Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Annual #32 offers killer cyborgs, shrinking into a microscopic world, and… fears of parenthood?

The great Bryan Hitch is back on pencils, with Andrew Currie on inks. But the really big deal is that it’s written by Joe Ahearne, creator of the cult-fave 1998 TV series Ultraviolet, and director of several episodes of Doctor Who.

We begin with a woman named Amy Brys walking in on the Fantastic Four conducting an anti-gravity mine training, where they’re floating around in a room filled with similarly floating mines. Johnny had given her an all-access pass to the new Baxter Building, and now she’s here wondering where he’s gone because he hasn’t answered any of her phone calls. Johnny shows up and says he didn’t call because he really likes her, and it’s dangerous to be in a committed relationship with a superhero. (What?)

An alarm goes off, and Reed says he’s picked up an energy pattern that’s a variation of the cosmic rays that gave the FF their powers. Sue says this is a concern, because it’s this same variant from the Negative Zone that almost killed her when she was pregnant. Johnny, just having returned from the Negative Zone, puts two and two together and believes he’s gotten Amy pregnant.

Later, Amy and Johnny try to talk things out on the sidewalk outside, where she insists she doesn’t need his help, when they’re attacked by alien creatures. The FF join the fight, deducing that these are cyborgs based on microscopic organisms. After fighting the creatures off, everyone returns to HQ, where Johnny says he didn’t even kiss Amy, let alone get her pregnant. (Why did he wait until now to say this?) Reed has Amy in his lab, saying the cyborgs were likely after her baby, because it might be born with vast powers.

Reed is going to use shrinking tech to make Sue microscopic and enter Amy’s body (ew) to conduct a paternity test. He tasks Johnny and Ben to go to the nightclub where Johnny met Amy to conduct a temporal scan and see what really happened that night. Using the scanner, they see a mystery woman following Johnny, followed by the microscopic versions of the cyborgs entering Johnny’s body (ew) while at the club. Similarly, Sue is attacked by more cyborgs while microscopic. She defeats them and she and Reed remove them from Amy’s body (so much ew).

The microscopic cyborgs (do these things have a name?) used Johnny’s DNA to impregnate Amy with a superhuman child. Now Sue and Ben shrink down microscopic to enter Johnny’s brain. In the lab, Reed says the cyborgs look familiar, and Johnny insists that Psycho Man is behind all this, with his history of both shrinking and cyborg/robot/android tech. (Remember that the original Psycho Man was a teeny-tiny guy in a huge robot suit.) Inside Johnny’s brain, Ben and Reed find the real culprit: Psycho Woman!

Psycho Woman uses a new version of Psycho Man’s original emotion modifier to overwhelm Sue’s mind, all while she makes a big speech about feeling trapped by parenthood. Reed hands Amy a syringe full of green liquid and tells her to prepare to make an injection. He then shrinks down to join the fight inside Johnny’s brain. All the cyborgs in the lab come back to life, so Johnny fights them. But he can’t flame on for fear of harming the others inside him.

It’s all Fantastic Voyage and/or Innerspace as Psycho Woman chases and fights Reed, Ben and Sue up and down Johnny’s veins. She overwhelms Ben with feelings of disgust, and she shuts down Sue by making her emotionless. With Johnny’s help, they contact Franklin and Valeria to restore Sue’s emotions. Psycho Woman lets out a blast so powerful it blasts Johnny through a window outside the building. He won’t flame on for fear of harming his teammates, so Reed tells Amy to jump after him. She catches up to him in midair, Point Break style. He flames on and flies her to away to save her life. The others survived thanks to Sue’s force fields. Johnny destroys the rest of the cyborgs along the way. Everyone reunites back in Reed’s lab, where Ben reports that Psycho Woman is “toast.”

Later, Reed fires up his personal time machine, saying Johnny can go back to that evening at the nightclub to prevent Psycho Woman’s plot from happening. Johnny doesn’t want to mess with the timeline, even though Reed says this will be a minor change only. Fearing that supervillains all over the world will want her super-powered baby, Amy swipes the time machine’s remote control and jumps into the portal, disappearing. With no knowledge of where or when she went, Johnny wonders if the child survived, and could be out there, anywhere, all grown up.

Unstable molecule: Is Reed’s time machine based on Dr. Doom’s original one? Or is it still the original one? It looks entirely different, but one still enters it by standing on a specific spot on the floor.

Fade out: At one point, Sue sends a message to Johnny by turning a spot on his chest invisible. Reed says that at this size, it’s as if Sue is turning the sun invisible. Can we assume that’s an exaggeration?

Clobberin’ time: Ben overcomes his feelings of disgust, simply because these are feelings he’s used to.

Flame on: Johnny appears overwhelmed by the thought of becoming a father, but Reed assures Amy he’ll be fine. Reed says Johnny is used to dealing with the unexpected.

Fantastic fifth wheel: There’s no mention of how Ant-Man is a former FF member, but we know he introduced a lot of shrinking tech to Reed and the others during that time. Before Ant-Man the FF could only shrink when inside their Reducto-craft. I can only conclude that his influence helped all the shrinking in this issue.

Four and a half/Our gal Val: All it takes to restore Sue’s emotions are the two kids saying, “Mom, are you there?”

Foundational: The Marvel Wiki insists this comic takes place between issues #580 and #581, yet there’s no mention of the newly-formed Future Foundation. I guess all the kids are off working on their special project to cure Ben.

Trivia time: This is the only appearance of Psycho Woman, so we’ll likely never know where she came from or what her relationship with Psycho Man may or may not be. The Marvel Wiki doesn’t even have an entry for her.

It’s also the only appearance of Amy Brys, although the wiki adds the detail of her baby surviving, having been kept safe from all the FF’s enemies.

Fantastic or frightful? Leave it to a guy who worked on Doctor Who to want Fantastic Four to get as weird as possible. This is a lot to take in, with the shrinking stuff, the emotion stuff, and the fears-of-parenting stuff. I don’t know if it all holds together, though. Like, why isn’t Psycho Woman’s emotion manipulation tied into the parenting stuff more? This would be better served as a seven-issue arc rather than an annual, but the necessities of comics publishing might have prevented that.  

Next: Spill the tea.

* * * *

Want more? Check out my ongoing serial, THE SUBTERKNIGHTS, on Kindle Vella. A man searches for his missing sister in a sprawling city full of far-out tech, strange creatures, and secret magic. It’s a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid full of action, romance, mystery, and laughs. The first ten episodes are FREE! Click here for a list of all my books and serials.