The story of the Fantastic Four’s lives in real time continues! Set in the 1970s, the heroes struggle to find their role in a rapidly changing world. Sue continues to fight for social causes while Reed becomes increasingly obsessed with preparing for the impending arrival of Galactus, creating tension within the Four. Let’s do the hustle with writer Mark Russell, artist Sean Izaakse, colorist Nolan Woodard and letterer Joe Caramagna.
Dan Grote: Justin, let’s start broad. You’re a young man with a lot of feelings about Marvel’s First FamilyTM. Every month, we watch you log your disappointments with the current run on the book. Is covering this Life Story offshoot, this real-time alt-walk down memory lane, doing anything to ease your suffering?
Justin Partridge: Honestly?! I think so!
I mean, the bar is absolutely in the basement by now. Especially after last week’s … truly horrid and misogynistic #33 (Review coming soon, True Beliebers!). But Life Story is finally allowing us generally pretty entertaining and sumptuously drawn/colored Fantastic Four storytelling.
Does this issue get a bit tripped up in the temporal trappings of the era? A little bit, sure. But honestly I am just happy that I don’t open this particular FF comic and then spend the whole of its page count audibly groaning and swearing under my breath.
A Woman Named Sue
Dan: While issue #1 kept the focus on Reed and his close encounter of the Galactus kind, this issue centers on Sue and the malaise she feels wanting to do good but constantly subject to her husband’s folly.
The narration boxes change from Reed’s bright blue letters in issue #1 to Sue’s touch of gray in issue #2, but it takes a few pages before you realize we’re getting Sue’s perspective on things. Maybe that’s a commentary on our implicit bias as male readers? Dunno. Justin, thoughts on this issue you can’t spell without SUE?
Justin: I think it’s a smart move for the follow-up, for sure!
Because, like you said, more often than not Reed is usually our POV character, and the subtle shift Russell and the art team deploy to get us following Sue is genuinely striking.
But as Reed becomes more and more obsessed with the Galactus of it all, this issue needs a new emotional center, and Sue provides it in spades. I would have liked to have seen her get a BIT more to do in this issue, for sure. But the way Russell and the art team continually sell her loneliness and disconnection from the team she arguably built gives the issue a neat slice of pathos I was taken by.
I also think it builds to a nice parallel with Reed in #2. While Reed and Doom (making his first appearance here, alongside Namor and Black Panther; for my money three of the most important FF characters that aren’t actual FF members) keep their eyes on the horizon, Sue can’t help but keep her eyes firmly locked on what’s happening around them.
Again, would I have appreciated this more if it wasn’t mostly focused around her having to miss out on superheroics to raise Franklin? I think so. But all the same, I do appreciate Life Story #2 delving a bit deeper into the team’s interpersonal dynamics, framed by their own history and the title’s take on the decades.
Dan: The motif of “I don’t see Sue around, do you?” is meant to be very sad. Sue with Cap’s shield? The opposite of sad, which I believe is RAD AF.
And can I just say, it’s nice to see Reed face real consequences for being an absent-minded, tunnel-visioned obsessive. Sure, Sue leaves Reed, but if you really think about it, didn’t Reed leave Sue for Galactus?
Justin: Oh, hell, I truly LOVE that read on this issue.
But you aren’t wrong! The text totally bares it out. And I think this series giving Reed an actual narrative reason for his disconnection has done wonders for the character.
Oftentimes he comes across like the old “Doctor Who: Curse of the Fatal Death” gag. Operating at a higher level of awareness, above his co-stars, like the Doctor can, and then only offering a curt “I’ll explain later!” when anyone actually tries to get him to talk it through.
But by replacing his nebulous “smart guy” aloofness with blind terror and focus on the coming of Galactus at least gives us something tangible, as an audience, to hang on to while he gets further and further away from his family. I think further hinging that emotionality around SUE and her increasing distance from Reed is another really smart set of choices that keeps their characterizations solid.
At first, you understand why Sue wants to stay close to home, but you also understand how and why she feels pushed away because of it. And then, as the issue continues, you keep understanding why she keeps feeling further and further away, constantly overlooked in favor of Reed’s “greater good.” And then, yeah, she gets an incredibly badass moment to send us into the ’80s with!
I have some problems with it for sure, mainly due to the Namor-sized complication we get in the final pages (LET SUE BE SINGLE, Y’ALL), but I have to say Fantastic Four: Life Story #2 is already a DAMN sight better than her whole solo miniseries last year was.
Dan: Hey, we don’t know how serious Sue and Namor are. Let her have some fun with the Prince of Abs-Lantis. She’s earned it.
Justin: God, has she ever…
Jump Around
Dan: Whereas the first issue told a more cohesive story, centered on the team’s origin, this issue jumped around a lot to pack in familiar beats from FF history. In 33 pages, we get Doctor Doom, the Mad Thinker, Klaw, Namor, Black Panther and the Skrulls, not to mention guest spots from Captain America, the Falcon, Tony Stark, Hank Pym and the Wasp. J-dog, how we feelin’ about this very busy issue?
Justin: I will definitely agree that it’s busy. So as the ongoing Reed/Sue strife takes up the foreground, the background, like Dan so handsomely said, is basically a Who’s Who of Fantastic co-stars. But even with the constant name-dropping and cameos, I still think the creative team weaves them into the narrative organically. At least in a damn well better way than the main title handles some of these co-stars’ inclusion.
We get a lot of fun background on the era, which found a lot of Marvel icons separating themselves from the state and battling for social justice on their own terms. And Russell’s plot for Sue stands her alongside Cap, Sam Wilson and the others quite beautifully, in my opinion, positioning her as the FF member who is concerned about the homefront as much as she is extranormal threats.
Again, some of this is a bit thudding and “white woman feminism,” like a scene in which Sue gets her copy of The Feminine Mystique (not that one) signed right before her U.N. address. But just because it’s broad doesn’t mean it isn’t good. That’s really where I think I land on this section.
Dan: Doom seems to have one of the most significant origin shifts in this comic. What do we think about taking him from a college frenemy of that fool Richards who turns into a cackling despot to a peer in the scientific community who turns into a cackling despot?
Justin: WELL, I am of two minds about it.
On the one hand, I kinda fucking love it? We were wondering in the opening issue when Doom was going to rear his armored face, and we opened pretty much immediately with his introduction here. Again, I appreciate the team rooting “our” idea of Doom into something totally different but tonally sound. Instead of college roommates, Reed and Doom are basically co-workers who bond into a real friendship. Doom even takes it a step further by actually BELIEVING Reed about the incoming threat of Galactus — one of the only major characters to do so thus far. I like that we get so much time with them as actual friends before the turn happens.
But on the other hand, I think said turn (that we all kinda see coming, really) just sort of happens? Without any real preamble, which I think undercuts slightly the really good stuff Russell puts between them in the issue’s first half. I mean, I do GET IT, really. His name is DOCTOR DOOM; of course he’s going to be a baddie. And Russell tries to gussy it up a touch by framing his heel turn as a reaction to learning Reed won’t “go far enough” to “save the world” (Read: enslave everyone and kill all the superheroes), which is classic Doom/Reed stuff you can find in any fic tagged with the pairing.
I dunno, maybe I just wanted a bit more narrative runway to get us to Doom’s turn. Or maybe even just a little more time with them actually connecting.
Dan: They could do with a little Charles-and-Erik-brand sexual tension, that’s for true.
One stray note: I did love the Mad Thinker’s trap scene. It was that very Silver Age combination of oversized and silly, Murderworld meets Batman ‘66 meets an AHOY comic. It gave Izaakse something to chew on.
Justin: OH GOD, BIG TIME. And it’s another awesome example of how Russell can make these broader, more goofy scenes work. His Superman entry into the Future State line was full of stuff like this; just off-the-nut setups that he seems to take really seriously. So I was truly happy to see it get a Merry Marvel makeover here (alongside one of my favorite lower-tier FF villains).
World Outside Your Window
Dan: Just like the first issue gave us the space race and JFK, issue #2 works in a number of real-world figures and events. Sue is hip-deep in the women’s lib movement, Ben Grimm guest stars on Bonanza! and Reed yells at Carl Sagan (how dare!). Did you have a favorite moment of fantasy and fact intersecting?
Justin: OKAY SO, I think this issue does suffer slightly from its period trappings. But, holy crow, did I love the quiet reveal that Ben Grimm had a whole freaking Rick Dalton-like career as a TV heavy. Someone please draw us a poster of The Thing starring in an episode of Bounty Law.
Dan: I’d love more of that in these Life Story treatments. Give me Johnny Storm on MTV’s Next. Give me Doctor Strange as the secret square on Hollywood Squares. Give me Dazzler as a judge on American Idol.
Justin: Wonder Man hosting The $100,000 Pyramid! Swordsman having his own line of aerobics tapes! The possibilities are endless!
But I think, like the first issue before it, #2 stumbles a bit with its history. Instead of dubiously leading a civil rights march, Sue’s now involved in the budding women’s liberation movement of the ’70s, while Reed and the rest of the team rub shoulders with scientific luminaries of the time (peppered with Marvel brains like Tony Stark and Hank Pym).
It’s … fine, honestly. It doesn’t leave an instantly bad taste in the mouth like the opening issue did, but I think some of the middle of the issue comes across a little clunky, the Sagan stuff in particular. I think the likenesses and the visual acuity of the scenes are really fun. It feels and looks realistic enough, and I will admit to feeling a bit of a geeky charge seeing Reed Richards talking to the guy who made my Sunday mornings watching public television so magical as a kid.
But it just feels like it’s maybe getting in the way slightly of the real stuff the creative team wants to focus on? Specifically Sue’s alienation and Reed’s continued drifting. In a perfect world, these scenes would be focused more on Johnny and Ben, both trying in their own ways to bring them back together, but this is decidedly NOT that. I may be trying to review the book I WANTED this to be, instead of the book it actually IS right now, but I can only live and write my OWN truth, True Beliebers. @ me all you want. I love talking about the FF, even when I’m wrong about it.
Marvelous Musings
- The Stark-sponsored symposium on how the world will end, while not set in the 1980s, should have been moderated by Bill Murray.
- Hank Pym as “the radioactive ants guy” is ::chef’s kiss::.
- But not as chef’s kiss as Namor reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in his swim trunks with his bare feet up on the table at his local library FOR SEEMINGLY NO REASON.
- LOTS of great Namor moments this round, along with him in his best costume. The fish-trunks and NOTHING ELSE. God, we love that fishy bastard.
- Love the Avengers meeting under a classic Farrah Fawcett bathing suit poster.
- If we’re changing POV with each installment, very much looking forward to a Ben Grimm issue.
Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts WMQ&A: The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
