Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Remember Marvel’s Annihilation crossover? No? Well, issue #578 sure does.  

Johnny, in voiceover captions (is that the right term?) describes meeting a woman at a bar called The Other Side of Zero, where a performance artist called the Anti-Priest is on stage making weird speeches. Johnny takes the woman back to the new Baxter Building. He wants to take her to his bedroom (wa-hey!) but she’s more interested in the controls to the Negative Zone portal. He tells her to get away from it, and she punches him out. Her eyes and mouth start bleeding (!) and she gives a big speech about wanting to die, and how everything is reversed in the Negative Zone, so death means life there.

Then the woman’s skin tears open, and a bunch of alien bugs come out of her. I guess this was a “kids standing on each other’s shoulders inside a trench coat” thing. Carrying a metal device, the bugs leap through the portal into the Negative Zone. Johnny deduces that the device was a bomb, and he decides to enter the Negative Zone to stop the bugs. He recruits the newest version of H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot to monitor the portal from Earth’s side. (Freakin’ H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot.) Johnny doesn’t call his teammates for help, saying “My mess… I’m gonna fix it.”

Johnny emerges on the other side of the portal right into a city under attack. Two aliens state that the attackers are the army of Annihilus, but the city has the power of the Cosmic Control Rod for their defenses. Johnny tries to warn the alien general that the bugs are attacking with a bomb. He’s too late, as the bomb explodes. The general is attacked by more bugs, who are apparently in the employ of Annihilus. Johnny then attacks the bugs with his flame.

Then we get another one of these text pages summarizing what’s going on. The nightclub is a recruitment center for something called the Cult of the Negative Zone. Inside the Negative Zone, Annihilus has been reborn and has gone to war with Blastaar the Living Bomb-Burst. Those were his people in the city. There’s also a bunch of details about this newest version of the Negative Zone portal, and some business about how this fits into the whole Annihilation crossover by stating that the attacking bug army has been reset to “pre-crunch” levels.

Then we cut to the present, where Johnny has been voice-overing from. He’s telling all this to Valeria, who’s also reading the text page on her iPad-like device. Johnny states that Blastaar’s city is in fact the Negative Zone prison from Civil War, now rebuilt into a city. Johnny explains that the bomb kicked off another Annihilation Wave, so he fled back to Earth. Johnny asks why Valeria is interested in this, and she says she must keep learning. He asks her if this incident is something the FF should be worried about, and she responds, “How would I know something like that?”

Then we catch up with continuity from the last few issues. Sue, acting in her capacity as envoy of humanity for the recently discovered Old Atlantis, arranges a meeting between the Old Atlantis king, Ul-Uhar, and the regular Atlantis’ current monarch, Andromeda. Speaking on behalf of Namor, who is with the X-Men at this time, she asks Ul-Uhar how he they can negotiate when he knows nothing of the outside world, not even having seen the sun. He responds by raising Old Atlantis up to the surface, breaking through the icy exterior of Antarctica. At the Baxter Building, Reed scolds Johnny for jumping into the Negative one without calling on his teammates. Johnny apologizes, and Reed tells him “You have to start paying attention to what’s going on.”

Cut to the moon, where the new Universal Inhumans are living in the Blue Area on board their city-ship. The six rulers have summons their top six warriors, naming them the Light Brigade. To prove their worth, the Light Brigade must take on a battle they know they can’t win. All six warriors jump through a portal into the Negative Zone city, where they fight the Annihilus bugs. The caption tells us, “The war of four cities begins.”

To be continued!

Unstable molecule: The text page says that Reed rebuilt the Negative Zone portal with a faster boot cycle and a decompression buffer. I suppose this explains why Johnny doesn’t pass through the trippy distortion area before arriving at the prison/city.

Fade out: Sue doesn’t say anything during the meeting between Atlantis and Old Atlantis, but the caption emphasizes her importance there as “the herald of man.”

Flame on: Reed’s talking-down of Johnny is even-handed. He says he appreciates that Johnny dives head-first into action, but reminds Johnny that he can’t do so in a way that endangers others.

Fantastic fifth wheel: This new version of H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot is bigger and bulkier than previous ones, and he only speaks in electronic bleeps and bloops. He chest opens up with a minibar that Johnny uses to make a cocktail for his date. Freakin’ H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot

Our gal Val: The Marvel Wiki confirms that Valeria is researching these four cities, and spoils a little bit about why.

Trivia time: Turns out the Negative Zone prison from Civil War was abandoned after the Secret Invasion crossover and before the War of Kings crossover, specifically in Guardians of the Galaxy #9-10.

What’s the Annihilation Wave again? While often described as a weapon, it’s Annihilus’ invading army, consisting of a seemingly endless number of insectoid soldiers that can swarm and consume entire planets. Therefore, the bomb in this issue is not the Wave, but just one weapon used by the Wave.

Fantastic or frightful? Writer Jonathan Hickman starts tying together threads that were set up in previous issues. That’s exciting to see, but this issue still comes off like a jumble of disconnected scenes. The fans love Hickman’s writing on FF, but I’m wondering when we get to the really good stuff.

Next: That’s no stuffed tiger.

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