Fantastic Four 700

 The Fantastic Four has made it to issue 700 (7 in the new series) by Ryan North and Iban Coello and I must say it is a breath of fresh air. It has great writing and beautiful artwork and I’m enjoying each issue. The story has the four traveling across America after Reed really screwed up and sent his whole building a year into the future. They are resting at Aunt Petunia’s place when Doom attacks and beats them. When I read it I was struck by parallels to Fantastic Four 200. 

In that storyline Reed had lost his powers and the Four had broken up. Johnny was a race car driver, Ben was a test pilot, Susan was an actor and Reed was a scientist. There was all a plot by Doom to give Reed back his powers so that Doom could defeat Reed at his most powerful. It succeeded but Doom failed and was destroyed by his own weapon. 

In this story Doom starts out by destroying the teams words, taking them letter by letter ~ I loved them trying to do the ‘abc song’ and failing~ until the Four could no longer function as a whole. Doom then tells them he will go back and undo Reeds failure and rescue the children. Of course he fails as well. (Here’s where North really highlights the difference between the two men). When Reed failed he accepted his mistake and did everything he could to make it better, even if it meant giving people someone to blame. When Doom realized he could not fix the problem and lost himself in an endless loop of useless attempts he gave up and prevented his past self from even making the journey in the first place. He stopped the technology from working and gave Susan the chance to slip her force field into the crack, breaking it. 

The Fantastic Four are a family. They are distinct and flawed and we love them, warts and all. Doom is tragic. He will always sabotage his own attempts to be a hero and never accept that he is his own greatest enemy. The story ends with Doom flying away and the Four going back to bed. They have to fix the wall first because Aunt Petunia is scarier than any Doom.

Keep up the good work you two and here’s to the next hundred issues.