Invisible Woman #5
J.A. Fludd
Recap
Like a good spy story, it all comes down to the chase. We left off with The Invisible Woman and secret agent Aidan Tintreach—who once seemed charming but has proven to be a sinister, murdering sociopath—facing off with Maria Hill, Agent of SHIELD. Maria was there to arrest Sue for treason after Sue was effectively blackmailed into helping Aidan steal a piece of LiFi technology that could be used against the US. Now, before Maria can complete the arrest (as if she actually could take Sue Richards into custody), Aidan gives them both the slip. The two women must now catch Aidan and stop the Symkarian government blowing a plane filled with college-student hostages out of the sky.
After a crazy stunt in which Sue uses her invisible force field as an umbilical to connect the SHIELD plane piloted by Maria with the plane carrying the kids, and boards the latter aircraft by forcing the hatch, Sue must contend with the pilot pulling a gun on her, one of the kids knocking out the pilot, and the dilemma of both stopping the plane from crashing and finding the explosive device somewhere on board. Sue accomplishes the latter by cloaking the entire aircraft and exposing the bomb, which she tosses out from the hatch in the nick of time. That leaves her to take over in the cockpit—but Aidan, of course, has stowed away on board the SHIELD craft, knocked out Maria and deposited her on the ground, and taken off again in pursuit of Sue. Well, that was a turnabout.
Aidan, in ship-to-ship communications, bitterly and insanely taunts Sue about her Fantastic Four morality which has always ruled out deliberately taking her enemies’ lives. Aidan means to give The Invisible Woman no choice but to destroy him, else he will ram her plane and destroy himself, Sue, and the young passengers. No appeal to reason that Susan can make, and no warning about what her powers can do, succeeds in dissuading the psychopathic spy. To save herself and the kids, Sue has no choice but to erect an invisible force field between the two planes and let Aidan crash against it, meeting an explosive doom.
A week later, Sue buries a locket that Aidan once gave her—his “Stormy”—under a tree the way he wanted. Maria finds her and informs her that the treason charges against her have been dropped. When all is said and done, The Invisible Woman is still one-quarter of The Fantastic Four, and while The FF are not above the law, the law is willing to be flexible and bend in favor of the greatest heroes of all time. However, Sue cannot easily forget that she has just taken a life, something completely against the code of heroes like The Fantastic Four, even if there was no other choice. This compromise of her principles is one that she will not soon forget, and she swears off spying, cloaks herself, and disappears.
Review
Well, there’s nothing like a little moral ambiguity, is there? I was frankly hoping that Mark Waid’s story would provide some work-around for Sue having to do commit an act that is against everything that The Fantastic Four stands for. Remember, these are the people who once saved the life of Galactus—whose feeding destroys billions of lives every time he consumes a life-supporting planet—because in spite of what Galactus does he is still a sentient life form. However, by taking The invisible Woman completely out of her Fantastic Four element, Waid tied her hands and removed all her options. Being in a spy’s position, our heroine had no choice but to act like a spy, which is a much more ambiguous, if not just plain dirtier role than that of the super-adventurer/explorer FF. Though none of this may ever be brought up in the regular Fantastic Four book (here’s hoping, except for the inventive uses of her powers), what she was forced to do to save all those young lives will weigh on some corner of Susan’s conscience forever.
Thankfully, the next time we see The Invisible Woman—next week, as I write this—she will be back in The Fantastic Four at her husband’s side in the latest chapter of the kind of super-cosmic adventure in which she really belongs. The next time someone does a miniseries about one of The FF, I hope it’s more of an FF-type story. And actually, I hope the next time it’s about Sue’s brother, The Human Torch.
Final Thoughts
In these five issues of her miniseries, we have seen Susan Richards do things with her powers that we’ve never seen her do before, and very clever things at that. We’ve also seen her do something that a heroine of her kind and her stature is not meant to do. All things considered, it was a good story, well put together. But it also serves as a reminder of who The Fantastic Four really are and what their real place is in the scheme of things—a place much loftier than the world of espionage.
Invisible Woman #5: Susan Saves the Day
- Writing - 9/109/10
- Storyline - 9/109/10
- Art - 9/109/10
- Color - 9/109/10
- Cover Art - 10/1010/10