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Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. I had just settled down, ready to explore an era (era) of Fantastic Four I’d never read, from Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett. But after only two issues with them, we’ve left-turned right into J. Michael Straczynski’s famous run on the series, starting with issue #527.

Straczynski, known as “JMS” to fans, is a fascinating guy. He’s most famous for Babylon 5, an ambitious five-year long “novel for television” he had plotted from day one. After cast changes, budget slashes, and constant battles with producers, he did the impossible and crossed the finish line at year five (plus a few spinoffs). Then there’s his career in comics. He made a big splash with his creator-owned series Rising Stars, and then wrote Thor and Amazing Spider-Man before taking over Fantastic Four.

There’s far less biographical info out there about penciler Mike McKone. He’s most well-known for Marvel’s Exiles, and he’s also drawn Punisher War Zone for Marvel, and Justice League and Teen Titans for DC.

The issue begins on an alien world, where an unseen narrator has been studying the place for five years and “the end is always the same.” Time passes faster on the planet than it does for the narrator, so that we see the rise of civilization over a short time. The society becomes advanced in arts and culture, but also warfare. It comes to an end with falling missiles and mushroom clouds. The lone survivor of this apocalypse simply asks “Why?” As he dies.

Turn the page, and Reed is our narrator, watching all this play out on a tiny planet inside his lab. Sue interrupts to tell him they’re having dinner with their new accountant, Mr. Onoffon. Reed has no interest in this. He’s feeling depressed, saying, “Some days I have more questions than I have answers.” He and Sue strike the same pose that two of the aliens from his tiny planet had on the first page.

The FF meet with Onoffon, and we catch up to what’s happening with the FF’s finances. During the time when the team was broke in the Marvel Knights series, Reed managed to develop some new patents to bring in fresh income, but now he owes income tax on those new patents, and is now being audited. Ben jokes about wanting to get paid, and Onoffon says his fortune is secure. Turns out that when the FF was broke it was only Reed, Sue, and Johnny’s percentages that were turned over to the government, because Reed has power of attorney for himself, Sue, and Johnny. Ben, however, didn’t lose his one-fourth of the business. He still has all his FF money from before. Got all that?

Onoffon can’t answer how much money Ben has, because there’s not enough space on his calculator for that many zeroes. Ben is rich, and Johnny facepalms and says, “This is so going to be bad.” Ben jumps up and down on a couch (without destroying it) chanting, “I’ve got money! I’ve got money!” Then there’s a cheap gag where he runs into the bathroom because he’s eaten too many hot dogs.

Later, Nick Fury visits Reed, saying that the S.H.I.E.L.D. and the US government are willing to forgive the FF for the Latveria incident (long story). Fury says the government wants to hire Reed as a consultant on a confidential project, Reed can only offer with an address and a date to begin, and no other info. Reed agrees. This is followed by a gag of Ben sitting on the FF’s Xerox machine, photographing his own butt.

That night, Reed explains to Sue that they could use the money, and it’s important to get back on good terms with the US. He reveals to her that the meeting is scheduled the next morning at an air force base in Nevada. He plays some music for her, that he says comes from “very far away,” and we the readers surmise that music came from the planet and the start of the issue. Then there’s a gag where Bill Gates gets a package from Ben, containing what Gates thinks is a photo of the Grand Canyon. Get it???

Reed arrives at a top-secret hidden base in Nevada. His plane must fly through some kind of shield or portal to get to it. Reed meets with a unnamed scientist, whom the Marvel Wiki identifies as Dr. Crane. He hints that the base was paid for by the funds the government seized from FF inc. Crane has been studying the cosmic rays that gave the FF their powers. He says attempts to recreate that event have been inconsistent, because it required a multitude of factors all meeting in the right quantities and the right moment in time. He says that the event, nicknamed “the jackpot” is about to happen again in just a few weeks.

Crane asks for info about Reed’s original spaceship that took the FF into space. He then goes on to say that giving people superpowers is unpredictable, but in this case, they can use the jackpot not just to replicate the creation of the FF’s powers, but to control the creation of those powers. Not just for four astronauts, but more than thirty. He shows Reed a team of astronauts ready to go, and he tells Reed, “You’re about to change the face of the known world for a second time.”

To be continued!

Unstable molecule: There’s no backstory on where Reed got this tiny planet from, or why he’s studying it so intensely. It works as metaphor, though, in that Reed feels like up to him to take care of the entire world.

Fade out: Sue is back to classic Sue in this one, trying to get Reed out of spending too much time in his lab instead of with his family. I’d thought the characters had moved beyond this by now.

Clobberin’ time: Ben gets queasy after earing seventeen hot dogs. With his super strength, you’d think his metabolism could handle that. I wonder if it’s psychosomatic, and his body is really reacting to the shock of learning he’s rich.

Flame on: Johnny uses his powers to heat up Ben’s hot dogs, rather than use the oven. I assume this is because they’re having company over.

Four and a half/Our gal Val: Franklin and Valeria are shown at home playing with a dog. What dog is this? Where’d it come from? It’s not the teleporting dog Puppy from the Chris Claremont days, so who is it?

SUE-per spy: The 2019 Invisible Woman miniseries revealed that Sue had a double life as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent all along. There’s no way of knowing how the Latveria incident affected that, yet Sue is not present for Reed and Fury’s conversation. Was this her maintaining her cover?

Trivia time: Can we consider Bill Gates a Marvel character? He has no page on the Marvel Wiki, which instead just links to Gates’ Wikipedia page.

The accountant Mr. Onoffon never appeared again after this. With a name like that, I expected him to be revealed as a robot or something, but it never happened.

Fantastic or frightful? JMS is clearly thinking in terms of long arcs, because this issue is all setting up things that will play out over the next several issues. I’m not a fan of the toilet/butt jokes, but, hey, that’s comics. The best bit in the issue is the opening, where JMS does his “sci-fi philosophic musings” thing he did so well on Babylon 5. A mixed bag, but it’s exciting to get an interesting new voice on the series.

Next: Forbidden Love.

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Want more? Check out my new ongoing serial, THE SUBTERKNIGHTS, on Kindle Vella. A man searches for his missing sister in a city full of far-out technology and hidden dark magic. The first three chapters are FREE, so give it a shot! Click here for a list of all my books and serials.

Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Time for more alchemy, dream-sharing weirdness, and possible Northern Exposure references in issue #526.

Recap: After an adventure in the Microverse, the Fantastic Four had an encounter with Diablo, the master alchemist. Diablo has recovered the legendary Philosopher’s Stone, and he says he will turn all the lead in New York into gold unless the FF allow him use of their time machine so he can go back and stop the Spanish Inquisition. Diablo gave the FF a few days to think about his demands, during which the heroes started having each other’s dreams, making them irritable and uneasy.

We begin with a flashback to the Inquisition, where Diablo (who is immortal, remember) being captured for blasphemy and buried alive as punishment. We then see that this is Alicia, having one of Diablo’s dreams. She was sleeping in a machine in Reed’s lab, helping him determine that this “dream fever” is spreading and infect the entire Earth in a matter of days (!). Ben and Johnny argue, while Sue says that Diablo’s deadline is in the morning. If he succeeds, it’ll cause a frenzy in NYC.

In Diablo’s apartment (hotel room?) he wakes from a dream about Reed and Sue’s children. He sheds his skin like a snake (!), which he calls his . He monologues to himself about the Philosopher’s Stone, which he says can do much more than turn lead into gold.

At the new Baxter Building, Ben suspects General Quark, the unseen enemy they fought in the Microverse, is the cause of the dream fever. Reed says there’s no way Quark will talk to them. Sue interrupts and asks Reed to turn on the external cameras. This reveals that the entire exterior of the building is now gold. While the FF are worried about looters coming after the building, Diablo shows up on a flying carpet. He tells them accept that he’s already won their conflict.

A short fight breaks out, with Diablo turning his flying saucer into fiery snakes. Reed breaks up the fight, deducing that Diablo has the dream fever as well. Diablo uses the Philosopher’s Stone, which reveals the infection. Dibalo then uses the stone to cure himself, but he won’t use it to cure everyone else unless Reed lets him use the time machine. They fight some more, with Johnny and Reed getting the Philosopher’s Stone out of Diablo’s hands and into theirs. Sue surrounds their HQ with a force field. Stuck outside, Diablo warns, “You forget you’re dealing with Diablo! You’re dealing with the devil.”

Reed attaches the Philosopher’s Stone to a device and activates it, turning the Baxter Building back to normal. The FF are thrown back by energy as it does this, and then Diablo appears in Reed’s lab, saying “It worked perfectly.” Reed deduces that once the stone was activated, it acted like a doorway, allowing Diablo to bypass all the building’s defenses. There’s another fight, with Diablo using smoke to confuse the heroes. Ben, still acting erratic thanks to the dream fever, inadvertently leads Diablo to the time machine. With the stone in hand, Diablo enters the time machine, ready to change history so he becomes ruler of the Earth.

It looks like the Fantastic Four have lost, but Reed then explains that this is not the time machine, but the interdimensional portal. Diablo has ended up not in the Microverse, but in an unknown dimension that has survivable living conditions, but it is completely uninhabited. Sue remarks that Diablo finally got to rule a world, one with himself as the only subject.

Later, Sue and Johnny have a heart-to-heart chat. She reveals that she was seeing his dreams. In his dream, Johnny is surrounded by several of his ex-girlfriends. He loses control of his powers and burns them all, crying, “You don’t understand what I can do to you!” Sue says this is a part of Johnny that he never shares with anyone, that he never had a girlfriend for long for fears that he might harm someone he cares about. Johnny says his power is like a gun, in that no matter how careful he is, there’s always a danger. He tells Sue she’s lucky to have someone like Reed in her life, and that he loves her more than Johnny will ever be able to love anyone.

Reed and Sue then have a heart-to-heart, establishing that Reed managed to cure the dream fever with the stone before Diablo disappeared with it. Reed says he doesn’t know who had his dreams. Sue wonders if this means someone out in New York dreamed of blackboards with endless equations. Reed says dreams aren’t just stress and worry, but also wants and desires. Sue asks Reed what he wants, and he tells her, “Only you!”

Unstable molecule: How strong is Reed? He stretches his arms around a lamppost, pulls it out of the street, and uses it as a huge club against Diablo.

Fade out: Sue is getting stronger. During the John Byrne years, she struggled in surrounding just the top of the Baxter Building with a force field. In this issue, she surrounds the entire building with one without breaking a sweat.

Clobberin’ time: Diablo uses his alchemy to trap Ben in the floor of Reed’s lab, leading to jokes about how he’s now shorter, or like a piece of the furniture. Johnny then frees him.

Flame on: What to make of Johnny’s feat of burning a loved one paralleling the temporary nature of his relationships? I’m not sure. I’d argue that’s an aspect of Johnny’s character, but not one that explains everything.

Our gal Val: Baby Valeria shows up in a few panels. She looks like she’s back to normal and has overcome having Ben’s nightmares.

Fantastic fifth wheel: Crystal appears in Johnny’s dream, asking if he ever truly loved her. He says he loved her more than she’ll ever know. Frankie Raye is also in the dream for one panel.

The Alicia problem: Lyja shows up in Johnny’s dream as well. She reminds him that they were once married, and she asks him if that meant anything to him. His only response is, “You don’t understand.”

Trivia time: In addition to Crystal, Lyja, and Frankie, the other ex-girlfriends in Johnny’s dream are Dorrie Evans, Cole from the new Frightful Four, and the Valeria of the fifth dimension (unrelated to Valeria Richards, or Dr. Doom’s lost love Valeria). Johnny romanced this Valeria back in the Strange Tales days.

Diablo’s timeline is a little off compared to the timeline I set for myself on this blog, but that’s okay. After this, he appeared in the Marvel Knights 4 spinoff, in that unfinished story involving Nicholas Scratch. Then he was one of several cameos in that supervillain gathering in Fantastic Four: Foes. He’ll be back in issue #551.

The Microverse villain Captain Quark is only mentioned and never seen, and the story of his conflict with the FF has never been told. That’s expected, but the real question is what became of Quark? In this issue, he and his soldiers are being held prisoner in the new Baxter Building, and that’s the last we hear. Have they been there all this time? (No word on whether this is related to the Ratchet and Clank character of the same name.)

None of the comic fan sites I frequent have mentioned this, but I feel it’s worth noting that this story arc bears similarity to the 1994 Northern Exposure episode “Mr. Sandman.” That one featured the townsfolk of Cicely, Alaska experiencing everyone else’s dreams, and wrangling with knowing each other’s private thoughts.

Fantastic or frightful? Kind of a simple story, and I’m not sure the dream stuff gels with the Diablo plot. But there’s a lot of fast-paced action and nice character moments, in the classic Marvel style.

Next: Our last, best hope…

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Want more? Check out my new ongoing serial, THE SUBTERKNIGHTS, on Kindle Vella. A man searches for his missing sister in a city full of far-out technology and hidden dark magic. The first three chapters are FREE, so give it a shot! Click here for a list of all my books and serials.

Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. After spending the last few months looking some of the many FF-related spinoffs that Marvel produced in abundance from 2002 to 2005, we’re back to the main series and the return of a classic villain in issue #525.

What’s all this, then? Mark Waid and Mike Weiringo have ended their famous run on the series, but Waid’s co-writer Karl Kesel is sticking around, maintaining a similar tone. There’s a real sense of “Let’s keep the party going” in this issue’s tone. Tom Grummett is the new penciler, with Larry Stucker on inks, Paul Mounts on colors, and Randy Gentile on letters. Comics guru Tom Brevoort is still on as editor.

Alicia is babysitting little Franklin and Valeria when the FF return from an unseen adventure in the Microverse. Alicia tells everyone that NYC’s Chesler Hotel is being torn down, not by the city, but by the building’s residents. They’ve apparently gone insane and are holding hostages inside. Johnny flies to the building, where he finds all the residents are destroying the building from the inside because they’re searching for treasure hidden in the walls or under the floors.

A short fight breaks out between the residents and Johnny and Ben, before Reed breaks it up. The residents use the water pipes to attack Johnny, and Ben suspects something is up with the water. Reed has Sue turn the entire building invisible except for the plumbing. She reveals all the pipes are not ceramic or metal, but gold. Reed says the pipes were originally lead, which means someone turned the lead to gold. Sue exclaims, “Alchemy!” and on cue, the evil alchemist Diablo appears. They fight, until Diablo says he’s there to return the gold back to lead. He’s acquired the famous Philosopher’s Stone, and makes the pipes lead again.

Diablo retells part of his origin story. Back in 9th century Spain, he mastered the potions that gave him eternal youth, and he survived torture and captivity during the Spanish Inquisition. He swore revenge, and he says today is the day. He wants to use the FF’s time machine inside the new Baxter Building to go back and stop the Inquisition from happening. Reed refuses, fearing that Diablo really wants to go back in time to conquer the world. Diablo says he will transform parts of New York into gold each day until Reed relents. He gives them two days to think it over, and then he disappears.

Cut to the next morning, when everyone is concerned about what Diablo will do. At the breakfast table, Franklin describes a dream he had, where he was confronted by Doctor Doom. Ben describes a similar dream, like something out of an old monster movie, where he’s chased by torch-wielding villagers. Johnny interrupts breakfast, irritable and short-tempered. Sue urges him not to lose control and she tells him to take the day off, Diablo or no Diablo.

Reed has been up all night, running tests on a pipe from the building. He hopes to track transmutational residue from it back to Diablo’s location. Elsewhere, Sue is in the business office for Fantastic Four Inc., talking to chief financial officer Jian about Johnny’s ongoing work of co-running the company. Jian says Johnny is doing well, and customers like him and are attracted to him. “Like moths to a flame,” Sue adds.

The next night, Reed reveals to Franklin that he too had a strange dream. He saw himself carrying a huge sack of mail through the city during a blizzard, only to attacked by a bunch of the FF’s villains. Franklin then reveals that mailman Willie Lumpkin told him he had the exact same dream. Reed wakes everyone else up and asks about their dreams. Ben had a dream of losing control of the Fantasticar and falling, and Reed says that’s a common type of dream for a child.

Reed fears that the FF are all having each other’s dreams. Further, without their own dreams, they won’t be able to sleep properly, which will make then more and more irritable and unable to think clearly. Sue says they’ve got to go after Diablo, but Reed says, “I don’t believe Diablo had anything to do with this.”

Unstable molecule: Franklin’s dream of Dr. Doom included the sensation of not being afraid of Doom. This suggests that he was having Reed’s dream.

Fade out: In the office, Sue asks Jian about an invoice for Vibranium. Although Black Panther is a long-standing ally to the FF, I find it unlikely that Wakanda is selling its most important resource to anyone. The Marvel Wiki states there’s also an Antarctic Vibranium, which was involved in a She-Hulk story, so perhaps this is the Vibranium the FF are buying.

Clobberin’ time: Ben swallows a huge stack of pancakes during breakfast, a shoutout to him doing the same back in the Jack Kirby days.  

Flame on: The hotel residents manage to put out Johnny’s flame by dousing him with water, even though it’s been a long, long time since he overcame that weakness. My guess is that Johnny’s off his game due to the dream stuff.  

Four and a half: With all this talk of dreams, there’s no mention of Franklin’s former dream-based powers he had in his Power Pack days. Franklin is still powerless during this time, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Our gal Val: There are a few references to baby Valeria crying all night. Ben suspects that poor Val has been having his nightly nightmares.

Trivia time: What’s Diablo been up to? Remember that the last time we saw him in Fantastic Four, the elemental creatures he summoned drew him into an unnamed abyss. In a follow-up Avengers storyline, he sent a simulacrum of himself to Earth in search of artifact that could free him. Diablo got caught up in the Avengers’ battle against an army of Hulks (!) in which the duplicate was destroyed, and he remained in the abyss. That leads into this issue, with no explanation of how he escaped and made it back to Earth. The theory is that the Philosopher’s Stone was instrumental in his escape.

And what about that Philosopher’s Stone? Despite being a popular myth for hundreds of years before a certain boy wizard made it a household name, this storyline is the only time the Marvel version of it appears. The stone gets a mention in a 2020 Black Cat comic, however, so it might return someday.

Fantastic or frightful? Rather than a soft reboot with a flashy new #1 issue, the new creative team picks up where the previous left off, maintaining subplots and a similar tone. This is something comics don’t do anymore. But Kesel, Grummet, and company come out swinging with a fun issue full of action and mystery. Good stuff.

Next: More dream stuff.

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Want more? Check out my new ongoing serial, THE SUBTERKNIGHTS, on Kindle Vella. A man searches for his missing sister in a city full of far-out technology and hidden dark magic. The first three chapters are FREE, so give it a shot! Click here for a list of all my books and serials.

Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. It’s more manga-inspired action with 2004’s X4: X-Men/Fantastic Four. I was going to skip this series due to unavailability, but I found a copy at the last minute, so let’s get our mutant freak on.

What’s all this, then? The first issue cover credits Pat Lee and Dreamwave Studios, with the interior credits show writer Akira Yoshida, Lee on pencils, and variety of others on layout, backgrounds, and inks. Founded by Pat Lee, Dreamwave burst on the scene with super-cool comics such as Dark Minds and Warlands. They later got the license to the Transformers, and they were more or less the caretakers of the Transformers universe for a while. Dreamwave shut down in 2005, and there are a lot of differing and unfortunate opinions online as to why, with a lot of ugliness and people saying mean things to each other. It appears this miniseries came right at the end of Dreamwave, because starting with issue #3, the credits read “Dream Engine Studios” instead.

X4 begins in Earth’s orbit, where NASA space station Simulacra is welcoming home a Mars lander. Something goes wrong and, there’s an explosion. Cut the Xavier Institute in Westchester, New York. Wolverine is woken up due to the X-Mansion’s doorbell. With no one else around, he answers it and finds the Fantastic Four at the X-Men’s front door. Ben says, “Our big brain just wants to talk to your big brain.” Wolverine loses his cool, and he and Ben fight for several pages. Storm flies down from the sky, and then a fight breaks out between her and Johnny. These fights go on for a few more pages, in a classic excuse-for-the-characters-to-show-off-their-powers. Emma Frost then arrives and uses telepathy to break up the fight.  

The FF and the X-Men gather inside the mansion, with Reed explaining that he just had to make a request in person, rather than calling or emailing. Reed wants to speak to Professor Xavier, but Wolverine says the prof has taken off. Reed shows them footage of the Simulacra, saying that the station had an eighteen-member crew, and its unknown whether any survived the explosion. The Beast suspects that something was hidden on the Mars lander. Reed says he’s come to the X-Men for use of Cerebra, their advanced mutant-hunting computer.

Emma Frost says neither Cerebra nor any mutant telepath can reach space, and Cyclops suggests a team flying to space to get a telepath close to the Simulacra. The X-Men show off their new X-Jet, which combines human and alien tech, and capable of long-distance spaceflight. The FF are impressed, but there are only six seats inside. It’s decided that the team will be Emma for her telepathy, Ben and Wolverine for the muscle, and Sue, Nightcrawler, and Gambit for their “resources.”  They fly to the Simulacra, where Emma senses frightened survivors inside. The heroes enter the station to find a tentacled monster waiting for them.

Issue #2 begins with Reed and Beast comparing notes, with Reed saying he’s been tracking a cosmic irregularity that may be related to the incident in the Simulacra, and it’s similar to the cosmic rays that gave the FF their powers. Reed says he’s concerned about what cosmic rays might do to mutants’ X-factor that given them their powers. On board the Simulacra, the monsters are revealed to be the Brood, alien parasites whom the X-Men have often battled. The heroes fight off the Brood, and Emma coordinates everyone to split up, with one half of their group searching for survivors and one half further fighting the Brood.

Sue, Emma, and Gambit find the survivors, who have been implanted with Brood eggs. Sue wants to save them while Emma argues that the survivors are already dead. Sue undoes a Brood jamming device and contacts Reed, who tells them must evacuate because the cosmic storm is approaching. Sue agrees to leave, hoping to return and save the survivors once the storm passes. The X-Jet gets hit by the cosmic storm as the heroes depart. It is damaged, and comes crashing down to Earth, in the middle of a forest. The X-Men emerge from it, transformed into monster-like creatures.

Issue #3 begins with Reed, Johnny, Cyclops, Storm, and Beast searching the crash site in a Fantasticar. They’re attacked, only to discover their attackers are the four X-Men from the mission, now in their monstrous forms. More fighting breaks out, with Cyclops and Storm not wanting to harm their teammates. We see that Nightcrawler has gained Sue’s powers, and Gambit now has Johnny’s powers. Emma doesn’t speak, but lashes out at Cyclops her new diamond form – her secondary mutation – and mention is made that she’s like the Thing now. Wolverine’s arms are unnaturally long, meaning he has Reed’s powers.

There’s a lot more fighting, with Sue and Ben eventually revealing they are okay. With their help, the heroes subdue the four transformed X-Men. Beast and Reed start to talk about a cure when Wolverine comes to and flees into the woods. While the others stay behind to search for him, Reed and Beast return to the Baxter Building. Because Wolverine, Gambit, and Nightcrawler haven’t yet had a secondary mutation, Reed believes Emma’s secondary mutation could be the cure. Then Sue calls Reed with a more pressing matter. The space shuttle Titan is returning to Earth from its space mission, except it’s filled with Brood.

Issue #4 shows that the shuttle is headed straight for New York. Sue blames herself, as the Brood on the shuttle are what became of the survivors she left behind. Storm tells Sue not to blame herself and focus on saving New York. There are several pages of Sue, Storm, and Johnny working together to bring the shuttle down for a safe landing.

Beast worries that a larger team of superheroes will be needed to contain the Brood inside the shuttle, so he and Reed get to work curing the transformed X-Men. There’s another fight on the woods when Ben and Cyclops manage to subdue Wolverine. The take Wolverine to Reed’s lab for further work on the cure, when giant whale-like aliens appear in the sky over NYC, and the shuttle opens to let out the Brood.

The big battle kicks off in issue #5, with several pages of the X-Men and the FF fighting back a full-scale alien invasion. In Reed’s lab, Reed wonders if he can cure the X-Men when he’s never been able to cure Ben. Beast gives him a pep talk, saying the always-changing nature of mutation gives Reed the edge this time. The cure works, and Wolverine, Gambit, and Nightcrawler join the fight in the streets of NYC. With their help, the heroes fight back the Brood.

As for Emma Frost, she too is healed, and she and Reed return to the X-Mansion to use Cerebra. Reed uses his genius to amplify Cerebra’s power, and Emma says she will send the Brood on “a ‘trip’ they won’t soon forget.” Combining her telepathy with the new Cerebra, she makes the Brood think that both Galactus and Phoenix have arrived in New York as well. The Brood then retreat, fleeing in terror. The two teams compare notes, with Reed saying neither of them could have driven back the Brood on their own. Later, the FF join the X-Men at the Xavier Institute for one of the X-Men’s regular softball games. Sue and Emma have a heart-to-heart talk, in which Emma says it is good to have someone else looking out for her teammates, and Sue says, “That’s what being a family is all about.”

Unstable molecule: Reed says he’s unaware the X-Men are experiencing secondary mutations. But he’s saying that to Beast’s cat-like form, which is Beast’s secondary mutation! Maybe Reed was just being polite.

Fade out: Like many comic readers, Sue is perplexed by the relationship between Emma Frost and Cyclops. Emma tells her that the X-Men think of her and Cyclops the same way the FF think of Sue and Namor.

Clobberin’ time: I’d thought that the Reed-trying-and-failing-to-cure-Ben plot was resolved by this point (Reed can’t cure Ben because of Ben’s own mental blocks), but it’s referenced several times in this. In the end, Ben says he has faith Reed will find an answer someday.

Flame on: When Gambit has Johnny’s exact same powers, Johnny manages to defeat him not with fire, but by punching him right in the face.

SUE-per spy: The 2019 Invisible Woman miniseries revealed that Sue had a double life as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent all along. When fighting the Brood in this story, she creates an invisible sword out of a force field. When did she have this kind of control? Could it be her spy training at work?

Trivia time: Where are the X-Men at in continuity at this point? Astonishing X-Men kicked off its “Danger” storyline, which the Danger Room went haywire, evolving into a new character named Danger. New X-Men was in the middle of its “Haunted” story arc, portraying the X-Mansion as a haunted house. (This was unrelated to the Danger Room stuff, it seems.) Uncanny X-Men had the mutants taking on the Hellfire Club in a confusing tale also featuring nanites. And in the adjectiveless X-Men, it was the Christmas issue (!) in which Wolverine’s clone X-23 became an official X-Man.

Why isn’t Professor X there? Never minding that he has a long history of taking off and leaving the X-Men on their own, in this case he’d left for Genosha in hopes of rebuilding it from a wasteland back into a working nation.

When the FF and the X-Men meet in the mansion, we see three Xavier School students eavesdropping. The Marvel Wiki reveals these are Elixir, Wallflower, and Wind Dancer, three recent additions to the school.

Why is the X-Men’s mutant-seeking computer Cerebra and not Cerebro? Cerebra is the newer, better version, developed by Professor X and Beast. In addition to mutants, Cerebra can also direct Atlanteans and vampires.

There are several refences to the Avengers not being around. This is more fallout from the Avengers: Disassembled event, where the Avengers disbanded for a time. But wait, New Avengers, which co-starred Wolverine, debuted at the same time as this miniseries. I guess we’ll have to conclude this miniseries precedes New Avengers.

Fantastic or frightful? The story here is very basic, and the idea of giving the FF’s powers to four X-Men isn’t explored as much as I’d like. Nonetheless, there’s a lot of good stuff here. The shuttle crash scene is very well done and cinematic, as the comic walks us through how the heroes use their powers to stop the crashing shuttle.  The sky whales recall the 2012 Avengers movie, to where I wonder if the movie was directly inspired by this.

Next: Back on main.

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Want more? Check out my new ongoing serial, THE SUBTERKNIGHTS, on Kindle Vella. A man searches for his missing sister in a city full of far-out technology and hidden dark magic. The first three chapters are FREE, so give it a shot! Click here for a list of all my books and serials.

It’s a holiday weekend, so here’s some Thanksgiving/holiday stuff:

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Want more? Check out my new ongoing serial, THE SUBTERKNIGHTS, on Kindle Vella. A man searches for his missing sister in a city full of far-out technology and hidden dark magic. The first three chapters are FREE, so give it a shot! Click here for a list of all my books and serials.