Comic books love to reuse ideas. It’s only natural that the Big Two publishers reuse plot points and tropes now and again. Their superheroes are designed to live in never-ending stories, and it’s far easier to fall back on tropes and expand on them than it is to constantly focus on being entirely original. In the modern literary landscape, being truly original is almost impossible, so when genuinely untested and new ideas come up, it’s especially important to foster them and give them the best shot possible. Marvel just had their biggest chance to do that with the Fantastic Four since Hickman’s run, but unfortunately, they fumbled it.
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One World Under Doom showed the evil doctor declare himself emperor of the world after he tricked Doctor Strange into making him Sorcerer Supreme. However, Doom going even madder with power isn’t exactly a new idea, even with a fresh coat of paint. No, the real new idea happened in One World Under Doom #7, where Mister Fantastic used his mastery over science to mimic magical might and become the Scientist Supreme. Reed has never used magic before, and yet the first time he ever did came out of nowhere and didn’t matter, which is a problem.
The Master of Science, Not Magic
Mister Fantastic has always spoken against magic. Frankly, he doesn’t even believe in it, despite how abundant it is in the Marvel Universe. To him, magic is simply a science that no one has been able to quantify or understand. Inherently, magic is not science, and actively works against it. In the Marvel Universe, magic and science are incompatible, which is demonstrated numerous times in the stories of characters like Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch. Magic has its own rules, but they are often contradictory and defy categorization, breaking the laws that govern things like physics and biology.
Reed mastering magic through scientific means kind of goes against the very few established rules for magic. Instead of training or understanding the magic he was using, Reed just mimicked what Doom did and achieved the same results, which is a scientific result, not a magical one. It makes magic feel sort of cheap, like it’s something that anyone can do by following steps. That is true to an extent, but magic also requires an inner component and understanding that Reed does not possess.
One of the things that set Doctor Doom apart from everyone else was his mastery of both magic and science. He’s the only major character who has an equal skill in using both, and he regularly combines them to bring about results that aren’t possible with either one alone. However, that combination of magic and science was also another barrier that the Fantastic Four needed to overcome to defeat him. They were scientists, so they had to rationalize and figure out the rules of their situation to win, while Doctor Doom would cheat with magic. Reed learning magic upsets this relationship, which should have been a really cool moment. The problem is that this was not built up to at all, and was over far too soon.
Wasting a Great Story For Shock Value
Despite all the potential downsides to Reed learning magic, Mister Fantastic breaking past all of his preconceived notions and actually trying to figure out how magic works is a very cool idea. However, the big problem is that this idea came out of nowhere, and it was immediately thrown away. There was no buildup to Reed studying Doom’s movements and spells, or asking other established magic users for tips and understanding. Reed could just suddenly do magic, and as hype as this was, it was more jarring than cool because I was left wondering how he figured this out.
Beyond that, Reed’s magic was all but abandoned immediately by the story and had practically no impact. The comic specifically says that Doom rips Reed’s astral self apart and bars him from ever entering the Astral Plane again, and in the final issue, Reed isn’t shown using magic at all. Reed’s spells distracted Doom for a moment and combined the heroes’ attacks into a single blow, but it didn’t amount to anything. The idea of Mister Fantastic mastering magic through scientific rules could be so cool and so inspiring, showing that nothing is out of people’s reach if they are willing to learn, even if they can’t understand what’s happening, but it wasn’t that.
Mister Fantastic mastered magic for two issues, and although it’s possible, it’s also unlikely that we’ll be seeing him using any more magic anytime soon. I would love to see this idea expanded, but as of right now, the title of magical Scientist Supreme is severely underutilized and not living up to the potential of the idea.
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Image courtesy of Paramount+
