Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four #1 Review

SECRET INVASION: FANTASTIC FOUR #1
Written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Art by Barry Kitson

As Secret Invasion is a comic book event and comic books don't typically kill off major characters, I didn't exactly expect the Fantastic Four, or two, since it's just Johnny and Thing, to die with that Skrull Negative Zone bomb set off in Secret Invasion #1, but I still get annoyed when it ends up being just a cheap gimmick used to build up suspense when we all know it means nothing.

Case in point, no one dies from this giant, swirling Negative Zone vortex and it was literally designed just to pull the Baxter Building and Reed Richards' inventions into the Negative Zone. What looked like some big, "OH SHIT", type explosion is simply another random day at the Baxter Building, as evidenced by one of the onlookers making the same joke in one of the panels about how stuff like that happens everyday with the FF.

So, while I did enjoy this issue, I have trouble accepting the very concept that it's built around, namely being sucked into the Negative Zone when they should be killed.

As for the issue, it does explain what happened to Sue Richards, sort of. For those interested, she was off on a conference in Vancouver during SI #1 and a Skrull Reed Richards was waiting for her in her hotel. She knew right away it wasn't him and the Skrull used his own invisible powers to disable Sue. Not sure why she isn't dead or why she was taken captive.

Meanwhile, we see the events, step by step, as the Skrull, who was revealed as Lyja, to no one's surprise, since it's been on covers for this series' solicits. In the Negative Zone, the Thing looks after the kids while fighting off some of Annihilus' bugs, which I assume didn't bother to join the invasion into our universe. Johnny, on the other hand, goes to check on Sue, who they saw enter the lab before the N-Zone portal blew open.

He starts questioning "Sue" and, through stupidity or just plain bad Skrull intel, Lyja can't remember Sue's favourite movie and is found out fairly easily. Good thing they are "undetectable". I guess Reed's big discovery before Pym shot him was the ability to ask the Skrull imposters questions.

Verdict - Check It. The creative team works well with what they were given by Bendis, so I can't fault them for an otherwise decent issue, but the majority of my complaints are more Secret Invasion related and the setup of this issue than the actual issue itself. I'll probably stick around for the whole thing, so it's not a terrible book by any means.

Related Posts