Hickman's Fantastic Four Part 5

 

 



We finally get issue one of FF.  It begins with Reed watching a recorded message left by Johnny in the event of his death.  His basic message is that they cannot stop what they are doing just because he has died and they should just replace him with Spiderman because Franklin would love that.  Spiderman shows up on the roof of the Baxter Building and is greeted by Susan who is wearing the new black and white uniform.  She shows him around the building and fills him in on what's been going on in case people just picked up the first issue of FF without reading Fantastic Four.  She gives Spiderman his uniform and then the security alarm goes off.  A group of AIM soldiers are attempting to break out the Wizard.  By the time they get there, they are unable to stop his escape but the Wizard tells Reed that he has something of his (referring to Bentley) and that he will be coming for it soon.  They return home in time for Nathaniel to cook his famous roast beef.  After dinner, Nathaniel and Val tell Reed about the deal Val made with Doom and Doom just happens to be in the Baxter Building.

 

 

 

Issue two opens with Ben discovering Doom hiding out in their home and he is not pleased.  He storms out with Dragonman to the nearest bar.  Susan goes after them because she is also upset with her husband.  The remaining Future Foundation members head into the classroom and try to fix Doom's brain damage.  They eventually figure out that they need a back-up of Doom's memory to transfer into Doom to repair the damage.  Doom eventually remembers his son Kristoff who Doom, conveniently transferred his memories and powers into.  So they build a big brain switching machine and swap Kristoff and Doom's minds.  Doom then, at full Doom power, tells Reed about the other part of Val's deal.  He needs to defeat Reed Richards.

 



 

 

This issue begins with the FF team travelling around to several of the Fantastic Four's classic villains inviting them to a theoretical discussion on how to defeat Reed Richards.  Once everyone has arrived and gotten comfortable Val begins explaining what happened.  She went through the bridge and several Reeds followed her back through.  The bridge seals behind them so they can't get back home.  The Reeds decide they need to use Sol's Anvil to power their trip back to their universes.  The Reeds separate and each take on their own specific evil task to help power Sol's Anvil.  One Reed orchestrates a civil war between the races of the new Atlantis.  Another attempts something similar among the inhumans but is killed when a telepath reads his mind and discovers he is lying.  The third makes a deal with Mole Man to destroy the city that has been stealing his moloids; and the final Reed made a deal with Annihilus to open the portal to the Negative Zone and keep it open so that Annihilus' armies can attack Earth once again.  How Valeria knows all this happened is beyond me.

 

 

Ok in this issue all the super villains are in the classroom discussing how to destroy these perfect Reeds when Susan's Atlantis conch shell alarm goes off.  She and a few others go to check it out and discover the Mole Man helping out the traitorous Atlanteans and he is being commanded by Reed.

 

 



Spiderman and Alex (he's another character I don't talk about much because I don't know who he is) are fight the armies of Atlantis and the Moleman as Sue flies up to talk to Reed.  There's a great moment where Reed just removes his goggles and Sue instantly realizes that he is not her husband.  Reed shoots Sue with a laser gun but Spiderman saves her.  The traitor army blows up the entire new Atlantis city and Sue, Spiderman and Alex escape in the fantasticar.  Sue mentions that she is going to call Namor to help clean things up.  Back at the Baxter Building, Reed examines Sue and she questions him about the alternate Reed.  He breaks down and tells her that he made a terrible mistake and he looks genuinely scared.  The issue ends at the High Evolutionary's city where the mole people there have come to an agreement with the Mole Man.  Just then, the Inhumans invade.

 

There are still six issues in this story so I'm just going to end it here.  Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

Scooby Doo and The Mask of The Blue Falcon

I saw this movie was playing on Cartoon Network a few months ago so I set my DVR to record it because who watches commercials now-a-days, am I right people?  I thought that I would have a few laughs at how bad it was, delete it and then never think about it again.  I never expected it to be blog-worthy.  Boy was I wrong!

Before we get into the story we should explore some of the background of these characters.  As you may have guessed, the Blue Falcon is a major feature in this movie, as well as his sidekick Dynomutt.  If you're not familiar with those two well don't worry my baby birds mommy's gonna feed you.  Dynomutt, Dog Wonder was an old Hannah-Barbera cartoon along the same lines as Space Ghost or Birdman.  Blue Falcon was Dynomutt's master and friend and together they thwarted crime.  The duo had several team ups with Mystery Incorporated on their original series Scooby Doo, Where Are You? Later in their career they appeared on Dexter's Laboratory.

Now onto the movie itself.  Shaggy and Scooby convince the gang to go to the San-de-Pedro Comic-Con-Apalooza.  It's held every July and this year they want to enter the costume contest with their Blue Falcon and Dynomutt costumes.  Freddy wants to see the trailer for the new, darker, edgier Blue Falcon movie.  Daphne has become dangerously obsessed with collecting these stuffed animals called "little fuzzies." The only reason Velma agreed to go is because there is apparently a monster haunting the convention.  The monster is known as Mr. Hyde and is a classic villain from Blue Falcon's past.  All signs point to Owen Garrison, the actor who originally portrayed the Blue Falcon and is now bitter and angry about the reboot.  It turns out that it was actually a friend of his who was attempting to frame him.

The actual story of this movie is not important.  What is important is all the inside jokes made within the dialogue.  At the convention, there are several cosplayers who are dressed up as other Hannah-Barbera characters.  I think the reason I enjoyed this movie so much though, is because of the character of Owen Garrison.  This movie came out in 2012, just two years after Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated premiered.  Owen Garrison is a man angered because they took something that he helped shape and create but bastardized it and made it darker for a new audience that he just doesn't understand.  This movie is not just about the Blue Falcon.  It's about Scooby Doo no longer being the show it was when it first premiered in the 1960's.  At the end of the movie, the evil movie producer realizes that it takes more than special effects to make a good movie.  They end up paying tribute to the original Blue Falcon in the sequel film.  This is their way of saying that even though Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated may not be the show you were expecting, it still respects where it came from.  This movie surprised the hell out of me.

Hickman's Fantastic Four Part Four

This is it.  This is the story that really drew people into Hickman's run on the Fantastic Four.  This is when one of the Fantastic Four will die.  This is Three!

Issue one opens with Val discovering the bridge.  If you're confused to what the bridge is, then go read part one.  Val crossed the bridge and discovered the army of lobotomized Dooms, the celestials and the other Reeds who, thanks to Val now had an exit.  When Franklin from the future visited Val, one of the many mysterious things that he said to her was, "All hope lies in Doom." Now that Val has released several people as intelligent as her father on an unsuspecting public, she could use some hope right now; so she uses a teleporter, which I assume she built using a paper clip and two rubber bands because she didn't have it a minute ago, to visit her 'Uncle Doom.'  Once there Val realizes that Doom has recently suffered brain damage in another story arc that I have not read.  Doom and her make a deal, she will restore him to his previously evil, awesome self and he will help Reed save the world from the other evil Reeds.  Elsewhere, the silver surfer discovers the corpse of Galactus buried beneath the Baxter building. Uh-oh.

Three part two... Yeah that's right.  Three part two begins with Susan leaving to do more political stuff for Atlantis but we'll get to that, what's important now is that Ben drank the potion that the Future Foundation brewed for him and his Thing exoskeleton broke off.  Johnny decides to actually be a pal for once and take Ben out on the town as just two regular guys.  This was a great scene, until they go and grab beers with 'old friends' and Stan Lee is there.  Damn it Stan Lee can't you stay out of my comics.  They end the night at Alicia's house.  If you don't know, Alicia has been Ben's girlfriend for forever and she's also blind so he was able to feel comfortable with his appearance around her.  They were never able to be together sexually though, until tonight.  This scene could have been really corny or just poorly done in a hundred different ways but because Hickman has such a great handle on these characters it was actually really beautiful.  The issue ends with Reed alone at home with the kids, stargazing when the silver surfer comes asking questions, and he brought his friend Galactus.

Three part thr... You know what screw it.  Issue 585 begins with Ben and Johnny returning home to find Galactus floating above the Baxter Building.  Galactus doesn't want a fight though, he merely wants Reed to join him in his giant planet eating ship as they go for a little trip.  While all this is going on, Susan is organizing a meeting between Namor and the old kings of Atlantis.  We also see more of those bug people from the negative zone planning an attack on the Baxter Building, but right now let's get to the meeting in Atlantis.  Namor kills most of them with a trident and the issue ends.

586 starts off with Sue still in Atlantis and both sides are trying to summon back-up but she's not having none of that so she throws up a force field trapping everyone until a peaceful solution can be found.  We go back now to Reed who is informed that Galactus has brought the others who are also responsible for the Galactus' death.  Of course, it is some of the characters from the Nu-World issue.  I don't know these people's names and I don't care.  I would go into more detail on these people but they really don't matter.  The only reason I'm mentioning it is because Reed is there and Reed matters but I hate everyone else involved in this.  Galactus is great, Reed is great, the silver surfer is great so why does this whole plot suck so much cock?  Okay back at the Baxter Building, Johnny and Ben are playing cards when the Annihilation wave invades (the bug people).  Johnny figures out that they will be headed to the negative zone portal in Reed's lab where Val and some of the kids are.  We get some more scenes of Reed and then back to Sue where it's apparently been a day.  Anyway Namor tells Sue that the old Kings were a bunch of dicks and used to kill the people that they put in Sue's position.  Back to the Baxter Building where Val is explaining to Johnny that 'cus of science the shielding may not hold and of course, as soon as she says that the shields fall and the Baxter Building gets invaded.

Okay things are looking pretty bleak for everybody right now.  Susan is still fighting for peace between two very different peoples, everyone at the Baxter Building is being swarmed by the armies of Annihilus, and Reed is off doing his stupid thing with Galactus.  So the Baxter Building is being torn apart but there's a big fix everything button on the other side of the room.  They just have to get through all the bug people.  Seems impossible until Franklin God's up some bug spray and kills all the monsters to Johnny's amazement.  No time to dwell on it though, gotta hit the easy button.  Once that's done Val informs Johnny that the shields will not hold much longer but there's another big win button on the other side of the negative zone so someone has to go and activate it.  Johnny, Ben, God and a few other kids decide that they are going to have to invade the negative zone before the negative zone invades Earth anymore than it already has.  So now that we're putting several children in danger let's check in on Sue shall we?  She asks the remaining old Atlantians if what Namor has accused them of is true.  Well, it's not.  In fact, when Namor murdered the old King with a trident, Sue inherited the throne.  Back at the good old Baxter Building the members of the Future Foundation that went through the portal quickly discover that Reed's win button is malfunctioning.  Their best chance is to just set off a giant bomb destroying the annihilation wave and the portal to Earth with it, but somebody will have to stay behind to set it off.  For some reason Val, who just four issues ago built a teleporter out of bits of string and a torn up sheet of paper, cannot possibly design a bomb with a timer!  Ignoring the plot-hole that I could drive a train through, we catch back up with Sue who has finally decided to drop the shield.  She informs Namor that he can either honor the deal that they agreed upon or face her womanly, sexy wrath.  After a good beating and somebody cleaning up his pants, he agrees.  At the Baxter Building, time is running out before the annihilation wave gets there and Ben says that he is staying behind no arguments.  Ben just had the greatest week of his life thanks to Johnny and he doesn't want to go out owing him.  Johnny begins leading the kids through the portal to safety but then trips Ben, shoves him through the portal and activates the shield so he can't come back through.  Ben tries to get the shield back open but there's no time, annihilation has arrived.  Johnny just has time to lock down the portal so that even he can't open it back up and say goodbye to Ben.  Johnny then turns around to see his certain death and says, "A billion to one, you think I'm afraid of that?" First he says it quietly. Then he screams, "YOU THINK I'M AFRAID OF THAT?!" As if he needed to convince himself, he wasn't going down without a fight.  He then shouts, "FLAME ON!" And takes on as many as he can before he is finally overwhelmed.  While all of this is happening, Ben's Thing power had begun to come back to him.  So he can see all of this happening through the shielded portal as his rocky outer skin re-grows.  He just keeps punching and punching the portal as his powers come back to him but it's just not enough.  And he now has to live with the guilt that, maybe if he didn't take the cure, he could've saved his best friend.  Finally, the portal closes completely putting Ben out of his misery and the issue ends with him and the kids just collapsed in a pile dealing with what they just saw. I must have read this issue a half-a-dozen times and I still get chills from it.

The first thing you will notice about this issue is that there is no dialogue for the first twenty-three pages.  In this sequence we see the avengers arriving to help but realizing they're too late.  Susan begins to close herself off from Reed.  Reed opens the portal to the negative zone to confront Annihilus with the ultimate nullifier but all he does is rub Reed's nose in Johnny's uniform.  Doom abdicates his throne to his son Kristoff because he is concerned about his brain damage.  Doom even shows up to Johnny's funeral either to pay respects or meet with Valeria, it's unclear.  Ben goes out and picks a fight with Thor and the Hulk and the Hulk just let's him pound on him for a while to let him get out all the shit he's got bottled up inside.  Reed is looking at a list of threats to Earth and has decided that he needs to reform the council which is also one of the threats to Earth.  Reed's father appears out of literally nowhere and says, "Hello son I'm home."

This issue was broken up into parts so I'm going to do that here.  This story is called Uncles.  Franklin is sitting on top of the Baxter Building when Spider-Man drops down next to him.  He takes him for a swing around town and they talk about Johnny.  They go out and get a hot-dog and then return to the rooftops.  Spider-Man tells Franklin that he also lost his uncle when he was younger and because of it it made him a better person.  When he thinks about him now, he only remembers the good times and he's not sad anymore.  Franklin tells him that he's sad because he thinks he could have saved Johnny but Spider-Man tells him that he knows he could have saved his uncle.  This story is only a few pages long but it is absolutely perfect.  A few times Franklin mentioned that Spider-Man was his favorite hero and because they both lost their uncles it is just a nice little story.

Anyway the issue completely ends with a little message from Jonathan Hickman asking us to join him in FF.  I don't know about you but I will be there.

Hickman's Fantastic Four Part 3

After Prime Elements, we get four stand-alone issues, and since this blog will probably end up being the length of a novella let's get right into it shall we?  The first issue is called The Future Foundation and if that sounds familiar, that's because the Future Foundation gets its own book down the line called FF.  This issue opens with Reed at a conference called Singularity.  It is apparently a forum for like minded people and scientists to get together and share thoughts on how to make the world a better place founded by Reed himself.  Reed closes the conference with a speech so cruel and evil that I was convinced that he was either drugged, possessed or a Skrull but no he's just normal creepy old Reed.  After that we get some scenes of the army of children living at the Baxter building.  The Moloids are setting their room up, Val is fixing up Dragonman as Franklin spars with Leech and Artie.  I still don't know who Artie is but now he can create matter with his mind.  While all this is going on Reed goes to visit the Wizard.  The Wizard won't stop babbling about the second coming of Christ or something so Reed gives him his helmet back, I'm sure that won't come back to bite him in the ass.  The main reason that Reed went to see the Wizard is to tell him that he has adopted his clone Bentley and he is going to raise him to be a normal person, not a freak like either of them.  In the final page of the issue, we finally see what the Future Foundation actually is.  All of the kids are sitting in a classroom including Dragonman, and two atlantians with the help of Susan's influence.  Reed tells them that there is nothing that they cannot accomplish together.

In The Frank-Tastic Four Franklin and Leech are bored so they get Uncle Johnny to take them to this great new toy store because Reed is too busy with a project from the Future Foundation.  Once they get their Johnny bumps into Arcade and Impossible Man.  He is about to cause a scene with Arcade but Impossible Man vouches for him saying he's his new business partner so he gives Arcade some leeway.  Arcade shows off some of the new Impossible Man toys and once everyone has one he sets off the trap.  All of the toys come to life and begin attacking people, SHOCKER!  Leech gets knocked out which upsets Franklin, so he makes a giant stuffed dinosaur come to life and attack Arcade... *sigh* Look I know these are not my best details here but I kind of hated this whole scene.  I mean we go from gathering a group of the most intelligent group of children to solve the world's problems to an issue about a bunch of shenanigans in a toy store. WHAT THE FUCK?  Anyway, they beat Arcade and we finally get back to the Future Foundation.  We learn that the first problem that they want to tackle is Ben.  Ben has been stuck as The Thing for years and Reed has never been able to cure him but the kids have found a solution of sorts.  All the other members of the Fantastic Four have had sort of an on/off switch with their powers but Reed has always been trying to turn Ben's completely off.  It doesn't work that way though, so they have come up with a way to make The Thing human for one week a year.

When Everything's Lost, The Battle Is Won, is the next issue and it is a doozie.  It opens with Franklin Richards from the future falling through time.  He lands in some pocket dimension with Valeria from the future and Nathaniel Richards, Reed's father.  Franklin tells them that his mission to his past self's birthday party was a success and then begins building a self-sustaining universe for them to live in when the shit hits the fan whatever that shit may be.  Val leaves on her particular mission and their grandpa leaves on his.  Turns out Nathaniel needed to go to the past State University, whatever state that may be, where Reed and Victor Von Doom are classmates and Victor is still a douche-bag (HA spell check just told me to put a dash in douche-bag).  Anyway, Reed is happy to see his father but rightfully so, has questions like why does he look exactly the same after all these years.  Nathaniel explains that, during events that we didn't see, (I'm pretty sure they take place in S.H.I.E.L.D.) Nathaniel is now almost immortal, and he was forced to play a game with all of the other Nathaniel Richards from alternate universes where they were forced to kill each other until one remains.  ALL THAT HAPPENED OFF PANEL!  Anyway only this Nathaniel and one other remain and he needs Reed's help to take him out.  Reed asks Doom for help and Doom can't resist the opportunity to show Reed his toys.  He gives Ben Grimm (Reed's roommate) a robotic armor suit similar to his Thing persona.  Ben states, "I could get used to this."  Oh poor, poor Ben.  Victor puts on a prototype of his Dr. Doom helmet that allows him to read and dominate minds.  Before they go to battle though, we take a break to see future Valeria's mission was to visit present day Susan, her past mom.  So now that nobody's confused, back to Reed and the gang.  They teleport through to the other Nathaniel's universe and see his fortress of solitude.  He pops out to greet them and the issue ends.

The last issue of the bunch is called Because of All These Things That I've Done.  The titles run into each other as do the issues.  The first thing that evil Nathaniel does is throw The Anachronauts at them.  I don't know if we've ever seen these characters before in Marvel but man I need some more of them.  There's like a space-man dinosaur, a Roman soldier robot, a cyborg monkey, a cave-man with a baseball bat and a genius midget pirate.  These guys are in this issue for about three pages but it was a marvelous three pages.  After the best characters ever get killed off, they have evil Nathaniel cornered but regular Nathaniel can't kill him.  Doom can though and he has his evil villain monologue about how the Richards could not have won this battle without Doom!  After that father of the year Nathaniel Richards takes off on his son again promising to see him again the next time he needs someone executed.  We now see Val and Sue sitting at the table sipping tea and talking.  Val explains that because Nathaniel, an immortal time traveler, has killed all other Nathaniels the time stream is collapsing.  Franklin and Val are going to stay in the time stream and rebuild it because Franklin is basically God.  In so doing, they will most likely die.  While this is happening, Nathaniel returns to Franklin who is preparing for the time stream's collapse.  Franklin throws Nathaniel into the time stream because he is confident that he can escape and he shouldn't be there when it collapses.  Val tells her past mom that dark days are coming and she needs to hold the family together in these dark times.  She leaves and returns to Franklin standing alone in his universe.  They begin to discuss options for survival but it doesn't seem to be looking good.  There's a really sweet moment where Val tells Franklin that he has always been her favorite hero as their world collapses around them.

Well that does it for those issues.  Next up is the story arc Three, and if you know your maths you realize that three is less than four so that means that one of the Fantastic Four will be dying in that arc.  Stay tuned to find out who.  That is if you don't know already I mean it's a three year old issue.