Fantastic Four #587 was released today. You may have seen it on the news touting the death of one of the beloved first family of Marvel.
Well, I read it. Haven't picked up an issue of FF in, well, maybe ever. Think I might've gotten one as a gift once (as part of our XMas stockings, my grandmother use to get my brother and me about a half dozen comic books), but I digress.
While it may not have gotten the coverage that the Death of Cap got, it was still on the frontpage of Yahoo! news as well as any comic related site, CNN, etc. It's been a long time in the works, this story, and by the end of the issue, one of the Fantastic Four does die.
***SPOILER ***
Maybe. Probably. It is a comic book, after all. These guys are notorious for characters magically being alive (sometimes literally brought back to life by magic...).
So who is it and how does it happen?
***SUPER SPOILER ALERT***
After having the ending spoiled for me by IGN, thanks a lot (but to be fair, the interview did have spoiler alerts), I couldn't really see it really being a question of who, but as an inevitability. The whole issue builds up to the death of the character and it's fairly obvious who it's going to be. You sure you want to know?
***SERIOUSLY, THIS IS THE LAST SPOILER ALERT***
The tension probably would've worked more effectively had I read at least the rest of the arc. I know, it's stupid of me to only read the final issue, but I couldn't help it. I wasn't going to read it at all, but after reading who it was, I had to know how.
Instead of guessing which character bites it, it was kind of like that feeling of watching a scary movie. You know, the part where you know someone's going to die, you have your hand over your eyes, and you want to look away, but you don't? It's like that.
You see, the issue builds up to the death of Johnny Storm. Yep. Human Torch died. But don't worry, maybe the rest of the team'll pay God another visit and force him to rez up ol' matchstick head (I say again because the Thing once died, and that's how they got him back)(No...seriously, go look it up).
And it wasn't even with the team all there. No...for reasons I don't know (again, haven't been reading FF lately), the team, except for a de-Thing'ed Ben Grimm (yeah, that happened. Again), were off doing their own things. Reed was on an artificial planet with Maestro (evil future Hulk. Or is it just an evil Hulk now?), a couple of people named Castle, and one helluva giant brain (it contains all the memories and brains of all the non-sentient people of the planet). Sue was under the ocean and is now the ruler of an ancient Old Atlantis sect (and arousing Namor in the process. How many books is that guy in, anyway?).
So that left human Ben and Johnny alone in the FF's HQ (is it still the Baxter Building?) to fight off the Annihilation wave (which I thought was something that the cosmic Marvel U had already dealt with, but whatever) and protect Reed and Sue's kids. And Leech. And a dragon. And some characters that I don't know who they are.
The first wave is fought off successfuly after the daughter (I think her name is Val) figures out that Leech wants to be knocked unconscious so that his powers won't affect Franklin's reality altering abilities. This allows Franklin to use his powers to make a lot of the bug things go squish.
The ragtag team o' misfits figure out that the energy barrier will fall during the second wave's attack and for some reason have to go to the other side to try to put up the Vibranium door. I gotta figure this stuff makes more sense to a longtime reader. So they do that and WHAT'S THIS!? The door has been programmed so that once the code to reactivate the barrier has been put in, the code scrambles and no one knows what it'll be. Oh, and they can't get the Vibranium door to work either. Go figure.
Someone needs to stay behind to put in the code to buy the team enough time to build a bomb (I think that's the option they went with) to stall for more time until the Avengers show up. Johnny tosses Ben through the door, punches in the code, yada yada yada.
Then the Torch tells Ben to tell Reed that this is where he (Johnny) made his last stand. Then he tells the huge ass swarm of bug things that he isn't afraid, yells flame on, and then we can only assume that it's pretty gruesome from the way the Thing (yeah, Ben turned all rocky. Again) reacts, since we aren't given much from Johnny's point of view after that. And really, we only see Johnny once after that. We're supposed to believe he's dead, but he's still lit up (unless the alien bug things lit him on fire as sort of an ironic kill type thing), so yeah.
My question is: If Franklin is so powerful, how come they just couldn't get him to destroy the incoming enemy wave, like he had the first one? Or move the Vibranium door into place? Or reinforce the energy barrier? Or any number of things?
So yeah, they killed the Human Torch. And kind of in a punk way, too, being offpanel and all. At least it wasn't like, he was all happy because he survived and the last one sent some sort of bug thing through him and he died. I was actually half expecting that. I've liked a lot of Jonathon Hickman's other books (like Secret Warriors), but this was a bit of a letdown.
As I am not a long time reader of Fantastic Four, I will say that perhaps my opinion doesn't matter as much, but as a long time reader of comics, I'll say that the book was almost methodical in its approach (building up the who's it going to be, how, having Ben and the kids there watching without sort of being able to do something about it, etc.).
On a side note, I picked up the latest issue of New Avengers (a series that I've been following since the beginning. The first time) and I have to say that I'm already enjoying this story much more than the first arc of the new volume. It may just be a return to form for Bendis.
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