What If...Vol.2 #15, 1990.

Ok, so, due to the overwhelming response we received to review this issue*, I'm finally gonna review this issue. I had some technical difficulties the last couple of days, but we're through that now and we're ready to go. Alright, so, What If...#15. I find it totally crazy that this comic is seventeen years old. And while technically it's a comic from the Nineties, it's pretty much a standard comic from the eighties, which means it doesn't suck and it was printed on newsprint, so there's all kind of printer's errors. Which I think is cool. It's also a really long one, I think there were only four ads in the whole thing, which means there's 27 pages of action to get to. So we should probably get to that, don't you think? Ok, here we go.

The title of this story is, "What If...The Fantastic Four Had Lost The Trial Of Galactus?", and it's also known by it's working title, "Gladiators Gone Wild!" It starts off with Reed Richards getting killed in the third panel of the first page. What? Wow, that was pretty fast. I guess they decided to mix it up a little and got to the point as fast as possible. So then Uatu starts talking and gives the reader a recap of how we got to this point in a cool double page spread:




So now that everyone's up to speed with what really happened in the normal Marvel Universe, we get back to what happened in this alternate universe. So they show Reed getting killed again, in case we missed it the first time (personally, I can never get enough of seeing Strecho getting killed, he's pretty annoying) and the rest of the FF get sent back to earth instantaneously. So, as you can imagine, they're pretty pissed, so the Thing smashes into Reed's vault and they hop into a Skrull Flying Saucer that just happens to be sitting in there for them. So they fly off, and somehow they know how to fly a saucer full of alien technology. Ok, then. They make it back to the Shi'ar galaxy with no problems, but Lilandra gets on the horn and tells them to back off. Well, Ben ain't haven' any of that and starts attacking their warship, while Sue shields them. Lilandra sends her Imperial Guards to go teach them a lesson, but then Ben fires a laser and blows up the Shi'ar homeworld. Oopsie. It was a total accident, dude, Ben didn't know it would do that. Plus he's really, really sorry bro. He just wanted to teach Lilandra a lesson, he didn't mean to kill her and a whole planet in the process. So, um, what do we do here, just exchange insurance information and let them figure it all out?

Gladiator doesn't take it too well, and he calls a war council with just about every single planet in the known multi-universe, except for Earth. He's pretty much totally pissed. He convinces everyone to go along with his plan of crushing Earth as payback and everyone starts to get ready. There is one wrinkle though. One of the Skrulls was posing as a Kree Admiral and stole an Omni-Wave Projector, which is an intergalactic cellphone. Only one of those cellphones from the eighties because it's pretty huge. Anyways. so then all of the warships from every planet converge on Earth to blow it to smithereens, the Skrulls are going to send a doom ray to wipe all of the ships and Earth, leaving them with the only remaining fleet. Diabolical.

So right about here is where Sue goes on TV and tries to tell everyone that they're super sorry for blowing up a planet. It was totally their bad. So the news reporters go out and get some reaction from a few of the local supersheroes and it's pretty insightful:



Wow. Earth-shattering insight right there, thanks guys. Anyways, while that was going on, the United Nations had a meeting and they decided to turn to the only man that can lead the Earth through a situation like this. That's right, they tell Colonel Nick Fury to come on down! (What you were thinking, that they'd turn to the President of the United States? Please, they go to the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., baby.) So Fury gathers the Avengers to tell them what's up. The Avengers are ready, but it probably won't matter because everyone's gonna get blowed up.

So the FF are hangin' out at their pad and they decide to do something about this madness, so they steal back their Skrull Saucer and head out into space to see what they can do to help. Their sensors pick up another Skrull Saucer chillin' on one of Mars' moons and they find out that it's packin' the Omni-Wave Projector. So they break into the other saucer and start wrecking the place. They find the Omni-Wave Projector, but the fleet that's coming to destroy the Earth is arriving, and back at Skrull Headquarters, they're getting ready to send the doom ray. So the FF decide to destroy the Projector, and the feedback ends up destroying them and Mars' Moon. "In space, no one can hear you scream". Good to know.

So Gladiator and his crew arrive and are ready to throw down. Or are they? Seems that right before they blowed up, the FF sent Gladiator a transmission telling him about the Skrull's treachery, and because of their sacrifice, the fleet will not deliver the Galactic Beatdown that the Earth had coming. It ends with Fury, Cap, Thor and the Vision gettin' all philosophical while an astral projection of Gladiator looms overhead. So basically it's a win-win ending. Unless you happen to be Reed Richards. Or the rest of the Fantastic Four. Or on the Shi'ar homeworld. Or on that moon that blew up. Then it pretty much sucks to be you. But you know what? This really didn't even happen, because it was in an alternate universe. That's the beauty of the What If... series.

*I was being sarcastic here

Fantastic Four #96. 1980.

Well, FF2 has been in the theaters for a few weeks, so it's high time we do some Fantastic Four content around here. So here we are, FF #96. Written by Archie Goodwin, Pencils by John Buscema, Inked by Joe Sinnott, and Lettered by Artie Simek. John Buscema, I've got a lot of comics from the late seventies/ early eighties by that guy. He stepped up when The King left Marvel and did a great job of blending in his own style in with Kirby's and pushed it to the next level. Look at that cover, even with the old school Marvel treatment cramping Buscema's style it's still pretty dope. And this was when they were still putting the title of the story on the covers, but it totally works in this case. The Alien...The Ally...And ARMAGEDDON! And whoa, the FF is going join forces with Doctor Doom? WTF! With an event that monumental, you've gotta have a good title and it's gotta be on the cover.

So it starts out that some dude called The Overmind busted his way into the Baxter building and zapped Reed Richards. A little backstory on The Overmind, it turns out he has "the force of a billion brains"; he somehow has the mind-power of an entire race and he's not afraid to use it. So while Reed is getting his ass handed to him (Yo, Reed! You got knocked the eff out!), the other three members of FF sit around and formulate a plan. What they end up with is not much of a plan, it's basically exactly what they always do, Ben and the Torch try the direct approach and end up getting smoked. Sue arrives and tries to surround The Overlord with one of her invisible force bubbles, but The Overmind ain't havin' none of that, and BA-DOM!, he busts through it and lays the smackdown on Grimm and Johnny, again.

So Sue checks in on Reed, but he's possessed by The Overlord and tries to strangle her. She takes off on her flying Segway (I'm not joking, check out the pic to the right) and leaves Ben and Torchie to continue to get their asses kicked by The Overmind. Reed chases her, but Sue gets her swerve on, Reed misses and ends up in the river. This is not one of Reed's better days. While she's flying through the city, she notices that people are going apeshit. They're rioting, robbing, and looting, you know, basically having a good old time. So she stops on to rest on some rocks and starts crying (I think this was back when she was still the Invisible Girl and she still cried a lot), when some old lady named Miss Harkness appears like Obi-Wan and tells Sue that she needs to go to the Dagobah system and train with Yoda, the Jedi Master that instructed her. Oh, wait a minute that totally didn't happen. What really happened is that she tells Sue that there's only one prescription for what's ailing her; and it's a healthy dose of Doom, baby. Doctor Doom.

With that info, Sue hops on her trusty Segway and crashes her way into Doom's building. This doesn't even faze Doom in the slightest. He's just cold lampin' in a chair, smoking a cigarette, and being completely awesome. That's why Doom is so cool, nothing surprises him. In fact, he's been watching the whole thing on the TV. He knows what's up. It takes a little convincing, but Doom agrees to help. It is officially ON, people!

They stop off at Reed's lab to pick something up and when finally get to the action, Ben and Johnny are just waking up from their ass kicking and they see Doom standing there in his B-Boy stance. So of course they want to battle him even though the Overmind is standing right there, totally ready to kick their butts again. Sue calms everyone down and gets them all on the same page. So they start attacking The Overmind and Doom hits him with his Psionic Refractor (Patent Pending) which turns The Overmind's mental bolts against himself. Oh snap, The Overmind's in trouble now! Basically it kinda just royally pisses off The Overmind and he starts cappin' on everyone. But, this is where Sue comes in. She forms a bubble around Doom so he can use the Refractor without getting hit by The Overmind's mental bolts. However, Reed is back, and he's pissed. He starts strangling Sue and without Sue's force bubble to protect Doom, the feedback is too much and the Refractor breaks (It's a prototype, dude, what did you expect?). This doesn't stop Doom from fighting though, he's a BFM, it takes a lot more than a weak mental bolt to take him out. So then The Overmind picks up the pace a little and he collapses. But he's still a BFM. Even when he collapses from exhaustion, he does it in a cool way. That's why he's Doom.

So what's gonna happen now? They have to stomach a humiliating loss and The Overmind has won, right? Well, hold on a second there cowboy, a comet comes outta nowhere and lands on Earth and it turns out that it's The Stranger. He takes The Overmind out behind the woodshed and beats him like a redheaded stepchild. Then he shrinks him down to the size of a mote of dust (just trust me on this one, a mote of dust is really, really small) and teleports him to a planet that's somewhere close to Barstow (aka, the middle of nowhere) so The Overmind can stay there and not bother anyone. Sucks to be The Overmind now, doesn't it? So, Deux ex machina ending, huh, Goodwin? Sigh. Way to go there pal.

Anyways, there is still the matter of Reed trying to squeeze the the life out of his betrothed. Lucky for her, he's somehow able to shake The Overmind's control and ends up feeling really, really, really tired. Doom wakes up and says he's outtie, but Johnny wants to throw down. Reed and Sue ask him why he's trippin', and they tell him to let Doom go, but Johnny's a hothead and takes off. For some reason, The Watcher shows up and tells them they did a good job and to keep up the good work (enlarge the pic to the left). He also tells them that The Stranger wouldn't have been able to find/defeat The Overmind if they hadn't made The Overmind use his full power. So that's good to know. Then Reed, Sue and Ben walk off into the sunset, and the status quo is maintained. The moral of this story is, like so many other comics from the eighties, the status quo must be maintained at all cost.

So to wrap things up, I've got a question for you, our readers. You, true believers, you will decide which comic will be reviewed next (and hopefully I'll be able to get it done sometime before the end of the week). Will it be What If #11 - "What If...The Fantastic Four All Had The Same Power?" Or will it be What If #15 - "What If...The Fantastic Four Had Lost The Trial Of Galactus?" You decide. Leave your vote in the comments section.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer Thoughts

Finally, something to wash away the taste of crap left behind by Spider-Man 3. I went into this movie with somewhat high expectations, as I do with all comic book movies. So here's my Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer review in one word: awesome. Parts of the dialogue are a little cheesy and the Stan Lee cameo is even more annoying than in Spidey 3, but overall the movie is great.

The development of the characters was better this time around. It felt very balanced, showcasing each of the Four's powers and problems. At only an hour and a half, I thought I would feel cheated, but the story moves along nicely. It isn't forced or rushed like Spidey 3. I always thought the FF were kind of lame in the comics - I never liked them, but over the course of these two movies, I've really grown to appreciate these characters, and the family dynamic.

Spoilers ahoy! Here we go - I like how much the commercials / ads kept out of the movie, like Doctor Doom. I knew the actor was in it, but Doom turns out to be a pretty big plot point. And huge spoiler - Doom gets control of the surfboard and turns into the Silver Surfer for a while - freakin' awesome!! And the only one that can stop him? The Human Torch by absorbing and using all four of their powers. I was really hoping they would show Galactus in all his badass humanoid form but I was okay with how they portrayed it. I always thought Galactus' costume looked a little silly, and the concept of a cosmic dust cloud destroying planets is a bit more realistic than a 60-ft. guy in a blue and purple costume.

Overall, it's a fun superhero movie, which is what these movies are supposed to be. Go see it already.