Fantastic Four Annual vol2 #1

Fantastic Four Annual vol2 #1 (2014)
by James Robinson & Tom Grummett
cover by Greg Land

The numbering of annuals can be very confusing. This was published during Volume 5 of Fantastic Four, but it’s not classified as “Fantastic Four Volume 5 Annual”: it’s officially counted as “Fantastic Four Annual Volume 2 #1”, even if it has nothing to do with Fantastic Four Volume 2.
The artist, Tom Grummett, will be a familiar name during the Reboot Legion.

The cover artist is the infamous Greg Land, who has the notorious habit of tracing other artists and even frames from… let’s just say questionable sources.
So I wonder: where did he trace this expression from?

I definitely do not want to know where he traced Valeria from.

As we saw last time, Valeria Richards is currently ling in Latveria, where you can witness the spectacle of HOVERBIKE JOUSTING.

If this was a Silver Age story, this would be treated as a regular day in Latveria because everybody knows jousting is a popular occurrence in modern day Europe.^*
But it’s a special occasion: the anniversary of the founding of Latveria!
^{*citation needed}

Well, according to Doom at least. Kind of surprised his mother’s birthday isn’t its own separate national holiday.

What sets Doctor Doom apart from other supervillains, and one of the many reasons why I find him utterly fascinating, is that if this was anyone else you would assume he’s just acting to manipulate Valeria.
But with Doom, he GENUINELY believes he’s a benevolent ruler.

Another aspect I love about Doom is that he actually DOES have the technology and resources to fix A LOT of the world’s problems… and the only reason why he doesn’t do it right away is because of his own priorities and twisted morality.
Valeria pushing him to do this “conquest with kindness” move puts into question why Reed Richards isn’t the one to act this way.
Sure, Doom has certainly access to more resources and has more tricks up his sleeve, but Doom has to this alone because he’s a pariah in the international community. Sure there would be pushback, but Reed should be able to accomplish SOME of this better than him, right?

Valeria and Doom seem to be in perfect unison with this plan, but someone crashing in Latveria happens to disagree.

It’s a rare occasion for us to see Doom’s throne room… and it’s exactly the perfect mix of awesome and tacky that you’d expect.

At this point Doctor Doom isn’t bothered by superheroes crashing at this place.

Susan is being remarkably courteous here because Valeria left on her own: Doctor Doom didn’t kidnap her child.
This time.

However, Valeria and her giant forehead want to stay.

The Fantastic Four are going through A LOT in this period. They’re being evicted from the Baxter Building, the Human Torch lost his powers, the Thing is in jail, and most devastatingly… Child Protective Services have taken away Franklin from his parents.

This is heavy stuff, but I have to mention something about the artwork. It’s perfectly fine here, but as I mentioned last time you just cannot have two artists agree to how old Valeria is supposed to look. Here she’s barely taller than Susan’t knees…

…even when, the last time we saw her, she was WAY taller.

Doctor Doom can’t help himself and he twists the knife on the recent events.
I’m kind of surprised Susan doesn’t suspect Doom to be the one behind the conspiracy going on to destroy the Fantastic Four. Maybe she thinks it would be beneath him?
Which I agree; he would gladly do most of that stuff… depowering Johnny, frame the Thing, bankrupt the team… but having Child Protective Services take Franklin would be too much for him.

And yes, I’m fully aware I’m saying this when I argued that both offering Franklin’s soul to the Devil and exiling him to Hell were both in-character for Doom.
He would still find calling CPS more despicable. Have I mentioned he has a twisted morality?

Kind of surprised Doom doesn’t take the opportunity to boast that the only reason both Susan and Valeria survived childbirth was thanks to him…

…but maybe he doesn’t want to distract us from Susan’s butt shot the revelation of the Valeriabot.

This is the final straw that breaks the Invisible Woman.

And oh boy, you DO NOT want to be on the receiving end of her Angry Mom power-up.

Honestly I can’t even think of a time when Susan was seriously angry at her child, even going as far back as Franklin’s birth in 1968.

As mentioned last time, Valeria is officially three years old at this point. It’s hard to tell because she’s a super-genius and, once again, 90% of artists draw her as much older.

When Doom tries to intervene, Susan straight up calls him a sociopath with a mother complex.
I’ve argued before that calling Doom a sociopath is a bit reductive, but she’s 100% spot-on about the mother complex.

She even brings up continuity, mentioning how Doom killed an alternate future version of her in Fantastic Four #561.

This results in, of course, a not-so-invisible fight.

In order to fight Angry Mom, Doom is apparently going all Disappointed Dad.

Susan sending Valeria away is bad news…

…FOR DOCTOR DOOM.

Susan Storm Richards, Marvel’s Badass Mom since… well I can’t say since 1961, more like since 1981.

It’s interesting to see that Doom is prepared to already resort to magic in order to fight her: typically he keeps that stuff for last unless he’s already dealing with magic users.

Except, he didn’t expect Susan to already be part of a subplot.

Not really sure how Susan’s force field is able to “seep through the atoms” of Doom’s own field… isn’t that supposed to be some sort of energy?

Doom loses this one-on-one fight pretty decisively… at least until he delivers the final blow.

That’s right: one of the parts of the conspiracy was to subtly restore Susan’s evil alternate personality of Malice, which dates back to the Byrne era.
The way this is accomplished for the conspiracy doesn’t entirely make sense to me, but it’s beyond the scope of this review.

If you’re not a Fantastic Four fan, you might have seen the Malice persona in this panel that sometimes makes the round as an out-of-context meme.
It’s sometimes brought up as a way to mischaracterize Reed as a terrible husband, but he’s not beating his wife here: he’s purposely antagonizing Malice in order to restore Susan’s personality.
(which admittedly yes, technically speaking does mean he’s beating his wife)

Long story short, whenever Malice shows up something really IS wrong with Susan.

My favorite types of Doctor Doom stories:
1) when Doom doesn’t win because he does not understand people at a fundamental level
2) when Doom doesn’t win… but also does not lose

After all, by losing this fight Doom has ensured the loyalty of Valeria and caused enormous emotional pain to the heart of the Fantastic Four.
He would somehow rationalize this as a win for him anyway, but I would argue that when it comes to the REAL stakes of this conflict… Doom won.

And all it cost him is just having to rebuild Castle Doom once again.

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Doom significance: 7/10
This is the main reason why Valeria will act as Doom’s sidekick for a couple of stories, but in the long run it does help their bond.
On the Fantastic Four side it’s not as influential as you’d think: they’re going through so much that the return of Malice is treated like a footnote… which isn’t even the first time.

Silver Age-ness: 1/10
Even with the Valeriabot, not too much.

Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
As mentioned last time I don’t have the highest opinion of Volume 5, but this was pretty great.
I’m sure that focusing a lot on Doctor Doom doesn’t have an impact on this.
But jokes aside, it does explore the complex relationship between all three players and doesn’t hold its punches. My only complain is that bringing up Malice is wasting the concept, using her more as a cheap nostalgic reference than an exploration of the character.
It’s not without precedent, since the DeFalco run brought her back and seriously cheapened her: the Byrne stories about her are still some of the best work done with Susan, and they’re the catalyst for her growing into a new person. Almost literally, as she’s kind of the reason why she drops the Invisible Girl codename to become Invisible Woman.
DeFalco turned her into something between an alternate personality and an almost supernatural entity, and Malice was way more complex than that in the original version.
This treats her the same way but manages to do even less with her, as Malice gets lost in the maelstrom of tragedies surrounding Volume 5.
A pity, as I think James Robinson is a much better writer than Tom DeFalco and would have delivered if he was given more room to breathe.
The fight between Susan and Doom is spectacular, and it’s always neat when we get a showcase about just how powerful she can be… but something feels a little off.
We have seen multiple times that Doom DOES have the technology to either bypass or even inhibit Susan’s force field. It could be argued that she’s grown beyond those limitations, possibly because Malice is much more aggressive than her, but it’s still weird to see Doom doesn’t even try to use those. So I would be inclined to believe Doom lost the fight on purpose in order to manipulate Valeria… except I can’t really imagine Doctor Doom losing a fight on purpose, ESPECIALLY to a member of the Fantastic Four.
It also makes you wonder why the whole team has such a hard time dealing with him, if just one of their members can kick his butt like this.
Doom would probably have ended the fight if could use magic, and it seems to me that he just gives up the second he notices Malice is in control.
Everything points out to either A) Doctor Doom lost on purpose B) Susan really can defeat him on her own. The first one is seriously out of character, and the second one ruins any potential future fight with the Fantastic Four. So pick your poison I guess.

It was a Doombot all along
Given that Valeria has picked up his habit of robotic duplicates it would be quite funny if she was also unknowingly dealing with a Doombot, but there isn’t much to support this. He does mention using magic, but we don’t actually see it and we have seen that some Doombots are capable of handling a bit of magic on their own. Somehow.

Crazy tech
I’m giving this to the awesome hoverbike jousting! It would be worthy of a visit to Latveria just to see those if it wasn’t for, you know, all those human rights violations and stuff.