’s up to Franklin and Valeria to rescue the Kree boy Jo-Venn from whatever the Priests of Pama and their “Dark Harvest” have in store for him and every life form on Earth that isn’t a plant. To that end, with Spider-Man and Wolverine in tow, they rely on the allied Skrulls and Kree who are battling the Cotati to point them in the direction of a clue. That takes them to an Alchemax facility that Peter Parker/Spider-Man briefly owned, where Valeria learns that the Dark Harvest stole machine components that could be used to build an Omni-Wave Projector. And this happens to be the very thing that the Priests have just finished.
Using the Omni-Wave and the stored Kree memories of Jo-Venn, the Priests of Pama intend to project all the recorded racial hatred of the Skrulls and the Kree across the universe and make the two species mortal enemies once more, conquering the enemies of the Cotati by dividing them. Meanwhile, back at 4 Yancy Street, N’Kalla uses her shape-changing powers to make Alicia think she is Sky and that she is healed from the Dark Harvest’s attack last issue and ready to fly off and help Franklin and Valeria. And it might have worked, except that no sooner does N’Kalla in the guise of Sky fly off than the real Sky wakes up.
Although Wolverine is a homicidal maniac, his tracking powers come in handy to lead the Richards kids and Spider-Man to the lair of the Priests, who quickly discover an imposter in their midst and capture N’Kalla. With both of the alien youths now in their clutches, the Priests’ weapon is even more powerful. Their fateful broadcast of genetically encoded Kree-Skrull hatred goes out into space just as the Richards siblings, the Webhead, and the Canadian Cuisinart arrive. At once, all Skrulls and Kree everywhere in the universe erupt into violent hatred against each other. Spider-Man’s reaction to this is priceless: “A giant ‘hate beam’ going out into the minds of two very extreme groups. It’s the Internet—but worse!” But Valeria and Franklin appeal to Jo-Venn and N’Kalla to turn their weaponized hatred into their own declaration of independence from what their respective species have done to them. Using the empathy of the bond that has inadvertently formed between them, the alien children begin to project not hatred but unity across space, halting the Kree/Skrull War!
Sequoia, the Celestial Messiah and master of the Cotati, has a “reward” for the defeated Priests of Pama. Using the plant elements that have been combined into the Priests’ genes, he wills them all to become trees in an eternal living monument for their failure. It’s a wrap-up as tidy as the well-maintained garden that the Priests have now become—but this is only the beginning of Sequoia’s downfall. An even bigger smackdown awaits him in the pages of Empyre #6!
In the end, all that’s left is the question, “Jo-Venn and N’Kalla, you’ve just saved the universe from yet another Kree-Skrull War. What are you going to do now?”
Answer: “We’re going to Disney World!” It’s like the end of the Super Bowl.
Review
Well, that was relatively painless, all things considered. These Marvel “events” are such an intrusion on regularly scheduled storylines. There are so many other things that The Fantastic Four could have been doing since the end of the “Point of Origin” storyline, not the least of which was starting to figure out what place The Torch’s new “soulmate,” Sky, is going to have in their lives. Instead they’ve had to spend this issue and the two previous ones being sucked into yet another all-consuming crossover. Well, the virtue of Empyre is that you could just read the main miniseries (which was really good) and be able to appreciate it without having to read every other comic book in the main Marvel line. And the virtue of The Fantastic Four’s part in Empyre is that they have been treated as principal characters who are central to both the conflict and the resolution, and not shunted off to the side in favor of Spider-people, X-people, and an army of Avengers. For that, at least, Marvel is to be commended.
Speaking of Spider-people and X-people, the commercial inclusion of Spider-Man and Wolverine in this issue thankfully does not come across as too much of an intrusion, either. Franklin and Valeria are allowed to take the lead in the outcome of this battle, which is only right, because it’s their book (or their family’s book, as the case may be). The only problem with Valeria is that because of the way she’s written and drawn, you have to keep reminding yourself that she’s meant to be an eight-year-old girl. This shows the basic difficulty of having children as adventure characters. How do you portray them convincingly as children while having them play what should be the role of characters at least twice their age? Franklin is a bit more believable; he’s thirteen years old, the same age as Kitty Pryde/Sprite/Ariel/Shadowcat was when she first came to The X-Men. But no one yet has quite gotten this whole “Valeria as heroine” thing down yet.
And on the subject of children, now The FF are going to have two extraterrestrial foster kids. I wonder if this was a part of Dan Slott’s collection of Fantastic Four story ideas that he’d been jotting down and saving for whatever time he had the chance to take over the book, or something that he’s had to take on because of Empyre and work into his plans. Whatever the case may be, these two children who began by being made to act out the mortal enmity of two entire civilizations have now started to become something else. Now this Skrull and Kree pair have been freed to make their own destiny instead of being tools of two feuding species, what will they become and what will The Fantastic Four do with them? I’ve heard people argue that The FF is at its best when it’s just the four principal characters, although the kids and Alicia are part of the “family” and can’t just be discarded. The additions of Sky, Jo-Venn, and N’Kalla are an unproven commodity and their real contribution to the book is a “wait and see” proposition. (And just what is it about N’Kalla and Alicia, anyway?) Let’s keep an eye on them and judge what they really bring to the table at a later date.
Final Thoughts
Well, it’s all over but the fallout, and for that we have an epilogue issue of Empyre centering on The FF next week. All things considered, this issue was a briskly paced and skillful wrap-up of The Fantastic Four’s part in this latest Marvel “event”. Next ish, it’s back to business as usual for a while—at least until Marvel calls another “event” and the regularly scheduled adventures of our force-some foursome are interrupted yet again.
Fantastic Four #23: And the Children Shall Save Them
- Writing - 9.5/109.5/10
- Storyline - 9/109/10
- Art - 9/109/10
- Color - 9/109/10
- Cover Art - 9/109/10
