Hold onto your Unstable Molecules because it’s time for another FF Review Two-in-One!
First Up…
Doctor Doom offers a clean slate as a wedding gift to the world in Fantastic Four #33 – Part II of “Bride of Doom”. Written by Dan Slott. Drawn by R.B. Silva & Luca Maresca. Colored by Jesus Arbutov. Lettered by Joe Caramagna.
Fantastic Four #33 gets achingly close to being good and then crashes headlong back to bad this issue. Set almost entirely in Latveria, Dan Slott and company kick off the nuptials in grand style and slick visuals. All while Sue Storm’s fiery kid brother wonders how he’s going to keep it together and sit through this ceremony.
Further complicating matters is the condition of everyone’s attendance: full immunity and a cease of hostilities against anyone formerly an enemy of the Latverian state. Oh, and the fact that Johnny totally hooked up with the bride-to-be.
While I still have major problems with the latter plot point, which we will get into a bit later, Fantastic Four #33 continues to hew closer to functional Fantastic Four storytelling. The wrinkle of the “ceasefire” clause to everyone’s RSVP is a really good one and writer Dan Slott does a wonderful job selling its importance to all narrative parties currently active in the title.
It also absolutely feels like a Doom move, too. Only he would basically force people to attend a party he’s throwing with some judicious fine print. So that silly (and soundly petty) characterization is something I can always value in a Fantastic Four issue.
Reed, Sue, Ben, and the abundant cameos also shine here, thankfully. Ben has a few genuinely funny moments throughout #33 and everyone else provides either a wry or charmingly optimistic soundboard for the whole thing unfolding in front of them. All are rendered in the absolutely sumptuous panels and color choices of the art team.
But much like the last issue, the fault lies in the Johnny Storm of it all, as the issue is hinged around the odd Three’s Company-like take Slott has on the relationship between him and Victorious. You see, nobody knows about the hookup, so much of #33’s page count is dedicated to how Johnny and Victorious are going to deal with it. And how they are going to tell everybody.
I can hear y’all now. “But Justin! What about Sky?! Isn’t he still dating Sky?!”. To which I say, I am glad you care about Sky like I do and it’s worse than you would expect. Through their “soul-bond”, Sky literally felt him cheat on her and reacted by announcing her imminent return to her home planet.
Ignoring but still acknowledging the truly troubling nonconsensual overtones and twisted intersexual dynamics of this story element, the way in which Slott stages her goodbye seems too flippant, too casually rendered for this all to really matter like he wants it to. She, quite literally, leaves the book for the time being with a single panel phone call with a staging that doesn’t even allow us to see her face.
This same flippancy and casual male cruelty also poison Johnny Storm’s characterization this month. Though he is the one that initiates the aforementioned phone call, attempting to reach out, the scene itself is buffeted by his awareness that they are going to Latveria and he’s going to see Victorious again. Wanting both a date and another superhero as “backup”.
So, not only do we have Johnny willfully trying to bring a girl to the wedding to make Victorious jealous, but he then just casts off said girl with barely a thought not even ten minutes after getting to Latveria. Scarcely even mentioning or trying to work through how she obviously felt his infidelity (which the previously on text even explicitly states is the case). Opting instead to appeal to the bride-to-be to “give them a chance” while his “soulmate” languishes, presumably “feeling” all of this.
I truly hated this, readers.
There is also the further grossness of the reveal to the wedding assembly that Victorious slept with Johnny. The quietly reproachful way the issue treats Sky is one thing. You could tell that after her introduction Slott didn’t much know what to do with her, so he’s trying to give her a dramatic exit (but ultimately failing). But this Victorious sequence just plays mean and punitive toward her for the simple fact of being sexually autonomous.
And not disclosing it to her husband-to-be, who would have probably judged her harshly for contact with his sworn enemies and then made her maybe “disappear” for the slight. I know she’s technically a “villain” (and also, like, not real) but I can’t see what being this punishing to her adds to the overall texture of this volume. Beyond, obviously, making a woman who had sex the butt of a joke. At the expense of another woman’s relationship, no less.
My bit now is “I read Fantastic Four so you don’t have to”. But the parts that work about Fantastic Four #33 make me want to start finally recommending it. That is, until, the book starts back on some thudding misogyny and troubling sexual politics and then I forget the whole thing entirely…again…
I am not ready to outweigh the bad with the good here just yet, but at the very least, Fantastic Four #33 gave me plenty to chew on. Both good and bad.
“The Bride of Doom” comes to an immensely frustrating conclusion in Fantastic Four #34. Written by Dan Slott. Drawn by R.B. Silva. Colored by Jesus Arbutov. Lettered by Joe Caramagna.
I had to wait an additional two and a half weeks to review Fantastic Four #34.
I tell you this not as a “gotcha” against the shifting nature of comic book releases. I’ve worked in this industry long enough to know that that’s just part and parcel of the process sometimes.
I also don’t tell you this to be petty or needlessly snarky. I am the one who took this beat, knowing full well who was writing it and also knowing that that’s just gonna happen occasionally. It’s just out of my hands and I can deal with that.
I tell you this because I truly hope you didn’t wait like I did for Fantastic Four #34 because it absolutely was not worth it.
Fantastic Four #34 apparently is the finale of the grand “Bride of Doom” storyline and we end it pretty much where we started it. With everything being made up and the points not really mattering in the larger scheme of the title. #34 opens “seconds” (read: weeks) after #33. Victorious has revealed her dalliance with Johnny Storm at the altar and Victor has reacted accordingly. By slut-shaming the living shit out of her and laying some smack down on the wedding guests; all of whom are still under the thrall of Latverian technology and unable to retaliate against Doom or his forces.
Once again, we get frustratingly close to some fun here. The narrative wrinkle of them not being able to offensively stand against Doom is genuinely neat and forces writer Dan Slott to think outside the box with the assembled cast and guest stars in order to deploy their powers and skills DEFENSIVELY. Mostly everyone’s voices here too are much more shored up than they have been in recent issues. Ben is lovably grouchy and Sue gets a few punchy one-liners as she takes the role of “field commander”, ordering the Fam, T’Challa, and Namor around in entertaining ways.
This run also continues to look absolutely stunning as well thanks to R.B. Silva and Jesus Aburtov. The sheer destruction of this issue-long set-piece does somewhat muddy their usually great background details and setting backdrops. But even with that slight misstep, the whole cast and the action throughout radiates with expressiveness and splashy layouts, keeping at least the visual timbre of this volume up to snuff.
But one can’t help but be underwhelmed by the “finale” of “Bride of Doom”. For one thing, I somewhat expected this to be a longer arc. Part of the reason I wanted to start writing these up, aside from trying to articulate my frustration with it, was because I thought this sounded like a breezy, slightly soapy way to get back into it. But now here we are, three issues later, four if you count the “Prelude To…” runway issue of #31, and Slott just casually reveals that the whole thing has been a sham. “The Biggest FF Story of the Summer” was little more than a pretense for Doom to get a bunch of people to come to his house and see how much they like him. Oh, and Victorious gets a new hat because Victor decrees she can’t ever show her face again ever. All for kissing a boy that isn’t Victor.
Speaking of said boy, I suppose Johnny’s new status is the real “development” of this arc. If you can call it that. Despite having recently been seen at the Hellfire Gala in regular dress uniforms, this “event’s” biggest forward development is centered on Johnny. As punishment for hooking up with Victorious, Johnny Storm is attacked by the “Armagedron”, the machine Slott has been teasing for basically the whole of this run. After protecting Zora from one of Doom’s power blasts and then taking the full might of the “Armagedron’s” Cosmic Ray-powered lasers, Johnny is placed into a state of constant nova, burning a bright blue with no access to his “human” form now.
It’s…fine. It honestly reminds me a lot of Matt Fraction’s hook of Fantastic Four, a few volumes back. Wherein the First Family’s DNA is being broken down by their exposure to the Cosmic Rays and the more they use their powers, the faster they break down. I can also see the narrative possibilities Slott is reaching for here. He just spent a whole arc alienating Johnny from the rest of the cast and holding them at arm’s length, so now, he’s just made that explicit. Taking him from standoffish to literally unapproachable in the span of a few pages. That’s something I could truck with for a few issues, absolutely.
I just still don’t understand why it had to come at the expense of Victorious’ honor to get there. Once again “The Bride of Doom” is pushed handily to the side, serving only as a plot prop hinging the anger of Victor and the wounded ego Johnny Storm. With a healthy dollop of more dialogue centered around how she needs to be punished simply for the act of sexual autonomy. How her status has been destroyed simply because she felt something for someone other than Doom. The facial chastity belt she is forced to don at the issue’s end is just the icing on a very misogynistic cake. One made twice as sickly with the reveal that she’s wearing it WILLINGLY.
I thought “The Bride of Doom” was going to signal an upswing for me with this volume of Fantastic Four. I thought that I was gonna get a silly, but entertaining exploration of the interpersonal dynamics of one of my favorite Marvel villains and how it reverberates through his greatest foes, The Fantastic Four.
Instead, I got a tonally jumbled, weirdly pointed story about how a woman needs to be punished for thinking she can have a life outside of her position and how her choices affect the men, and men ONLY in her life. Also, Namor was there. I expected far more during the wait for Fantastic Four #34. But that’s the job, I guess. Writing about The World’s “Greatest” Comic Magazine. Maybe, eventually, I can take those quotation marks out again.
Two-in-One Thoughts
- People in the letters are still complaining about Reed’s beard. Can I not have ONE GOOD THING?!
- Caramagna letters the absolute hell out of this issue’s “IT’S CLOBBERIN’ TIME!”
- Next time! The 60th Anniversary Issue! A CRISIS ON INFINITE KANGS!
- *whispers* In Galactus’ Name I Pray, PLEASE BE GOOD.
Zachary Jenkins runs ComicsXF and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of all this.
