Ultimate Fantastic 4 #27 discussion [spoilers]

Super_Human

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Best issue Millar has done on this title by far.

Great character work,especially with Ben.

Land is superb as usual.

10 out of 10.

I would type more but I'll leave that to you guys.
 
Ultimate Fantastic Four #27

Holy s*******t!!

Opens with Reed Richards talking to his past self(?) :panic: I dunno but there are spiders and they're hanging above them and they sound dangerous. But they're talking about changeing the accident because of Ben. Reed returns to his time and calls Sue.

Sue is checking out an Aztec like pyramid with Jean Grey and Kitty in South America. They find the tomb of a "Super-Skrull".

Johnny's talking to the zombies about making beer. Zombie Reed says he's going to get out when he's ready to break out.

Ben is getting yelled at by a police officer for accidently apprehending undercover cops by smashing the car with a telephone poll. Ben says he's feeling really depressed lately. Johnny's birthday party is being thrown and Ben's on his way to it. Johnny told him it was a costume party so Ben dresses up in Carmen Miranda? Sorry I forget but it's the classic lady with the fruit on her head look. Ben gets embarassed and runs away. Johnny turns to Thor and asks if this affects his Ultimates Audition. Thor tells Johnny to get a life or something.

Johnny, Reed, and Sue look for Ben. They find him in Central Park and we're given probably the most touching scene since Banner and Betty at the Trisk... Seriously, I almost cried... (Which makes twice today).

They decide to go through with the time traveling and changing the accident. They time travel back to warn Past Reed so the accident doesn't happen. They explain the spiders... interdimensional guards that make sure no one ****s with the dimensions. And just as Past-Reed with the correct coordinates this time goes through the teleporter, Super Skrull shows up too late. Skrull cries out he's too late and we're taken into the NEW WORLD TIME.

President Thor is talking with his intern about the meeting of the first Skrulls. Vice President Reed Richards is to be the first to meet them because he's first to make contact. They talk about the world is no overrun with super-people (good and bad) and Thor says he likes it that way...

5/5 AMAZING!

****in' Millar. I hate him and I love him all at the same time. I have a problem with the outlandishness of his Fantastic Four and there wasn't too much of it this time save the spiders. But the Spiders are great. I can't wait to see them attack someone because you know it's gonna happen.

Millar's portrayal of Ben.... I have nothing to say. It's like commenting on God. It's beyond perfect.

President Thor scene... interesting how him and Fury are both into the whole super-powered world... compare and contrast... Seems like are beloved Thor character might have some flaws too.

I hope it's real confusing to comprehend this post. But a lot happened in this issue and it was so brilliant. You just have to read it to understand it.

Can't wait to read more. I hope Millar doesn't **** this up.
 
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I agree.

Here's a rundown:

Basically Ben has had it. He hates his life, and he can't even kill himself to get out of it. The other 3 agree to go back in time to stop the accident.

But the accident doesn't stop. For reasons unexplained, the Super Skrull is there and arrives too late (that's all he says; he doesn't say what he's too late for). Instead we are taken to "New World" where Thor is the president, Reed is the vice-president, and thanks to a power sharing initiative set by Thor, basically everyone on Earth is super-powered.

We also find out the "Chitauri" is considered an offensive term and they prefer "Skrull" (at least in the New World).

Lots of fun. 4.5/5
 
UltimateE said:
I agree.

Here's a rundown:

Basically Ben has had it. He hates his life, and he can't even kill himself to get out of it. The other 3 agree to go back in time to stop the accident.

But the accident doesn't stop. For reasons unexplained, the Super Skrull is there and arrives too late (that's all he says; he doesn't say what he's too late for). Instead we are taken to "New World" where Thor is the president, Reed is the vice-president, and thanks to a power sharing initiative set by Thor, basically everyone on Earth is super-powered.

We also find out the "Chitauri" is considered an offensive term and they prefer "Skrull" (at least in the New World).

Lots of fun. 4.5/5

4.5/5? Interesting...
 
TheManWithoutFear said:
4.5/5? Interesting...

I really have a hard time giving a book a perfect score.
 
I really enjoyed this issue, and I can't wait to see where Millar goes next.
 
TheManWithoutFear said:
Fair enough.

Anyone enjoy Thor's characterization at the party?

Look closely at the party panel.Look at the guy in the bottom left.Is that supposed to be Wolverine?
 
Wasn't bad at all. Quite enjoyable. But instead of feeling the title is crowded with excellent ideas, I feel that it is just a waste of potential ideas. Instead of feeling filled with lots of story, it feels lacking, like there could be so much more. Empty and shallow, not crowded at all.

I liked the Argiopes, even though they make no sense. Where were they in #21? They didn't show up when Ben punched the T-Rex, or when the Chrono-Bandits threatened to kill the first human-fish-thing. They also don't stop the F4 from actually changing history at all. So their function is to stop threats to the reality fabric, but they won't stop time travellers changing time. Surely altering history and the future is a threat to the reality fabric worth stopping? Inconsistent if you ask me.

And I've yet to care about the zombies. To me, they're a half-baked idea being taken too far.

Also, I reckon the Super Skrull is the F4 in some way. Either one of them from New World, or all four melded together. Perhaps even Doom. We'll see.

As for Greg Land - I particularly liked the all-human line up of the F4 and Doom prior to the accident. I thought they looked good. Especially Doom and Ben.

President Thor giving everyone super powers was a nice idea, and the New World seems interesting.

The main problem I had was the actual plot.

While nice enough, it seems I might be the only one finding it a little... manipulative.

Ben Grimm is on the verge of suicide. He cries himself to sleep every night. He tries to kill himself but can't think of a way to do so. Everyone treats him like crap all the time. Johnny plays tricks on him.

So the most powerful emotional scene for this guy whose life is a living hell is when he's sitting on a park bench crying to himself because Johnny played a rather obvious trick on him.

Why didn't Millar go all the way? He says he's plotted his run out very carefully, yet we've never seen the reality spiders before, why hasn't Ben, during his fights with Namor and the zombies, shown a prediliction towards dying? His attempts at suicide could've been covered up by seeming acts of self-sacrificial bravery. Every life or death fight he's been in would've been his chance to end it, yet totally portrayed through subtext of his actions, so that when #27 comes around and Ben admits he's suicidal, we know this because he's ALREADY been so subtley trying to do so for the past 6 issues. That would be a great moment.

But why didn't Millar go all the way with just this issue; why didn't he show us the trials Ben had to go through to GET to the party? Why not put it all throug Ben's POV? Show him getting the taxi, which breaks, him having to walk, spending all his dough, just to get there. And show us all this AFTER we've seen how much this party, being around Johnny and his super-hot glamour friends, means to Ben. And we realise the party's a joke when Ben does - and not before (something I felt killed the scene).

Instead of scenes of Zombie beer and the police having a go at him, why not really explore what it's like to BE Ben, explore what it really means to be trapped in this monstrous body and what it means to be so depressed as to honestly try to kill yourself. Why not have us see him try to kill himself since he thinks Reed's given up on testing on him? We watch him try to kill himself, but he doesn't know how. We see him continually dropping subtle hints to Reed, asking for help to end his life, none of which Reed gets, and it looks like (since we're seeing this through Ben's eyes) that Reed's just stopped caring about curing Ben at all. The issue then could culminate in any of the following ways -

1) Ben, totally at his wit's end (can't live, can't die), hears that the other three have been thinking about using the time machine to cure him. Deciding not to wait, Ben takes the matter into his own hands and travels back in time and alters history. It results in him being cured, but Reed and/or Johnny are now "The Thing" in his place. Would Ben now treat Reed/Johnny with the same cavalier attitude they treated him? Would he treat them even worse? Would Ben give up his own happiness for them? The most bitter pill would be even if he did return to being the Thing to spare Reed/Johnny, they'd never know.

2) Ben, as above, uses the time machine and it results in President Thor's Super-Earth with everyone having powers - EXCEPT Ben. Which is worse? To be a monster among men, or a man amongst gods?

3) Ben, becoming more and more numb to the world as he finds it harder to feel anything anymore, starts become a lot more carless and destructive to the point where, with his inability to live beside humans properly, coupled with the bizarre adventures he has with the F4, Ben soon becomes unable to tell what exactly is real anymore, resulting in him creating an incident like the Hulk incident in such a desperate attempt to FEEL something. When finally subdued or possibly even killed, Reed's guilt propels him to travel back in time on his own, ignoring Sue and Johnny and Professor Storm's protestations to cure Ben before all this happened.

4) Ben, desperate for release from his life, tries to use all the bizarre weapons lying around that Reed's made, but he can't do so. They don't work. So Ben hits on an idea. They have four evil parallel zombies in the Baxter building. And he breaks into their jail cell so that they will eat and kill him. Now, either they do, and Reed's guilt propels him to alter history OR they don't. Instead they escape. They kill Storm, the soldiers in the Baxter building, Johnny, Reed, and Sue. They take over the Ultimates. They cause millions upon millions of deaths in an hour. And that is when Ben decides to travel back in time and fix the mistake (and his own appearance) as best as he can, and on his own.

The last one would also set up the zombies as even more of a threat if them being released in #30 is to be such a big deal. It'd be a two-fer.

The whole issue could've been a really powerful exploration into Ben's life instead of the well-meaning shallowness we got here. Greg Land sold it with his emotive work, but Millar seemed, to me at least, to be dragging his heels.

The whole arc is propelled by the mixed feelings of depression and guilt Ben's situation creates, and the more powerfully that is set up, the more powerful the entire arc will be, and I think Millar did the bare minimum. As it is, I don't feel time travel is the only option, but that it's a contrived way to get "President Thor" going. The alternative side of the story - what happens if they don't cure Ben (suicide, guilt, etc) - isn't set up enough to make me truly believe that potentially altering human history and giving up their lives is an option they'd honestly carry out with such conviction. Part of me thinks it would've been superb if Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Professor Storm were all creating huge probability schematics to work out EXACTLY what would happen if Ben wasn't the Thing and then trying to work out how they could alter the timeline safely, if only a precursor for stopping other things like 9/11, Bush becoming President, and with each new thing changed, they become more and more ambitious delving deeper and further into the past until they decide, maybe Jesus being around was a bad thing... or that Jesus showing up in the 13th century would be better. But then, that would be a whole different arc.
 
That's a lot of thinking there Bass.

Two things.

The spiders, I thought the same thing. I think they're "kewl" but really inconsistent is the best way to describe them. I thought about where they were during the T-Rex thing in class today.

Second, why didn't Ben kill himself when battleing Namor and other confrontations? Because he's a hero. He's not gonna just take his life when he's not only fighting for his own survival but for his friends too.
 
I hate when Bass posts. Nobody can follow it. Freud could post and go into all the psychlogocal babble about Ben's depression, Reed's guilt, Johnny's attitude, blah blah blah......and it would all sound like "Wolverine is kewl cuz he can kill with his claws."

Damn you Bass.......damn you.






Anyways...here's my feeble plebianistic input:

The best UFF issue I've read......period. I have never seen Ben portrayed so brilliantly.


5/5.
 
I can't believe how unbelievingly crappy this issue was. Langolier spiders that are only visible to time-travellers? Who the heck comes up with this crap? How is this ultimate? This is the same stuff that keeps me from reading 616.

As if one Reed wasn't enough, they had to cram 4 of him into the issue?

Boo hoo, poor Ben can't find razors sharp enough... This is old and feels like an excuse for them to do some more time-travelling that will ultimately fail to change anything at all.

This isn't Ultimate at all, it feels like the same old Fantastic Four without the white in Reed's hair.

I'm dropping this.

1 / 5 for pretty art.
 
Bass said:
Why didn't Millar go all the way? He says he's plotted his run out very carefully, yet we've never seen the reality spiders before, why hasn't Ben, during his fights with Namor and the zombies, shown a prediliction towards dying? His attempts at suicide could've been covered up by seeming acts of self-sacrificial bravery. Every life or death fight he's been in would've been his chance to end it, yet totally portrayed through subtext of his actions, so that when #27 comes around and Ben admits he's suicidal, we know this because he's ALREADY been so subtley trying to do so for the past 6 issues. That would be a great moment.

Maybe he doesn't hate it as much as he wants to. I could see there being a major struggle in Ben's head on what to make of this. Maybe he's holding back.

I'm expecting Millar to address this.
 
I wasn't impressed with this issue as many of you were, mainly for the reasons Bass listed. In terms of character motivation for Ben, I must be missing something. As for the time-spiders, I also was wondering why they didn't play a part previously.

Anyway, check out the timeline thread for the update concerning this issue, as well as some pretty major updates concerning other placements.
 
7 out of 10

Solid issue.

I agree this is the best UFF issue in a while.


Finally we get to see some actual character development in the Four. I can't believe it's taken this long to bring up anything with Ben and I think that it has taken waaaay too long to get here. This suicide notion seems somewhat out of left field because while we knew he was depressed, we as the readers weren't offered that much meat to this previously. I also hate the fact that Ben's trials haven't been explored more, especially concerning the lack of feelings from Johnny and attention from Reed. These two are supposed to be best friends right? And Reed has barely enough time, the way it seems, to say hello. If I were Ben, and this is partially why I feel Millar missed a step in progression from shock-anger-depression line after the accident, I would be really angry with Reed. I would have prefered if Ben had decided to leave the Baxter Building, especially considering that he seemed really independant before the accident, after all he did just happen to be hiking in the middle of the desert when he came upon Reed.

I feel like the only characters in UFF are Ben and Dr. Storm because Johnny is a freakin jerk and Sue and Reed are pricks.

I like the whole President Thor thing because now I know where they are going with it. Seeing all those super heroes made me think one thing... "Thor you stupid socialist ******" It is interesting to see the difference between Thor and Fury, especially considering that Thor was able to create a faux-Utopia in such a short amount of time. I wonder whose going to be the villan in this, since from the previews it looks like Super Skrull is a good guy.

The thing I don't understand is Millar basically dissmissing his own arc and saying "I don't like the name Chituari, and Skrull is better" because I would not like that at all. Keep them with a different name please, it adds some distinction between UU and 616.

The spiders seemed like a plot device, but I don't mind too much because at least they prevent too many time travel arcs, and we all know how fuzzy time travel can be.

I liked the Zombie Four.
 
I liked this. But then, I've liked all of these past issues.

And congrats to Nas-T for getting his letter published.
 
To be honest i thought the time spiders were explained very well. They only appear when you are near yourself. thats why they weren't in the past. Touch yourself and you get eaten. There was a small paradox though. Reed only new about them because Reed 24 hours ago explained them to him. So that was a bit silly. But the time spiders were not at fault. 4.5/5
 
How was that a good save? He changed the name with a line of text.

That's as bad as Hammerhead coming back from the dead saying "Yeah, I was dead, but it sucked, so I came back."
 

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