Fantastic Four #41: Who Watches the Watchers When They’re Not Watching?

The Watchers are not only among the most powerful beings in the universe, but also the most learned.  So you’d think they’d understand ideas like “exceptions to the rule” and “mitigating circumstances.”  No such luck in this issue.  

When “our” Watcher, the one formerly stationed on what used to be our Moon, tries to rally his people against The Reckoning, he warns them that these beings who are tearing the universe asunder are really the Prosilicans, whom the early Watchers once gave technology for which they were not prepared.  The Watcher all but begs his people to rise up against their former protégés, for which his powers are seized and he is imprisoned—by his own father!  These cosmic historians are sticking to their creed of non-interference in the universe, even if it means the end of the universe.  And you thought only Siths deal in absolutes!  

Elsewhere, on the planet of the M’Kraan Crystal, the Thing barely has a moment to take in Reed’s reveal that the Watchers’ omnipotence is killing him.  Reed, Ben, She-Hulk, and the Jack of Hearts must battle the deadly Rapture and Reject.  The Thing faces Rapture in spite of knowing that this fatal female is destined to destroy him.  She almost slices off his fingers and is stopped only by Ben’s Adamantium wedding ring, which she cuts to pieces!  An instant later, she cuts open poor Ben’s stomach, and Reed desperately wraps himself around his friend to hold him together.  When Rapture and the Reject head for the M’Kraan Crystal, following the Wrath’s orders to open up a can of cosmic destruction, She-Hulk suddenly has a flash on insight about why this whole thing is her fault—but that will have to remain a tantalizing cliffhanger, because we have another battle to witness, this one on the planet Spyre.  

The Unparallelled are up to their soulmate bands in the forces of the all-annihilating Annihilus when Spyre suddenly appears to have a third sun.  But wait, that’s no sun; that’s the Human Torch, whose powers have been amped-up to make him a virtual living star.  You’ll remember everything that Johnny went through when Annihilus’s Negative Zone critters swarmed him and he appeared to have “died.”  That’s why our torrid Torch is taking no cosmic crap from these guys now.  Straight away, he roasts the “Annihilation Wave” and confiscates the Cosmic Control Rod from Annihilus himself, sending the iniquitous insect back to the Negative Zone and seizing his armada.  He gives the Cosmic Control Rod to the Overseer of Spyre and rallies the Unparallelled to take this battle to other places in the universe where they’re needed.  The Unparallelled, like true super-heroes, prepare to leave Spyre for what is probably the first time for most of them (except for Sky, and we’ll talk about this in a minute) to show the universe what they’ve got.  

And finally, in Asgard, the assembled Heralds of Galactus, joined by the Silver Surfer, have ended their battle with the Norse Gods and are pumping cosmic energy into the remains of Galactus to resurrect him.  The Surfer himself feels compelled to join and help them—as does mighty Thor, who also did a brief tour of duty as a Herald.  As Galactus’s body regenerates, the Destroyer—another former Galactian Herald—appears, disassembling itself and wrapping around the planet-killer’s reconstituting body to form a new entity which the Surfer dubs “The Destruction.”  Removing the Ultimate Nullifier from a pocket dimension inside his surfboard, the Surfer leads The Destruction off into space to present yet another challenge to The Reckoning.  

Where do you reckon all of this is going to end up?  To be continued…