Writer: Ryan North
Artist: Carlos Gomez
Color Artist: Jesus Aburtov
Cover Artist: Alex Ross
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Price: $4.99
Reviewer: StoryBabbler
The Fantastic Four have a curious mystery on their hands. When the Earth was being impacted by tiny unseen objects, the heroes discovered that it was all actually tiny proton-sized alien starships. But now that they’ve figured one part of the mystery, the other half remains to be solved. Read Fantastic Four #24 and see what unfolds as the heroes encounter a living pilot of one of these ships.
Review:
The last issue left things off with the Fantastic Four discovering the small objects impacting Earth were actually proton-sized starships carrying individual tentacles aliens of unknown origins. Where they’re from and why they’re arriving on Earth were a mystery, along with why all the ships’ occupants were dead or dying upon their arrival. But the team found a ship with a live one, and it was strangling Johnny. There will be some SPOILERS in this review.
This issue picks up right where it left off, this time Reed in the narrator seat, and it’s as scientific and logical as you’d expect Reed to be. Here, we discover the alien is called Zrixa and she hails from a far away planet that was dealing with the vexing issue of figuring out interstellar travel. They realized that the usual tricks don’t work for sufficient interstellar travel across star systems let alone across the galaxy. So they discovered a method of using specific particles harvested from their Sun to power ships the size of protons. Thus, how Zrixa was able to arrive on Earth. However, there’s more than she’s telling as Reed and the others figure, but it’s right when they try to make headway when trouble begins.
I’ll get into the positives then the negatives of this comic. The first positive is the art from Carlos Gomez and Jesus Aburtov’s colors being good as usual in depicting the characters, Zrixa’s alien world, the various locations, and the big moment near the ending. Then there’s Reed’s narration, which like Johnny’s narration from the previous issue, gives plenty of life to the comic and informs Reed’s mindset during the plot. It also gives this comic a solid contrast between Zrixa and Reed, two genius super-scientists but one has empathy while the other does not. And that’s where the positives end.
Unfortunately, this comic commits a common flaw in many sci-fi storytelling: theme over scientific practicality. What I mean by that is when they depict an advanced civilization, human or alien, but the storyteller says they’re low on resources or their world is “dying” and it’s all because of a specific extreme sin or vice. In this case, the greedy rich trying to save themselves at the expense of everyone else in the world. The problem is that because they’re so advanced they could try any number of methods conceived by actual real-life scientists to solve the problem. In this comic’s case, Zrixa’s world was freezing because their star-harvesting process kept dimming their sun.
But here’s the thing, if they could do that then they could’ve solved their problem while still harvesting the particles they need. See, this star-harvesting process is a real-life process called “Star Lifting” that you can find info on even on Wikipedia. Essentially, it’s a hypothetical process that a sufficiently advanced civilization uses (through various methods) to remove portions of a star’s matter for repurposing. And you can use that matter to power any number of things, or even extend the star’s lifespan to millions of years or more. So, even if the sun in Zrixa’s home system was dimming they could’ve fixed it or better yet used what was left to fuel the construction of generation ships, arc ships, mobile space stations, or any other types of megastructures to save their people. Especially since it was billions of years ago. But they don’t in order to make the story’s plot and themes work.
I go this deep into my criticism because Ryan North has injected real-life scientific advances and phenomena into his Fantastic Four run. But he plays with fire by doing so. This opens his stories up to such criticism as he tries to apply real-world scientific principles and concepts in a setting that practically disregards most of that and tries to get them to coexist. We saw some of this in the previous issue, and we see it again here. Granted, some of it is okay such as the methods employed by Susan and Valeria use to decipher the messages from Zrixa’s people. But the backstory of Zrixa’s people and their downfall hinging on their overuse of star-lifting and the inability to do or try ANYTHING ELSE, does not work. Especially when he tries to really hammer in the themes of love and hope triumphing over hatred and greed against impossible odds so hard.
Final Thoughts:
Fantastic Four #24 concludes this two-part story as the heroes find out more about the aliens in the tiny subatomic ships. The backstory of the alien pilot Zrixa and her people is interesting, but the fate of her people, how it happened, and their final actions were less then satisfying. Thankfully, the highlight is Mr. Fantastic as he takes over as narrator and his thoughts give this comic plenty of life similar to how Johnny did in the previous issue.
