Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. The Dark Reign event was all about Norman Osborn throwing his weight around, and that’s what does for our heroes at the end of Dark Reign: Fantastic Four.

Recap: Feeling overwhelmed by all the violence and ugliness of Civil War, and now with Norman Osbourne running the Avengers, the Initiative, and a new version of S.H.I.E.L.D., Reed constructs the Bridge. This is a portal-type machine that allows him to see how these events played out in alternate universes, in the hopes that he can change the world for the better. Meanwhile, agents from H.A.M.M.E.R., Osborn’s new version of S.H.I.E.L.D., attacked the Fantastic Four to arrest them after Osborn declared them suspended from the Fifty States Initiative. When H.A.M.M.E.R. tried cutting power to the building, it made things go haywire, sending Sue, Ben and Johnny on an adventure in other universes.

Issue #3 is mostly set in compressed space-time, where Sue, Ben, and Johnny are bouncing around various other realities. We see other versions of them on a pirate ship battling pirate Skrulls on another ship. Then it becomes a Western, with Sue as a super-cool gunslinger. Things shift again, as the cowboy and pirate characters end up in an alternate World War II, Reed, meanwhile, continues to explore other universes where Civil War still happened, but differently. Valeria and Franklin are alone inside the Baxter Building, basically under siege with Osborn’s troops outside.

Issue #4 begins as Osborn shows up at the Baxter Building’s front entrance, demanding to see Reed, while Franklin and Valeria stall him over the intercom. Inside the Bridge, Reed breaks down. He says his mind has processed one billion alternate timelines (!), and he can find no circumstances in which Civil War and Osborn’s reign could have been avoided.

Osborn enters the Baxter Building with the Avengers’ “Spider-Man,” who isn’t Spider-Man at all, but secretly the Mac Gargan version of Venom. There’s some comedy bits where Valeria plays the part of Reed’s secretary. She says the papers they were served say that only one person may meet with Reed, not an entire squad of soldiers. Osborn plays along, and goes off with her alone. Valeria says her parents are away on superhero business, but someone else wants to talk to him. That someone else is Franklin in a Spider-Man mask.

Inside collapsed space-time, where Sue, Ben, and Johnny are lost, they’re not in the WWII from last issue, but on another planet where Reed is in place of the Kree’s Supreme Intelligence. He talks about how all societies will eventually fail, while attacked by Skrulls with Venom symbiotes. The cowboy, pirate, and WWII versions of our heroes join the fight.

Still alone in the bridge, Reed snaps out of his doldrums and says there’s always a solution. He muses on how one single moment is all someone needs to look at things in the right perspective with complete honesty. He says his successes in the other universes were when he acted alone, and not alongside Tony Stark or Hank Pym. He wonders if this is arrogance or the truth.

We get a couple of pages of the alternate universe battle against the Skrulls while thinks about hiding his genius behind false humility, and having to do whatever it takes to solve the problems of the world. Reed shuts off the Bridge, which returns Sue, Ben, and Johnny to Earth. Everyone’s glad to be reunited, until Sue asks where the kids are. Turn the page and we see Franklin and Valeria running from Osborn as he shoots at them with a gun (!).

The kids hide inside an office while Osborn monologues about how he has no hesitation about killing kids, saying he’s a believer in “corporal punishment.” (I’m no lawyer, but I find it hard to believe corporal punishment gives someone the right to shoot little kids. Let’s just assume Osborn is exaggerating for dramatic purpose.) Then the FF jump out, ready for a fight, as Sue says, “Get away from my children!”

Issue #5 begins right away with Osborn’s answer to Sue, “Make me.” Sue disarms him with a force field, but that only sends a message for Gargan and the H.A.M.M.E.R. troops to attack. She stops them by surrounding the FF with a force field, and Osborn inside it with them. This would appear to put Osborn at a disadvantage, but he instead withdraws his gun again and aims it at Reed. Except Osborn is shot in the arm by… Franklin! His toy gun now has real bullets, apparently.

Reed stands up to Osborn, telling him to leave. Osborn makes more threats, saying the FF will never stop him, and he’ll come after them when they least expect it. Norman leaves, taking all his goons with him. The whole family is reunited. Johnny asks if Reed found what he was looking for inside the Bridge, and he says it’s hard to say, but he thinks so.

Sue asks for more details, and Reed says he might know how to fix everything. She asks if anything else happened. Then we get a flashback. Just before Reed shut down the Bridge, he asked for one final projection. He asks how many Bridges have been built in by other Reeds in other universes, and the computer tells him there are 141 of them. He then sees a bunch of mysterious figures emerging from the other side of the Bridge.

Back in the present, a shifty-looking Reed tells Sue that nothing else happened. She tells him to destroy the Bridge, because it endangered everyone. He promises to take it apart, piece by piece. Then we see more of the flashback, where the mysterious figures tell Reed they can help fix things in his universe. He asks who they are, and they say, “We’re just like you,” and “We’ll be here waiting when you’re ready.”

Reed keeps his promise to take the Bridge apart, only to then put it all back together in secret a week later. He says this is his crossing-the-threshold moment, and that everything that’s gone wrong from Civil War onward has been his fault all along. He enters his private thinking room, with his mathematic equations written all over the walls. He thinks, “I know what I have to do to fix it.” We see that he’s written on the wall, “Idea #101, solve everything.” The caption says this is to be continued in Fantastic Four #570, but our heroes must deal with Dr. Doom before that. Speaking of which…

To stay caught up with events in Fantastic Four, we’ve also got to look at what’s been happening in Dark Reign proper. Secret Invasion: Dark Reign #1 takes place immediately after Secret Invasion ended, with Osborn forming his own version of the Illuminati made up of Loki, Namor, Emma Frost, the Hood and our very own Dr. Doom. They’re called the Cabal. With the exception of the Hood, each of these characters are in a down place in their lives. Working with Osborn will put them back on top. Remember that when we last saw Dr. Doom, he was locked up in the Hauge.

Then, in Dark Avengers #1-4, Osborn formed his own team of Avengers, with a few washed-up heroes and a bunch of villains posing as classic Avengers. He even got an Iron Man suit of his own and named himself the Iron Patriot. His team got their first mission when Morgana Le Fey kept time traveling from the Arthurian era (era) to the present over and over to attack Dr. Doom and claim Latveria for her own. Osborn’s Avengers saved the day, and Osborn used his new political powers to restore Dr. Doom to the Latverian throne. And THAT’S where the next issue of Fantastic Four picks up.

Unstable molecule: If you know your Fantastic Four history, you’ve probably already guessed the figures inside the Bridge are the Council of Reeds, a controversial subject we’ll get to sooner rather than later.

Fade out: The Western version of Sue is named “Black Sue,” which is maybe not appropriate. It’s because of her all-black outfit (based on Black Widow, maybe?).  

Clobberin’ time: The Elizabethan version of Ben, called “Chamberlain Grimm,” also joins the alternate FF on their adventures, often hesitant to join the fight until the others encourage him to do so.

Flame on: Even though Franklin saves the day by shooting Osborn, Johnny is the one who is quick to snatch the gun away from Franklin and tell him guns aren’t for kids.

Fantastic fifth wheel: The newly-rebuilt H.E.R.B.I.E. robots are seen in one panel helping Reed dismantle the Bridge. Freakin’ H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot.   

Four and a half: Franklin’s cowboy outfit from the start of miniseries pays off in the final confrontation, as he says a bunch of tough-guy Western lines to stand up to Osborn.

Our gal Val: We were initially told that the FF were going to keep Valeria’s super-genius a secret. But now that Norman Osborn knows, it’s safe to assume everyone knows.

Sue-per spy: The 2019 Invisible Woman miniseries revealed that Sue had a double life as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent all along. In the pirate universe, that version of Sue was revealed to be “Agent Storm,” secretly reporting to that reality’s version of the Illuminati.

Trivia time: Why is Loki a woman during Dark Reign? It happened just before this, in Thor vol. 3 #5. After Thor came back from the dead following Ragnarok, he went on a quest to find other reborn Asgardians. He found Balder and Loki still alive, held prisoner by a reanimated Destroyer armor. Loki says she (the Marvel Wiki gives her female pronouns during this time) was changed by the Fates upon her rebirth. She promises peace with Thor, only to secretly join the Cabal. Loki remained female for quite some time, even becoming the new Scarlet Witch for a while. She’ll die again in Siege and then be reborn again as Kid Loki in Journey Into Mystery.

Fantastic or frightful? A lot of the alternate timeline stuff in Dark Reign: Fantastic Four has little to do with the plot, and feels like it’s only there for artist Sean Chen to go wild with new designs and big splash pages. The confrontation with Osborn is the big moment, and it’s frightening how he has so much political power that he can shoot at children and get away with it. An enjoyable read, but a slim one.

Next: No day at the beach.

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