Fantastic Four: Dark Reign #1

In Fantastic Four: Dark Reign (Jonathan Hickman), Reed Richards builds a machine to travel to other realities to compare problem-solving techniques with his counterparts. It's a very cool idea, if not an entirely an original one. Mark Millar, during his run on Ultimate Fantastic Four, put Ultimate Reed Richards in contact with some of his alternate selves so they could work as a sort of uber-thinktank. But Millar's idea was merely a lead-in for his Ultimate FF vs. Marvel Zombies arc - in essence, just a macguffin to set up a big summer horror flick.

Here, Hickman gives the concept some real pathos. In the wake of the Skrull invasion, Reed looks back at all the recent tragedies that have rocked the Marvel Universe, like Secret Invasion, World War Hulk, Civil War, etc. He feels responsible some of these events, but more than that, he believes deeply that "every problem has a solution" and his interdimensional bridge is the way to find them. It gets at the core of Reed Richards, the intersection between the superhero and the scientist. And with all the inter-reality travel the Fantastic Four (not to mention other Marvel heroes) have engaged in over the years, it's a wonder it's taken 40+ years to see someone really tackle this story head on.

The remaining Fantastic Three are left without knowing how long Reed will be gone or what he'll be facing while he's away. And of course there are some shenanigans from Norman "I'm a Sane Protector of Babies and Apple Pie Now, Really" Osborn as Reed is heading out, 'cause what else happens on a Tuesday night in the Baxter Building?

(The comic didn't actually specify that it was a Tuesday. But it was in some reality, I'm sure. So there.)

- JC

Secret Warriors #1

Brian Michael Bendis and Jonathan Hickman's new series Secret Warriors was advertised with the promise of "a secret that will break the internet [sic] into tiny little pieces." (via) As it turns out, the secret has a lot of possibilities for a superhero/spy comic book, but the execution is a little shaky at this point.

The story is told in a non-linear format, but basically Nick Fury, the former head of S.H.I.E.L.D, goes back to an old secret base and hacks a computer to find out that H.Y.D.R.A, long-time enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D, has apparently infiltrated and may secretly have been running S.H.I.E.L.D before it disbanded. And now H.Y.D.R.A. may be running H.A.M.M.E.R, which replaced S.H.I.E.L.D and is under control of the U.S. government. (I'm going to stop typing the dots in the acronyms now, because I feel stupid. - RD)

My question: why is Nick Fury just finding out about this now? If all he needed to access the secret database in the secret SHIELD base was his secret username and secret password, as badass and super-spy as he's supposed to be, why doesn't he know all this until after the fact? SHIELD doesn't even exist anymore. Fury's final line of the comic, "I've been working for the bad guys the whole time," is a nice cliffhanger, but unless they can give me a good reason why he didn't have access to the database, or how the HYDRA involvement was hidden even from the head of the organization, I don't buy it.

Later, Nick Fury breaks into the White House to talk with the President - presumably Obama, but kept in shadow throughout - to tell him all about these old SHIELD bases and the information and/or technology still in them. Fury then rejoins his spy kids and tells them to stake out one of the old bases. HYDRA agents are expected to appear and do their best to collect intel from the base. If HAMMER shows up, Fury says, it's proof that the administration is on the up-and-up, without HYDRA control.

I don't follow this logic. Double bluffs happen all the time in spy world. Nick Fury should expect them with his morning coffee. The President could easily send HAMMER agents as well as or in place of HYDRA agents, if in fact both agencies are run by the same people. It would actually be easier to send HAMMER in whether the good guys are corrupt or not. HAMMER has been reacquiring SHIELD technology since they took over, so they would cause far less comment if they simply moved in and set up shop. The presence of both organizations means nothing; the President, knowing that Nick Fury informed him of the SHIELD base for a reason, would assume that Fury would be watching him and send HAMMER agents regardless of HYDRA's involvement. This is Espionage 101, and I just can't believe that Fury hasn't already thought this through.

I'd like to see where it goes, and I expect a lot from this writing team. In the future, I hope the story explains itself a little better.

- JC

Dark Reign: New Nation

As part of the Dark Reign storyline, Marvel put out a book of five 8-page previews of new series or minis set to launch within the next few months. What's fascinating is how each of these writers handle the task of getting a comic into about a third of the normal length.

War Machine: Crossing the Line (Greg Pak) and Skrull Kill Krew: Breakfast in America (Adam Felber) are both pretty standard short stories. They're both simple and true to the premise of their respective books. In War Machine, Iron Man's friend James Rhodes goes looking for bad guys to kill because he's a soldier and has no problem with killing. For this 8-page short, he finds a bad guy and kills him. Skrull Kill Krew is pretty much the same thing, only the main dude's killing Skrulls. Again, the story is short and predictable, solid writing with a few good jokes but nothing outstanding.

In Secret Warriors: Declaration, Brian Michael Bendis and Jonathan Hickman give us a glimpse inside Nick Fury's head. Fury's new team has already been introduced through a sort of backdoor pilot in Bendis' New Avenger series, so the short just sets the tone for the ongoing book. Rather than trying to cram a story into 8 pages, this is more of a vignette - if it were fanfic, it would be a drabble. It works well for what it is; Bendis writes good dialogue, so we get to see a classic Captain America WWII speech with a Band of Brothers feel. It's also interesting to see an old soldier/spy approaching the 21st century War on Terror with his 1940s idealism intact.

Agents of Atlas: The Heist was probably my favorite story in the book. I met Gorilla Man in X-Men: First Class and was looking forward to seeing him in action with his team. Jeff Parker really used the 8-page format brilliantly, introducing a group of people I was expecting to be superheroes, yet here they are stealing all the gold from Fort Knox. The reason for the heist ties into the Dark Reign overplot, but we get a full adventure that sets the group up for what's to come. It works as a short story because the idea is so simple; we get 6 pages to see how they pull off the heist and a couple pages at the end to find out why. It's not a standard plot for a super team, and it works beautifully.

The story that actually got me to pick up the book, and the one I'll probably follow in series form, was New Avengers: The Reunion: Suspicion (Jim McCann). It's about the aftermath of Secret Invasion, with Ronin and Mockingbird reunited. I was intrigued by interviews with the writer that showed he was very excited about the relationship dynamics between these two, and, as previously blogged, I liked what I saw of Mockingbird's return from years of captivity on a Skrull homeworld. The story is a prelude of what's to come rather than a self-contained plot, and it does an interesting job of showing us Mockingbird's mental state. She's returned to a changed Earth, where some friends have died, and others have fought one another in a Civil War. Her husband is just glad she's home and ready to act like nothing happened, but she's working through some PTSD and trying to figure out who she is and what the world is now. I came into this short hoping for a great superhero love story, and I still think and hope that's where Reunion is headed, but what I got was a great psychological study. Now I'm not just excited about where Ronin and Mockingbird are headed as a couple. I'm equally invested in where Mockingbird's journey is taking her alone and how she'll balance her past and her future.

- JC