Fantastic Four Life story #2 - The 1970s

[stubbleupdate]

For a quick catch up on this series, check out my post on #1.

Mark Russell writing Fantastic Four...that's something that will make me sit up and take notice. His Red Sonja was decent, and his Flintstones was just brilliant, better than it had any right to be.

Last time out, the Fantastic Four got their powers and Reed met, if only fleetingly, the cosmic horror that is Galactus. Now, in ten years later, he is consumed with getting earth ready to fight an impossible monster that might not even exist. He crosses paths with billionaire playboy philanthropist Tony Stark and Latverian scientist and supporter Victor Von Doom PhD.

But this post isn't about Reed and Galactus

There are a few kisses with history as Namor the submariner visits his local library to check out Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which discussed environmental issues like too much pesticide. You can buy the the book and many books inspired by it from all good bookstores
After his appearance in the Flintstones, Carl Sagan cameos in a conversation with Johnny, Ben and a furious Reed (the classic scientific conflict about contacting aliens and hiding from them.

But this post isn't about them either

It's about Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman in a very real sense


Sue gets a lot to do. Or, possibly, a lot to not do in this book. There are several instances where characters assume she is invisible when really she is just at home, doing childcare. She is squeezed out of a photo op for Reed, Tony and other scientific hangers-on.

But then she does find something to do.


Sue is buying The Feminine Mystique



A bit of overlap between Sue talking about hiding in fear from the monsters and Reed's obsession with Galactus. But of course, Galactus isn't the real monster, is he?

The thing I love about Russell's writing, in this book and his other work, is how he takes great big ideas in fiction, including speculative fiction and makes them not only relatable but also puts emotion into them.

Comments

[silverhammerman]

So, what's weird to me about this series is that unlike Spider-Man: Life Story, Russell isn't actually following or remixing the beats of the FF's publishing canon, seemingly at all. It's doing a fundamentally different thing, telling a story about the incredibly long buildup to Galactus' arrival, with greater focus on character dynamics, but also for some reason stripping out a bunch of relationships.

Doctor Doom shows up here, seemingly for the first time and, like Ben Grimm, he's another character who has his powerful relationship with Reed Richards completely ditched for seemingly no reason. It's just a whole lot of weird decisions, from the looks of things.

As to the Sue stuff, I guess this is a way of confronting the way she was treated in the original comics. I can't say either way that I like or dislike it. I'm trying to figure out how to take her speech at the UN, and if this is in continuity with Spider-Man: LS, then it's funny to think that this is a part of the same world that was low key a military dystopia, which fits because her speech does have some war hawk vibes.

I was lukewarm at best on Spider-Man: Life Story, and I had high hopes for this as an improvement, but what I've seen shared and talked about so far doesn't do much for me. I'll still be checking this out once it's collected though.

[beyondthefringe]

Agreed. I simply don't understand what Russell is doing here by fundamentally restructuring so much of the Fantastic Four's underlying character dynamics. Why strip out Reed's connections to Ben and Doom, when those are among the strongest emotional ties of the entire premise?

Namor felt kind of off-brand as well, just going to hang out in a library. "It's okay, I'm local" is not something he'd ever say.

Doom not scarred but already building masks.

The Thing as... an actor. In Westerns.

Sue just being left behind all the time while Reed apparently has no real connection/relationship with his own child.

As an FF alternate history this is adequate... but it's missing them on so many levels. It doesn't have "The FF is a family" or "The FF are science explorers" or anything to tie them together.

[jlbarnett]

it sounds like he has an idea he wants for Reed so he's altering the story to fit

That kind of writing sucks

[laughing_tree]

Why strip out Reed's connections to Ben and Doom, when those are among the strongest emotional ties of the entire premise?

I haven't been reading this, but if I had to guess, it's because with a series that's going to span multiple decades of time, there's no need for all those old relationships to be built in from the start. If Doom meets Reed in the 70s, then by the time its the present day they're *still* going to be two people who go back decades. But in a way that avoids the slightly artificiality of all the F4's major relationships happening before/at the start of their careers, as if their lives go in stasis after the 60s.

[beyondthefringe]

But... one of the fundamental dynamics baked into the Fantastic Four concept is that Reed and Ben were best friends, and Reed has always felt guilty for condemning his best friend to a life as a monster. And we're two issues in and we've barely gotten anything of that ilk. It's more like "whoops, sorry I got you monsterfied, man I met five minutes ago."

When SUSAN is apologizing to JOHNNY--someone who has never actually been all that unhappy about being young, handsome, and on fire--about dragging him into the life, and Reed's all like "eh" about things that don't relate to Galactus...

Come to think of it, Ben didn't do jack or shit in this issue. Instead, Russell wastes time constructing a whole new history for Doom that throws out almost every fundamental about the character.

I'm not asking for slavish adherence to the Fantastic Four's history, just a story that recognizes the core essentials of the characters and extrapolates from there. I'm not seeing that here.

[laughing_tree]

What best suits a five-issue decades-spanning single story that presumably will have a definitive ending isn't going to be what best suits a perpetually ongoing series of stories set in an eternal now. What's essential to one isn't going to be what's essential to the other.

[beyondthefringe]

But why tell a Fantastic Four story that's barely about the Fantastic Four?

Spider-Man: Life Story, while not perfect, had the right approach: keep all of the major character relationships intact and extrapolate from there. Hit the major decade story beats, and extrapolate from there. Alter the world as necessary to reflect the passage of time, but still construct a logical story combining the passage of real world time and the necessities of comic book plotting. Things made sense.

This just doesn't feel like a good Fantastic Four story to me because the emotional connections are completely off, and because Russell is deviating so strongly from what -actually- happened to the team in the time periods covered. I mean, in the comics, they'd already encountered the Mole Man, Skrulls, Namor, Doctor Doom, Black Panther, the Inhumans, etc, well before the '60s were out. The '60s issue should have embraced all of that iconic, transformative, wild Kirby energy. The '70s should have reflected the post-Kirby era and the changing times. The '80s issue should reflect the John Byrne era as that was such another iconic run... (I say "reflect" not "emulate" because obviously we want the writer's own take on things, but on Spider-Man, Zdarsky still managed to capture a feel for each decade in turn...)

The tl;dr of this is that it bugs me as a writer to see someone miss or ignore the fundamentals of the property and change long-standing character traits to suit the story.

[laughing_tree]

I just don't see things that way. The whole point of an alternate take is to do an alternate take.

I wrote elsewhere in these comments about why I think there's very limited value in doing a publication history-adherent meta approach with the Fantastic Four.

[jlbarnett]

there reaches a point where the alternate take no longer deserves to have the names of the original attached

[laughing_tree]

I always assumed Zdarsky's inspiration for "Life Story" was "Superman/Batman: Generations," given that he's a bit of a fan of it. And I think the premise works best with those two characters, where there are generally huge shifts to the characters across the decades. Superman used to leap instead of fly, Batman used to be Adam West, their continuities have been rebooted, etc.

The Fantastic Four, by contrast, might be one of the worst groups to get that treatment. Almost more than any other Silver Age property, they've barely changed across the decades. (Can you think of any modern Marvel property that's *less* different from its Silver Age version than the Fantastic Four?)

I think you pretty -have- to abandon the meta approach of "Life Story" to make it work.

[beyondthefringe]

Two approaches come to mind, both of which have been done quite well using non-FF properties.

First, you have the Furst Family in Astro City, which embraces the family of adventurers aspect, and -does- allow characters to grow and age, so that you can have multiple generations develop over time.

The second is the Noble family from Noble Causes, which embraces the idea of the superpowered family as celebrities and adds in the soap opera aspect as well, so that the family grows and changes as members come and go.

If you wanted to apply these approaches to the actual Fantastic Four, starting with them as adults in the '60s when they took their fateful trip, you just let them age and develop over the years. Reed and Sue get married and have Franklin, of course. Ben and Alicia do their dance of indecisiveness where Ben never feels worthy because he's a monster. Johnny, ever the playboy, has a string of girlfriends before settling down with, say, Crystal, before getting divorced.

And so on, Franklin grows up, dates, gets married, has kids. Valeria does the same when she's introduced at some point. You add more people to the family pool--have Sue leave Reed for Namor as seems to be a popular narrative choice.

By the time you've hit the 90s or whatever, you have three generations of the extended Richards clan having their adventures in space, time, the Negative Zone. By 2020, maybe even four generations, not counting whoever they might pick up from other dimensions or the future, or if they bring in Nathaniel Richards...

I will admit that the Fantastic Four don't seem to have the same iconic beats throughout the decades as some characters--as noted, so much of what built them as a concept came in the first 50 or 102 issues under Kirby's influence--which is WHY the idea of them as family needs to remain strong as a core concept.

Otherwise, they might as well be the Challengers of the Unknown, another title about four random people who banded together to have science adventures, and who get forgotten/rebooted every decade or so.

[laughing_tree]

Oh, I think there's a lot of potential in the real-time aging approach. But none of it requires the meta approach of "Spider-Man: Life Story," where you follow the beats of the actual publishing history. What would that even look like, when so many F4 runs have been cover versions of the Lee/Kirby run?

[jlbarnett]

there was an annual in 99 I think that had that approach

[silverhammerman]

Generations was my point of comparison for Life Story, and there was probably a good deal of inspiration there. I don't think LS comes out of the comparison favorably, though admittedly I've only read Generations 1 and I understand the sequels get progressively more John Byrne-y and bad. Generations 1, by ditching all but the broadest strokes of the meta-continuity stuff, was much better at telling a coherent story in its once-a-decade chunks, whereas I think Spider-Man: Life Story struggled to find a balance between continuity and its own story. It hewed close in ways inaccessible to newcomers, but diverged enough to be annoying and unsatisfying for continuity heads.

I don't think ditching the meta-continuity is necessarily the only way to make these stories work, but a lighter touch is certainly required. Following the broad strokes, but without the need to reset things could still tell a fine story, and also address the way that, as you say, the FF has been a very static team over the teams, largely because it always defaults back to the classic lineup and setup.

It just strikes me as odd that Russell's approach with the FF is to stretch "classic" FF plot points out over decades while also ditching a bunch of what makes those classic stories work. I'd much rather see the 60's as a foundation and then diverge from there. In the end though that's just clearly not what Russell is interested in doing, which is unfortunate for me, because it is what I'm interested in reading.

[laughing_tree]

Generations 2 is a perfect illustration of the pitfalls of a writer being so in love with their world they don't know when it's time to let go. Byrne had already told his story with the first Generations, leaving 2 to feel like an extended, glorified version of the "deleted scenes" extra on DVDs.

And this conversation is reminding me of what Byrne said when asked about taking the Generations approach to Marvel characters. Something along the lines of, "What's the point? Their publication histories already read as one giant story."

[cricharddavies]

Prediction: Franklin becomes Galactus in this one too.

[zachbeacon]

That's...depressing.

At least in Earth X Franklactus was a hero fighting the Celestial menace.

Here the narrative would be that a neglected son becomes the threat his father was trying to prevent.

[onsokumaru]

Wow. Didn't think about that, but that would make sense, in a horrific way.
It's possible Reed was" infected" by Galactus when he encountered him.

[mazway_75]

Huh, not feeling the potential here like the Spider-Man one. As noted, taking out connections to Doom and Ben hurts it a lot and just feels...off.

[stubbleupdate]

I enjoy how in a post about Sue Storm being sidelined, the community has decided to focus on other topics.

[tcampbell1000]

I'm perfectly okay with Ben and Doom's relationships to Reed developing a bit later in his life, as they do in this issue (Ben starts rooming with Reed after Sue leaves, Doom works at Reed's side for years) though I'll admit some of the altered details are strange. Why is Ben an actor? When did he and Reed get to be pals, anyway, and why?

The real puzzle, though, is that what seems to be a sensitively told tale about a Seventies divorce is grafted a weird emotional climax and then an even more mismatched action climax. Like, congrats to Sue for finding her voice, but the floor of the U.N. is not exactly the place for people who "haven't been onstage in a while." I can't even tell which "monsters" she's urging more decisive action against-- fascists? Chauvinists? Sexual predators? Galactuses? It's certainly not a speech that only a Fantastic Four member could've made, so she's not there because of the authority of her unique experiences. And it doesn't send the best message, liberationwise, that she only got this podium because a head of state wanted to sleep with her, and then he got his wish. (Did you practice that "fifty percent" line, Namor, or did it just come to you?)

Then Doom shows up, Reed and Sue actually work together in perfect tandem to take him down, and then she's all "we need to talk" and BOOM, SMASH CUT to divorce. Like, wouldn't it fit the story better if Reed and Sue didn't mesh as a Doom-fighting duo? Isn't the whole point that he doesn't understand who she is any more, if he ever really did? Wouldn't this be the ideal moment for her to prove that she can be a better hero than he expects of her?

And if instead you're going for the irony that they still make a good pair of hero partners but they don't work as marrieds, then why cut past the conversation(s) where both of them realize that, AKA the most interesting part of the whole story? Because "we need to talk" is not the obvious shorthand for "so hey, I'm about to dump your ass" that some people seem to think.

I will say, it's nice to see someone have the guts to let Sue leave Reed in any continuity (even if they reconcile next issue). But some of these choices are honestly baffling.

[tinygaylaura]

I have to be honest, I have never liked Sue Storm

Like

At all

Everything about her character is just so damn dull

Even by the poor standards of the silver age's treatment of female characters where the Comics Code pretty much mandated that if you weren't a villainess you had to be about as interesting as paste or else she was written even worse than the others...and her toxic codependent abuse cycle I mean um "Relationship" with Reed was worst of all. Everyone remembers the time Hank Pym struck Jan by mistake while having a mental breakdown and literally having a split personality in control of his body at the time...yet no one seems to remember the fact that Reed has spent decades deliberately and conciously being the worst person ever to Sue.

On top of that there is literally nothing interesting about Sue's personality, her character her ANYTHING. She is the epitome of the boring as hell Girl Next Door/Little Betty Homemaker bullshit of an inferior age. Literally a blonde haired blue eyed white "good girl" who is demure, modest and acts like a housewife on a show from the fifties.

So this story trying to make us care about Sue was fighting an uphill battle for me right from the start and I'm sorry to say it lost. I don't think anything it did made me care about or like her.

Frankly Sue and Reed are the worst members of the Fantastic Four. Ben is awesome and Johnny while he can be a little bit of a douchebro sometimes is at least entertaining about it. Reed on the other hand is one of the worst people in the Marvel universe (And honestly if characters like Red Skull and Purple Man didn't exist I would say that Reed was THE worst character, bar none) and Sue feels like something a Republican would create on a Weird Science style magic computer as their perfect Stepford Wife