Franklin Richards Full Power (Hickman's Fantastic Four: Full Story)

what's going on guys this is Rob if you guys enjoy my content make sure you hit the subscribe button and make sure you hit that little bell so you never miss out on my sexy voice so what I want to do here is begin getting into what I consider to be one of the best stories ever written in Marvel Comics Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four but because this story is so expansive and there's other things that I want to cover this series will actually serve as a backdrop and that in addition to my other videos this series will be uploaded as well allowing for two a days until we finish so instead of going through and providing a large narrative on why the story was written instead what I want to do here is provide this information as we progress through the series itself and the reason why is that for Hickman's Fantastic Four the series actually draws this emphasis from the entire history of the team with special emphasis placed on Civil War what I mean here is that with this story having started in 2009 and Civil War having it written in 2006 prior to Civil War reads role within the Marvel Universe was largely that of an explorer and chronicler of Science and Technology however during the events of Civil War and because the conflict was a symptom of a larger problem involving the warring nature of humanity Reed Richards set about to quite literally solve the problem of everything opening up with Reed Richards and his father Nathanael this particular bit of the story is something I'd like you to keep in the back of your head since the concept of father and son will be a recurring theme throughout this series especially because a story itself largely emphasizes Franklin Richards but this moment comes to us as a flashback to Reed's childhood while we will learn more about the relationship between the two within the will of Marvel comics Nathaniel Richards first appeared in Fantastic Four number 272 as the father of Reed albeit in an absentee form however with these original appearances from John Byrne almost no information was offered about Nathaniel saved the fact that he abandoned Reed Richards and his mother three years before the Fantastic Four gained their powers what this expansion of Hickman does is established that the moral compass of Reed in terms of his willingness to fail for the sake of discovering tales from the lessons handed down to him by his father who plays a significant part in his life despite having been gone for so long but following this flashback we jump to the present day with the Fantastic Four facing off against a villain known as the wizard now in truth this battle is not really designed to play any major or significant instead this is simply designed to show us what the Fantastic Four are doing in the current day and that this error of their lives has them fighting his superheroes and so with the wizard defeated almost immediately after sifting through the robots of the wizard the Fantastic Four come to the realization that the wizard himself has been building robots designed to work as proxies carrying out his will through destruction now while this seems like the normal actions of a villain after accessing one of the robots self-destruct mechanisms and tracing the signal back to its source Reed arrives at the Wizards lair only to discover that he's been systematically developing a race of robotic humans and children while we don't know exactly what the purpose behind this is Pikmin provides us with an explanation when the story shifts its focus to the aftermath in the Baxter building where Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm go back through normal actions of jiving one another during a conversation with Sue Reed's mind jumps back to the wizard who argued off panel that humanity would inevitably destroy itself now again this ties directly into civil war and now with Tony Stark operating as a director of shield and the fifty state initiative in place which is to say a government-sanctioned superhero team in all 50 states because civil wars but the superhero community down the middle with the remainder of Steve Rogers Avengers operating underground the Wizards claim of society's imminent destruction rings in the mind of Reed who's put his brain to task and appears to have come to the same conclusion and so taking to a room within the Baxter building which is off-limits to everyone else we discovered that in addition to a litany of ideas in the mind of Reed his top goal at the moment appears to be his desire to solve the problem of everything now this bit is extremely important because what Hickman's gonna do is effectively turn the entirety of the Fantastic Four concept on its head stepping into a multi-dimensional bridge something that I hope you notice is that if you see my videos on time runs out this looks almost identical to the device used by Reed to view the multiverse in an attempt to decipher why the multiverse was collapsing prior to Secret Wars it's for this reason that if you choose to the writings of Jonathan Hickman within marvel comics can actually be read in isolation and in chronological order revealing a complete story unto itself dealing with multiple facets of a superhuman community that said after initially speaking to a disembodied voice we learn that these men are actually different versions of read from different realities what we're told is that Reed Richards of Earth six five nine zero and Reed Richards of Earth twelve hail from realities were the Fantastic Four were exposed to the cosmic radiation they granted their powers but instead of developing the power to stretch their bodies one gained the abilities of Johnny Storm and the other gained the abilities of Susan storm now while Hickman will touch lightly on the face of the other Fantastic Four members from each of these continuities for the moment Reed's taken before the Council of Reed's within a hall that exists outside of all space and time as a result the council is able to perform their work within the hall without having to worry about negatively impacting the multiverse around them in addition to this after entering the hall proper we learned that the council consists of a litany of reads from different realities and with different powers as an example and one reality Reed Richards is a mutant that leads the x-men but in another reality he became the Silver Surfer or Doctor Strange however before being able to receive a proper tour and after the council is alerted to an invasion of Earth by Galactus and the 2:01 to reality Reed is greeted by three versions of himself with each one wielding an Infinity Gauntlet and so with Fantastic Four number 571 the comic picks up were 570 left off with the council preparing to do battle against Galactus of Earth to zero one two now on its face where this seems to be a massive conflict that seven of the reads have a symbol to face off against Galactus and three silver surfers we actually learned that each of these reads is wielding an ultimate nullifier then a sidetrack for a second if you recall my comic concepts video on the ultimate nullifier itself we had talked about how the device serves to completely extinguish and eliminate anything in existence up to and including the universe while I wouldn't say that this is a Glary plot hole Marvel had previously established that there was no limit to what the ultimate nullifier could destroy within any given universe meaning that a person with the intelligence and willpower of Reed Richards only really needs one however with there being seven nullifiers here the indication is that perhaps this version of Galactus is too powerful to be destroyed by a single nullifier but it's entirely possible that Hickman missed this piece of information but regardless of the reason for this following the off panel destruction of Galactus we switched to earth eight nine zero one as Reed is being educated about the council's purpose what we're told is that the read from earth 8901 initially put his mind to task of solving the universe's issue of hunger by terraforming a section of a barren and uninhabitable planet while we're not told how this was initially done but we are told is that over time this 25 square mile hatch agree to cover the entire planet and extended to other worlds within this universe as a result the read of Earth 8901 turned his sights to feeding the hungry throughout the multiverse by using the food from these planets to send supplies through an interdimensional portal to other realities in addition to this while Reed Richards from the earth eight nine zero one reality does possess an Infinity Gauntlet the gamma only works in the reality that it heals from now this bit of information is extremely important and the reason why as a prior to this revelation the only information on the limits of the gauntlet came during the 2003 crossover JLA and Avengers when Darkseid picked up the gauntlet but couldn't use it however with this statement had been effectively wrote the limit of the gauntlet in stone making it in continuity which has remained an aspect of his existence ever since now for here we jumped to the earth 45 reality on day 3 of reach education and pick up with the darker side of the council what we learned here is that because the council exists to solve the problem of everything not every solution is peaceful or honorable instead the council must occasionally delve into the realm of the unthinkable in order to keep the multiverse safe in this instance because every story that involves Doctor Doom sees him attempting to gain absolute power for the goal of ruling that reality the council had taken it upon themselves to capture each iteration of dr. doom which would aspire to evil as a result and within the tomb below the main council chamber are countless versions of doom who have had inhibitor collars placed around their necks which destroys higher brain functions and turns each version of doom into a vegetable now on its face this seems like an outrageous situation and a complete paradox to the role of the council and serving as a guiding force for the universe but in truth I actually agree with it decide check for a second when I was younger I read a book called injustice what's the right thing to do by Michael Sandel and in it he provided a scenario of a trolley train in this situation you're the conductor of a trolley when the brakes go out and the only recourse you have is to adjust the tracks if you stay on course you'll kill five construction workers but if you adjust course you'll kill only one this situation falls directly in line with the utilitarian philosophy of doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people however the other side of this equation is the line-drawing if everyone who demonstrates incorrigible evil is stripped of their freedom and the goal of the council is to solve the problem of everything then stripping everyone of their freedom is the only logical conclusion to eliminating war and conflict now while this does fire allowed into a ton of new arguments I'm actually curious as to whether or not you all agree with the idea of the council stripping Doom of his freedom and his mind but following this situation we transition to another flashback of Reed having a conversation with his father discussing his troubles at school and said on the issue being that Reed is constantly picked on and the problem that he faces is that no one in school is able to keep up with him on an intellectual level and that because of his intelligence Reed feels like an outcast offering words of comfort Nathanael states that the intelligence Reed possesses is a struggle at his young age because he's not in position to use it properly but when the time comes to truly help the world rediff will be able to expand beyond his own sphere of influence and help more people than he can imagine and so using this as a basis on the sixth day we just welcomed before the council and asked to make a choice to whether or not he was going to join the council and solve the problem of everything however before the council is able to successfully induct Reed into their ranks the hall is besieged by unseen forces switching to one of the Reed's who makes mention that the bridge of the multiverse has been compromised what we're told is that a member of the council had stumbled into the earth for to 8/0 reality and discovered that the Celestials of that universe had become mad with power instead of serving to explore and experiment the Celestials instead use their combined abilities to destroy the realities versions of Galactus eternity and the other cosmic entities after which they forced the inhabitants of the universe to worship them and so as this video winds down taking the council member and accessing his mind through telepathy the Celestials learned of the council's existence and launched an attack with the intention of expanding their sphere of influence to all realities so as we continue our discussion on Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four instead of writing out a script for this what I want to do is have fun with it a script is usually a good idea if it's something like the little documentary thing that I'm doing for a history of the Marvel Universe but I think with a story like this that I absolutely love I think it's easier to just sort of run through it kind of off the cuff so in the previous video that I had done on this we had talked about how following the events of Civil War Reed Richards had basically come to this realization that it was inevitable that humanity would destroy itself and so because he was effectively the smartest person in the world he had basically taken it upon himself to solve the problem of everything now while Hickman doesn't directly give it to us what he tells us is that somewhere along the line Reed had developed a multi-dimensional bridge meaning he could access other dimensions and other universes and that after he had done this he had begun speaking with disembodied voices but didn't really know who he was talking to but after getting in and talking to those individuals he basically discovered they were alternate reality versions of himself who had come together to form something called the Council of Reed's which is basically an amalgamation of all these different versions of Reed Richards who had all come together to solve the problem of everything now we're the first video covered how we were given a tour of these different realities and the different steps that were taken to solve the problem of everything what Hickman does in this comic here in issue number 572 is basically show us how much hubris the council has and what I mean here is that where hubris is basically just excessive pride or extreme arrogance what Hickman's telling us is that because all these different versions of Reed Richards had taken it upon themselves to solve the problem of everything they effectively saw themselves as fixtures everything was within their ability to fix but with these Celestials that appear from the earth for to aid zero reality we learned that's not the case now in the last video we had talked about how these Celestials hailed from a universe where they had gone mad with power instead of just being explorers and chroniclers of science and technology like in the current Marvel Universe they had come to the conclusion that because they were so powerful they should rule that universe the mad Celestials that come together and wiped out that universes version of eternity and the other cosmic entities and then forced the inhabitants of that universe to begin worshipping the Celestials and so while one of these versions of read was housed within that reality and exploring he had stumbled across the Celestials and in turn the Celestials basically took apart his mind read his thoughts and discovered the existence of the council and looked to use the various dimensional portals of this council of reeds to access other realities and essentially take over the multiverse and so what this does is this picks up with those particular series of events and it shows us that the Celestials are essentially laying waste to everyone and what I mean is that none of these reads stand a chance now this is very very important here and the reason why this is a big deal is because while these reads are running for weapons and different things like that one of the first questions we would ask is that if three of these reads have infinity gauntlets why can't they use them well like we saw in the last video the Infinity gauntlets can only be used in the reality that they hail from and because the Council of reeds is located in this place outside of all time and space the gauntlets don't natively work there and so what happens is that one of the Reed Richards who has an Infinity Gauntlet speaks to another version of Reed whose body is essentially a portal to his native dimension and so the reed with the Infinity Gauntlet sticks his hand into the portal which basically allows him to just dip his toe so to speak into his own reality and by virtue of that used the Infinity Gauntlet but what's really funny about this is that it still doesn't work because the mad Celestials appear to be so powerful whether it's because they evolve differently or they absorb other individuals is it made clear but because of the power that they possess even if only a handful are wiped out more just keep coming now what Hickman is indirectly telling us is that because the Celestials in the main Marvel Universe exist by way of literally planting their seeds in planets and then allowing the Celestials to emerge in those planets Galactus was most likely destroyed when the mad Celestials took over meaning there was no one to consume the planets to keep the Celestials from being born and so the result is that these Celestials most likely took over the reality not in just power but in sheer population and so what the mad Celestials laying waste to the council and the main earth-616 Reed Richards making his escape he travels back to the Baxter building closes the portal barely making it out alive and begins grabbing up different in armament now what I want to do here is I want to sidetrack away from what Reed Richards is doing for a second and I want to focus on Franklin and valaria now this is not wildly important for the events that are transpiring with the MADD Celestials but it will be important later on and the reason why is because all of this is basically about Franklin Richards the entirety of Hickman's run is literally about Franklin Richards I know it doesn't seem like it now but as we get further into this and we start seeing Franklin Richards from the future we'll begin to see just how important these events are to his character and so what we're basically seeing is Franklin and valaria just kind of enjoying themselves messing around with the different artifacts around the Baxter building now for those of you guys who are not familiar valaria is a character who is wildly intelligent in fact she's about as intelligent as both Reed Richards and dr. doom despite the fact that she's just a child and of course Franklin Richards has the power to work reality but something that I want you guys to take note of here is that in this story and within this point in Marvel's timeline Franklin Richards had already lost his powers they had been burned out and they had been since the original Abraxas saga when he resurrected Galactus and destroyed Abraxas now if you guys are interested we can have a discussion on that at some future point in time but all we really need to know is that at this point in the story Franklin cannot work reality he really can't do anything he's effectively just a normal boy now at this point we go back to Reed Richards as he's gathering different arms and armament together and we actually pick up with Susan's storm now again this element of Susan and the element of Franklin and valaria is gonna be important in the next couple pages and the reason for this is that in the previous events in the last video we had talked about how Susan and Reed had had some bit of a falling out and this was due to the fact that Reed was just constantly preoccupied he basically wasn't paying attention to his family and within Marvel Comics Susan storm is very family-oriented she's effectively the person that seems to be holding everything together and so from her perspective because Reed seems so isolated and so removed from her and the children as well as Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm it seems as though Reed doesn't care about them now the reason why this is important is because as we transition back to the Council of Reed's with Reed Richards travelling back to try to get everybody all the arms they need to defeat the Celestials while they are successful in doing this once the conflict is over we end up finding out there's a much darker side to the Council of reeds and what I mean here is that in addition to the council going through and essentially lobotomizing all these different versions of dr. doom who had displayed evil that just simply couldn't be corrected we also learned that these versions of Reed had all given up their families from the dimensions that they hail from in order to solve the problem of everything it requires the totality of their mind and the totality of their focus and the result was that they basically abandoned their families now this point right here is the entire crux of this story and this is why the end result of everything is so important and so if there's nothing else that you remember from this story please remember this one thing but the way that we learned this is that what the version of Reed Richards who had accidentally run into the math Celestials and initiated this entire conflict in the first place his conversation with the main earth-616 version of Reed tells us that as time progressed as they began to move away as he spent less and less time with his family Susan's storm from his reality began to get angry and eventually walked away from him the children Franklin Richards and valaria Richards did the same thing Johnny Storm Ben Grimm it was all the same process in addition to this that reality's version of Captain America the Avengers all the earth superheroes slowly began to forget about Reed Richards to the point that he didn't exist or people didn't know who he was and so even if you were to go back they probably wouldn't recall him with the exception of his closest family members who probably wouldn't want to have anything to do with him and so when the earth-616 version of Reed is confronted with this information he immediately says no he says absolutely not there's no way he's going to abandon his family for the sake of trying to solve the problem of everything because for him it's too important now again this is wildly important this is very very significant this this these first few issues are really the foundation for everything which is why I keep stressing how important they are now the reason why Reed Richards chose to stay with his family is explained to us when we get another flashback with his father Nathanael now this is actually a point that's kind of been dipped on occasionally over the course of Marvel Comics but not really on the previous video we had talked about how Nathaniel Richards the father of Reed was basically absent he throughout his childhood while there were moments where Nathaniel Richards had traveled and appeared and made his presence known to Reed Richards and even engaged with him a little while for the most part Reed grew up without a dad and the result is that he knows how it feels to not have a father and so for him to be given the option or to be told that he has to do the same thing his father did and abandoned his family in order to solve the problem of everything for him it just doesn't work he can't square that circle and so what we find is that he begins to reflect on his experiences of a Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm his love for Susan storm but he also keeps the advice that his father gave him to be a better man than he was to be a better father to be a better husband and so once Reed comes to this realization he effectively steps out of his office and begins to reconnect with Susan storm with that being said we're gonna go ahead and bring this video to an end we're gonna wrap things up and what we'll actually find in the next video is that the Fantastic Four from Hickman's run it's actually going to start tying in to other events and while a lot of this isn't wildly important we're gonna go ahead and cover it anyway just because there's a few things that pop up here and there there are again going to contribute to the larger story and towards the end events regarding the adult version of Franklin Richards returning to the past as so as we continue our discussion on Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four we picked up now with issue number 574 and what I want to do at least what I've done in the last video is in the description I actually put a reading list as well as a link to where you can buy this on comiXology because to be quite frank with you guys these videos I think will be entertaining if you haven't read the Fantastic Four from Jonathan Hickman but it's also something that I suggest you read on your own just because you can do it illegally pace and there'll be a couple things here in there that I'll be required to pass over but because the story is so good again this is something I highly suggest you guys buy but with this particular comic we actually start out with the birthday of Franklin Richards now this is why I love Jonathan Hickman's story so much because he doesn't forget the small things and what I mean here is that what the Fantastic Four being Marvel's original superhero team they've been around for decades and their stories have seen a multitude of different things take place they've done everything from fight street-level heroes to take on Galactus in deal with cosmic and even multiversal level threats there was even a story where the Fantastic Four went beyond the multiverse and visited the one above all which is the comic a lot of people reference when they say that the one above all is Jack Kirby but with Jonathan Hickman he reminds us that despite the fact that they've done these incredible things they're still human they're so on a basic level people they have thoughts they have feelings they have emotions they have children to take care of and with Franklin Richards this is especially important and the reason why I think this matters so much is with Franklin as a character most anyone who's ever read anything about Marvel Comics or has a passing interest has looked at the character of Franklin and been enamoured by the powers that he possesses as a child he's effectively able to control the Marvel Universe depending on who you talk to he's actually the reason why characters don't age but with the abilities that he displays it's very easy to look over the fact that he's still a kid and so with this birthday issue what we get is valyrian Richards giving Franklin Richards a present but then also revealing that this birthday party is a surprise birthday party now again with this whole celebration we see a mishmash of different characters show up and what we don't need to go through all of them some of the characters that seem to appear here are both powerpack as well as leach now with power pack for those of you guys who don't know there was a point in time where Marvel was reaching out to the younger audience space and I don't mean teenagers actually mean little kids and what they did is they created a superhero team called power pack which included Franklin Richards but also had various other heroes involved now I've got a video on power pack I believe that you're welcome to check out and if I have that video I'll post it in the description but with the character of leach in my mind I think he's actually one of Marvel's most powerful mutants by his very nature leach is what's called a Morlock meaning he has a physical deformity which keeps him from being able to live on the surface and instead he lives in the tunnels but the power of leech is to actually shut off the powers of other people and as far as we know in Marvel Comics there's no limit to this and so it could be that he could take on apocalypse and some would just shut off apocalypse his action as to his powers of an immortality different things like that he could take on someone with st. abilities whether or not he could stop Jean Grae from being the Phoenix it's something we don't know and I don't think that situations ever been explored although I would be interested to see that comic but Liege is very formidable just because of the fact that he can turn off other people's abilities but in addition to this and something that I also like you guys to take note of here is Spider Man one of the funny gags with this is that Ben Grimm basically introduces all the children to Spider Man and they react exactly the way we would expect them to the kids say that's not Spider Man you know and of course the real Peter Parker shows up but the reason why this matters is I would like you to pay particular attention to how Franklin Richards relates to spider-man because there is a beautifully written issue later on in this story where Franklin Richards spends time with spider-man and we get some very in-depth views into how Peter Parker views his life after the death of Uncle Ben but this relates to the fact that Johnny Storm will actually die later on which is kind of a spoiler here but that of course takes place during the annihilation storyline which again will tie in here in a little bit but with Franklin Richards spending time with spider-man they just kind of hang out and there's really not a whole lot to go on here not a whole lot to celebrate of course he takes him on a on a ride through the town which happens off panel we don't really see that but was the two of them returned we see a little bit of banter back and forth between Peter Parker and Johnny Storm and this again if those of you guys who were currently reading the the spider-man run is where a lot of this stuff yells from even though they're not necessarily the best of friends at this point in time they are still extremely good friends and so as we continue on with our run of of Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four with issue 574 but we actually pick up later on that night and this is where the story gets cool what happens is because the technology of the Fantastic Four allows them to basically monitor everything that goes on within and without the back ship building on a global scale the building is met with a time quake condition red now while hitman doesn't tell us exactly what this means we can basically just infer that somebody is opening a portal somewhere and indeed that's exactly what happens but the individual that shows up completely incapacitated Fantastic Four now while he doesn't necessarily beat them he puts up a force field that they can't get past and when I was reading this I was like oh my who is this guy like what's going on here and we don't find out until later on but what happens is while Susan storm tries to get past this while Reed Richards puts his mind to the test Ben Grimm tries to pummel through it there's nothing they can do but more notably whenever they punch a hole through a wall to try to get around it the force field expands to fill that hole so they're basically never ever going to get through but from here we see Franklin Richards as a child actually sent out into the hallway trying to figure out what's happening now again one thing to keep in mind here is that Franklin doesn't have powers he's just a young kid he's just a boy and so while the Fantastic Four call out to this guy and try to get him to stop he murmurs something to Franklin Richards and effectively lifts him into the air now from here the man goes into the bedroom of Valyria Richards now again valaria is a character who is wildly intelligent in the realm of Marvel Comics in fact she is right up there with Reed Richards and dr. doom and it's probably one of the smartest people probably the number one smartest person on the planet when everything's taken into account and in fact during Hickman's run of secret Wars a valaria Richards was the one that came to the conclusion that the incursions cannot be stopped Reed Richards didn't come to that conclusion first it was actually her now Reed of course didn't want to listen to it he wanted to preserve his reality but at the end of it all he had to accept her calculations as being absolutely true but what this man says to Valyria Richards is that the future must be avoided at all costs now again this is classic Jonathan Hickman this is really just him telling us stuff and we have no clue what's going on so if you feel yourself being confused don't feel bad it's the nature of Hickman stories but all of this will begin to make sense as things go on now what he says to her is that there will be a war between the four cities and that those who died cannot be forgotten now this is something that I really want you to pay attention to because the next thing he tells her is that all hope lies with dr. doom and this is the craziest thing this is the craziest situation but again all of this will be made to make sense but when is it up happening is as he begins to make his way out he begins to leave valaria catches up with him and she says happy birth which tells us this is the adult version of Franklin Richards and so once everything begins to calm down once this version vanishes and the portal disappears and Reed Richards Ben Grimm Johnny Storm and Susan storm get with the kids and they basically put them back to bed the conversation becomes who is that guy and why was he able to shut everything down now for here we also take note of the fact that valaria Richards has her own little calculations on how does not the problem everything and while this isn't very important right now this will be very important later on but more notably than this what we learn is that the words that the adult Franklin Richards muttered to his younger self was to rest and remember who he was and this is why I love the story so much I love this comic because what's happened here is the adult Franklin Richards has woken up the powers of his younger self now will actually learn later on that other things are happening that he actually mentioned other things to him and we'll learn there's a lot more to the situation than what's initially being revealed to us but because Franklin Richards powers have been restored to him the first thing he does is create a pocket universe and the bedroom of his room now how awesome is that if with that being said guys I really hope you feel the excitement in this comic because this is such a cool story and it really only gets better from here it just keeps going up and up and up and it leads to this amazing finale so as we continue our discussion on Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four what we do here is we actually tie in to the events of old man Logan now this is really cool because a lot of people don't know that the Fantastic Four from Jonathan Hickman tied it into old man Logan and actually followed up to it and told us what happened after the story came to an end now somebody to keep in mind is that The Secret Wars version of old man Logan actually reckoned this information from Hickman's Fantastic Four and so this information in the in Hickman's run isn't really applicable anymore for those of you guys who don't know retcon is retroactive continuity that means that somebody goes in and changes things removes things and so because the old man Logan Secret Wars event had basically provided new information this information here isn't really relevant anymore with regards to the larger Marvel Universe but for the sake of our discussion and Hickman's of the Fantastic Four we can use this because it still self-contained and it'll be very important to understanding the things that happen later on down the line but for those of the eyes who never read old man Logan this was a story that was written as an alternate universe that basically depicted a world where the supervillains had taken over everything what did it up happening here is that because humanity and superheroes were not necessarily as powerful as the villains there were always a multitude of circumstances whereby the villains could have taken over but the reason why they didn't was because they could never work together they had their own agendas they were infighting they wanted to destroy their own nemec's or maybe they'd assembly wanted to take over the world but for whatever reason they thought only about themselves and they weren't thinking about other things and so what ended up happening here is that within the realm within the universe of old man Logan under the leadership of the Red Skull the super villains of the world launched multiple attacks against the superheroes of the world at the same time meaning the Fantastic Four the Avengers the Inhumans the x-men they were all attacked simultaneously now these attacks weren't necessarily done by brute force which is to say the supervillains didn't just charge buildings and attack everyone instead they use stealth they used guile and they use espionage to achieve their goal within the realm of old man Logan within the I guess the context of Wolverine himself what we're told is that the Spider Man villain Mysterio had the ability to create illusions that manipulated the five senses basically your your sense of smell touch taste so on and so forth and so what ends up happening is Mysterio travels to the x-men mansion and tricks Wolverine into believing that the villains of the Marvel Universe are attacking the mansion and so Wolverine goes through and kills every last one of them but once the illusion is revealed we learn that Wolverine had actually killed all of the x-men and because of his healing factor all their attacks to him did no damage and so with Wolverine realizing what it is that he's done he actually goes into a state of isolation and refuses to pop his claws again now following Wolverines time away his superheroes began getting killed off by the supervillains until there was no one left to stop the supervillains from taking over the world now what we're only told what goes on within the context of the United States and what we is that the country itself was divided into sections with the red skull taking over Washington DC and the surrounding areas in the Northeast and everybody taking whatever else was left and so while people like Magneto took over middle America magneto himself was killed with his section being taken over by the campaign but in terms of Wolverine while he's attended to live a quiet life he started a family of his own but he lives under the rule of the Incredible Hulk now following the events of these super villains taking over the world The Incredible Hulk roofs banner had actually made it with his cousin she-hulk because as he explained it she was the only one that he could procreate with and so the result was that they produce a litany of incestuous kids now were the events during old man Logan would have Hawkeye show up at the front door of Wolverine for the purpose of having Logan accompany him across the country in an effort to take Super Soldier Serum to the various underground resistance groups in New York in order to improve their efforts to defeat the super villains with Wolverine being gone we actually learned that the family of the Incredible Hulk killed his family and so once the entire effort of the resistance movement is shown to have been a ruse by the Red Skull for the purpose of eliminating what was left of the superhero community when Wolverine gets back home he finds out that his entire family has been killed by Bruce banners family and so in response he pops his claws for the first time in something like 50 years and kills the Incredible Hulk as well as virtually everybody else in his family save for the Incredible Hulk son Hulk jr. now we're old man Logan ended with Wolverine taking hold jr. and riding off into the sunset we didn't know how things ended we didn't necessarily know what came next with Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four it follows up to that what we're told is that following this Wolverine he basically initiated a giant resistance group bringing together various humans and what was left of the superhero community that was in hiding and led a revolution against all the supervillains of the world killing them all and taking the planet back and so where humanity spent the next several decades even the next hundred years basically going through and rebuilding itself about 500 years after the events of old man Logan ended Galactus returned and tried to consume the planet now by this time hope jr. is old any actually looks almost identical to the maestro from The Incredible Hulk stories which you'll find down in the description of this video but what we learn is that the remaining superheroes are those superheroes who have began developing new powers and mutants who have emerged basically leading attack against Galactus but a multitude of them are completely obliterated by the power that Galactus possesses now while Galactus is defeated because he's basically killed ones up happening is hope jr. alongside various other individuals began terraforming Galactus turning him into an object that can be used to travel into the past for the purpose of preserving humanity and the reason why is because as time progressed whether the planet had been consumed by Galactus or not it was going to become uninhabitable for a variety of reasons and humanity would simply cease to exist and so what this does is this actually jumps back to the present day and we pick up with the Fantastic Four alongside a relatively new character named Alyssa Moy now Alyssa Moy was introduced as part of Mark Miller's run on the Fantastic Four prior to Johnathan Hickman's run and what Alyssa Moy was established as being was the girlfriend or I guess the ex-girlfriend of Reed Richards prior to his marriage to Susan storm and Alyssa Moy is actually as smart as Reed Richards is and so the conclusion that Alyssa Moy came to was that by virtue of terraforming by virtue of pollution a multitude of other problems the earth at some point in the future would become uninhabitable now this does not mean that Alyssa Moy knew that old man Logan was going to happen in fact old man Logan is now an alternate reality so that future will not happen but because of the fact that she believes that the earth is going to become uninhabitable at some point in time she alongside a man named Ted Castle who's also as intelligent as Reed Richards had developed something called new world and this was basically an artificially created planet earth that would exist so that when the time came that the normal earth was not habitable anymore humanity could move from the normal earth to new earth and lived there and so what ends up happening is once Hulk jr. and those various forces from the future travel into the past in an effort to save humanity they encounter resistance from the Fantastic Four who don't want their planet to be destroyed before it needs to be and so what happens here is once a conflict began to quell once the Fantastic Four and Hulk jr. and the various other forces begin to talk things out and realize what's going on ultimately the Fantastic Four hunt the Incredible Hulk and those individuals on new world and then send them on their way now the reason why I brought this up and the reason why this matters is that for those of you guys who were reading time runs out by Jonathan Hickman the events that led into secret Wars there was a comic whereby Captain America obtained the time Jim and began jumping forward in the future and there was one instance where by Ultron had taken over the world that was not the age of Ultron story what that was was Alex Ultron during the events when the Incredible Hulk and those individuals in the future were trying to preserve their planet there was one being named Alex Ultron who was actually the epitome of the Ultron program in terms of an individual meaning that from a time that Ultron was first created by Hank Pym up until that point in time Alex Ultron represented the peak of the Ultron programming and so what ends up happening is that once they're set on new world and they're sent off along their way Alex Ultron begins to evolve and begins to grow to the point where it actually goes out on its own and then creates a planet Ultron in and of itself and then eventually comes back to earth and tries to take things over again now again that was an alternate reality but I just wanted to bring that up because I wanted to show you guys how everything and Jonathan Hickman's writing is all interconnected but again we'll get back into Franklin Richards future self restoring the powers of his younger self in the next video because what we're actually gonna find is there's a lot going on there's all different kinds of things behind the scenes and that this is really all just a story about a son trying to save his dad so as we continue our discussion on Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four what I'm thinking is that you guys are gonna freak as we get to this video because if you guys are anything like me I was reading through this comic and I was like oh my god and this is why I love Jonathan Hickman writing so much because god he knows how to help one hell of a story so in the last video we had talked about how the old man Logan's story dealt with the death of all the superheroes and the supervillains taking over the world and at the end of that story Wolverine had basically taken the son of the Incredible Hulk as a newborn and went forward with the intention of creating a resistance to get rid of all the supervillains and so what had happened is in that reality the supervillains were completely eliminated and society began to go back to a state of normalcy but the problem here is that over time the earth began dying and so the result was that those individuals in the future though both superheroes and normal humans had worked together to create a portal to create a machine that would allow them to travel into the past in order to ensure their survival but in order to power that machine they had to take Galactus from the future kill him and then use his power cosmic to power the machine and so the result was that once they achieved that goal the future body of Galactus had fallen through the rift and landed in the present which was discovered by Mole Man who informed Reed Richards of what was going on and so what we do is we pick up with this and that Silver Surfer had discovered that Reed Richards bury the body of future Galactus and Silver Surfer reported back to Galactus what it was that he had found simply because this was such an important situation and so what happens here is that Galactus from the present simply shows up on the planet earth and this is so cool because he doesn't go through a whole bunch of introductions he doesn't do any threatening he said we just shows up to Reed Richards when Reed Richards appears to me Galactus and Galactus just says explain and this I think is one of the perfect examples it's so cool how hitman takes concepts takes like all these thoughts and emotions and feelings and throws them into a simple word because when Galactus just shows up and says explain it denotes Authority it denotes if you don't give me what I want to know I'm going to destroy your world I mean it's it's such a cool series of things that go into this but what Reed does is he effectively tells Galactus exactly what I just said a second ago about the future of the old man Logan universe and the travel through time and the result is that Reid says that for him it just seemed right to bury that version of Galactus it didn't seem right to simply just leave his decaying corpse on the surface of the world now while Reid doesn't necessarily say it either I would imagine that to a degree there would be panic if for example the Avengers were just travelling around the world or if the x-men were just travelling around the world doing whatever the Avengers and the x-men do when they're often and they stumbled across the decaying corpse of Galactus on the surface of the planet they would probably start freaking out and they would be like oh my god Galactus is dead and who knows who did it and it would turn into a great big huge thing and so it was probably cut trying to eliminate panic you know more or less but the fact remains here that once Galactus is informed of everything that's going on by Reed he tells the Silver Surfer to locate the new world that Reed had put the survivors on and sent them off to and so one silver surfer locates a new world he tells Galactus exactly where it is and Galactus says that they're immediately going to leave and they're gonna go find new world and investigate for themselves now this is all extremely important and the reason why is because this deals directly with Franklin Richards and this tells us why Galactus is afraid of Franklin Richards what we find out is that with Johnny Storm showing up and trying to figure things out trying to understand whether or not he needs to react in a defensive or an office and capacity when Reed tells Johnny that he's going to leave with Galactus there's really no discussion here there's no debate there's no well let's talk things out and figure things out Galactus wants to find out what's going on Reed's gonna go with him and there's no two ways about it and so what happens is that once the two take off once a Silver Surfer goes with Galactus and Reed Richards to find out what's going on in new world we pick up with new world but something interesting to note here this is why I say this is all about Franklin Richards is because when they arrive Galactus makes mention to read about how fast he had left earth and Reed says yes he noticed that but he figured that if Galactus was leaving the earth faster than normal do is probably a reason why and Reed was simply going to wait and see whether or not that reason revealed itself but instead Galactus tells him directly what he says that he left the planet Earth in order to avoid a conflict that could have been catastrophic on a universal scale meaning it could have laid waste to the universe and when Reid asked what it is that Galactus is talking about Galactus says that the barriers and Franklin witcher's mine had been removed which of course was done by his future self and that Reed and Galactus need to talk about Franklin now again this is a really big deal because Galactus says that he was afraid basically he left the planet Earth because he was afraid and by combining those two things together he left the planet Earth because he was afraid of facing Franklin Richards now this doesn't mean that Galactus in and of himself is terrified of the ability that someone could have to warp reality and in fact this really is the case with Franklin Franklin can warp reality but it's the fact that Galactus is afraid of Franklin because of the things he's done in the past way back in the 1990s during the Abraxas saga when Galactus was killed Abraxas took his place but then Franklin Richards basically resurrected Galactus from the dead the fact that he brought back a cosmic entity from the dead tells us how powerful Franklin is at the same time Franklin's a child meaning that his imagination can run wild he can create and manifest all kinds of different things that would wreak havoc on the world as a whole and it could be the Franklin doesn't know how to undo those things so he could manifest some force that would wipe out the universe entirely and then not be able to undo that we've never really seen an instance where that's happened before but it doesn't mean that it couldn't now what we don't find out exactly what it was that Galactus and Reed Richards talked about instead Hickman actually just skips over that now we'll find out exactly what it is that he's talking about once we see the mad celestial show up and Franklin Richards battle them an entire scenario effectively speaks for itself but more so than that will actually see Galactus speaking directly to Franklin Richards about the power he possesses and what it is that he's capable of doing and how he relates to Galactus himself but from here we basically just show up at new earth and we see the Galactus and Reed Richards are talking about everything that's going on and so where Galactus initially asked how it was that new earth was created how it was all this came into existence again Reed Richards basically rehashes what we know about the future of the old man Logan universe and when Galactus asked whether or not Reed Richards can prevent this from happening that is to say he can actively save that future from coming to an end Reid begins to reflect on his time with the with the Council of reeds and he makes the case that yes most likely he can solve this problem that would have resulted in the destruction of the future the result is that because Reid what effectively be stopping those individuals from the future and having to come to the past in the first place and initiate this entire series of events for Galactus this world will simply cease to exist and so instead of allowing it to pass instead of allowing it to basically vanish without any real advantage Galactus decides to consume it now one of my favorite things here is that the occupants of new world initially protests they say no Galactus cannot destroy the world and Galactus is reply is who test God and does not wager their life a price will be paid and this is why I love Galactus so much because this is just a cool thing to say it's just a cool line to say I like the way it sounds to be honest with you guys and I might even make like a wallpaper or something out of it but I think it's a really cool moment it's just nothing really significant here it's just these are one of the things that I like about about Hickman's writing and so basically the people on this planet on new world are given a chance to leave what Galactus says is that he is going to consume the world he's going to end all of it but instead of simply just killing all those individuals on new world what he's gonna do is allowed Reed Richards to get as many people off the planet as possible between the time that Galactus begins consuming his machine in order to consume the world and the time that he's done doing that and so from here what we do is we transition back to the future of Franklin Richards and we pick up with his character after he had woken up the powers of his younger self now I know this is a lot of time-traveling I know this is a lot of bouncing around but these things are extremely important for understanding the very end of this story and why things unfold the way they do what happens here is we pick up with the adult Franklin Richards when he simply arrives in the future and there's nothing here it's just a giant expanse of white we don't really know what's going on here there's no planet there's no greenery no buildings no nothing it's just total emptiness and the questions asked by an individual that we can't see whether or not Franklin was successful and what he says is yes he had basically woken up the powers of his younger self remove those mental clocks and so now the younger Franklin Richards has the power to warp reality in addition to this the adult Franklin Richards had told Valyria that all hope lies in doom now we'll find out why dr. doom is such an important part of Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four but what we learn is that the adult version of Valyria is also here alongside the adult version of Franklin Richards and so what we're told is that the entire basis behind this the entire premise behind the adult Franklin Richards going into the past was performed by the father of Reed Richards Nathanael now again when we started Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four we had talked about how the father of Reed Richards Nathaniel Richards was basically absent he threw out almost his entire life he didn't really spend much time talking to his son because he wasn't there while he was part of Reed's life when he was very very young Nathanael had simply just vanished for reasons that weren't really explained what Hickman's run of the Fantastic Four does is it basically fills in the gaps and it simply says that at this point all they can do is just see how things unfold now again this is really just very confusing here because the indication seems to be met this future is coming to an end and that some window some opportunity is effectively closing with each moment the passes and this seems to be their last-ditch effort to ensure that this future does not come to fruition now again we don't really know what this future is we just know that something's going on and they're trying to keep it from happening and so while valaria travels back and she effectively leaves what franklin richards does as an adult is he manipulates this pocket reality this little dementia that he's created due to the fact that apparently because the future is coming to an end this is a safe space that time will change time will pass but instead things will stay exactly the way they are the way he's making them within this small space now this is all meta textual stuff this is all meta textual commentary and it can be a little bit daunting but things will make sense and the reason why is because Nathaniel Richards actually jumps into the past to visit Reed Richards when he was in college alongside Ben Grimm and while they were together while they were spending time with one another what Nathaniel does is he basically explains why he was gone for so long but what he says is that at some point along the line he and a multitude of other Nathaniel Richards were pulled into a singularity to battle some individual with immense power and because of this Nathaniel himself had gained the ability to control time to manipulate time the downside to this was that in the far distant future time itself was controlled by a man named immortus and it was monitored by the time variance authority meaning that individuals who meddle with time are strictly punished and so the result is that because both Nathaniel Richards from the main Marvel Universe and all the other alternate reality versions of Nathaniel had all developed the ability to manipulate time after battling this foe they were all brought forward to immortus and they were basically instructed that not all of them can have his power only one of them can but because the power is part of them on a genetic level it can't be removed meaning the only way to ensure that only one of them can have the power is to eliminate every version of methane Richards except for one and so what this did is it initiated something called the great hunt and it was basically all these different versions of Nathaniel Richards from across the cosmos hunting each other down and trying to kill each other and so for those of you guys who read spider-verse and you followed the events with the inheritors chasing down all the different versions of spider-man and spider-woman from across the multiverse this is the equivalent of that except it would be as if all the spider-man were hunting each other down and so one is up happening is Nathaniel petitions Reed Richards to basically help him take care of the last version of Nathaniel so that the existing the main Marvel Universe's annual Richards will be the last one left now while Reed himself is extremely intelligent during his college years he's nowhere near as intelligent as Doctor Doom now this will change over time due to the fact that dr. Doom's arrogance will actually get the better of him but at the moment Reed is still smart but doom knows a little bit more about both technology and the ability to manipulate time and so what ends up happening is Nathaniel Richards and Ben Grimm and Reed Richards and Doctor Doom from the past from our college years basically travel back into the future and they encounter this second to last remaining version of Nathaniel this evil version of himself now where this isn't super important where this isn't necessarily the most important thing coming out of the story it actually is the basis for why Franklin Richards is doing the things that he's doing and what we find out here is that with these versions of Nathaniel battling one another ultimately it all comes down to this very notion that Nathaniel is going to be the last one left he essentially kills all the other versions of himself and so with these two versions of Nathaniel Richards battling one another the conflict essentially goes exactly the way that we would suspect in the sense that there's some give-and-take there's the possibility that the main version of Nathaniel Richards will lose but ultimately he ends up coming out on top with the help of Reed Richards Ben Grimm and Doctor Doom from the past and so while they're successful in killing this other version of himself Nathaniel Richards is basically the last one left now the main version of Nathaniel Richards is the only iteration of himself now having said that what we do now is we pick up with Nathaniel traveling back to the future to meet Franklin Richards and this is extremely important and if there's nothing else that you remember from the story please remember this what is up happening here is that Franklin begins to talk with Nathaniel and he asks him were you successful in killing that other version of yourself and Nathaniel says yes and so the result is that Franklin says perfect and destroys the reality around Nathaniel and what this does is it tells us that Nathaniel himself is almost powerless to stop everything that's going on that he doesn't even really understand why it is that Franklin's doing this and what Franklin says is that one he disabled the ability of Nathaniel to use his own powers by controlling both reality around him and manipulating his brain but also that when Nathaniel engaged in the great hunt and began killing off all the other versions of himself that he made all those alternate reality versions of Reed Richards fatherless and the reason why this is a big deal is because in our earlier versions of Hickman's run of Fantastic Four we had talked about how those alternate reality versions of Reed Richards had created the Council of reeds and abandoned their families because they didn't have the guidance of their fathers and the reason they didn't have the guidance of their fathers is because this great hunt took place and their fathers were killed off and so what Franklin is doing here is he's not really gaining revenge on Nathaniel he's basically saying that Nathaniel in Anor himself is the reason why all this happened in the first place and so what we do and something you may have noticed is we were going through this comic is we actually saw some discussion between valaria and Susan and we pick up with that while there is a lot of fluff that goes on in the two of them talking which is really just a mother relating to her daughter where at least valaria relating to her mother in her younger form not everything that happens here is extremely important and in fact the only thing that's really important is what she says to Susan storm at the end what valaria tells her is that when everything seems like it's darkest when everything seems like it's going to end and all hope seems to be gone that Susan storm is going to have to hold on she's going to have to keep fighting despite the fact that the circumstances seem bleak but at the moment that she does that at the time when everything seems like it's going to crack and it's gonna fall to pieces that something will come to save her now we find out what that something is again at the end of this story I know it seems really really wild but uh but this yeah it's it's it's awesome what happens I'm almost inclined to spoil it because I've done it before but I don't I don't really want to those of you guys who have read Hickman stand asking for it please don't spoil this please don't tell people what happens but in the end winds up happening is that Phil area effectively departs as things begin to come to a close she takes off and she goes back with Franklin Richards and what we find out is that something had happened in the past that began this wave of destruction throughout the multiverse and the multiverse itself was effectively collapsing and this pocket universe that Franklin had made was designed to keep space-time separate from around them but the issue with this is that Franklin himself can warp reality but in order for him to be able to warp it he has to be in control of it and the issue is that if reality is operating outside of his control he can't do anything to stop it his powers effectively work against him and that seems to be what's happening here and so is the two of them begin to get sucked into this rift what is up happening is they jump through and then we actually won't see or hear from them until the very end of this story but with that being said we're gonna go ahead and bring this video to an end let me go let me know what you guys think about about Hickman's fent Hazzard for again as of the last video I know this can be a little bit daunting and things will actually be a lot easier to understand going forward but again I promise all of this will make sense once we get to the end and that's the nature of a Hickman story Hickman stories draw threads from all over the place they pull threads from everywhere and nothing seems to make sense but then at the very very end he writes a single comic that wraps all that stuff up and then you just get the light bulb effect oh I understand what he was doing that's exactly what is up happening don't worry guys everything will make sense at the end of this which will probably happen in the next three or four videos or so we've got a few more things to cover especially with a death of Johnny Storm in the future of Ben Grimm but aside from that we can actually sort of jump towards the end and then just fill things in according to whatever seems to be interesting as so as we continue our discussion on Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four we pick up now with the Fantastic Four issue number 579 now this I guess this and issue number 580 these are what we call filler issues these are not wildly important to the overall happenings of hitman's Fantastic Four but the reason why we're covering them is because there are events that will transpire later on in his run of the Fantastic Four that will require us to know about this the first is that spider-man will become part of the events but also Doctor Doom will become part of the events but the other half of this is that Hickman is going to launch a story called the future foundation and the Future Foundation will basically be a tie-in to his run of the Fantastic Four and it'll be like Batman with Detective Comics where it gives us the other half of what's going on with regards to the events as they're transpiring now with this story what we're told is that Reed Richards has journeyed to Golden Colorado to pick up with something called the singularity conference now the singularity conference does actually exist I wouldn't say this is something like TED talk but as far as I understand it is basically a research conference it involves some of the top minds that focus on artificial intelligence now again I'm not really knowledgeable about it so I can't offer too much on that discussion but what I can say is that within the Marvel Universe as far as Jonathan Hickman's run of the Fantastic Four is concerned the the singularity conference was created by Reed Richards in Marvel Comics and he was designed for the purpose of bringing the world's top scientific minds together to basically solve the world's problems to move the world in a more progressive and prolific direction but the issue here is that Reed Richards has yet to see this conference to do this and what I mean is that as he's talking to them of course he praises she-hulk for the fact that you know being in the legal profession she's basically written articles about the laws of artificial intelligence and about the laws of technology and how they relate to what goes on in the world at the moment before Reed this was designed to genuinely be a technological masterpiece but instead of being that the individuals who were part of the singularity conference have basically allowed their politics to run the show instead of writing articles and instead of focusing on is artificial intelligence a realistic goal or our advances in technology a realistic goal is turned into an argument of our is artificial intelligence and its technology are those realistic goals insofar as their political views about religion and I guess you know various social issues around the country and the result is that reads basically come to the belief that they've all failed at their their task they've all failed a conference and they failed their purpose and so what Reed Richards ends up doing is he doesn't really does disassemble the entire concept of the singularity conference instead he leaves he basically quits he walks away and says that everything is all said and done and so the following week what we do is we pick up with his arrival back at the Baxter building now we're not really told what he was doing during this time and we don't really need to know but what is important here is that after talking to Johnny storm after talking to the various members of the Fantastic Four and just kind of associating with them and being welcomed back what we're told is that he's basically reached out to the smartest people or the smartest children and the in the Marvel Universe so he's reached out to his own children Franklin and valaria now I wouldn't say Franklin is one of the smartest people in the world but because of the fact that he's a child of Reed Richards of course Reed Richards is going to bring his son into the fold but valaria as we discussed is genuinely extremely intelligent she's as smart as Reed Richards if not smarter depending on what it is that's going on but the reason why she has the edge and the reason why all these other kids are brought in as part of the part of this this group is because they have imagination they're not restricted by politics they're not restricted by how they want the world to be restricted they're restricted by how they look at the world and so to them there is no limit anything can happen anything can be done and this is exactly what Reed was looking for and so after talking to these various individuals after talking to the various students and Wyndham asking the question why are they all there what Reed says is that they are the future foundation they're there to basically help him solve the problem of everything but more so than that to basically look to the future to look to the horizon and to move the world into a better direction now the reason why I brought this up this is actually kind of a sub this is a side-story this actually will be pretty interesting later on down the line and it will tie in to Reed's failing in attempting to solve the problem of everything it's basically the events of Ben Grimm for those of you guys who have looked at Ben Grimm historically as a character that's routinely been a part of the Fantastic Four and always fought alongside them you may see him in a couple different ways you may see him as a character who's basically just kind of the comedic relief he cracks his jokes and he calls it a day you may look at him as the strong guy of the team he basically is the hired not really the hired muscle he's basically the the muscle of the team he does what the other members of the team can do when it comes to sheer strength but one of the major cornerstones of Ben Grimm's character is that he's always struggled with the fact that he can never go back to the way he was before now there have been attempts made by Reed Richards to basically cure him but they've always failed and in some in some instances they've been catastrophic in the sense that they've completely changed the way Ben Grimm looks at in fact if you go look at some of the John Byrne artistry on the Fantastic Four there was one point in time whereby his physical appearance became very edgy and very rocky in the sense that instead of looking kind of smooth the way he does now he had a lot of sharp edges and the reason why is because that was a result of Reed Richards meddling around and attempting to cure him and so what happens here is the first task of the future foundation is to try to cure Ben Grimm and this is one of the coolest things about this because this is Hickman basically telling us that again these kids have unbridled imagination there's no limit to what they can do but more so than that they're better working as a group than they are as individuals and this again highlights the limit of Reed Richards Reed Richards is just one man he can only look at the world through his own eyes but with a group of kids who have unlimited imagination putting their minds to task they can effectively solve anything and what we find out is that valaria begins speaking with Ben Grimm and they initially present the idea of returning him back to his human form of basically making him normal again but Ben Grimm again shied away from it just because of his checkered past with Reed Richards attend me to do this and so what we're told by both Franklin and valaria and a couple other kids is that the problem with Reed Richards trying to cure Ben Grimm is he wasn't looking at Ben Grimm for what he was he was looking at Ben Grimm's entire change as something on the surface as opposed to a fundamental change and this is actually really cool because Hickman gives us a little bit of modification on the powers of the Fantastic Four but for the longest time when the Fantastic Four had their abilities Reed Richards stretching Johnny Storm being able to you know set himself on fire and so on and so forth you know we always had this notion that maybe it was just something that read and that Susan storm and that Johnny storm could control they tapped into some aspect of their brain and they were able to manifest these things but what the what hitman tells us the through the Future Foundation is that this is not the case that basically Johnny Storm Susan storm and Reed Richards have like an on/off switch for their powers but there's still a genetic part of who they are so when it comes down to the very fundamental the core level of of the Fantastic Four in a lot of ways they're no different than the x-men and the only difference here is that instead of a gene activating that caused their powers instead there are their bodies were modified on the on the genetic level and so the result is that Ben Grimm does not have this on/off switch he doesn't have the ability to modify his genetic code and so what Franklin Richards and more valaria Richards and the rest of the Future Foundation do is they basically say that they've come up with a way for him to do this they've come up with a way for him to effectively turn his power off and what they do is they present him with a with a substance with a chemical of sorts that he can consume and that will make him human for only one week now this is extremely important and the reason why is because in the next video and what we're actually gonna do in the next few discussions or so is one we're gonna talk about the death of Johnny Storm but - once we get further into this and we actually get into nathaniel richards visiting Reed Richards again we're gonna learn that there's actually a lot more to this substance and not only is it going to make Ben Grimm human for a week it's actually going to have unforeseen consequences and this is gonna you know again be Hickman's way of telling us that Reed Richards doesn't know everything and despite the fact that he has a future foundation and despite the fact that these kids are all working together in the end they're actually going to screw up the life of Ben Grimm they're going to you know they're going to basically destroy it Ben Grimm doesn't know it they don't know it and they won't know it for a little while but it's actually a really cool series of events and it's actually really interesting the way this whole this whole little bit unfolds and again I really consider this to be just a great element of hickman storytelling it's just a cornerstone of storytelling this thread doesn't go anywhere it just shows us how things will turn out in a future point in time however following this we do is we pick up with valaria Richards a short time later when she goes to visit Doctor Doom now this little bit of the story actually requires some expansion on a few previously existing concepts they're not wildly important but they give us an idea of what's going on during an event called the fall of hooks which dealt with a group called the Intelligencia what we were told is that at some point prior to most of the large events have been going on in Marvel Comics some of these smartest super villains in the history of Marvel Comics had basically banded together as a sort of Illuminati esque team of their own and they had planned world domination and different things like that but they were responsible for the creation of Red Hulk and so on and so forth but the fact remains that dr. doom had been a part of their plan to basically take over everything but during this conflict as part of fall of Hawks alpha dr. doom had been captured alongside Reed Richards and a handful of other superheroes who were considered to be the top eight smartest individuals on the planet Earth which is actually where that list comes from people talk about the smartest individuals of Marvel Comics and what had happened was dooms intelligence had effectively been siphoned off now we didn't initially know this and in fact we didn't really know the outcome of it all we knew was that doom had seemed to have been shaken up by everything that was going on and so what happens is that as Valyria Richards is making her way out of the Baxter building she stumbles across the laboratory of Reed Richards and the portal that he created did granted him access to the council of Reed's and what happens is she basically begins going over the holographic logs of Reed Richards where he talks about everything that had happened and what valaria learns is that not only was Reed trying to solve the problem of everything but she also learns that he that she can basically access this particular portal and so what happens here and this actually takes place off panel though we find out later on what Isle has taken place she basically accesses the portal and so what happens is that once she's done she leaves and she comes back to converse with dr. doom now once we pick up with doom he's basically reflecting on how his intelligence had been siphoned away by the Intelligencia and because the fact that he's partially damaged he basically reaches out for the purpose of taking his adopted son Christoph Bernard and assimilating the intelligence of Christoph Renard and in turn basically using him to restore himself now this tells us how sinister and how dark Doctor Doom is but it also makes him really cool I can't tell you exactly why but there's something to be said about Doctor Doom willing to just kill innocent people for the purpose of ensuring his own legacy of ensuring that he continues on but before this plan can be fleshed out before he can decide what it is that they do next valeri of Richards appears and so what happens is she begins talking to dr. doom now something to keep in mind here is that when Valyria Richards was born to Susan storm filaria Richards and Susan were going through birth complications and always actually dr. doom that effectively saved her life they made it possible for Valyria to be born and so he's sort of an uncle to her he's basically a very close member to her but even more so than that and this is why I love Hickman's writing so much is because she looks at him not really as a role model but as a person whose intelligence is equal to if not occasionally a little bit less than her own and so because of that when it comes to the mind he's an equal to her and so she views him as maybe somebody she can consult and that's what she's doing here because of the fact that the future Franklin Richards had appeared to valaria and said all hope lies in doom she's basically fulfilling this patch she's finding out what it is or why it is that all hope lies with now again she doesn't know how the future is going to turn out but her logic dictates that if the future version of Franklin was going to come to the past and tell her all hope lies with doom then she better go visit dr. Jamie and so what is up happening here is that dr. doom of course she explains what all had gone on with her father with Reed Richards creating a portal that allowed him to access the Council of reeds and when dr. doom asks what it is that she found when she went through the portal but she shows us that some of the reeds had been killed that this council of reeds at this temple had basically been in total shambles and what she tells us is that the Council of Reed's have effectively been destroyed in their entirety or at least they appear to have been destroyed in their entirety but she also says and this is actually a very very important thing she also says that there are a whole bunch of versions of dr. doom that seemed to have been lobotomized and they're just living below the the facility itself the council chamber itself and so when she travels into the end of the building she actually discovers that demand Celestials are still there and the battle is still raging on albeit with whatever few forces happen to be left behind and so while these verses of Reed are doing what they can in the again it's just not enough because we're talking about entities from a different reality that possess universal level power that possess astronomical power and so what is up happening here is well as completely text list well we don't really know everything that's going on we know that valeri is trying to help them that most likely she talked to them but we're not given the full explanation of what all had taken place and this is actually interesting I'm not really sure why a Jonathan Hickman chose to go this route I wouldn't go as far as to say it was a bad decision it's just his the effect that he was looking for was kind of lost on me when I was going through this but what what she tells dr. doom is that in the end Reid made the wrong choice and this is actually really interesting because had valaria made the decision things would have been vastly different and we actually would have seen the future of Franklin coming to fruition but what she says here is that her father had the choice between solving the problem of humanity or else basically keeping his family and because Reid chose to stay with his family because he chose not to take the same road that all the other reads in the Council of reads chose which was to basically abandon their families that in the end he made their own choice and he screwed up but more so than that was funny with this is that Valerius says that she notices something is off about Doctor Doom now she does not know about the fall of Hulk storyline she does not know about those events as far as I'm aware all she knows is that by virtue of the fact that a Doctor Doom is twitching a bit in one of his hands because of the fact that he is perspiring because of the fact that he's showing characteristics that do not exceed the normal kind of confidence that he puts off complete control the situation that something's not quite right and valaria immediately deduces that he has brain damage and so the the agreement the two of them strike is that she will find a way to cure dr. Doom's brain damage if dr. doom agrees to basically help Reed Richards whenever the time comes when that help is needed now we will actually find this out later on following the death of Johnny Storm and dr. doom is actually gonna join the Future Foundation which creates it makes some really cool storytelling it creates a for some really cool dichotomy between himself and the rest of the Fantastic Four and the superheroes so as we continue our discussion on Jonathan Hickman's fantastic for what we do now is we pick up with the death of Johnny Storm now Johnny Storm dying was a huge deal it was a very big deal and the reason why is because throughout the history of the Fantastic Four the only person who ever really died kind of was Ben Grimm and that was why we saw the Fantastic Four traveling to the realm of the one above all and that's where we learned that the one above all is effectively Jack Kirby or at least some people say is Jack Kirby you know honesty it could be Jack Kirby or Stan Lee it's just people psyched that because it was in comics I can't really blame him for it but the fact remains that with the death of Johnny Storm this is actually pre looted by an event called the war of the four cities and if you guys recall our discussions in the early videos on Hickman's Fantastic Four we talked about how the future version of Franklin Richards had travelled into the past to visit his younger self and wake up his powers but he had also told a velarium Richards that there was going to be a war of the four cities now within this story we pick up in part with the Future Foundation now in the last video we talked about how the Future Foundation was a group formed by Reed Richards using children and the reason why he wanted to use children is because they're not impacted by the world's politics they don't make their decisions based off religious motives they don't care about political allegiances all they care about is what their imagination can let them achieve and so they're effectively untainted by the real world and so using children allows Reed to basically do whatever he wants to when it comes to the idea of trying to solve the problem everything about trying to make the world a better place and so with this war of the four cities we're actually gonna have to delve into some history of Marvel Comics now a lot of this is currently being covered in my series a history of the Marvel Universe but some of the stuff we're gonna talk about we haven't gotten to yet now with regards to the first of the four cities this is old Atlantis now in Marvel Comics way back in the day when the earth was basically new when he was when life was appearing for the very first time the celestial showed up on earth and they began experimenting on humans on primitive man and they created the deviance and they created the Eternals and then they left normal humans alone save for the fact that the genes of normal humans were modified so that at some future point in time they would begin developing superpowers for some people this was a predisposition towards being bitten by a radioactive spider and becoming spider-man instead of dying for other individuals it was the activation of a gene that would grant them powers which was the case of mutants but the fact remains that with this period in time those humans who were not enslaved by the deviants after the Eternals had basically bailed off began forming their own cultures and their own civilizations and the central hub so to speak of civilization on earth at the time was Atlantis it was a giant trading hub technology was advanced far more than it is right now in Marvel Comics which is interesting and we'll explain why here in a second but it was this massive interweaving he was like the Roman Empire before the Roman Empire and so what ended up happening here is the Celestials came back to basically see how their work how their experiment was progressing then the result was that the deviants believed that the celestial was wanting to take over the world and so the deviants attacked the Celestials now while this was happening the advance citizens on Atlantis realized that this conflict would likely lay waste to the surface and so what they did is they immersed of their city in domes of an unknown composition in preparation for the coming destruction and s exactly what happened the war between the deviants and the Celestials initiated what's called the great Cataclysm basically meaning that almost all technology was wiped out and Atlantis sank to the bottom of the ocean and so once Atlantis dropped off you had various themes and various groups that were forming but within Atlantis you had a sub sect of people that carried on the tradition of the old ways they never let go of the past this continued on until the modern day and this is part of the war of the four cities these people who hold on to past traditions who don't really follow the ideologies of Maine where the sub-mariner have come to the conclusion that is high time that Atlantis take over the surface they basically return back to the surface world and begin conquering all over again and so what's going to happen here is that they are going to find themselves in a conflict with what are called the universal Inhumans now after the Celestials had showed up on earth meddled with the genes of humanity the Cree race on the far side of the universe had realized what was going on of course they had been fighting the scrolls for quite some time but because the war took place across the universe you had different battle stations you had different territories that operated as military campaign points and things like that and the earth was in a very strategic location it was basically in a place to where if it were conquered they could easily sway the tide of battle and so what ended up happening here is the Kree saw the Celestials meddling with the genes of humanity creating the deviants and the Eternals and so what they did is they took a sub sect of humans and they modified their genes so that when these humans were exposed to the Terrigen mists they would undergo a transformation into any number of races who in turn would go into those particular races start civil wars and allow the Kree to to basically take over that planet and then continue their expansion of their own empire now somewhere along the line the leader of the Kree race the supreme intelligence realized that if this happened long enough eventually it would lead to the crease own destruction and so what ended up happening is the supreme intelligence ordered that all of these inhuman projects be completely eliminated and all of them were except for five you had the chameleons you had the Badoon and you had a handful of others of course you had the Inhumans on the planet Earth and so this represents the second of the four cities and what happened is that these universal Inhumans the races that exist way out on the eat on different parts of the universe have decided that it's time to take over the planet Earth now with regards to the third city this is what's called the forever City on the planet Earth there is a guy named Herbert Wyndham but most likely you've heard him referred to as the High Evolutionary and he was a guy from the 1930s who was obsessed with genetics he was actually a really big deal he was really involved with the studies of mr. sinister and will actually get to a discussion in my videos on a history of the Marvel Universe with regards to mr. sinister because he was responsible for a lot of different things he was responsible for Cyclops the meddling of his powers when he was younger he was responsible for the creation of the weapons Plus project which led to Captain America it led to Wolverine it led to Deadpool mr. sinister was behind the motivation and why it is that we know that if Cyclops and Jean Grey ever had a child it'd be wildly powerful mr. sinister is behind a lot of things that have taken place in the realm of science and Marvel Comics as a whole but because Herbert Wyndham because the High Evolutionary was so obsessed with genes what ended up doing was basically performing experiments on himself the problem with this was he was considered crazy by his contemporaries by various scientists in the 1930s at the time and so he was effectively out stood from the scientific community and so he took up residence in a place called wonder core mountain and what he did is he began basically modifying the genes of animals in order to hyper I guess the to speed up their evolution to basically make them human-like so to speak and the fact that they could talk in terms of the fact that they were bipedal so on and so forth he had his group called the new man well while all this was happening he also had the intention of taking over the world and so what he did is he went underground and he created a place called the forever city and the forever city was basically a location whereby he had an evolution machine it would allow him to basically speed up the evolution of all beings on the planet Earth all of whom would swear allegiance to him because he would present himself as their leader the problem with this was that when he activated the machine he considered it a failure because of the fact that the Machine actually forced those who were exposed to it to revert in evolution meaning they would go backwards in evolution they wouldn't go forward and so he effectively abandoned the forever city and so his time progressed and various underground creatures like the Malloys and so on and so forth discovered this forever city they began calling it the lost city of the High Evolutionary this represents the third city in the war of the four cities and the reason why is because those who are currently occupying this territory have decided that it's now their time to take over the surface world now the final city in this discussion and the one that actually leads directly into the death of Johnny storm is the negative zone and the forces of Annihilus now what this does is this actually picks up after an event called annihilation now for those of you guys who never read annihilation it was a really really good story and it actually coincided with the events of civil war and it was really interesting the way these two stories compared again with one another then the reason why is because the the connection between the two was Richard Ryder of the Nova Corps and what had happened is that while Captain America and Iron Man were feuding on the planet Earth in the negative zone Annihilus had basically discovered the negative zones equivalent of the power cosmic the power that Galactus wields and so because Annihilus is obsessed with killing everybody in order to ensure that he can't die that no one can conquer him Annihilus took over the negative zone and then invaded the main 6160 universe and began unleashing a horde of of its forces it was called the annihilation wave and it basically spread like a plague throughout the universe conquering planets killing everything that it came across it was one of the most impressive displays of death and destruction in the history of Marvel Comics now we're this led of course of the capture of Galactus and different things like that going on and there were a lot of teams that were taking place and even led into the formation of the guardians of the galaxy under a star-lord what ended up happening here is once Annihilus was defeated he was basically convent to find back to actually a negative zone he was basically stuck there and so what ended up happening here is the Fantastic Four the future foundation and these various forces were going about their own normal business but within the Marvel Universe you had what I think was called the court of the negative zone or the court of Annihilus or something along those lines but it was basically the remnants of the annihilation wave who had taken up residence on earth and we're operating to ensure a nihilist could actually come back and succeed and wiping out all life in the earth-616 universe and so when did up happening is that because Reed Richards was the first person to discover the negative zone because he's consistently had a portal that accesses the negative zone the court had basically surrounded the Baxter building by virtue of jobs and businesses and so on and so forth and then invaded the Baxter building and opened up the portal and so for the first time in Hickman's run of the Fantastic Four Franklin Richards lets everyone know that his powers have returned when he wipes out the forces of of the annihilation wave over the the preemptive forces but what happens is that the Future Foundation Franklin Richards and and Johnny Storm and those guys go into the negative zone for the purpose of destroying Annihilus forces to ensure that he can never invade the earth 6-1-6 universe again and so what happens here is that while they're doing the best they can ultimately they're overwhelmed because Annihilus has billions of soldiers billions with a beat he's got so many soldiers is unbelievable and so what is up happening as a future foundation basically bails out but someone has to stay behind and they have to basically lock the door and then randomize the access code so that no one can figure out how to gain access again no one can get in and no one can get out and so what is up happening here is Johnny Storm stays behind and this to me is one of the best moments and in Hickman's run because Johnny Storm is not he's not scared he's not afraid he doesn't care he's he's angry and he's confident because he turns around he says a billion to one and then he just says flame on and in depth and then it immediately cuts to the end of the comic now when this happened when he Hickman revealed that Johnny Storm was basically dead it took the comic book world by storm there's no better way to say that it it sent shockwaves know there had never been an instance when Johnny Storm had died because the Fantastic Four just don't die it doesn't happen sometimes the x-men die sometimes Captain America gives up there's been a couple times where Captain America supposedly died we'd turned out he was alive you know Thor died and Thor disassembled during the events of Ragnarok but the members of the Fantastic Four don't die that's off-limits you don't kill them and so it was a huge surprise to see Johnny Storm killed off now that being said with Johnny storm of being dead with Fantastic Four issue number 588 Hickman gave us a comic that had no words it was literally all just images but I will tell you guys right now this is one of the best comics that you're ever gonna see and the reason why is because it literally just gives us stages we don't have to read what's happening to know what's going on and what's really interesting about this is that because Ben Grimm was the one that had to basically watch Johnny Storm die that had to watch Johnny Storm sacrifice his life this impacts Ben Grimm more than anything else then what this does is it initially picks up with a call to arms I mean the Avengers basically everyone shows up everyone's like oh my god Johnny Storm is dead because in the realm of Marvel Comics the Fantastic Four are basically royalty guys it's like watching a prince you know or a king or queen die you know it is it's an insane thing to see and so the superhero community whether they're villains or otherwise are in total shock and so of course you have Thor you have Wolverine you have the New Avengers more or less Captain America Iron Man they show up and they visit the the Future Foundation they visit the the Fantastic Four and the response from Ben Grimm is he doesn't know what to do you know he's just kind of lost here because despite the banter that he and Johnny Storm had the fact that they would bicker all the time once you got past you know what seemed to be bitterness between the two all you found was love you know Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm had a strong connection with one another because they were effectively the best of friends and we knew that because when it came down to it when it came down to the Fantastic Four fighting together Ben Grimm had Johnny's back and Johnny had been Grimm's back but now in the eyes of Ben Grimm no one's got his corner you know no one is is behind him and so what happens is that when Susan storm returns from her mission she's told that Johnny Storm is dead and again the the shock on her face is absolute absolute shock and absolute you know a crushing sensation because once we get into day three we learn that with her brother being dead she spent almost the entire time isolated she's been away from everybody she will not let Reed Richards touch her she will not let anybody have anything to do with her and so on day four who Reed Richards supposed to his weapons facility in the Baxter building and grabs the ultimate nullifier now for those of you guys who don't know the ultimate nullifier is a big deal this thing is capable of just wiping out anything now you know what it destroys its relative to the to the drive to the ambition and the intelligence of the person who wields it but because Reed Richards is in such an emotional state and because he's so angry and because he's so intelligent he could simply press the button and wipe out the universe if he wanted to and that's what he does he goes to the portal of the negative zone he effectively you know accesses it is you not able to cross through into the poor but he can see into the inside and he sees Annihilus and he basically threatens him with the ultimate nullifier and Annihilus just presents him with a shirt of Johnny Storm and that's all it takes that's that's all it takes and so Reed Richards just kind of walks away and so what we do is we move to day five which is effectively the funeral for Johnny Storm we see everyone here every almost every single superhero that's ever been important in the lives of the Fantastic Four are present here and so as these individuals are talking to one another as they're speaking with one another Ben Grimm gets angry now this I think is one of the best absolute best moments of the story because with with the the stages of grief you know the stages of dealing with someone who dies anger is one of the most prominent and one of the most dangerous stages depending on you know how close you were to the loved one that you lost and so what ends up happening here is of course Doctor Doom actually vacates Latveria for a time he put some Christophe Renard in charge and he actually leaves and goes to pay his respects to the Fantastic Four but we also see spider-man spending time with with Franklin Richards now this will be important because was actually gonna happen this is going to be a story where spider-man works with Franklin on how to deal with the fact that Johnny Storm died and this again is a really good story if you asked Sal if you if you or you you tweet Khali pop and you ask him what do you think about spider-man's you know conversation with Franklin Richards after the death of Johnny Storm he'll tell you it's one of the best stories that he's ever read in the history of Marvel Comics and so we switch over to Valerie Richards and the Future Foundation and what's interesting and what I hope you guys notice about this is everyone's dealing with the situation in their own way initially the Future Foundation have their own their own ideas the thought is maybe we replace you know replace Johnny Storm with someone else with she-hulk storm Black Panther Wyatt Wingfoot who has long since been an ally to the to the Fantastic Four and a close personal friend of Johnny Storm but she erases all that issue says the only thing they need to do before they do anything else is kill Annihilus and so what we do here and this this I said this is why I think this is one of the one of the best moments of the entirety of the story is we pick up with Ben Grimm and what happens is that on day 26 Ben gray meets with with Bruce Banner and with Donald Blake the human form of Thor and of course we see that the Donald Blake has a sticker his cane which if he hits on the ground it will turn into the the hammer of Mjolnir and he'll become Thor and so what happens is they present him with a I guess with an image of Johnny Storm and initially Ben Grimm doesn't want to have anything to do with it and so Donald Blake transforms into Thor and he and Ben Grimm begin fighting one another and then Bruce Banner changed into the Incredible Hulk and they start fighting all three are getting into a conflict and they're battling and initially this seems as though they're picking a fight but what they're doing here is they're letting Ben Grimm work out his anger they're letting him work through his hatred and his rage because Ben Grimm is so strong if he were to freak out and if you were to just start attacking anything he would almost lay waste to the planet but both Thor and The Incredible Hulk are two of the only people in existence who can withstand a beating from Ben Grimm almost completely unfazed and so this is why I say this is such a great story or such a great aspect of the story because this is basically just Ben Grimm coping with the death of his best friend and so what we do as we begin to wrap this up as we can begin to bring this to an end is we join Reed Richards on day 29 and this is Hickman kind of bringing us back to reality it's the segment bringing us back to the story saying okay you know you guys have had your time to focus on the death of Johnny Storm we have to get back to the bigger picture here we have to get back to this great big huge story arc that he's giving us and so while Reed Richards is going over his list of things the idea that the in the negatives oh maybe invading the planet Earth the idea that the universal Inhumans want to conquer the planet Earth Franklin Richards power set these are all these are all important things that are you know a major threat to them you know Galactus possibly trying to consume earth as a big deal and for those of you guys who don't know this harkens back to the original appearance of Galactus in Marvel Comics when he first met the Fantastic Four the fact that Galactus was forced out on bad terms was a admit the possibility existed that Galactus could come back at any point in time and consume the earth and there would be virtually nothing the superheroes could really do to stop him but more so than that Reed Richards says that the reformation of the Council of reeds is necessary and this is something that I'd love for you guys to keep in the back of your head because this will be very important later on down the line but as this begins to come to a close what happens is Reed Richards is met with the arrival of his father Nathaniel Richards so as we continue our discussion on Johnathan Hickman's Fantastic Four we pick up now with what I consider to be one of the absolute best moments of the story this sits right up there with the ending of Hickman's Fantastic Four the conversation between you know Galactus and Franklin Richards about how they'll both stand until the end of time this is this is right up there this is the segment of the story that deals with a conversation between spider-man and Franklin Richards and what happens here is during this month of mourning basically this 38:32 31-day period whereby all the members of the Fantastic Four and even some of the other superheroes in the Marvel Universe are dealing with the death of Johnny Storm spider-man visits Franklin on a rooftop and Franklin is kind of here just trying to understand everything that's going on and what happens is he basically just starts relating to spider-man as a child and this is why this is so good because when you cast aside all the powers that Franklin Richards has when you cast aside the fact that he can just make the universe whatever he wants it to be the one thing he has to contend with when it comes to his powers is he cannot bring Johnny Storm back he cannot resurrect Johnny storms than dead and a lot of people will look at this and ask why if he could resurrect Galactus why could he not resurrect Johnny Storm because Galactus is a cosmic construct he is and he's an aspect of the universe it would be like Franklin Richards you know recreating a planet after that planet was destroyed it's easy to do because it's just a cosmic as part of the cosmos is just the way things are with Galactus he's just an amalgamation of cosmic energies and so to simply reconstitute those energies in a way that take on the form of Galactus with all the same memories and all the same views and experiences and so on is not difficult but to recreate a human being who has a soul and whose soul has presumably passed on to the realm of the dead Franklin cannot access that area and so he's effectively trying to open a door or trying to get into a room through a door that he can't open and so this is why it's so hard for him to deal with the fact that Johnny Storm has died but more so than that what's really interesting about all this is that spider-man tells Franklin the best thing to do is to just clear their heads is to get away from spending so much time being down about the situation and to do basically just sort of take a day for themselves and so that's what they do they end up going out and they get a hot dog with one another and this is why I love Hickman's run of the Fantastic Four so much because he does a great job of humanizing the characters when we look at characters in Marvel Comics we look at Captain America we look at you know daredevil Iron Man so on and so forth for the most part there's this wall that exists between us and them we recognize they're fictional characters they say whatever the writers want them to say they do whatever the writers want them to do but when you're going through Hickman's run of the Fantastic Four it it doesn't feel that way and maybe I'm reading a little more into it than I probably should but it doesn't feel like fictional characters to me it doesn't feel like nonsense they feel like genuine people with their own organic thoughts and desires and someone and so forth and so what happens here is that as short of this is while the two of them are talking a Peter Parker reveals to Franklin that his uncle had died when he was younger and what this does is it creates a very close relationship between the two of them because they're both coming from the same place you know Franklin Richards lost his uncle Johnny Storm Peter Parker lost Uncle Ben and because both of these individuals played such prominent roles in their lives they have effectively it kind of bridges the gap between the two of them now there are some differences here and hickman doesn't shy away from these differences he doesn't move away and try to ignore them he actually embraces them here with Uncle Ben the value of Uncle Ben in the life of Peter Parker was not recognized until he was gone it was the perfect example of you don't know what you have until it's gone and Peter Parker talks about this he says that he didn't really realize how close or how much he needed Uncle Ben until Uncle Ben was gone with Franklin it's similar but it's not the same a Johnny Storm played a very active role in the life of Franklin and he was around for quite some time of course you know Johnny Storm was an active member of the Fantastic Four went on a series of adventures but more so than that he and Franklin shared a very close relationship more so than spider-man and uncle and Spiderman looked at Uncle ban as a father figure whereas Franklin looked at Johnny stolen for all intents and purposes as a brotherly kind of figure really more of an extremely close friend than an actual relative and so what is it happening here is that at the two of them begin to go on and this is this is why I love this story so much Franklin says that he has a secret to tell Peter Parker and when Peter asks him what it is Franklin says he thinks he could have saved Johnny Storm and this is so awesome because this is this really hits of the heart of Franklin's struggling it hits at the heart of him as a character with all his vast abilities he couldn't he doesn't feel like he could have saved where he feels like he could have but he didn't and this is why he struggles so much because partic'lar could have easily saved him Franklin could have simply use his powers wiped away the entirety of the annihilation forces in saved Johnny Storm but Franklin didn't and he didn't because he's a child despite all the things that he's done in the past all the crazy situations that have happened around him they happened because he was able to think we're headed but in the situation that they were in when the annihilation wave was threatening to invade earth Franklin got caught up in the situation he panicked and he didn't quite know what to do and so the result is that when he tells spider-man that he thinks he could have saved you know Johnny Storm spider-man replies by saying that he knows he could have saved his Uncle Ben and this is so important for the realm of spider-man because it tells us that every single day day in and day out when he wakes up in the morning when he hangs out with his friends when he's fighting crime when he is going to bed Peter Parker sits down and realizes he could have saved the life of Uncle Ben but then the question becomes what if he had what would spider-man be like if Uncle Ben had lived now there is an actual story in Marvel Comics that spirited that that deals with that and it'd be kind of a cool story to run over one day but for right now for our discussion this basically goes towards the statement that Peter Parker makes to Franklin in saying that the decisions that they make the people that they meet over the course of their life both good and bad experiences shape them on a fundamental level and what he says here is something I'd like you to pay extremely close attention to because this will be a huge factor and why it is the Franklin Richards in the future who was doing the things that he did what spider-man says here is that because Uncle Ben died he gained a valuable understanding of what it meant to do the right thing at the right time to not be guided by anger to not be guided by rage to accept the fact that people make mistakes that he's done things that he wished he didn't do and there are things that he didn't do that he wished he had and the result is that he has to live with that but it's made him a better person much in the same vein Franklin Richards dwells on the idea that he believes he could have saved Johnny Storm and he most likely could have but the fact that he didn't does not mean the Franklin is a failure and this is what Peters telling him but he's not a failure as a human being he simply just he was in a situation he was caught up and he didn't quite know what to do and so the result is that this as this little segment of the story begins to begins to wrap up what is up happening as Peter just sort of brings things to a close and takes Franklin Richards back home and what this does is this leads us into the official launch of the Future Foundation story and Peter Parker becoming part of the Future Foundation now for those of you guys who have seen various images of Peter Parker during your travels where you've seen him in his white suit basically dressed in this weird-looking white suit this is future foundation this is Jonathan Hickman's run of the Fantastic Four and what we do here is we transition to two Reed Richards after this morning phase is basically over and what happens is he's watching a an image of August a hologram a message from Johnny Storm basically telling them you know yes it sucks that I'm dead yes it sucks that I'm not in your life anymore but you guys got to move on you guys got to look to the future you can't dwell on the past and so for Reed while he's watched this video time and time again it's helped him to sort of move forward it's helped him to accept the fact that Johnny Storm loved them that Johnny Storm sacrificed his life to protect them and so in the end the only thing they can really do is continue to move forward and so what we do here is we pick up with spider-man officially joining or I guess heading over to the Baxter building to meet with Susan storm and this is interesting because this is when the costumes of the Fantastic Four begin to change and on its surface Hickman doesn't immediately tell us what's going on but even when he does tell us didn't spend a whole lot of time doing it there's not so huge grandiose explanation it's not a storyline in and of itself is basically Susan storm telling Peter Parker that after the death of Johnny storm that things needed to change it didn't make any sense to wear costumes that had fours on them anymore because there weren't four of them anymore instead there were only three because Johnny Storm and so in order to both respect to the memory of Johnny Storm but also move into the future they brought Peter Parker in to basically not necessarily take the place of Johnny storm but to be a temporary substitute now the reason why this matters is because Peter Parker and Johnny Storm have a friendship that goes back a long time in fact the first real friend said that they had evolved out of the amazing spider-man issue number one when Peter Parker tried to join the Fantastic Four and they turned him down but because of the fact that he spent time with them because of the various crossovers where he fought alongside of them a friendship began to bloom between the two of them and so while I wouldn't go as far as to say that they were like brothers I will go as far as to say that for the Fantastic Four it only made sense to have spider-man come in and step into this role and this is really cool because the the outfit that he gets it's very similar in terms of what is capable of to the iron spider armor now if those you guys who don't know the iron spider armor is actually very anticipated in the Marvel Cinematic Universe a lot of people believe that costume is going to show up but the iron spider armor was a suit given to spider-man by Tony Stark when Spiderman was fighting on Tony Stark's side during the Civil War event and the iron spider costume allowed him to basically change his physical appearance he actually took on the the black costume from Secret Wars and during the the whole I guess prelude to the venom saga you know was just kind of a quick little scene just give us a sort of idea what the suit was capable of but because of the fact that the Fantastic Four's outfits have been consistently composed of unstable molecules that unstable molecule a formula basically allowed Susan storm to use her powers while she was on the suit it allowed Reed Richards to stretch the suit and so on and so forth but it also benefits in the sense that that Spider Man can sort of modify the suit to I guess suit his own situation to sort of make it his own and so what happens here is that as they're going about as they're having their own conversations and they're sort of conversing with one another what we end up doing is we actually jump to Pavlov which is a prison and that is where the wizard is being held now the wizard originally appeared in the beginning of our discussion on Hickman's Fantastic Four and we didn't really have a whole lot to say about him suffice it to say that he presented the catalyst for Reed Richards recognizing that people are just bad and they're gonna do bad things and the only way to to basically save the world was to solve the problem of everything which initiated the whole Council of reeds storyline but with this group called advanced idea mechanics sort of these enigmatic individuals who are bent on world domination through technological means they had been brought in for the purpose of rescuing the wizard now we're not originally given an idea we're not initially told why it is that this is happening instead we see that Thea the Fantastic Four alongside Spider Man show up in their new get ups with the new pain suits on the on the vessels and with their new costumes and they basically go through and defeat advanced idea mechanics and they eventually get into a skirmish with the wizard all of the wizard is successfully able to escape now what he says is that Reed Richards has something that belongs to him and he's gonna take it back now what the wizard is referring to is his son quote-unquote the wizard didn't really have biological children per se instead he was a genius-level inventor who went through and created people he created human beings of all shapes and sizes and then used them as an army to carry out his various schemes but the child that he had created had been taken by Reed Richards when the wizard was originally imprisoned and that child is part of the future foundation more or less being taught the various ideas of technology and how to make the world a better place which goes directly in line with the Wizards idea of dominating the world and taking away humanity's freewill owing to the belief that humanity would use its freedom to make its own decisions as it means to destroy itself and so what is up happening here is that once the wizard and the the various groups get away we sort of see some some banter back and forth but we actually end up jumping back to the Baxter building now this is a really cool moment in the story what happens here over the course of the next little while and the reason why is because at the end of the last video we had talked about how Reed Richards father Nathanael Richards had come back and this was a very big deal because Nathaniel Richards had appeared off and on throughout the history of Marvel Comics but he had never had a I guess a long term role in his son's life he basically bailed out on Reed Richards when he was a child and then hadn't seen him for decades now of course we actually found out that it was because Nathaniel Richards in I guess in relation to Reed he was one of a multitude of Nathaniel Richards from across the multiverse that were pulled into this conflict and they all started hunting each other down and so Nathaniel was basically jumping from one reality to the next in order to keep himself alive he was literally just on the run trying to keep himself from dying and so picking back up with the with the Baxter building it's the small things I think that really build Hickman's run into something special and the reason why I say this is that with Peter Parker sitting down and getting ready to partake in the roast being that's been cooked by a Nathaniel Richards he initially goes to sit down and Johnny Storm spot and Franklin says no you can't sit there that's Johnny spot you know that is that is Johnny's place and it's sort of just paying respects you know even though Johnny's not there it's just kind of paying a respect and saying we have to keep Johnny's memory alive now of course this is designed to be a temporary thing and as we'll find later on these events with Johnny Storm aren't necessarily what they what they appear to be but the fact remains that one of the funny little bits here is that while they're all sitting down for dinner they actually say grace now the reason why I like this is that while it's not really important and has virtually no bearing on the story whatsoever it's funny to hear of Franklin Richards say grace because when you're a god and you can make your thoughts a reality of what relevance are God's to you or what relevance are you know other beings to you Franklin Richards could easily destroy the sky fathers Franklin Richards is on par with the Celestials Franklin Richards is as powerful as some of the most powerful beings in Marvel Comics the only ones that really surpass him are like eternity and infinity and even they might find themselves with a bit of a challenge when it comes to trying to take him head-on if his powers were to fully manifest and and reach the entirety of what it is that they were capable of but again this is just a little bit of a funny situation here nothing too big just you know something that that I thought you guys might might enjoy a little bit but what also happens is we get a little bit of the of the look of the Fantastic Four beyond the conflicts and again this is why Hickman so cool because he gives us you know the stuff between the pages so to speak then of course when Reed is talking about everything that's currently going on about the universal and humans and so on and so forth the initial idea is what maybe they should terraform the moon and that way they can give the Inhumans a place to live as opposed to those individuals having to having to live on earth and where everybody else on at the tables says yeah sure that's fine that's a great idea Nathaniel says that's stupid and this is really funny because Reed Richards has basically been in an environment for so long where everybody just agrees with him that it's refreshing to have somebody say Reed that's a stupid idea now this doesn't mean that Nathaniel's being a dick it simply means that everybody in the Fantastic Four is so used to how intelligent Reed is very rarely what he's saying we should do something without having thought about it first but even for Reed Richards it's nice to have someone come along and say you should not do that is that silly but at the same time it's just a dad relating to his son you know and for Reedus is good to have that feeling because it's one that he has not felt for quite some time and so as things begin it progresses as dinner begins to pass what is up happening is we see that the you know the kids are put to bed and so on and so forth and Nathaniel Richards and valaria Richards meet with Reed for a conversation now for those of you guys who did not see my last video we had talked about how valaria had traveled to Latveria to visit dr. doom and she had made a pact with dr. doom that if doom would assist in defeating Reed Richards that she would help dr. doom fix whatever brain problem it is that he's suffering from now the reason why he was suffering from a brain issue went into a story that was previously existing we don't really need to go into that you're welcome to watch the video if you if you want to see it it seems like an unnecessary thing to add at this point into into our discussion but the fact remains here that Reed is not happy with this REE does not like the idea of associating with dr. doom because they've been enemies for so long but also because dr. doom is a very nefarious person dr. doom isn't necessarily someone who had tricked people he's a very honorable guy which will actually find out here in a little while but the fact remains that he's basically just a dick and Reed doesn't want to have anything to do with that but the fact remains that because of Valyria thinks it is a good idea because Nathaniel's saying hey I've been in the future this is something that needs to happen in the end Reed Richards more or less it goes along with it and so ones up happening is of course we see them pick up with dr. doom now dr. doom in the Fantastic Four or in the Baxter building is one of the greatest moments in Hickman's run and the reason why is because all he does is just give Ben Graham a hard time and this this is this is such a great this is such a great moment you guys are gonna get one hell of a kick out of this so of course bin Grimm's reaction to finding out that dr. doom is in the Baxter building is exactly what you expect it to be you know Ben Grimm just freaks he's like no way we're know that's ridiculous doom does not need to be here he's our arch-nemesis you know what's going on here and of course Reed says no it's fine I allowed him to be here you know and then doom starts haunting Ben Graham and of course with Johnny storms death fresh and the minds of everyone dr. doom being dr. doom decides to use that subject and what he does is he asked Ben Grimm he says is it true that while Johnny Storm was facing off against over a veritable horde of the annihilation wave that Ben Grimm surrounded by children ran off in head and that just sends Ben Grimm right over the edge and he loses his mind now this is kind of important because if Ben Grimm were to get his hands on dr. doom he would probably kill him in this this stage of complete rage but because Susan storm steps and she sort of stops everything she's sure does sort of just basically stops the two of them where they're at using her ability to cast force fields and the initial idea here is that no one really understands why Ben Grimm is here aside from read and valaria and Nathanael and of course doom himself no one knows why he is allowed to be inside the Bakshi building but the fact remains that Ben Grimm doesn't like what's going on and so the result is of course he takes a dragon man and they end up leaving out dragon man we don't need to worry about its you guys are walking look him up he's not really intricate for our discussion here but he just kinda like a mascot so to speak for the Fantastic Four and they end up bailing out now initially Reed is you know says Susan you should go spend time with them figure out what's going on you know try to get things sorted out and her response is that Reed is an idiot for having dr. doom here she doesn't know why he's here and she's not happy about it but the funny thing is that dooms response is that in the end his goal is to fix whatever problem it is with his brain and it doesn't matter to him what else is going on especially the thoughts and feelings of Susan storm and again this is another perfect example of Hickman writing Susan storms not putting up with any of dr. doom [ __ ] and what she says is that if he keeps mouthing off she's gonna send some air bubbles into his brain and reduce him to the intelligence level of a vegetable and and of course doom shuts up which of course I would probably do the same but the result is that you know spider-man makes a couple jokes here and there nothing to at nothing too major but we end up transitioning to the the room so to speak what they call it which is more or less kind of like the the auditorium the meeting hall where the Future Foundation to gather together for their lessons under the direction of Reed Richards in order to solve various problems and so of course a Peter Parker being inducted into the Future Foundation the other members know who he is as a superhero but they're not really acquainted with his intelligence and so as soon as Peter Parker shows up he immediately makes an impact by asking some various serious questions are the injuries of Doctor Doom in terms of his brain are they physical injuries that is they are portions of his brain missing is a simply psychological does he believe he's not able to access those portions of his brain or is it entirely possible that those portions of his brain you know not necessarily physical are some we just gone that he just can't access those for whatever reason they've been wiped from his mind in their entirety and so while the rest of the future foundation is a little shocked at his intelligence valaria Richards chimes in and says that if the the case is that his brain is structurally intact that is to say the physical structure of his brain has not been changed then it's a very simple concept of dr. Doom's brain basically just needs a reboot that if there's a backup of all of his memories and his intelligence they can grab that backup and they can use it and this is a really funny moment here because Valyria is of course she's talking to dr. doom while Reid's listening on and she says we need a backup and then doom just kind of like yes so backup you know I mean he's just kind of thinking for a second and it seems like he doesn't really grasp what it is is going on and they just kind of you know look at one another for a second and doom a soul area if she's trying to annoy him and she just sits there for a second or two and then she says I said we need a backup and then doom finally figures out what is she's talking about this isn't really huge but I love this kind of thing I love this kind of thing in comics because it again it makes them human it you know this is the kind of thing that you would see and you would laugh at if you saw it happen in real life and and so to me it was just a really a really great moment but what we do here is we pick up in in Latveria proper now once we're in Latveria now what we find out is that this entire situation is actually going to rely on the character of Christoph Bernard now initially when I was going through this and I'd actually forgotten some of the writing that Hickman had done here I was trying to figure out a way to to add christophe Renard into our explanation were the great things that we don't have to because Jonathan Hickman basically gives us that he essentially gives us the rundown of you know who Christoph Renard is and what we're told is that at some point in the history of Latveria there was a rebellion that was orchestrated and while dr. doom was able to quell the rebellion Christoph Renard was a child who was orphaned by the death of his parents and so what ended up happening is dr. doom took Christoph Renard as his own but did this for a couple reasons one because dr. doom probably felt bad for him although within Marvel Comics assuming anybody's actually writing dr. Doo he should be written he would never admit to that but the other half was that dr. doom wanted to back up he wanted to make sure that if something happened to him if he died that his legacy would be carried on through an heir and so what he did is he took all of his memories all of his intelligence all the knowledge that he had on the dark arts on science on technology and put it into the mind of Christoph Renard now well this does make Christoph Renard intelligent the best way to think about this is if his brain was a computer then the all the stuff of Doctor Doom everything that makes up who Doctor Doom is it's like a file sitting on that computer somewhere it's just waiting to be retrieved so that it can be used in a situation and just like this and so what happens is that after activating a piece of machinery the mind of Doctor Doom is basically restored back to its normal self now of course Reed Richards up to this point was not aware of the fact that a patch was struck between valaria and Doctor Doom he simply thought that they were going to help fix Doctor Doom because it's just the right thing to do because Reed is not a terrible human being but once Reed is filled in on the situation and once he's told that the entire basis behind this was to I was at the behest of a packed what we find out is that healing dr. doom fixing dr. doom was done for the purpose of a having dr. doom defeat Reed Richards now what we'll learn later on is he's not actually going to be facing off against this Reed he's gonna be facing off against the Council of reeds which is gonna make for one hell of a story so as you guys can probably tell from the length of the video this is a big one and the reason why is of course we missed a video for the last couple days that's because I've been trying to find a way to basically bring this whole segment of Hickman's Fantastic Four into order and the reason why is because if you guys watch my last video I had basically told you that from that point going forward things were gonna explode it was gonna get absolutely crazy and Hickman was gonna start grabbing these different ties and he was gonna start bringing them all together and so for those of you guys who were kind of curious about where the whole plot thread of the war of the four cities was going to this is where we find out we find out this is basically where things are sort of wrapping up now again for those of you guys who didn't see that video the war of the four cities was a premonition given to Larry Richards the genius daughter of Reed Richards by the future version of Franklin Richards and what Franklin said is that there will be a war of the four cities and we didn't know exactly what it was that he was referring to at the time Hickman hadn't really unveiled everything but as the story's progressed so far over the course of our discussions what we know is that there are a there are groups of Inhumans that exist beyond the earth and of course the Inhumans were experiments by the Kree for the purpose of exposing different races to the Terrigen mists who in turn would morph into various races in and of themselves they might have powers they might not they all serve different kinds of purposes but the goal was to basically use the Inhumans as a way to infiltrate different races across the cosmos allowing the Kree to take over those races and expand their own their own Empire that was the premise behind the Inhumans on earth what we learned was that our earth Inhumans were not the only one so there were other Inhumans from across the cosmos from across the universe who had received this same treatment and they were considered to be the universal Inhumans and its harm had come when they had basically made the argument that it was time for them to take over the earth to make earth their their rightful place now as far as I'm aware Hickman doesn't really give us a reason why except to say it's just part of the story and we could just kind of take it you know for what it is we don't really need to read too much into that but the second of these groups was of course the the members of the forever City which was a which was a city basically created by the High Evolutionary a man who lived his life according to the premise of evolving himself and others as best he could and so the result was that he created something called the ascension engine which basically jump-started the evolution of various people who stepped into that city whether they were extremely primitive in the form of moles themselves or whether they were human beings it would basically speed up their evolution to the next stage now the next group after that was of course Atlantis and Atlantis as we know were at least those of you guys who were relatively familiar with Marvel Comics now is that's where name of the Submariner comes from well of course because Atlantis had been around for thousands and thousands of years if not you know millions of years you had old Atlantis which was ruled by a group of those individuals who held on to old beliefs and the the idea was that they were going to overthrow the new Atlantean Empire led by name with a submariner and they were going to basically take the surface back and so this led to the whole involvement of Susan storm being a sort of go-between for name with a submariner to deal with the old Atlanteans and for the old Atlanteans to be kept in check to keep from seeing their plans of taking over the world coming to fruition now that said the the fourth group came in the form of a nihilist his forces that existed in the negative zone and all they wanted to do was basically open a portal to earth and to conquer earth along with the rest of reality they were pretty straightforward and the easiest to understand so again it sort of rehash this our first group was the universal Inhumans our second group were the occupants of the forever city our third group was old Atlantis and our fourth group was our I guess is a nihilist and his forces now what we're gonna see is that with this coming to fruition because of the fact that Valyria Richards had accessed the portal that had been created by Reed whereby he encountered the multiversal versions of himself in the form of the council of reeds when she did this what we find out is that she basically escaped alongside these other reeds when the mad Celestials were still laying waste to the council chamber and so we have about four or five different verses of Reed from this council who are within the main earth-616 universe of Marvel Comics and so what we do here is we pick up with dr. doom we pick up with the fact that he again is basically going to help Reed destroy him or at least destroy these other Reed Richards and so once we begin to get into this we basically see that invitations are being sent out to various people of course to the High Evolutionary to Diablo to the mad thinker to the wizard and one thing I'd like you to take note of here is that these invitations are being sent out to some of the most formidable or at least some of the most some of the oldest villains of the Fantastic Four and there's a reason for this because of the fact that this council has effectively been assembled for the purpose of defeating Reed Richards who better to reach out to than the people who have fought him for so long and so the idea is to bring all their minds together for the purpose of using their experience to destroy Reed but what happens is that once this Council will convene The Watcher appears now for those of you guys who don't know before The Watcher was killed in the original sin leading up to secret Wars whenever The Watcher showed up at an event it meant that [ __ ] was gonna pop off it's basically the best way to put it things were gonna go crazy and it was he always appeared during a time when something would take place that would affect the universe and this is Reed's reaction because of the fact of the Watchers here because valaria was the one who said about the idea of having all these villains come together of bringing dr. doom on for the purpose of defeating Reed and because the fact that Valyria had gone through the portal Reed Richards reaction is what is she done she basically set in motion a series of events that will reshape the entire landscape of the Marvel Universe and so what we do here is we actually pick up several months after this council originally convenes and we join with the different versions of Reed Richards from the Council of Reed's as they're going around to these different forced cities then initially we pick up with the old Atlanteans and what we find is that one of these Reed's is creating subversion within the old Atlanteans themselves because the Atlanteans were composed of different tribes what he does is he's basically says one tribe was going to betray the other and he's effectively just planting the seeds of civil war planted the seeds of dissent among these old Atlanteans not from here we jump to the forever city and what happens is we pick up with this version of Reed who basically says that the entire premise here is to effectively use this ascension engine that was created by the High Evolutionary as an engine of sorts to basically power a device that would that they're gonna create now we'll find out what this device is here in a little bit at this point we basically find out that this Reed is meeting with the we're meeting with Mole Man the person who originally discovered this and the reason why this is important is because there's a lot of manipulation and a lot of subterfuge going on here what mole man says is that the problem he faces is various Malloy's that is to say those weird-looking organisms that are subservient to him they have been leaving him and they've been going to the forever city and they've been having their evolution jump-started then the more this happens the more mole the marmalades leave and so the bargain is being struck here is that if Mole Man will basically work with this read then they will effectively he'll he'll effectively set it up so that his Molloy's won't leave anymore they won't be able to access the city and so what we do at this point is we jump into the realm of another one of the reads who's talking to the universal and humans and what happens this is actually a perfect example I'd like you to keep this in the back of your mind because this will be important for the battle that happens later on but what happens here is this read initially becomes extremely arrogant and what I mean by that is he goes into the situation not thinking about the consequences he wants to again be manipulative he effectively wants to pit the Inhumans in a war against the other four cities that's really where all this comes from but because of the fact that he's going against a telepath from the Centauri race who are well known for their telepathic prowess his mind is read more so than he expects and they immediately detected subterfuge and so what happens is they set about basically imprisoning him interrogating him studying his mind and finding out exactly what the full scope of their plan is and so finally the last read that we pick up with before we begin to wrap back around two events that are currently transpiring is this read this meeting with the cult of Annihilus now again the cult of Annihilus was a group that existed within the main earth-616 universe but they worshiped the concept of Annihilus and so once this version of read begins speaking with Annihilus himself the question is if they help Annihilus what does he want in return for his help and so Annihilus says and the only way he'll help this read is if reid opens the portal to the negative zone and then leaves it open allowing Annihilus forces to come pouring in now again I know we're kind of grabbing things here I know it may seem a little off in terms of word as that we're coming from and why these things are being done but what hickman does is he starts wrapping these different things up together then what we're told is that these reads are basically building something called Saul's anvil and Saul's anvil is a very important concept in Hickman's Fantastic Four and I want you to keep this in the back of your head because this will become very important especially when we start dealing with the situation of Galactus but what we learn is that in order for Saul's anvil to work the way it's supposed to it requires a lot of different things but the reason why old Atlantis was getting special attention was because these reeds required a hyper thermal vent basically meaning it was a way for them to access water stores or to use superheated water in order to allow the energy that would be put off by Seoul's anvil to vent out of the planet instead of simply just blowing that energy down into the planet and then cracking it into the other part of this was that they required the ascension engine to basically power it they require the annihilation forces to keep the forces of Reed Richards and the various superheroes of Earth at bay to keep these individuals from conflicting with their plans and they required the universal and humans to be another component for this Sol's anvil that would actually allow them to go forward into the universe beginning to sort of conquer it and for them to serve their purpose and so what we do here is we jump back to the Council of doom we jump back to this gathering of these various villains of Reed Richards past and their plans to defeat the remainders of a Council of reeds and what's really interesting about this is it basically throws into sharp relief the problem that these villains have of course they don't really fight amongst each other we'll see some of that happen later on but the bigger issue here is they're not looking at the situation for how it is they're looking at the situation for how they want it to be what reed says here is that valaria opening that chamber set up a series of events that simply just can't be undone there's no way to get past this anymore and the other half of this is that the villains begin looking at it so they're facing off against Reed Richards himself but what Reed says is that these members of the council are not like him they gave up their family they gave up their friends they gave up virtually anything that could be used against them their singular purpose their one goal is to basically take over the universe and then find a way back home and continue their role of controlling the multiverse in and of itself and so what happens is Nathaniel Richards basically steps up and says this is their weakness this is the problem that everybody's not looking at they're looking at it like they're facing Reid but they're not they're facing totally different individuals who have common goals they have common themes but the weakness that they have is their desperation their weakness is the fact that they want to get back home and so the easiest way to defeat them is to prevent that from happening and so while Reed Richards and the various individuals don't necessarily grasp what it is that Nathaniel saying Nathaniel says what is it Reed would do if Reed were in a situation that he didn't think he'd get out of if Reed were in a situation where he seemed overwhelmed by the events that were transpiring and he wanted a way to sort of let his mind wonder in order to keep himself preoccupied but also focus on the variables as well as the facts what would he do and Reed says they're building a machine which of course we know to be Saul's anvil and so what happens here is Valerius says yes she knows about it yes she knows about that device but the first step in order for them to acquire this is to basically get to old atlantis and so what happens is the the Fantastic Four I guess the future foundation at this point begin to head out to old Atlantis but while this is happening Susan storm has also been summoned to old Atlantis because of the fact that the subterfuge that that version of Reed had been working on the one that had been planting the seeds of civil war has basically come to fruition and the old Atlanteans are fighting amongst themselves and so what happens is that while susan is there and while Susan spider-man and a couple other members of the Future Foundation help to basically fight off these forces in the end they appear to be overwhelmed in addition to this they're joined by the forces of the Mole Man and so it's basically a situation where everybody is against the Fantastic Four but more so than that because Reed isn't there to necessarily explain everything that's going on as the conflict begins to unfold the alternate reality version of Reed Richards the one that was part of the Council of reeds and was sowing the seeds of civil war reveals himself and to Susan's eyes this is her husband this is the actual Reed Richards the so she's very confused and she's absolutely baffled as to what's going on and so what happens is this evil version of Reed plays on that he takes that idea that Susan is momentarily distracted and effectively attacks her and so while she's temporarily incapacitated of course she's not severely injured and she's not dead spider-man tends to her and Alex one of the members of the Future Foundation does what he can to basically take out these forces or the very least to keep them at bay and to keep them from destroying the city of old Atlanta this and so while he's not necessarily successful owing to the fact that that version of Reid is able to take old Atlantis away as they want to whisk it away and open up this thermal vent for access what we do is we pick up with Reed Richards and one of the most dangerous situations that any man could be in dealing with an angry wife and so what happens here is as he's talking to Susan storm her question is when Spiderman was telling read about everything that was going on with that battle Reid was not really shocked when he said an alternate reality version of himself had taken an old Atlantis away the question she has is why what was he not shocked why was he expecting to hear something like that and so he effectively sits down and tells her everything that's going on he tells her that he opened a portal to basically solve the problem of everything that he walked through that portal that he encountered alternate reality versions of himself from all across the multiverse that they had all abandoned their families they had left their wives and children they had left their friends behind and that the Celestials from an alternate reality had effectively laid waste of that council and that Reid was not willing to to take those same steps and effectively left he disbanded her seemed to abandon the council in favor of keeping his family and so what we do here is we jump to the forever city of the High Evolutionary and again we see more of these reeds spending time with one another and this is where the bargain begins to come into play if these individuals who are part of the forever city if they will close their doors off to the Mole Man and to the to the moloids who would otherwise seek to enter the city then these Reed Richards will work on a way to ensure the long-term survival of these members of the forever city now the reason why is because with their evolution being jump-started the way that it is they're still not able to procreate the way they need to because that facet of them just isn't available it's not worked into their genes that's the reason one of the reasons why evolution works the way it does is to ensure things begin moving in a forward direction naturally but because they were artificially sped up their bodies don't function right and so because of that if these Reed's are able to effectively cure them then it won't be a problem anymore in order for them to achieve access to this improvement on their physiology they also have to basically work on the and fix it so that it'll go back to its previous standard that way the reads can enhance it to their to their desires in order to make it work the way they wanted to and so what happens here is that as they're as they're working on this Saul's anvil heirs are working on this machine where ultimately I guess met with the return of Earth's in humans and the reason why this matters is because with Earth's and humans having been gone during an event called the war of Kings which dealt with Vulcan the third summers brother who's an omega-level mutant seizing control of the Shiar Empire in Black Bolt who led the Kree Empire waging war against one another it opened the stage it opened the the platform for the universal in humans to try to acquire earth in the first place and so with the Inhumans back with the Inhumans looking at both these Universal in humans as usurpers as well as the actions of these various Reed's going in direct conflict with what it is that they wanted to achieve we eventually see that these Inhumans begin to just wage war they effectively just begin crushing every single person who would otherwise I see to oppose them or usurp the position now this is actually really cool and the reason why this is interesting is because this is in direct opposition to the kind of inhuman stories that we're getting right now with with Marvel Comics the Inhumans stories that we're getting at the moment really aren't that great but this run of the Inhumans give them a dynamic aspect they give them range they make them interesting they make them intriguing because they have motivation they have desire as opposed just kind of being people who were there but the fact remains that we basically joined the the versions of Reed temporarily as the Inhumans start to lay waste to the city as they just begin killing off every single occupant every single person that's there now what we do here is we actually take a break for a second and we jump back to the Baxter building I know it really feels like we're jumping around a lot I know it feels like we're bouncing around a lot but there's going to be motivation behind this and there's going to be a reason because this is going to clear up a lot of stuff and it'll let us move forward without having to worry about any of these lingering things but picking up with Susan storm we see her meeting with Nathaniel Richards and this is interesting here it's not a super important thing but it's interesting here and the reason why is because it tells us that Susan storm doesn't really trust Nathaniel yes he is playing a smart yes he's giving them information from the future but in her mind the futures not written in stone the futures not guaranteed but for Nathaniel he knows their futures guaranteed and so in terms of their ideologies it's the perfect example of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object but the other half of this though is we have to remember that Susan storm is operating on information given to her by the future version of her daughter valaria where Valerius said that dark times are coming that hard times are coming and that no matter what happens Susan is going to have to stay strong and so to this moment I guess at the very least it seems as though this is what Susan is doing she's staying strong in the face of the fact it would be so much easier to just give in to the thing I'll just say yes you're right okay fine we'll do whatever you tell us to as opposed to trying to avoid him we're trying to block his every turn and so what we do here is we transition away from the Baxter building and we pick up with Reed Richards and the Council of doom after the conflict in the forever city and what happens is that as they're going through of course they have a force field to protect themselves from the radiation of the ascension engine which has been given to them by dr. doom again if this force field wasn't there their evolution would just a jumpstart and who knows how they would turn out but as they begin to go through and is it begin to investigate what they also do is they have a plan and their plan is to effectively take out each individual version of Reed that's that's present here and to remove them from the situation to basically conquer their plan and so as they're going through and as they're pulling these things off one of the coolest moments in in dr. doom actually happens here while Reed Richards is fighting alongside the Council of doom he's actually taken away by Medusa and by lockjaw who of course is in a human that teleports people away but during this during this conflict dr. doom encounters one of the versions of Reed and Reed initially says you have no business being here you have no business you know and conflicting with our plans and dr. doom just slaps them across the face and says do not speak again unless us to answer my questions this is not a huge deal it's not major to the story it's just great to see dr. doom doing this kind of stuff but while doom isn't here gaining this alternate reality version of read he's actually attacked from behind by the madfinger and diablo now the reason why Hickman gives us this is because while this will go towards you know the I guess the wrapping up so to speak or the tying up of loose ends with regards to the Council of doom it's also a great homage to the history of the Fantastic Four that when it comes down to it the mad faker in Diablo are very basic they're BCD level villains there there are nowhere near dr. doom in terms of popularity or even in terms of capabilities and this is proven by the fact that dr. doom after being attacked and turns around and he basically says you would try to kill me with fire of all things they try to kill him with fire and he turns around and he says world be damned doom indoors and for those of guys who don't really read comics that much of this is your first experience with Doctor Doom and Marvel Comics this is why we as Kalibak fans loved dr. doom because he's got the best lines ever he's so arrogant but he's so cool at the same time and so what happens is that because the mad thinker is a villain that prides himself on analyzing the entirety of a situation because he's he prides himself on the idea that no one else seems to understand or seems to analyze the same variables he does and he believes himself to have always come out on top because of that he tries to pull this with doom he basically tries to barter the life of Diablo he says that if doom you know accounts for the variables that no one expects if he is a a caring and a giving individual if he's a compassionate person then that would change the situation nobody would see that coming and doom should do that and doom says no and he basically just seems to kill Diablo here and so what happens is that as we jump back to Attilan as we jump back to the Inhumans we see of course the arrival of spider-man of of Nathaniel Richards and of the main earth-616 Reed Richards and this is really interesting here this is really cool because this is classic game humans here but for those of you guys who weren't really familiar with with the previous Inhumans the way they existed before Secret Wars you had Black Bolt who was the leader who couldn't speak because his voice would kill anybody that he spoke to but you also had medusa who spoke for him just by reading his body language and and so on and so forth but with the character of medusa and with with black ball what we learned is that their actions of laying waste to everyone that seems to seems to be usurpers it's basically just inhuman justice this is just the way it is the Inhumans themselves don't really go about you know traditional justice the way that we would do it in terms of human society we don't put people on or they don't put people on trial they don't you know have them you know determined determined to be guilty or innocent by a jury of their peers they just kill stuff they just wipe things out it's just how they do it and it's really not you know something to read too deep into it's just the way they do things but the fact remains that with the Inhumans going through an attacking virtually everybody that's the wizard and his advanced idea mechanics henchmen seem to vacate they seem to basically bail out and so what we do here is we pick up with a high evolutionary who gets to the ascension engine and he says that this has basically been modified it's been adjusted yes it's been adjusted beyond his expectations but it doesn't serve the purpose that it was originally designed to serve anymore it's basically been transformed into a power source and so while there are a few things that happen here and there while Reed Richards is basically made to look on and watch is the events unfold in the forever city we of course see the insane brother of Black Bolt Maximus the mad going through and attacking people and this is just kind of some fun stuff this is really just a little bit of a filler things that are given in here but overall the arc here is that the various versions of Reed almost all of them are defeated they're basically defeated and taken prisoner by the Inhumans and the reason why I say almost all is because while Doom is initially invited to the inhuman sea he of course turns it down and the reason he turns it down is because he spots one of the reeds who has not been captured yet who's basically watching the events unfold now something I'd like you to take note of is for those of you guys who have not been watching or not seeing my hickman video so far yes this version of reed has an Infinity Gauntlet but because he's in a universe that's not his own the Infinity Gauntlet doesn't work here why he continues to wield the Infinity Gauntlet I'm not really sure it seems just to just be a part of his character in the same way that Professor X has a wheelchair that dr. doom has a metal suit it's just part of who he is but it also helps us to distinguish between this version of Reed the council of reeds and our main earth-616 reed but what is it up happening is that while doom goes against this version of reed that version of reed responds by saying that he's fought doom countless times you know he's fought an infinite number of dooms on an infinite number of worlds he knows every move the doom is going to make before he even makes it and this is interesting because with dr. doom as a villain he prides himself on his intelligence but what this version of Reed is saying is that doom is predictable that he's really not as smart as he believes he is that have given enough time he himself is nothing if not a series of patterns he's nothing if not a guy that just does the same thing over and over again which is actually Hickman telling us this is a reason why I do get to beat all time because he keeps using the same schemes all the time but the fact remains that this reed uses one of those collars that was used to turn all the versions of dr. doom and a vegetable z' and he puts it around dooms neck but what we also learned is that the collar does not automatically turn a person into a vegetable and instead he turns the collar down so that doom is effectively just made his slave under the threat that if doom does not do what he's told that the collar is going to be turned out to max power and so again what we do is we go back to the to the city of Attilan and we pick up with Reed and we pick up with Nathaniel and spider-man as this entire conflict it's sort of wrapped up and so for those of you guys who may have gotten a little confused or a little lost in the conversation so far the overall gist here is that the reads of the the council were basically creating Saul's anvil a way to open a dimensional rift in order to access their own world and in order to access the council but the only way they could do that was to use aspects of the four cities and so while they attempted to do what they could by implanting subterfuge in the end they were defeated when the Inhumans showed up and just clean house and so with this event coming to an end or at least with this aspect of the story coming to an end what we find is that Reed Nathaniel and spider-man are presented with Eldrick now for those of you guys who don't know not all Inhumans who were exposed to the Terrigen mists become powerful people not all of them become like black bold or Medusa some of them become the dog lockjaw others become Eldrick which is a door that takes you wherever you need to be it doesn't mean that it'll take you where you want to go it'll take you where you need to go and so it basically reads you on a very subconscious level but there's also some some veiled allusions here that maybe the door of aldrick also understands you know the future or it understands how things will turn out and it basically takes you where you need to go in accordance to how the universe is supposed to unfold and what future events are gonna be taking place again Hickman doesn't give us a whole lot here on this we're kind of left to our own devices to interpret exactly how the door functions with regards to the need of the person that travels through it but the fact remains that once Reid and Nathaniel and spider-man go through this door we pick up with Reed Richards and his arrival back at the Baxter building now this is extremely important to the future of events that happen especially during the Thanos conversation with Reed Richards which will actually probably be coming here in the next you know two or three videos or so and what happens is once he gets back to the Baxter building he's there with Susan and he tells her everything that's going on the entire conflict with the Inhumans how they went through Eldrick and Eldrick took them where they needed to be and he says it apparently he just needed to be here he just needed to be with his wife and this is a big deal because what Susan says is that by reiterating what valaria told her that dark days are coming and that even if alaria had not visited Susan storm and even if alaria had not told Susan storm that that dark days were coming Susan would know it's simply just by intuition and that's a legitimate claim yeah I wouldn't go as far as to say Susan storm has precognition or anything like that but I will say that she seems to have always been accurate in terms of her ability to perceive that things aren't the way they're supposed to be and so what she tells Reed and again this is extremely important that Reed seems to have gotten lost in his attempt to solve the problem of everything with the realization that the Council of Reed members or at least as Sullivan had made it into his universe the attempt to stop him that maybe he's fighting a losing battle that maybe the these events are just supposed to unfold and all Reed can do is watch them on full to the fruition and then try to stop some final event that occurs at some point in the future now again this is something that I really want you to keep in the back of your head because we will reference this especially when we see the return of the adult Franklin Richards but because of the that the actions of these various reads still leave on the chest table the possible invasion of Annihilus it brings to light the fact that the earth itself is still in extreme danger and so what happens is that while Ben Grimm had departed the Fantastic Four for a time to basically kind of focus things and in light of Johnny Storm dying what he does as he returns at the behest of spider-man but he brings The Avengers with him and so what we do here is we pick up in the Baxter building itself and we basically joined Reed Richards and all Reed really does is effectively explain everything that's going on he tells them everything that's happening the fact that dr. doom appears to have been taken prisoner by one of the reads he tells them about the council he tells them about all these events unfolding and that while we did what he could while he did what he thought was the right thing to do this is ultimately all just backfired and so he's effectively assembled the Avengers or at least a huge number of the Avengers in order to combat this threat and we see the creme de la creme of Marvel Comics here some of the most powerful and popular Avengers we of course see Iron Man we see Luke Cage iron fist we have Carol Danvers we have Wolverine we have Red Hulk we have Doctor Strange we have some pretty powerful folks here and you know with regards to their own right we also see a few x-men and this really presents a circumstance whereby things could really begin to go crazy things could really begin to pop off and the reason why I say that is because during the event of war of kings the supreme intelligence had been destroyed and if you guys recall my discussion on the Inhumans we had talked about how the supreme intelligence had the entire inhuman project of decommissioned because of the fact that the Inhumans would at some point in the future rise up against the Kree Empire and destroy it and so what happens is with the with these versions of Reed being taken prisoner by the Inhumans themselves they're effectively handed over to Ronon the accuser who is really like the Stewart of the Kree Empire while Black Bolt is not there and so these two Reed's are handed over to Ron in the accused and they are brought together their minds are effectively melded together and they are transformed to transmogrified into the supreme intelligence and so because the supreme intelligence has basically returned and encompasses all the knowledge of all the Kree rulers that have ever existed he also now has the knowledge of these these two Reed Richards to go along with it meaning this supreme intelligence is now knowledgeable on a multiversal scale not just a universal scale but the fact remains that because of the fact that the supreme intelligence had been dead for so long that in the end the goal is to still destroy the Inhumans and so what happens is the supreme intelligence since fourth the Armada of the Kree race sends them all towards the planet Earth and this comes on the heels of the Avengers going forward with the intention of facing off against the forces of the annihilation wave assuming they advance facing off against the the I guess remainders of the rete the various members of the Council of reeds who are still running around the planet Earth and so in response to the fact that the Kree could very well destroy the entirety of the human population Reed Richards basically sends out an SOS and in response to this SOS is the arrival of Galactus with that being said we're gonna bring this video to an end and the reason why is because those of you guys who read Hitman's Fantastic Four you guys know that in the next video which will be out tomorrow things get crazy anyway guys we're gonna wrap this up I hope you guys enjoyed it let me know what you guys think about Hickman's Fantastic Four so far because if you guys have had a few jaw-dropping moments so far it ain't nothing compared to what comes out in the next video I know you guys hate cliffhangers I'm sorry I got to do it to you but uh yeah I'll catch you guys later face [Music]

Channel: Comics Explained

Views: 1,702,147

Keywords: comicsexplained, marvelexplained, fluidicbeats, Comics, Comic Books, Marvel, Marvel COmics, The Hulk, The Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four, Jonathan Hickman, Avengers, New AVengers, Infinity War, Thanos, Infinity Gauntlet, Reed Richards, Susan Storm, Human Torch, The Thing, Mr Fantastic, The Inhumans, The X-Men, Spider-Man, Doctor Doom, Council Of Reeds, Old Man Logan, Wolverine, Galactus, Franklin Richards, Valeria Richards, Full Story

Id: CWNMny3p6xc

Length: 148min 51sec (8931 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 01 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Jdoggokussj2]

great story