Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. We’ve spent a lot of time with the genius kids from the Future Foundation, but now it’s time for their first big superhero slugfest in FF vol. 2 #7.

While the Fantastic Four are away on their year-long expedition of time and space, a temporary replacement four – Ant-Man, Medusa, She-Hulk, and newcomer Darla Deering – runs the Future Foundation in their place, except the original Four didn’t return when expected, leaving this ragtag bunch on their own. Further complicating matters, Medusa has been acting erratically. She ran off with Bentley-23 and joined up with the Wizard and Blastaar the Living Bomb-burst, all of whom then transported the new Baxter Building into the Negative Zone.

This issue begins with the Wizard stressing the importance of family to Bentley, who responds, “I’m not your son.” (Remember that in their last encounter, wannabe supervillain Bentley actually rejected the Wizard and chose to stay with the Future Foundation.) Bentley deduces that the Wizard is using mind control on Medusa, making her act like she’s Bentley’s mother. She snaps out of it for a moment, only for him to blast her with it again. Medusa tells Bentley that the Wizard has brought the Future Foundation to the Negative Zone, where he plans to kill them all.

Inside the new Baxter Building, Ant-Man comes to a similar conclusion, telling the Foundation kids to prepare for battle. Ant-Man keeps flashing back to his dead daughter Cassie (don’t worry, she eventually comes back), and he admits how frightened he is for the kids. This moment is interrupted by the Wizard’s group attacking. Everyone fights, and this time it’s Dragon Man who deduces that Medusa is being mind-controlled.

There’s a curious bit where the Wizard says his image of family being “heteronormative cisgendered classification” is superior to the Foundation’s found family. Ant-Man punches him in the face, saying “Your image is boring, creep.” Medusa, meanwhile, gets all tangled up with a bunch of the kids. She gets her own mind back for a sec, pleading with Ant-Man to help her. Darla punches Blastaar with a classic “It’s clobberin’ time,” but he responds by hitting her so hard that her Thing suit breaks apart.

Before Blastaar can smash the now-helpless Darla, she gives him a big speech about her success as a pop star, concluding with how she considers Bentley to be her friend. Then Bentley arrives in the building, having constructed some sort of high-tech vest that he puts on Blastaar. The vest teleports Blastaar into space, where he materializes next to a huge space station. (Reminder that in the Fantastic Four storyline running parallel to FF, we just saw Blastaar travel from the end of time back to the Big Bang, so pieces are starting to come together and connect the two series.)

With the villains defeated, the team brings the Wizard to Attilan to face judgment from the Inhuman royal family. Medusa admits the Wizard got into her head by exploiting a “psychic weakness,” that made her act motherly. Black Bolt renders his judgment, which Medusa interprets as “Black Bolt would have words with you.” The Baxter Building returns to New York via unseen Inhuman technology. (Although Lockjaw the teleporting dog cab be seen in the background, so maybe he teleported the entire building across dimensions?) Everyone survived, and Darla asks if that means it’s a happy ending. Ant-Man says, “That’ll do.”

Then we pick up on the storyline started a few issues back where Ant-Man wanted this new team to take out Dr. Doom once and for all, only for Alex Power to leave the Foundation and travel to Latveria, where he requested an audience with Doom. All we see in this ending follow up is that Doom does indeed meet with Alex inside Castle Doom, where he asks Alex to tell him everything about Ant-Man and the foundation’s plan to end him.

To be continued!

Fantastic fifth wheel: Where is She-Hulk during the fight? When we last saw her in the previous issue, she and Ahura were in Attilan. Look in the background and you see she arrives at the same time Lockjaw does. Further, she’s the one who damages the Wizard’s helmet to free Medusa, not Ant-Man punches.

We get more backstory about Darla Deering. She says she had her first hit single at age 14 (!) and has been winning Grammys and MTV Music Video Awards every year since then. She also has thousands of followers on the Marvel Universe’s social media, Yamblr, Facespace, and NewToob.

Foundational: Wakandan kid genius Onome asks why the kids are fighting and not hiding. This is what prompts Ant-Man to reveal he’s frightened for them, but he tells them they can’t save the world by living safer.

I had thought that Leech’s powers only worked on mutants, yet in this issue a lot is made of him grabbling Medusa and refusing to let go. The Marvel Wiki states his powers affect anything considered supernatural, and not just mutants.

Trivia time: At first, Medusa easily overpowers the Foundation kids, but then they overwhelm her (perhaps with Leech’s help, noted above). Just how strong is Medusa? This time I turned to our old friend The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Deluxe Edition, which says that a fist-sized lock of her hair can lift or press 750 pounds, while her entire head of hair can lift or press 1.6 tons when used all at once. The Handbook also suggests the possibility that Medusa can control other hair and hair-like textiles that are not her own, but this has never been proven.

The Marvel Wiki counts this as an official appearance of the Frightful Four, with Medusa being an “enslaved” member, and Bentley-23 being a “forced” member. Depite the Wizard’s assertation of “Long live the Frightful Four,” I don’t know if I buy that.

The wiki has no entry on the teleporting vest that Bentley invents on the spot, only calling it “a harness.” I wonder if it’s a reference to the M-Vest from DC Comics’ Shade the Changing Man.

Fantastic or frightful? Writer Matt Fraction seems to want this run of issues to be action-heavy, because these are a lot of big superhero battles. This one is fun because we get to see the entire Future Foundation ensemble acting as a team during the brawl.

Next: Crunch time.

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