Reivew of Fantastic Four 556 (4 stars)

Overall rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Dang. When Millar and Hitch want to bring out mass destruction, they pull out all the stops. This keeps feeling more and more like a big budget summer disaster movie (not that I’m complaining). This issue picks up at the end of last issue, with the soldiers in Alaska confronting “CAP.” Oops, did I say confronting? I meant, saying two lines of dialogue before getting disintegrated. Within minutes, CAP disintegrates an entire army base. Earth Trust then alerts S.H.I.E.L.D. to send all the superheroes they can to take this down. (I wonder if they also told them who was responsible for this robotic monstrosity.)

The story takes a brief cut to Johnny’s new apartment, currently being wired for his new reality show, who checks to make sure there won’t be any cameras in the bedrooms. (Typical Johnny!) We then learn the name of his new villain girlfriend, Psionics, who has to leave to go to “work.” And speaking of “Fantastic Females,” 😉 the story then cuts to Sue with the kids in the Baxter Building looking for Reed. Just a quick comment here, but anyone else jealous that Frank and Val get to grow up in a building where things like the massive electrical experiment going on in the background are common place? We also get a funny line from Sue here who is looking for a new nanny and considers Wolverine. (Anyone else instantly reminded of The Pacifier?) It is here that Alyssa interrupts and recruits the FF (or the F3 I suppose, without Reed) to assist in taking down CAP.

The three arrive in Alaska only to stumble upon a battleground full of unconscious heroes. The instant I saw the splash page, I had three questions, but I think I have figured out some fairly logical answers. One, why are the Secret Avengers there? Well, once the Mighty Avengers found out what a massively huge threat they were facing, Spider-Woman probably gave a secret call over to Luke Cage similar to what happened in Secret Invasion. Two, what is Dr. Strange doing there? Well, if this is before Secret Invasion, his presence probably fits continuity wise, if it is after, it either means that he returns sometime during Secret Invasion (which I suspect will happen), or the “fun” continuity fix answer is simply: refer to She-Hulk 21. Three, and perhaps most important, why are they not dead? Seeing as they don’t have any weapons (except Ares, who is immortal anyway), CAP didn’t see a logical reason to kill them, they were only impeding its progress, and not its prime targets.

Sue, Johnny, and Ben engage CAP, and are soon joined by some of the heroes who regain consciousness. CAP fights them for a while, before discovering its teleportation feature and teleports away to its next target. During this, Ben is knocked off a cliff, into a deep body of water (I’m assuming this is a bad thing, given his dense structure). The Earth Trust is scrambling over what to do now that CAP knows it can teleport, before Reed interrupts with a “Sit tight gentlemen, I’m on my way,” and an awesome picture of Reed riding in on his “wormhole motorcycle.” I’m sure Reed has an insanely awesome science-y solution to this problem that we will see next issue. So once again, we get a great FF issue from team Millar/Hitch, and the promise of what looks like another one to come.

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-LOTRKing