FF 02: Sneak wordless preview

[bjornwilde]

So if you saw the previous post with FF01 you'll know the new team isn't getting just one new member but two three plus the kids. I liked this idea but there was something that bugged me.



Given the events of the Unthinkable story arc, why is this even being considered without it being mentioned?



It would seem I'm not the only one. Go Ben! Not to Reed bash but why the hell are you looking so shocked considering what Doom did to Franklin and rest of you?

From Marvel's site.

First try at the new site, hope I got all the HTML right.

Comments

[crabby_lioness]

To be expected, really.

[espanolbot]

Doom: Bah, when Doom can not handle a man who looks like a gingerbread sumo wrestler, you can put him to bed with a shovel!

[naebler]

Im wondering if Doom is going to, as a show of good faith, give Ben the ability to switch Human to Stone any time he pleased.

Not only to 1 up reed, but to build on what the FF already did for him. Plus it seems it would be just the right amount of Dickery that would work well if Ben was running at you in gonna cream you mode.

Also, what happened with Doom War, you'd think Victor would be on a no fly list and not welcome in the US. Even as a monarch of another country, hostile countries can be told their Diplomatic clemency has been taken... can't they?

[terrykun]

You just gave me the image of Doom flying commercial.

"Beskirted serving wench! Doom demands more peanuts! And leave the entire can of ginger ale this time!"

[auggie18]

This is the guy who trapped Franklin in Hell. If I were Reed, I wouldn't be holding Ben back, I'd be going after Doom with my arms all "wickty witcky witcky"!

Trapped. Your. Son. In. Hell. React better, Reed.

[sinisterlink]

Trapped Franklin in Hell as well as tortured the crap out of the rest of the Fantastic Four and basically possessed Valeria. The Unthinkable story arc along with other things Doom has done over the years has really confused me with how Valeria has this "Uncle Doom" thing going on. It's like, have they not told her what he's done over the years?

[jlbarnett]

cause he helped Sue during her birth and named her and has apparently promised to protect her.

Apparently Unthinkable is just going to go the way of all those stories that are never mentioned again. It probably simply never happened to the current writers.

[mistervader]

Is there a link to the scans of that particular moment? I remember seeing them on S_D before, but I dunno if that was in 1.0.

[nomadicwriter]

Here:

http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/2358200.html

(Sorry about the non-link. Guess I ought to get round to setting up a proper Dreamwidth account if I'm going to keep commenting here...)

[darkknightjrk]

From what we've seen in the first issue, Reed isn't a fan of this either--it was Valeria's choice. Ben's just more...active about it.

Ben's response

[capt_satellite]

This is exactly how I thought Ben would react. Given what happened, I'd guess this might have been the last straw for Ben and the FF, but I don't think he'd be able to abandon the family, given the guilt he feels.

Ben Grimm...my childhood hero since 1967.

Re: Ben's response

[bjornwilde]

Exactly! I am hoping the next page features Susan showing up for a revisit of the invisible snakes in the face Wieringo used in Unthinkable as well.

[sinisterlink]

Well, from these scans I'd guess that Reed must have "forgotten" to mention that Doom was on the team. Nice dick move, Richards. That's like inviting Spider-Man to join the team and then going, "Oh, and the Green Goblin is going to be a reserve member. No hard feelings, right?"

[arilou_skiff]

Because that was a really shitty story arc?

[bjornwilde]

It might not have been if it had had ramifications past an issue or two. Yes it was a drastic move on Doom's part which was quickly discarded but I liked the idea of him turning to magic for a bit. But the way the comic has been it's been swept under the carpet with no fall out for Doom since he escaped from Hell.

[auggie18]

Why, exactly?


I've seen a lot of people say that and I really don't understand the hate. I'm not a huge Fantastic Four follower, which may be why I liked it, but why do you think it was a really shitty arc?

[freezer]

From what I can tell, the main concern is that Unthinkable basically turned Doom into Jigsaw The Wizard.

And not the Jigsaw with the twisted sense of fair play from the first movies but the sadistic Joker-as-death-god Jigsaw from the latter ones.

Not to mention Doom's plans always had some sort of endgame outside of "make my enemies suffer." Basically setting the whole thing up just to torture the FF (let alone what he did to two innocent children) rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

Granted, that Doom crossed the line and then hit Turbo Boost was probably the point. But you really can't take an iconic character like Doom and change his style and MO that drastically and expect it to stick. (See also: Electric Superman).

But really, even if you consign Unthinkable to discontinuity, there's still Doomwar. Do they really think they can keep Doom a secret from the large number of powerful entities that would take the Baxter Building apart to get at Doom (read: The Asgardians)?

[nomadicwriter]

For me, Unthinkable is one of those particularly painful storylines that is both very well done and really out of character. (So it bites a lot worse than, say, Millar's "Masters of Doom" arc, which I am happy to drop out of my mental canon and never again recall that it existed.) There was a lot of good stuff in Unthinkable and the Authoritative Action follow-up, so I can't just file it under "godawful ooc crap" and ignore it, but at the same time I just can't reconcile the portrayal of Doom with his established characterisation. So it actually bugs me a lot worse than something that's just dire all through, if that makes sense.

[baxter2814]

No, no, it makes complete sense and I have had that reaction so, so, SO many times. Example: Countdown? Complete garbage, therefore I absolutely adore it and consider it some of the best entertainment ever. On the other hand, Identity Crisis? GAH! Hate with a violent passion because there are so many little good things about it mixed into the wall bangers that I just can't bear to delete from my memory.

Also, your icon is made of win. :)

[kd_the_movie]

I liked Unthinkable, but I think it'd work better as the "last Dr. Doom story". Because for Doom to just say "Fuck this bullshit, i am sick and goddamn tired of playing around with Richards and his insufferable family" would IMO mean he'd have to be on his last leg.

[nomadicwriter]

Yeah. It really doesn't help that Unthinkable came right after Doctor Doom scored an awesome victory over the four by saving Valeria. You could run with 'Doom at his darkest and most desperate' after years and years of humiliating defeats; it's a bit tough to explain launching into that storyline right off his finest hour of justified smugness. Dude, he won. He saved Val, he saved Sue, he fixed Johnny - all after Reed was incapable of working out how - and then they had to thank him for it and live with a permanent reminder in the shape of Valeria's name. This is really not a position that leads naturally into, "I just can't take it any more!"

[stubbleupdate]

Two new members?

There's Uncle Doom, Spider-man and grandpa Richards in the First Family alone.

[bjornwilde]

D'oh I forgot Richards senior! I'm not counting the kids as I can't see them on missions.

[zenbro]

Nobody insults Aunt Petunia's peach cobbler. NOBODY.

[baxter2814]

Ugh....you know, the good news for Marvel's marketing is that the death of Johnny DID get me back on my old Fantastic Four habit and make me fall in love with them all over again...

The bad news is that instead of making me pick up their current stuff or express any interest whatsoever in their recent stories, all it did was make me remember that "hey, these guys were the most epic badass little family once!" and inspire me to start re-reading loads of '80s stuff.

Really, I'm usually good about meshing old-school stuff with newer stuff, but with the FF, the tone shift between them *still* jars me no matter how many times I contrast them.

[aaron_bourque]

Because Unthinkable never happened? Please please please???

[midnightvoyager]

This

[baxter2814]

Also this.

I actually always have problems when I criticize Unthinkable, because I don't dislike it because I think "Doom would never stoop that low" (his entire life revolves around one-upping some inferior dolt who bruised his ego by being smarter than him. He IS plenty petty enough), but the whole plan just wasn't...Doomy. Are there adjectives other than "Doomy" to describe the Doomishness of Doom's evil plans? There's more to Doom's character than evil, hammy, manipulative, and arrogant. He has a whole subtly characterized and quite specific schtick that always involves grandiose consequences, even if his main goal is "make Richards suffer".

[nomadicwriter]

Now would be an excellent time for some kind of partial retcon addressing it. Doesn't have to be one that the F4 themselves believe, just one that allows the readers and more Doom-neutral characters like Val and Nathaniel to have some sort of angle on it so it's not the armoured elephant in the room through this whole storyline.

My personal mental retcon is that Doom made his initial bargain to work with the Hazareth earlier on, in return for saving baby Valeria when she should have died (not so much out of altruism as to stick it to Reed, natch) and the rest was a mix of him tricking the Hazareth into believing he's going along and leaving it up to the F4 to extricate themselves if they could. Retcon out the godawful skinning thing as Doom pulling a con game on the demons and chalk the rest up to Doom considering that he's serving the greater good and it's all Reed's own fault if he's too incompetent to stop Doom's actions... works well enough for me to live with.

[leoboiko]

OR, it was a defective doombot.

Always works.

[aaron_bourque]

I've said before, it makes sense that it was a Doombot. Because a Doombot would not grok the personal reasons why Doom's "Unthinkable" plan make no sense for Victor. A Doombot would just be all logical and "well, Richards has no skill at magic, thus making Doom superior by default! Also girls are icky!" so it wouldn't hesitate, if given enough autonomy, to try something like that. All the while forgetting that Doom is human and has feelings and wouldn't send someone he had a connection to (so strong a one that he named his Richards niece/goddaughter after the woman, sheesh!) off to the same (or worse) torment his mother underwent, nor that he would want to beat Richards at anything but his own science-y game . . .

All leading to the classic sci-fi cliche when Doom finds out, and he logically and methodically berates the Doombot for its failures, ending with Victor talking his Doombot to death . . . yessssss.

[nomadicwriter]

Well, yes, I guess there's always the classics. :) Although one of the biggest reasons Unthinkable bugs me is that all the magic and armour-changing makes it harder to just declare it a bot without further explanation. ...Which is not to say I wouldn't happily handwave that in a heartbeat given the opportunity.

And really, it actually makes more sense to call Doombot here than a lot of places canon played that card. After all, we have direct precedent for Doombots not understanding the moral difference between implanting Doom's memories into a robot/clone vs. implanting them into a small boy he'd declared his heir. (I wish Byrne could have had the chance to go with his original intention of Doctor Doom completely losing it when he came back and found what the bots had done. But hey, Hickman's brought back Kristoff, so maybe there's hope for that storyline too.)

...Trusting the current writer to do awesome things with his material. This is such a novel sensation. Who can I petition to keep Hickman on this book forever?

[proteus_lives]

DOOM DOES NOT FEAR YOUR PRIMITIVE CHAIR WEAPONS.

Note to Reed

[big_daddy_d]

Yeaa...don't hold Ben back. Just allow him to give Doom the beating he has coming.

So..Correct me if I'm wrong but..

[steverodgers5]

Are Marvel just completely pretending that the alterations to Doom during Masters of Doom, or whatever it was called, never ever happened in 616 continuity at all? Because that's a real slap in the face to Mark Millar is it not?

Not that I mind, (in fact I wish they'd do that with some of his other stories too!)

I'm just not quite sure whether I'm annoyed that Marvel don't even bother to come up with some 'no prize' style explanation for their screw ups these days, or whether I'm just relieved that they are completely sweeping it under the rug, never to be mentioned again.

Y'know, For all the criticism he gets, at least Dan Slott tried to come up with an explanation for why Marvel's continuity sucks these days. But I'm surprised other writers don't even bother to do something similar anymore.

Re: So..Correct me if I'm wrong but..

[bjornwilde]

My attempt at understanding this Doom vs the Doom from Master of Doom and Doomwar is that this Doom has been messed with by the Intelligencia in the Red Hulk story line. It was revealed an issue or two ago that Doom's intelligence has been reduced and that his helping Val is based on her promising to fix him.

[halloweenjack]

I'm all for simply declaring the story out-of-continuity and moving on. There's a theory regarding Star Trek V, the one that Shatner directed, that writes it off as an extended dream sequence; early on, Kirk, Spock and McCoy are singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat", and Spock muses over the philosophical implications of the line "life is but a dream"; at the end of the movie, they're back at the campfire. And the events of the movie have never again been mentioned in continuity, ever. Ergo...