Overall: Each member of the Four have their own storyline going on here, so I'm going to tackle each story separately. Upon returning to the Baxter Building, the Human Torch and the Thing(who is still human thanks to the serum he took)look up and spot Galactus standing on the roof. The Torch flies to the roof, while Thing heads inside to watch the kids. On the roof of the Baxter Building, Mr. Fantastic explains to Galactus why there was a dead future version of Galactus buried deep within the Earth. Upon hearing Reed's explanation, Galactus tells the Silver Surfer to locate the beings who were responsible for the death of his future self, which the Surfer does. By this point the Torch has arrived on the scene and is told by Reed to head inside the Baxter Building to protect the kids, since he'd be staying with Galactus for the time being. Johnny reluctantly does as he's told, and Reed, Galactus and the Surfer teleport to Galactus's ship. Once they arrive on the ship, Galactus tells Reed that he feared(!!!)staying on the Earth for too much longer because Reed's son, Franklin, had regained his full powers. Meanwhile, the Invisible Woman is trying to broker a peace deal between the warring parties of Atlantis. Everything seems to go swimmingly(heh heh)at the Atlantis conference, with Sue's presence leading to peaceful relations, until Namor gets up and kills one of the rival kings of Atlantis! Why? Because he's Namor, and he does whatever he wants!
Yep, things are DEFINITELY heating up now! I didn't even mention in the review the fact that Annihilus's forces were preparing an attack on the Baxter Building in order to open the gateway to the Negative Zone. So yeah, this issue was chock full of goodness. So we have Reed in space with Galactus, who is worried about the return of Franklin's powers, Sue, who looks to be stuck smack-dab in the middle of an Atlantian civil war, and Johnny and Ben who are tasked with watching the Baxter Building, which is about to be attacked by the forces of Annihilus. All while Ben has been depowered! So going into the final two issues of this storyline, I could see any of the FF members being killed off. I can't even make a guess at which FFer is going to bite the bullet, because Jonathan Hickman has crafted this story perfectly. It really could be anyone, which will make this story that much more interesting going forward.
Score: 8 1/2 out of 10.
Wow, does Steve Epting draw one sweet Galactus or what?
Wow, does Steve Epting draw one sweet Galactus or what?
After reading the advance solicitation for issue #587, I'm pretty sure Johnny will die.....but Hickman could still surprise us. I can't believe how many plots he is tying together right now. I feel lucky to have read all the other issues, because there's a big sense of pay-off.
ReplyDeleteI think the final 2 pages of this issue were worth the admission price.
Reading advanced solicits... Shame on you Kello! But yeah, I hate to say it but Johnny is the least connected member of the team, making him the easiest one to kill off. Reed and Sue have the kids, Ben is on the Avengers now, plus he's prob the most popular member of the team, and Johnny is just sort of there. I mean he def ranks among my favorites, but he's just so stagnant I could easily see him disappearing for a year or so. Plus that would set up Annihilus as a big time FF villain again. But yeah, every single character is in a situation where they could be wiped out, which just heightens the suspense.
ReplyDeleteHey, what about this? Johnny gets killed off at the end of this storyline and his son(or daughter)from that annual(the one from a few months back) comes back through the time stream and joins the team in his/her dad's place?
Reading this review has made me realize yet again how much I'm looking forward to finally having some time to read in the near future! The way you described this issue makes the story sound awesome, and having read a couple issues of this arc (not to mention seeing that scan!) I know it looks awesome too. Can't wait to see how this all ends up.
ReplyDeleteThe way this story is written is just SO good! It's giving each member of the Four a threat to deal with, with us knowing that the end result WILL be one of the members not surviving. At first the whole, "One of the FF will DIE!!!!!" thing seemed kind of... desperate to me, but it's actually added to the excitement of the story, since the end guarantees a major shake-up of the team.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds...fantastic (if you'll forgive the pun). It sounds like there's a real sense of dread building in this book, which is something you just don't see as much in superhero comics anymore. Everything's so interconnected these days that you would never expect anything really bad to happen to a prominent character in, say, an Avengers comic...but the FF have always done a good job of staying in their little corner of the universe, which I think helps out a lot here.
ReplyDeleteReading your comments takes me back to the way I felt reading New X-Men #149, where everything just went all to hell in about four pages. At the end you really did get the sense that anything could happen, and it sounds like the same thing with this issue of FF. (I know we've talked about that X-Men comic a million times before, but it's so good that I can't help but think about it every time I hear about another awesome superhero comic!)
Don't worry Marc, that pun was a million times better then that horrid "swimmingly" pun I used in the review! :D
ReplyDeleteYeah, that sense of dread is what's making this storyline a real page turner. I just WISH I would have been reading Hickman's work on this book leading up to this storyline like Kello did. I definitely plan on picking up the rest of his FF run, but it probably won't be until some time after X-mas when this storyline has concluded, which kind of sucks. Every page is building towards something HUGE, which makes reading it that much more exciting.
That's great comparison actually. The build-up to the Xorn/Magneto reveal was just phenomenal. The whole team had been sent all over the place(Wolvie and Jean were stuck in space, Beast had been beaten into a coma, etc)and then out of the blue, BAM, we discover Xorn had been Magneto the whole time(which Morrison did such an awesome job laying the groundwork to if you look back). Every page from that moment forward has just exhilarating to read. You had NO idea what would happen next, and the pay-off between Wolvie and Mags was simply perfect. God do I love that run...
One of the reasons it was so well-done is that you were in the same position as the characters psychologically. The second you realized that something was really wrong was the same exact second that they did...I remember Wolverine saying something that was basically the equivalent of Admiral Ackbar's "It's a trap!" as he put two and two together and realized that he and Jean were trapped in Asteroid M, on a direct course for the sun. It was such a wild, frenzied, and terrifying moment, like something big, dark, terrible shape was descending over them but they couldn't figure out what it was until it was too late.
ReplyDeleteSo yeah, if that description is at all befitting of this FF comics as well...man, I can't wait to read it!! :D
Exactly. And the reveal at the school with Mags and Prof X is still one of the greatest moments I've ever read in a comic. The way Morrison built the suspence up with the doors all locking and stuff, to Xorn's unmasking was all just so perfectly excecuted. Yeah, I think I need to pull that run out and give it a full re-read again soon...
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