Fantastic Four #36
J.A. Fludd
Recap
After revisiting the intro scene for Johnny Storm, the Human Torch in Fantastic Four #1, we segue to the present. Today our Torch burns so hot and so constantly that the glow from the Baxter Building can be seen all up and down Madison Avenue and 42nd Streets. While the once-omnipotent Franklin somewhat self-servingly suggests that a device to transfer some of his Uncle Johnny’s surplus cosmic energy to himself would solve both of their problems, poor Johnny can’t even eat a cheeseburger without vaporizing it and melting the HERBIE who’s serving it, and Reed in a special suit has to feed him nutrients with an Adamantium hypo. (Too bad the suit that Reed is wearing makes it impossible for Johnny to burn that stupid-looking, scraggly beard off him.) The Torch needs help, and Reed thinks there may be one person who can help him. Unfortunately, it’s the girlfriend that Johnny was cheating on when he got himself into this mess.
Elsewhere, on Yancy Street, Alicia takes Jo-Venn and N’Kalla on a neighborhood outing where they meet Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. (What kind of permit or license do you need to keep a red Theropod as a pet in New York City anyway?) The blind Alicia isn’t able to notice how peculiarly one certain neighbor is acting (which I assume is a setup for next issue) before the light from the Torch and the Thing stepping out onto the roof of the Baxter Building blazes out over the city. They are waiting for the person that Reed called to show up—but as soon as she approaches, they know something is very, very off.
Sky, Johnny’s “soul-mated” girlfriend from Planet Spyre, comes swooping in—but she has become a mutated avian monster because of the bonding of her and Johnny’s armbands. Somehow Doom’s amping-up of Johnny’s powers has been transmitted empathically through the bands to Sky, which has amplified her powers to the maximum as well, and in her new form she is furious. Remember that when Johnny had sex with Victorious, Sky was able to feel it happening. She attacks him, tearfully demanding to know who the other girl was, and rips his armband from him, scorching her mutated talon-like hands in the process. Johnny is crushed with guilt over the consequences of his impulsive bedding with Dr. Doom’s enforcer and what it has done to the innocent Sky.
The Fantastic Four use the Forever Gate to send Sky home. (The reason Reed called on Sky is that her people have such a knowledge of the mutagenic effects of cosmic rays.) Before she goes, Johnny, wearing a containment suit that Reed has hastily fabricated, comes to her, apologizes, and removes her armband, releasing her from their bond, but not from the transformation and the pain that it and his cheating have caused her. Sky steps through the gate to her home planet, and now I want to see a follow-up story to all of this about how the people back on Spyre—including the member of The Unparalleled who actually loves Sky—react to all this. The people of Spyre, who had thought our heroes would bring the destruction of their hermetically sealed way of life, parted with the Fantastic Four on a note of respect and trust. How will Johnny’s indiscretion and its consequences for Sky affect their world?
Johnny sadly burns through the containment suit as Reed sends the dejected Torch far down to a sub-basement of the Baxter Building, where he will have to stay in a specially sealed chamber until the FF can work out something else for him. When the Thing notes that the Torch has kept a stiff upper lip through this whole ordeal so far, Reed points out that in his present state, our lad is now physically unable to produce teardrops. Which brings us to what may be the saddest closing line in sixty years of Fantastic Four adventures when Reed sums it all up. “Johnny Storm doesn’t get to cry.”
Review
The thing I’m wondering about is something that a reader brings up on the letters page of this issue. In the third fan letter, a Dan Lowe mentions, “…if Sky could feel everything Johnny did while he was cheating, then he could have felt everything she felt, every moment he was doing it. There is no way he is that despicable of a character.” And Dan Lowe is right. Johnny Storm, much as I love him, is without question a himbo. But he is a heart of fire, not stone, and cannot possibly be so unfeeling that he would knowingly go to bed with another girl while also knowing that he was empathically transmitting it to his supposed girlfriend. Dan Slott’s storyline does not seem to have a way of accounting for this, and I’ve yet to see what defense he has for it. It’s a glaring and troublesome hole in the characterization.
Then again, there’s also my boyfriend’s opinion about Sky, which I’ll pass on here because I think it’s relevant. My guy—an even greater Fantastic Four super-fan than I am—has an interesting reason for having no sympathy for Sky. He points out that Sky carried the unconscious Johnny to her bed from the FF’s first encounter with the Unparalleled, stripped him naked, and put the armband on him before he awakened! She didn’t even wait for him to revive and then tell him, “You know, my planet’s cosmic Match-dot-Com, which fixes everyone up with their soulmate, said you and I were a match, and I’ve got these empathic armbands I want to share with you…” She just went ahead and banded him, naked and unconscious in her bed. Now Johnny might well have gone along with this and would likely have slept with Sky anyway, but she really didn’t give him the option. The whole thing was not, so to speak, consensual.
The only possible defense for Sky is that she was raised in a culture where this was the custom and everyone blindly assumed it was the correct way to live. Thus she would have seen no reason for Johnny to object. Her cultural blindness, however, exposed her to the possible negative consequences of a relationship with an alien boy that she really didn’t know. If Johnny hadn’t gone to bed with Victorious, there is every possibility, knowing him as we do, that he would have broken her heart in some other way, though probably not as horribly and grotesquely as this. This is exactly why, a few issues before this, I described Sky as a naive character.
Anyway, now that Slott has started this thing, I really want to see a follow-up. He must have something in mind and it’s a story that I’ll be watching for.
In the wake of John Romita Jr.’s visit as artist last issue, we’re back to musical artists with Nico Leon at the drawing board. He does a good enough job, and he doesn’t make the Thing as gigantic as some other recent artists have done. But again I reiterate that I’d like to see this book with a regular penciler who’s there for every issue and brings a consistency and stability to the look of it all; preferably someone who works in a more classic style. John Romita Jr., Ron Lim, Aaron Lopresti—there are a number of people who would work admirably. The Fantastic Four deserves it.
Final Thoughts
The present fate of the Human Torch is one of the cruelest things that Dr. Doom has ever done, and no doubt we’re only beginning to see the harm that it will do to Johnny Storm’s life. And while Sky was naive about her seemingly ordained relationship with Johnny, she didn’t deserve any of this, either. The fallout from Doom’s actions will be far-reaching this time. Meanwhile, what was it about that woman on Yancy Street…?
ICYMI! Fantastic Four #36: Johnny Storm Doesn’t Get to Cry
- Writing - 9/109/10
- Storyline - 9/109/10
- Art - 9/109/10
- Color - 10/1010/10
- Cover Art - 10/1010/10