Ryan North’s Fantastic Four run has reminded readers of everything they love about the Fantastic Four. One World Under Doom has thrown the Marvel Universe into a tizzy, as new Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Doom has used his powers to take over the world. That’s not all he’s taken, as he robbed the Thing of his powers in a bid to take away the powers of the whole team. This has sent through the Fantastic Four on a temporal, multiversal trip to give the Thing his powers back, which fails every time. The Thing surreptitiously changed the spatial coordinates to Earth 616’s past in desperation. He regained his powers… but at the cost of the Fantastic Four’s. The issue ended with the universe ending and Fantastic Four #32 picks up where things left off, as Valeria Richards, whose mind took over Mary Richard’s (her counterpart on this Earth) body.
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Valeria finds a world that’s very familiar, and immediately wonders how the world could even still exist, as the Fantastic Four stood between the Earth and doom multiple times (sometimes Doom). She gets her answer when she meets Franklin, who is in the form of Galactus. Franklin has been used like a weapon by her parents to protect the world with his godlike powers, and has created a world where any problems are solved by his powers, from supervillains’s greatest acts to the simplest acts of crime. This gives Valeria an idea, and the plan she creates is a partly from an X-Men classic, the dark future tale called “Days of Future Past”. This story is also related to Franklin, making this issue’s story work on multiple levels.
The Fantastic Four and “Days of Future Past” Have Been Linked for Years
“Days of Future Past”, by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, ran through Uncanny X-Men #141-142. The story opens in the future, a world where the US government passed the Mutant Registration Act, which led to a Sentinels arms race, which led to the mutant-hunting robots killing most mutants and superhumans, putting the remainder of humanity in concentration camps where they can make sure mutants aren’t born. The surviving X-Men form a resistance, and come up with a desperate plan — send the mind of Kate Pryde back into her young body and prevent the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly. The plan is a success, but the Earth of “Days of Future Past” still existed. Readers learned in later stories that one of the X-Men’s most powerful — and useful — members in this future is Franklin Richards. The telepathic, reality-altering mutant helps fight against the Sentinels and even helps send his girlfriend Rachel Summers back in time to the present.
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In Fantastic Four #32, Valeria quickly realizes that Franklin is going to be a problem with her plans to restore the old universe, but she’s the only person who thinks that Franklin has gone too far. Jean Grey and her husband Namor (which is something of a funny joke in its own right for longtime Marvel fans) are the last few members of the resistance left. Valeria comes up with a desperate plan, one that takes a page from “Days of Future Past”. She gets Jean and Namor to get her parts for a time machine of sorts, to open a temporal wormhole and send her mind through it into her old body in the last universe. As I was reading the issue, I immediately thought of “Days of Future Past”, and saluted North for using this idea. There’s a little irony to it even, as later in the “Days of Future Past” timeline, Franklin would do something quite similar. However, North is too good of a writer to leave things there. It obviously doesn’t work.
Fantastic Four #32 Brilliantly Subverts the “Days of Future Past” Trope
Valeria Richards is one of the smartest people on the face of the Earth. She’s smart enough to know that Franklin is basically omniscient. She knew that he would sense the wormhole opening, and she knew that he could move at the speed of thought. There was no way for her plan to work in time. She even knew that it would be somewhat impossible to send her whole mind back in time. She made sure that everyone thought of the old plan in order to fool Franklin, though, to hide the real plan. Her actual plan was to send something much smaller back in time — just four words, leading to the next issue.
Fantastic Four #32 is an example of everything good a Fantastic Four story can be, with North combining ideas from “Days of Future Past” and the classic episode of The Twilight Zone “It’s a Good Life”. This is an amazing comic, one that shows just how frightening Franklin could have been and how efficient Valeria is. The word peak is thrown around a lot, but this issue deserves it more than most thing called it. This is peak Fantastic Four.
Fantastic Four #32 is on sale now.
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