Crisis From The Stars!

 

Having remembered writer Mark Waid's Fantastic Four run from the early 2000s, I was not only intrigued at seeing him take up work on the title again fifteen years later, but also surprised to learn that distinguished artist Neal Adams would also be aboard for Waid's four-issue series, which debuted in October of 2020.

I believe the last pages I remember seeing from Adams during his time at Marvel was his War Of The Worlds work from Amazing Adventures #18 in 1973. If I'm not mistaken, Adams' only work depicting the FF (three of them, at any rate) took place in Avengers #93, when a trio of Skrulls took their form to attack the assemblers (with Adams doing a few cutaway panels of the real McCoys in a subsequent issue). Having plied his craft with the Avengers, the X-Men, and the Inhumans, the FF would elude Adams for forty-nine years before finally landing on his drawing board as a full-fledged project--which was bound to make even those like myself, who had all but ceased reading new Marvel work, more than curious about the finished product.

This first installment of Waid's story is geared to build momentum for whatever challenge the FF will face, with much of it featuring the group in action against not one but two more immediate threats, the latter of which will be related to what is to come. The story's overriding theme, "antithesis"--literally, the opposite or contrast of one thing in relation to another--could mean anything at this point; the only thing we know for now, thanks to the cover, is that it will involve the Silver Surfer, who has returned to the service of Galactus. Obviously the Surfer is in bad shape, and the FF don't seem to be responsible for his condition--but we'll have to wait and see what we learn as things take shape.

As for that first threat, a character which fits that bill is surely Annihilus, the fiend from the Negative Zone who has once more broken through to our world with intentions toward conquest and death.

 

 

With a bit of ingenuity that culminates in striking at Annihilus through what is both his greatest strength and his most vulnerable asset, the FF handily deal with their foe, while giving Adams an opportunity to provide his take on Marvel's first super-team.

As we would see throughout, Adams has the tendency to restrict Reed's stretching power to elongating himself in thin strands, especially his arms, neck, and fingers, resulting in him resembling a "plate of interstellar spaghetti," as Captain America described his Skrull foe in the Avengers tale--a length-only approach that doesn't best demonstrate Reed's abilities in a life-or-death struggle. Here, we could argue that Reed's purpose is to coordinate the plan to separate Annihilus from his cosmic control rod until he can collapse the gateway through which Annihilus entered; until we see more from Adams in this series, it's difficult to say whether Adams simply interprets this character functioning this way as opposed to suiting the moment.

The team as a whole, of course, is no longer tied to the original purpose of their space flight which triggered their transformations, thanks to their one-size-fits-all origin that they and other Marvel characters received to sever their ties to past events--and so over fifty years later, they remain frozen in fighting form and parents of a young boy and a toddler. Here, Waid seems to be giving greater focus to Reed's preoccupation with his work while unconsciously distancing himself from his three partners, as if the writer is laying ground for something further down the line in the story--though there's one partner who has learned a thing or two about prioritizing Reed's attention.

As for the other two FF members, Johnny Storm is still playing practical jokes on Ben Grimm--while Adams has clearly been perusing the PPC's recent post on "Marvel mouths," if his depictions of the Thing's dental features are any indication.

Fortunately for Johnny (but unfortunately for Reed and Sue), an alarm signals the arrival of a planetary threat in the form of a blazing and potentially destructive meteor. Reed's initial plan to stop the object fails, to his confusion, but it's a splendid opportunity for Adams to demonstrate the trademark shadowing and magnified facial features which he can bring to characters who face a crisis.

As a team, the FF manage to alter the trajectory of the object so that it avoids any populated area--but after discovering the nature of this object, and its recent fate, they discover the mystery of this crisis has only begun.

Aside from what we've learned here, there's little to be revealed from the image we're shown representing what happens in the next issue: In space, the FF watch helplessly as Galactus is struck by another figure in this drama, even as he apparently sends the Surfer soaring in the other direction. Beyond that, we'll have to rely on Reed for analysis--fortunately, he's elongating his neck once again in order to get a better look at the situation. I don't know, Reed, from our vantage point we can see everything just fine at a glance, while you're witnessing the scene firsthand--what's the problem?

Given the pieces of this puzzle we've been offered thus far, Waid appears to be off to a good start with this tale--to say nothing of the impressive rendering of the team we've seen by Adams, who turns 80 years young this June. This post was scheduled to appear in the PPC just as this story is running its course--so your thoughts not only of this first issue but how you felt about the story in its entirety are welcome, as always.

BONUS!

Have a look at a prior sample cover that Adams had submitted to Marvel as a pitch for doing future work on an FF series.