In this review of Fantastic Four #25, the team heads for a mission into Latveria, only to find themselves somewhere not even close.
Fantastic Four #25
Written by: Ryan North
Art by: Carlos Gómez
Main Cover: Joshua Cassara
Variant Covers: Greg Land, Greg Capullo, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Sean Galloway
Page Count: 36 pages
Release Date: September 11, 2024
This review contains spoilers
Fantastic Four #25 opens with the Fantastic Four landing just outside Latveria in some VTOL craft reminiscent of, but not exactly the same as, their old “Pogo Plane.” The reason why they couldn’t cross into Latveria is that the entire country is surrounded by an impossibly huge metal dome. Reed speculates that this must be magical in nature and clues us in to how, in current Marvel continuity, Dr. Doom is now the Sorcerer Supreme of Earth. When Johnny tries to burn his way through the dome, everyone is transported to a very different place. From the flora and the gravity, Reed quickly surmises they are on an alien world, proven to be even more true when they find a city full of this world’s intelligent species, invertebrates resembling some microscopic lifeforms, but human-sized.
Although some of fauna on this world, resembling gigantic insects, are mildly dangerous, the intelligent species is friendly and, once they iron the kinks out of their universal translator, are soon getting to know the locals. They have a lot of time to get to know the locals because Reed has to built a rocket-ship from scratch — the aliens have roughly 20th century knowledge of their own biology, but are technologically primitive — and he won’t know where to point it until the 3-month long rainy season ends and they can see the stars.
During this time, Johnny and one of the invertebrates fall in love with each other. As the rocket-ship is finished just before the monsoons end, everyone assumes that distance is the only factor that is going to challenge this new relationship – until Reed looks at the sky and realizes this is Earth. Something has altered the past so fundamentally that Earth was formed differently and life evolved on it much differently.
Converting the rocket into a time ship, the FF and Johnny’s new partner investigate a big burst of temporal in the distant past and see thousands of U.S. nukes teleported here by Doom’s protective barrier in the future and the nukes going off in eons past alter the course of Earth’s development radically. A debate ensues about which world to save and the ethics of letting the other one cease to exist, until Reed solves the dilemma by creating two timelines where both worlds coexist – with the catch being that the two timelines can’t cross again, so Johnny and his partner will never meet again.
Analysis
Last issue I was saying how excited I was to see a good old-fashioned two-parter and now we’re getting a done-in-one filler issue with Fantastic Four #25! Our author, Ryan North, is the same as usual, but the guest artist, Carlos Gómez and his quasi-manga look is filler issue-y and the lack of an Alex Ross cover makes this issue stand out, but not in a good way. Those Alex Ross covers have been great!
Last issue I was also saying how relieved I was not to see Dr. Doom come back for the zillionth time – and here we are in Fantastic Four #25, setting up for another big Dr. Doom encounter. At least we haven’t seen him yet and I have to admit this is probably a first, taking an entire issue trying, and failing, to cross the border into Latveria.
Although Reed is more critical to this story than anyone else, the focus is on Johnny and his relationship with Angelica Shore (or Angelica of the Shore, as the universal translator doesn’t seem to translate the concept of surnames to them perfectly). Tom Defalco had long ago made Johnny xenosexual (when Alicia turned out to be a Skrull), able to find alien species attractive, but this issue really pushes the envelope on that, as Johnny is able to find himself physically attracted to a female with only some features of a face, no skeleton, and only vaguely humanoid in form.
It seems so unlikely that I thought some explanation like mind control might come up. Instead, it feels like the entirety of Fantastic Four #25 was set up as a purity test. Are you able to accept Johnny’s sexuality if we have him do this? What about this? At some point, we are not really discussing Johnny’s sexuality anymore, but a parody of his sexuality, and that’s the line I feel like this issue crossed.
There are other issues I have with this issue. Although the rest of the FF are very supportive of Johnny, when Johnny gets home a therapist might help him realize that what he took for love was more likely a need borne of loneliness. At one point, Ben punches Johnny in the face and, unless Sue was blocking most of the blow, Johnny should be dead now or at least most of his skull fractured. It’s hard to imagine any scenario where the U.S. would shoot thousands of nukes at a country in Europe, particularly since missiles haven’t been able to get through to Latveria since the early 1960s. It’s hard to believe that Doom’s spell is so powerful that it just randomly sends a thousand missiles 4.5 billion years into the past.
It’s hard to believe that the spell is so selective that it transports all three of Johnny’s teammates, even though they are only near Johnny when he touches the dome, but it doesn’t also transport their plane, which was also near Johnny. It’s hard to believe this is Earth in just a different timeline; what about all the alien visitations Earth has experienced? Wouldn’t there still be this world’s version of the Inhumans here, modified by the Kree? It’s hard to believe that Reed just happens to have a doohickey in his made-from-scratch timeship that lets him make his own parallel timelines. It’s hard to believe that parallel timelines can’t cross, when the FF have explored different timelines before, and dimensions only separated by vibrational attunement from each other, without bringing the cosmos crashing down around them.
I do like the focus on hard science in this version of the Fantastic Four. I even liked the twist, at first, that the FF had been on Earth the whole time. Also, Carlos draws a gorgeous Sue (I love how her hair swirls when they’re in low gravity/high orbit). But there are not enough positives here to overcome all the negatives.
Marvel Comics provided The Comic Book Spot with an advance copy of Fantastic Four #25 for review purposes. Find more reviews here. If you would like to buy a copy of this title, and help support the Comic Book Spot at the same time, consider purchasing this book at Amazon, My Comic Shop, or at Things From Another World.
