FF #5

Background

Evil Reeds are gathering gear together so that they can regain their inter-dimensional overlords status! This process involves destroying cities and eventually the world and possibly reality...

Story '...the Sounds of War'

Spidey, Sue Storm and Alex are facing off with the evil Reeds and Mole Man, who are trying to get Old Atlantis for themselves. In short, they succeed, giving Spidey, Sue and Alex a beating in the process and transporting Old Atlantis away.

In the meantime, after The Thing walked out last issue, he went to hang out with Alicia Masters. Alicia tells Ben that she loves him.

Back at the Baxter building Reed is looking after Alex's injury and checking out that Sue is okay. Sue confronts Reed about how he has been hiding the existence of the evil Reeds from her and Reed breaks down and opens up to her.

In the Forever City of the High Evolutionary, the evil Reeds are making bargains and busy at work when a shadow darkens the sky. It's the floating city of Attilan, with the Inhumans led by Blackbolt on board...

General Comments

An okay issue (with the usual gripes), with a pretty good cliffhanger at the end!

I can't say though, after five issues, that I'm really getting into this series. I have mentioned before how things really aren't explained and how the new #1 is really misleading. That was hammered home yet again this issue with Alex revealing his powers in battle and taking a bit more of the limelight. It made it obvious how much I don't know about this character (and some of the others that hang around the FF)! I don't know who he is, why he's part of the team, what are his powers, etc And at no point has this ever been explained! I guess I should stop complaining about the lack of information, as it seems par for the course in this series! I can't imagine that any of the new readers brought in by the shiny #1 have hung around by this point in the series... won't someone at Marvel wake up?! I feel that this series could be easily improved immensely with at minimum some more effort put into the summary page...

The art is good though and the return of Black Bolt, while puzzling (he supposedly died in the War of Kings event), is intriguing. It feels like, for once, that a bad guy's master plan might have a spanner thrown in the works, before reaching fruition. Sure I know it's not new that the hero beats the bad guy, but usually it's in the nick of time, against all odds and after it seems the bad guy's triumph is certain. Usually it's the hero that has something else thrown at him while trying to defeat the bad guy.

Overall Rating

There are elements of a good story buried here and the art is great... but it still sucks.