Marvel 2-in-One #11
Recap
Our friends at Marvel Comics have yet to favor us with Fantastic Four #3. It is now the beginning of November and we saw the last issue two months ago. Thus we are seeing here the reunion of Mr. Fantastic and the Thing without the benefit of perusing the story that finally got the Fantastic Four back together. Am I happy about this? No. Am I going to vent my spleen about it when the time finally does come to review FF #3? Probably. In the meantime, about the story of Ben Grimm and Reed Richards catching up…
In the wake of Ben and Johnny’s adventures across different universes, there’s a loose end to tie up. Reed Richards could not in good conscience let the Mad Thinker stay stranded on the post-apocalyptic Earth where the deranged Spider-Man ran a Thunderdome-type arena. (He was more concerned about what would happen to that world than about what would happen to the Thinker.) So Reed and Ben return to that alternate reality to collect the Thinker, and as soon as they have the vainglorious villain in tow, Ben begins to pick at the sores in their relationship.
Why did Reed leave Ben and Johnny behind and take Sue and the kids on a long jaunt across spacetime to rebuild the Multiverse? By way of answering, Reed takes Ben to yet another universe and a planet of sentient water. Here Reed explains that he wanted a “time out” for his family from the lives of super-heroes. He wanted to show Franklin and Valeria wondrous places and teach them to appreciate the science of learning about them. That was the real mission of the Fantastic Four, to serve humanity by discovering “What’s out there?” The team had gotten so caught up with saving Earth from one super-calamity after another that the original purpose of the Fantastic Four had gotten lost. Reed simply thought that if they had brought Johnny and Ben along for the ride, the two of them, being more about action than contemplation, would be bored.
However, as it becomes clear from the attack of one of the plant creatures that live symbiotically with the sentient water, it worked better in theory than in practice. Wherever they went, they kept running into dangerous situations. It just seems to be in their nature. Just being part of the Fantastic Four is apparently a lightning rod for super trouble. It finds them regardless of whether they’re looking for it. Once they’ve sent off the plant monster, however, something else becomes clear: Ben isn’t buying it. The fact remains that Reed allowed him and Johnny to think that he, Sue, and the kids were dead, and he’s furious! However, Reed had another reason…
In yet another alternate world, Reed brings Ben to Castle Doom to meet a Dr. Doom who has only superficial scars on one side of his face—and is happy to see his friend Reed Richards! No kidding! Ben, as the Brits say, is gobsmacked to see Doom embracing Reed!
It seems that in this world there was never a Fantastic Four. The Ben Grimm native to this reality is a commercial pilot, Susan Storm is a corporate executive, and Johnny Storm is a movie star. And the Reed Richards belonging to this world…is dead! When “our” Reed first invented the Multisect technology that Ben and Johnny used for most of this series, he came to this world on a trial run and confronted the indigenous Dr. Doom, who battled him—and spared Reed’s life. This made Reed curious to see just how redeemable this iteration of Dr. Doom was. So he continued coming back to this world (even having Franklin re-create it after the Secret Wars) and gradually befriended this alternate Doom. It seems that beneath his vanity and arrogance, this Doom has the curiosity and sense of wonder of a benevolent genius.
Ben can’t help but compare this Dr. Doom to the one with whom he and Johnny traveled, the Doom who tried to be a hero but almost reverted to type during the showdown with his Galactus-powered counterpart. Ben confides in Reed his suspicion that any Dr. Doom in any universe has an innate bias towards evil and will always be at risk of tipping to the dark. Reed says that if he had let Ben and Johnny know that he, Sue, and the kids were still alive, Ben and Johnny would come after them and possibly foil Reed’s plan to keep this one Doom out of darkness. Ben calls Reed out for making unilateral decisions and not trusting his family. The Fantastic Four, he maintains, can do anything—if they are together.
Mr. Fantastic and the Thing take their leave of this world, with its native Dr. Doom taking Reed aside one last time and asking Reed not to give up on him. We’re left to ponder whether one Dr. Doom in all of space and time can really remain good and not descend into evil—and also whether Marvel can get its act together and actually get us an issue of The Fantastic Four every month now that they’ve brought the book back from three years of undeserved oblivion! But more about that in a couple of weeks. I hope.
Review
The two greatest men in the world of Marvel Comics, by my own reckoning (and your opinion may vary), are Captain America and Mr. Fantastic. Consider Reed Richards: Most brilliant man on Earth. Leader of the Fantastic Four. Discoverer of unstable molecules, faster-than-light travel, the Negative Zone. He has repeatedly fended off invasions by the Skrulls, saved mankind from the menace of Dr. Doom, saved Earth itself from being consumed by Galactus, repelled or thwarted more threats to humankind, our planet, and our universe than we can count. Reed has devoted his life to using science to save our world and make our world worth saving. Why is it, then, that comic book writers always want to make him such a colossal screw-up?
Perhaps it’s something written into the very origin of the Fantastic Four, where Reed rushes an experimental space flight without adequate radiation shielding, a risk that makes the four of them superhuman but also makes his best friend a monster. The origin of the FF establishes that Reed can be fallible in direct proportion to his greatness. And perhaps that’s the problem. People who write the FF, or any material that uses them, have a way of not playing up the greatness but seizing on the fallibility. Is it because a Reed Richards who is the greatest man on Earth is not seen as an interesting or worthwhile character? Is it because they find Reed more “relatable” if he messes things up? I’ve grown to hate the notion of characters needing to be “relatable” because there seems to be an assumption that the only things people can “relate” to our weaknesses, foibles, limitations, flaws, and dysfunctions as if these are the only things that are truly “human.” Reed Richards is a character about human aspirations and possibilities, and yet people constantly lose sight of that. The result is a character who makes unilateral decisions that affect his family without consulting them, takes matters into his own hands without confiding in his loved ones, disregards and disrespects the people closest to him, lets other characters lead him around by the nose (as in the Civil War, when he went along with Iron Man), and participates in the creation of murderous cyborg clones of Thunder Gods. The things for which Ben is calling out Reed this time are the latest instance of “Reed is a Jerk Syndrome,” and in the new Fantastic Four series I, for one, would like to see this laid to rest.
As Reed is a Marvel super-hero, and Marvel is about heroes who are conflicted and vulnerable, we shouldn’t expect him to be perfect. But neither should we constantly see the leader of the Fantastic Four and the de facto founder of the Marvel cast of heroes as an emotionally tone-deaf, insensitive screw-up whose actions abuse and hurt the ones he loves. Reed’s actions after the last Secret Wars are on the record; they are a fact of history. From here, there’s nowhere to go but up. Making Reed a champion of science but a constant failure to his loved ones is a disservice to the character. It’s time to come up with some other, better things to do with Mr. Fantastic.
As for Ramon Perez’s art: I see a bit of improvement over the job he did last issue. His work is taking on greater solidity, but in some places, it’s still too sketchy. (Look at Reed’s face on page 9, panel 3. Come on, Ramon, you can do better than that.) I still hope to see a great comic book artist emerge out of the unpolished style we’re seeing from him just now. The art in this issue shows a degree of progress, but he has to come further. He’s working with some of the best characters in comics and needs to rise to the occasion.
Final Thoughts
This issue was about tying up loose ends, not only in Marvel 2-in-One but in the main Fantastic Four book. It remains to be seen how Reed’s actions, as explained in this issue, will be addressed in The FF. In fact it remains to be seen how our Fantastic Four, with a lot of help from their friends, got out of the situation in which we left them back in September. I still look forward to seeing the Fantastic Four return to doing what they do best: “Challenging the Unknown” and righteously clobbering the evils that they find along the way.
Marvel 2-in-One #11: Reed and Ben’s Rocky Reunion
- Writing - 9/109/10
- Storyline - 9/109/10
- Art - 8.5/108.5/10
- Color - 8/108/10
- Cover Art - 10/1010/10