The Fantastic Four are all tied up in Empyre but before they get to that, they have to wrap up their wild adventures with the X-Men in X-Men/Fantastic Four #4 by Chip Zdarsky, Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson, Ranson Getty, and Laura Martin. With Doom’s hand revealed, Franklin makes his choice between Yancy Street and Krakoa.
Stephanie Burt: It’s been so long since the last one that I’m having trouble getting my brain back onto this island. I want to stay on Krakoa, or go in search of Kate Pryde. Wait, here she is! Part of me doesn’t care what else happens in this issue: I just want to read a Marvel comic in which Kate Pryde is alive.
That part of me is apparently not “critical.” The other parts are more “interesting.” I’ll let them take over now.
Andrea Ayres: Long time no talk! I’ve missed this. I can’t help myself but agree with you, I could get rid of the FF in this issue and just read about Kate and Franklin. I feel like their dynamic is the most interesting. For me this entire series falls a little flat and it doesn’t change much in #4. What isn’t hitting for me? Hard to pinpoint exactly. It feels like it’s on the cusp of being there but it’s missing a puzzle piece.
Faux (Or Foe) Autonomy
SB: It’s not that none of the other characters change or make decisions; rather, they (Sue and Reed and Chuck and maybe Doom) change, or revert to type, in predictable and not especially dramatic ways.
The current series looks even worse when you set it beside the 1980s FFvX, where Reed and Doom and Kate and Franklin and Sue all grew and changed in ways with long-term ramifications, ways no one could have seen coming long in advance. Here… I feel like we saw it coming.
We do get some fun moments when the adults try to parent Franklin. Doom tells Sue that Franklin can’t be interrupted till he’s finished his tech upgrade because he’ll lose his progress. That’s what my eighth grader says about his Legend of Zelda character at bedtime. Sometimes I let him keep playing. [Ed. note: If he is playing an older Zelda, they have specific places where he can save and not doing so has a big impact. If it’s Breath Of The Wild you are getting fooled.]
The FF treated Franklin like a child (and Sue calls him one) throughout the series, but Doom treats Franklin like a child here too: Doom’s a bad actor serving his own ambitions by feeding a child’s demand for autonomy, as if Franklin just wanted a later bedtime. But Franklin’s about to see through it.
AA: You’ve touched on one dynamic I think is quite interesting in this series. It’s the one between Doom, who offers a faux autonomy to Franklin and then Franklin’s parents, who offer him none or little.
Doom uses technology to make lofty promises to Franklin, promises this teenager wants and needs to hear. “You’ll be okay.”
I reflected on that while reading this. Doom promises what the internet promises all of us. In the same way the internet uses what we desire via data collection, tracking cookies and the like; that’s essentially what Doom does to Franklin. Side note: the use of technology to manipulate teenagers (and adults) is an enterprising field of research. Doom promises the world. Franklin’s power and problems can be saved. Franklin can be everything he wants to be and what does Doom want in return? Nothing really. Just a little access. This access, however, is worth more than Franklin may understand at this point in the issue. It’s something his parents, however, seem to get. Curious to hear your take on that?
SB: I had not seen the analogy between Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, etc. collecting personal data on teens and Doom collecting data on Franklin, but you are absolutely right. (What if, behind the mask, Doom looks like Mark Zuckerberg?)
Doom tells Franklin that nobody’s on his side except Doom. Then he monkeys with the powers of the only adult who’s clearly on Franklin’s side, sending her plummeting through ground, and through the laws of physics, by making her…. “heavier than stone”? That’s not her power set; that’s Harry Leland’s. From what we’ve seen till now Kate doesn’t control her mass; she controls quantum probability (the chance that atoms will slip past each other). When she almost died in the 1980s FFvX she didn’t float up into the atmosphere like a helium balloon; she discorporated– her atoms had less and less probability of interacting with one another, and with the world around them. See The Physics Of Superheroes by James Kakalios for more about this.
Maybe Doom knows more about Kate’s powers than I do. (PS I’m not sure he does.) At least he calls her Katherine. He’s still a jerk, though. When Kate asks Franklin “Is this what you want?”– “this” meaning “Uncle Doom may kill your parents”– Franklin figures it out.
AA: I feel like we could write an entire book, or at least a chapter about Doom, control and Kate from this series.
Fixing What’s Broken
AA: It’s painful to see this moment of realization. It’s the moment where Franklin puts together how manipulative adults are. It shows how they are often self-interested and petty the same way children and teens can be. It’s pulling back the mask that anyone really has it together. I’d be curious to know what you think about the overall look and feel of this issue?
SB: Just as in X-Men/Fantastic Four #3, everyone looks a bit like they’re made of shiny metal. I guess it’s a sunny island. Laura Martin’s colors blew me away: so much light, both tech from the superhero fights and tropical illumination. Unlike in last ish, the Dodsons draw some very expressive faces, especially Franklin’s and Reed’s. I wonder if it’s a relief for an inker or penciller to go from drawing Doom all the time, with his mask full of rivets and angles, to drawing normal-ish human features.
AA: That’s a damn good question. I have to admit one of my favorite images in this entire run is the look of gratitude and (maybe) understanding on Kate and Franklin’s face on page 14. It’s the moment where Kate asks Franklin what he wants and he says he wants to go help his mom. Kate sees Franklin and he knows it. He understands he can speak honestly about what he truly wants.
Franklin says “Everything feels broken.” I don’t think there’s a better way to sum up what it’s like being a teenager, okay being a human. Everything constantly feels broken. So often parents try to shield us from the world and as we grow the facade breaks down. It’s difficult, reality is not pretty and learning how to cope is really damn hard. As teenagers the brain develops the capacity for complex thinking and that really makes dealing with life a lot more challenging, especially with hormones up in that milieu. As adolescents the body feels broken, our minds, relationships… it’s a great line.
SB: Agreed. I’d like to see more about how that feels. More about how it feels to be Franklin. Kate gets it– the more so because she, too, grew up among superheroes, facing superhero-level dangers, while adults around her assumed she would be OK.
AA: Yep! We also see Franklin claim his autonomy. It’s an important message too. It says, yes. You can be broken. You can be hopelessly broken but still lay claim and ownership to what you want. Brokenness doesn’t disabuse you of your autonomy. I feel like Western culture often signals that message to us, unless you are ‘together’ you can’t make decisions for yourself. Hogwash. *slams fist on table filled with metal goblets*
Great Men With Obvious Solutions
SB: Sue sure has to give a speech before coming to the obvious sensible solution: let Franklin live on Krakoa as long as he comes home for dinner sometimes. The kid she and Reed should worry about is Valeria, who wants her Uncle Doom to “move on to ‘acceptance’ in the stages of grief over the death of humans.” Does that mean she wants him more comfortable with killing people? [Ed. note: no] Or that she wants him to accept the coming death of humans as a species, in favor of mutants or in favor of posthumans, techno-replacements, the Singularity? [Ed. note: yes] Are Doom and Valeria part of the coming techno-priesthood we saw in Powers of X? [Ed. note: it would be the 3rd time Hickman pulled that]
AA: My thoughts? VALERIA, STAHP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!
SB: There sure are a lot of genius men here congratulating themselves on their personal growth. Chuck visiting Reed, mind-wiping his mutant-gene-dampening gadget, and then explaining that he, Chuck, is now too moral to erase Reed’s memory of getting his mind wiped… it feels very in character. (What’s he gonna do next, fake his own death?)
AA: I wish so much that this ending was not what it was. It feels so anticlimactic. It kind of diminishes the entire arc for me. Like…of course this is how it ends. Of course.
SB: On the last page, Chuck says, “That was then. This is now,” and Magneto tells Reed “Your wild unchecked actions are now being checked.” This is… not the kind of snappy dialogue I want from Chip Zdarsky. What’s next? “We’re tired of being The Outsiders?” Maybe some hockey fic, with a goalie named Tex?
Andrea, does anything in this issue surprise you? Because nothing surprises me. It’s almost exactly the resolution I was expecting. It looks cool, though, it’s visually varied even in the talking-heads segment (the back half), and it’s all in character. Maybe that’s enough.
AA: It’s not enough for me damn it. I’m a hard person to please though. I totally agree with you. Midway through reading this issue, I imagined we’d get more of Kate. I don’t know to be blunt about it all; I could give a s-word about this ending, specifically those panels you reference Stephanie. I think you’ve really touched on how I feel about the promise of this comic versus the reality: doesn’t seem fair.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- This picture is just me [Ed. note: me] to this column.
- FFvX, Original Flavor, by Claremont, Bogdanove, Austin, et al, was a high bar to clear.
- Valeria, please don’t do what you seem to be doing.
- Would this book have felt different had the editing gone through the X-Office, rather than the office at Marvel responsible for the FF?
- Though there were ups and downs, I think we can all agree Kate’s hair was the real winner in all of this.
- Andrea will be moving on to cover X-Factor starting next week!
- Stephanie will still be around, we just gotta get comics to start coming back out normally.
Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids. Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.
