Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. What to do with Dr. Doom? How about just hitting him where it hurts? That’s what we’re doing in FF vol. 2 #15.

After the disappearance of the original Fantastic Four, a replacement four – Ant-Man, She-Hulk, Medusa, and newcomer Darla Deering – took charge of the young geniuses of the Future Foundation. After many ups and downs, Ant-Man decided it was finally time to take on Dr. Doom and finish him off once and for all. The previous issue had the entire Foundation, plus various side characters, regrouping at the Watcher’s home on the moon to make a plan, and then they were off.

After a summary of the plan, we jump right into the action, where the team sends a bunch of backup mechanical Thing suits and Puppet Master’s recreations of Marvel heroes in a frontal assault of Doom’s castle. Cut to the moon, where the kids are controlling all the bots and puppets as if it’s one big video game.

In caverns beneath the castle, Dr. Doom and Kid Immortus have subdued Annihilus. He orders his troops to fall back, deducing that the frontal assault is merely a distraction for the main four. Alex Power and Ahura break into the castle’s cells and rescue Alex’s parents, leaving Ravonna behind in a cell. After everyone takes off, Ravonna opens some sort of portal and escapes on her own.

On the moon, the aliens posing as Julius Caesar and Sun Tzu argue about strategy, so Bentley-23 takes over and leads the kids in the next wave of battle. She-Hulk, Medusa, Darla, and Old John Storm break into the castle. John flies off on his own, while the other three nab some of Doom’s tech and attach it to Darla’s Thing suit. Meanwhile, at the Latverian embassy in New York, Black Bolt and Triton capture Maximus, who used Ant-Man’s tech to shrink to ant size and hide. The other Inhumans take down the embassies in other countries. John Storm finds and attacks Dr. Doom, but Doom takes him down with one blast. Immortus wants them to combine powers and become the prophesized Doom the Annihilating Conqueror, but Doom says he doesn’t need anyone’s help.

Cut to the scene from Fantastic Four #14 where Reed and Sue sent Franklin and Valeria back to Earth with teleporting Inhuman dog Lockjaw. Ravonna meets them in the timestream. She says she needs their help in stopping her younger self. The Watcher appears in Doom’s cave to observe, just as Immortus tries to create the Annihilating Conqueror. But it doesn’t work, as Doom merely steals Immortus’ power for himself. He does the same thing with the Council of Dooms (they’ve been in the background during all this) as well as Annihilus and finally the Watcher himself.

Now ‘roided up with nearly omnipotent power, Doom is attacked by She-Hulk, Medusa, and Darla. Darla uses the device from earlier to transfer the cosmic power from him into her Thing suit. It works, but he still has enough power to knock out the three heroes. Now all he has to do is get to the device and restore his power. That’s when Ant-Man appears before him, saying, “Not this time, Doom. This time, the ant finishes the job.”

To be continued!

Unstable molecule/fade out/clobberin’ time: Reed, Sue, and Ben are in one panel, recreating the scene from issue #14.

Fantastic fifth wheel: After being apprehensive about going into battle, Darla is the one who turns the tide against Doom in the final moments. Also, at the start of the issue, we see that someone has made a Darla Funko Pop.

She-Hulk exclaims “Avengers Assemble!” during the battle, saying it’s hard to remember which team she’s on.

Medusa uses her hair to hold back Doom’s arms in the fight. The kids don’t have a Medusa action figure to use in their planning, so they use a redheaded Troll doll in her place.

Ant-Man’s hero line about finishing the job is foreshadowed earlier during the summary of the plan.

Crystal is seen in one panel, taking down one of Dr. Doom’s embassies.

Four and a half/Our gal Val: Ravonna tells Franklin that his powers won’t work while he’s stuck in mid-teleport, suggesting that his world-altering mutant powers are making a return. Valeria is knocked unconscious when they’re stopped in the timestream.

Foundational: Bentley takes the leadership role by building up his teammates with gaming memes and Mountain Dew, because of course.

Ahura dons a flying suit based on his father’s, guided along by Alex Power’s gravity powers. This gives him more to do in the fight. It’s also reminiscent of the homemade wings Alex wore for a time during his Power Pack days.

Trivia time: All the remote-controlled Thing suits have big lightbulbs for heads. This is a reference to Helper, Gyro Gearloose’s robot assistant from the classic Disney Duck comics.

Look closely, and you can see the cans of Mountain Dew are actually “Mountain Doop,” a reference to the lovable X-Statix character.

I suppose I should look up the origins of all the video game memes referenced in this issue and explain what each one is, but do I really want to bother?

Fantastic or frightful? All that plot and multiverse nonsense leads up to this, just a good old-fashioned superhero brawl. I’d thought this storyline was low on gas, but this issue is all the quirky fun that this FF/Fantastic Four dual run is famous for.

Next: C’mon baby, light my fire.

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