Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Is Black Bolt your favorite Marvel character? He’d better be, because FF #5 all about him.

Recap: Four evil alternate universe versions of Reed, of the interdimensional Council of Reeds, are running around on Earth, plotting to bring about war between four recently-discovered lost civilizations. As the Reeds enact their plan in an underground city – one of the four – Attilan, home city of the Inhumans, appeared in the sky over Earth, with an angry Black Bolt sitting on the throne.

The issue begins with yet another recap of what the Inhumans have been up to lately, which has been a lot. In the War of Kings crossover, Black Bolt took over the Kree empire only to die in battle against Vulcan, ruler of the alien Shi’ar empire. A space-time bomb had gone off, and Black Bolt was believed dead in the explosion. Cut to “weeks ago,” where Medusa is ruling the Kree in Black Bolt’s place. Crystal spies on the proceedings from the sidelines, telling the teleporting dog Lockjaw to keep on eye on things. An unnamed Kree scholar tells Ronan the Accuser (yes, he’s here as well) that it’s time to “release the seed.”

Just as we’re starting to follow this plot, we then cut again to “thousands of years ago,” on the Kree home world of Hala. Two scientists meet with the Kree Supreme Intelligence. The scientists have experimented with “metagenesis” allowing them to create a weapon from any living being (!). The Supreme Intelligence uploads the data into itself, with a lot of talk about “cosmic awareness” and “genetic prophecy.” One of the scientists says there are thousands of minds of geniuses contained in the upload, but one lone voice speaking on behalf of religion is an outlier called the “divine chimera.” This is the individual who will eventually be the downfall of the Supreme Intelligence. He has a symbol, which looks like Black Bolt’s famous antenna.

As the upload nears completion, the Supreme Intelligence orders the scientists killed, which that era’s (era’s) accuser does. The Supreme Intelligence orders a “cleansing,” after which we see the Kree accusers travelling from planet to planet, ordering huge slaughters to prevent this “chimera” from being born. The caption states that “five and one” survived – five queens for one king. This is a reference to Black Bolts queens from alternate universes who saw him die in War of Kings.

On the final page, we see Black Bolt emerge from space-time, still alive, with the caption stating that “fate cannot be avoided.”

To be continued!

Fantastic fifth wheel: Medusa is negotiating among the blue-skinned Kree and the other breeds of Kree, acknowledging (somewhat uncomfortably) all the different types of Kree there are.

It’s fun to see Crystal cast in a sneaky spy-like role, operating in the shadows.

Trivia time: This issue is setting up the big rematch between Black Bolt and the Kree Supreme Intelligence, right? Wrong! The Supreme Intelligence was killed by Wraith in the Annihilation: Conquest miniseries. Black Bolt’s return will go down a different route.

Fantastic or frightful? Heaven help any comic book fans who picked up this issue hoping for “It’s clobberin’ time” and instead getting this stuff. And yes, fans love far-out cosmic Marvel, but this issue is a far cry from the likes of Jim Starlin. Instead, it’s the first of two issues explaining how Black Bolt came back from the dead, and all in flashback with the main FF story on the backburner. Everybody loves Jonathan Hickman’s run on FF, but after reading this, all I can do is ask, “Why?”

Next: Kree will rock you.

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