Comic Book Review: Fantastic Four #570

It has been a while since I picked up Fantastic Four on a consistent basis. While this is one of my favorite titles there hasn’t been a creative team over the past few years to get me to have this every month. Ever since Mark Waid and the legendary Mike Wieringo run there hasn’t been a great run on this title.

While I liked the beginning of Mark Miller and Bryan Hitch’s run delay’s hurt their run so I am waiting for the trades of their run to come out. Hopefully the creative team of Jonathan Hickman and Dale Eaglesham can hook me into putting the Fantastic Four onto my permanent pull list. Let’s see what the new creative team has in store with Fantastic Four #570.

Creative Team
Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Dale Eaglesham
Colorist: Paul Mounts

Story Rating: 8 Night Girls out of 10
Art Rating: 9 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 8.5 Night Girls out of 10

Synopsis: We begin in Reed Richards’ childhood where we see a young Reed scared to get down from his tree house. On the ground below, Reed’s father tells his son that everything is okay and that being afraid is nothing to be ashamed of and that Reed needs to try and come down himself. Reed’s father continues to tell his son to trust him as he knows his son can do it. Reed jumps down from his tree house.

In the present, the Fantastic Four are fighting a bunch of giant robots in the city. The robot is able to put Johnny out of commission by using a fire extinguisher it had in its palm.

Sue yells at Reed to figure something out to stop the robot. Reed tells Sue that the robots all seem to have been constructed to fight against each member of the Fantastic Four. The Thing comes up with a solution for them to each switch the robots they are fighting and he smashes the robot fighting Reed as an example of his plan.

Elsewhere, the Wizard thinks about the hole in his logic. Back in the city, the Fantastic Four finish defeating the robots and Johnny uses his heat vision to discover that each one was piloted by Wizard clones.

In The Wizard’s lair (do villains still use the word “lair” to describe their hideouts?) he says to his kid how disappointed he is that his plan failed. The Wizard talks about how all he has in his heart is anger for his son’s generation and that he has to do something about it.

Back were the Fantastic Four are, Reed is analyzing one of The Wizard clones.  Reed realizes that the clones are actually robots designed to terminate each member of the Fantastic Four (I guess Arnold Schwarzenegger was busy being the Govenator with his big budget cutting knife that he couldn’t make a guest appearance as The Terminator in this issue.) Reed uses the data in The Wizard’s robot to program his teleporter to locate The Wizard’s location. He tells Sue that he will be home for dinner and teleports to The Wizard’s location.

Upon Reed’s arrival he sees a bunch of pods holding clones of The Wizard that are of different ages. The Wizard then appears in front of Reed telling him not to be afraid of the discovery.  The Wizard asks Reed if he wants to team up to find out the origin of the universe.

Reed tells The Wizard that the Wizard is sick.  This infuriates The Wizard. The Wizard goes to push the self destruct button to blow up his lair.  Reed uses his powers to tie the Wizard up.  Reed says that the Wizard is going to be locked up. Reed tells The Wizard that he will visit him in prison and that maybe they can publish a paper together.

Later that night, Reed is in Valerie’s room telling Valerie and Franklin about the Fantastic Four’s adventure from earlier that day.  Franklin tries to get his dad to tell him another story but Reed tells him that it is bedtime.  Reed says that next time the story he tells his kids will be from a book.  Reed says that he does not like telling his children about the Fantastic Four’s adventures. Franklin leaves Valerie’s room upset over not getting another story.

Reed tells Valerie good night and asks her if she was scared of the bombs from earlier. Valerie tells her dad that she wasn’t scared especially since her father built the whole top floor to be an inter-dimensional panic room. She continues by saying that she is three years old and she does not have time to think of stuff like that. Valerie than tells her father goodnight.

We then see Reed with Franklin on his shoulders walking to Franklin’s room with Franklin telling his father that when he grows up he is going to stay up late just like Uncle Johnny. Reed puts his son in bed and they each tell the other that they love each other and Reed tells his son goodnight. As Reed turns of the lights to his son’s room Franklin asks if The Wizard’s kid will be alright. Reed says he hopes so but it will be a difficult process. Franklin asks his dad if he will help the kid and falls asleep.

In the living room of the Baxter building Johnny is trying to make The Thing choose were they should go on a trip to “heal” The Thing’s broken heart by giving him three choices. The Thing says he does not know and Johnny makes him choose one which turns out to be 3 days and 2 nights stay at Nu-World. The Thing tells Johnny that Johnny will just ditch him as soon as they get there but Johnny tells The Thing he won’t do that and that they will have a blast.

As the two of them talk about their trip Reed walks in and tells Sue the kids are in bed. Reed says that Val already figured out the changes he made to the building already and that she is going to be smarter than himself. Sue doesn’t think she can handle Val but Reed assures her that she is a great mom and she will do a great job.

Sue tells Reed she is going to turn in for the night and asks if Reed is coming. Reed thinks back to what The Wizard said about the world tearing apart and he tells Sue that he has some things to do before turning in. Sue wishes Reed luck and asks him not to fall asleep in his lab again.

We then see Reed going down to his lab. As Reed walks around his lab we see that every inch of the walls covered with different writing of ideas Reed has been working on to save the world. As he walks around he enters another room with The Machine thinking about how he wants to build a better future than the one he currently see. Reed activates The Machine.  Three shadowy figures emerge from the machine.  Reed asks the three figures to help him.

The three figures show themselves to be different versions of Reed.  Reed asks the other versions of himself “How do I solve everything?”  They answer “Aggressively.”  Our Reed ask his other versions who they are. One of them answers by saying they are the Reed Richards from Earth-6590 and Earth-12 and were chosen because of them being the most familiar to our Reed due to their powers being closely resembled to his family’s.

Reed asks his other version were they are exactly. He answers by saying they are inside a pocket reality outside of the universal structure and space between them. As they walk towards a building one of the Reed’s welcomes our Reed to the Council.

They enter the building to find different versions of Reed from the multiverse. As our Reed says how amazing the place is an alert sounds off and we see that Galactus has attacked Earth-2012. One of the Reed’s says how unexpected this is. Our Reed asks what exactly is the place they are in. The other Reed saying that they are the ones who police time and much more as the founders of the Council intended.

Our Reed asks who built the place. Someone speaks up and says that it is a place to become something greater than what you were.  The heads of the Council ask our Reed to join them.

We then get a splash page with three different Reed’s each with an Infinity Gauntlet.  The three Reeds tell our Reed it is time to reach his full potential. End of issue.

Commentary
The Good: Fantastic Four #570 was a great read. Jonathan Hickman knock it out of the park with his first issue on this series as he was able to hook me with this first issue to put the Fantastic Four back onto my pull list.

Hickman did a very good job making this issue of the Fantastic Four new reader friendly. For a first issue of a run this an important thing to do as Hickman has built up interest in his work with what he has been doing in Secret Warriors and new readers interested in his newest project. He did a great job establishing who each member of the Fantastic Four are and how this is more of a family than a team.

And while this was a very new reader friendly issue Hickman did a great job making this an enjoyable issue even for long time readers with how quickly shows he has a good understanding of the group and what makes them great characters. Each character in on the team, along with Franklin and Valerie, had their own distinct voice with no one character sounding like the other.

I especially liked that Hickman quickly established that Reed Richards will be the star of his run. While each member of the group is an interesting character in his and her own right with everything that has gone on with Civil War and Secret Invasion Reed has risen to become one of the stars of the current Marvel Universe. I love seeing his lab were Reed covered every inch of the walls with writing and equations of him trying to figure out the problems facing Earth. It also a good way to continue the Nu-World storyline from Miller’s run on this title as we saw that the Earth’s leaders trying to find a way to solve the planet’s current problem.

And I like The Wizard’s involvement in making Reed think harder about the problems facing Earth right now and how the two of them as scientist are seen as Gods do to their genius scientific minds. The Wizard is a cool old school Fantastic Four that has been rarely used over the past few years. And it will be cool to see if Reed does actual work with The Wizard in the future as it was hinted that they would make a good team though it was probably a sarcastic comment.

Even though I don’t know when Reed built The Machine transporter that got him in contact with the other versions of himself I thought it was a cool addition to the things Reed has built. And though I am not a big fan of multiverse spanning stories seeing all the different versions of Reed was awesome. I love how Hickman made the Council of Reed Richards act as protector of the multiverse and seeing all the different versions of Reed from all the different Earths was cool to see as each one had a look that stood out.

What will be interesting to see is if the three Reeds with their own Infinity Gauntlets is a sign that our Reed will be getting the Infinity Gauntlet from his universe since he does have one of the Infinity Gems from his time in The Illuminati. This can also be a good way to involve the other members of the now defunct Illuminati.

Another thing I enjoyed about this issue is that Hickman understands that unlike most teams the Fantastic Four are first and foremost a family. Sometimes writers forgot this in favor for them being a superhero team battling the bad guys. Even though the team fought The Wizard in this issue it did not take the whole issue to take care of The Wizard and only the first third of the issue was the battle with the middle third taking place in the Baxter Building showing us the members of the team interact. I especially liked how Johnny tricked The Thing into taking a trip to Nu-World as it is a good way to bring in the world built in Miller’s run and not just letting the Nu-World concept forgotten because of the new creative team.

Also I like that Franklin and Valerie where a part of this issue as they are characters that are usually forgotten in this issue. While they can’t exactly be involved in their parents adventures it is good to see them in the series as it makes the title feel like more of a family title. And also having both characters involved in the story allows for Hickman to show the parental side of Reed and Sue showing that they aren’t just scientist and superheroes. I am interested to see how Hickman deals with Valerie growing intelligence as it seems it will be a major sub-plot in his run.

Dale Eaglesham’s artwork was incredible. While it took a few pages to get used to him drawing a Marvel title do to his time spent on drawing DC characters he did a very good job giving this title the old school feel it should have. He did a very good job giving this title a Jack Kirby-like feel with his artwork and I especially liked how he drew the different versions of Reed as they each had their own distinct look. Also I liked how he drew the nice moment with Reed and his two kids as it was a nice quiet moment between a father and his kids.

The Bad: While I enjoyed this issue a lot I wish that Hickman would have informed us when Reed actually built The Machine that allowed him to come into contact with the different versions of himself. It would have been nice to get at least a little information about The Machine as it feels like a convenient deus ex machine to move the story forward.

I also did not like how Eaglesham drew Reed. It looks odd to see Reed buff and with a beard. While I know that Reed, along with the rest of the Fantastic Four, have been given different looks over the years I just don’t like the look Eaglesham gave Reed in this issue.

Overall: Fantastic Four #570 was a great start to Hickman and Eaglesham’s run on this series. They did a very good job making this a very new reader friendly issue while also hooking long time readers with the introduction of the multiverse versions of Reed and continuing the Nu-World plotline. I definitely recommend picking this issue up for fans of team books and of the Fantastic Four specifically.
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Kevin