Fantastic Four’s Civil War tie-ins are among the best of the lot. They start out sad.
Johnny Storm has been beaten by an angry mob, and the team are waiting to see if he’s going to be okay. Thing is pretty tortured by the whole event and decides to leave the country.
Thing goes to France and we get a fun side-adventure in the middle of all the “heaviness” pervasive in every other Marvel title at the time.
He teams up with some French heroes.
Anyway, there’s lots of scenes connecting to the main Civil War story. None of them add much value, but you can’t beat this creative team–they are told well and are fun to read. There’s also a through-like of Mad Thinker and Puppet Master. None of this is important to cover here.
The F4 series handled the break up of Sue and Reed in an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT WAY than the actual Civil War comic. Here’s what happened in the miniseries:
In Civil War, Sue is heroic and self-sacrificing–she writes a letter and leaves in the middle of the night after having sex with Reed for one last time and kissing her kids goodnight.
In Fantastic Four, Reed is headstrong, refuses to share his private motivations with his wife, and tells her to leave.
Very different.
I don’t know how Marvel editorial let something like this get by them. Or maybe it was a brilliant kind of Rashamon to show that everyone is the hero of their own story?
Johnny of course does wake up from his coma and he also has a character arc here. Again, nothing important–but he does get some bonding time with Spider-Man.
The Civil War issues are the end of JMS’s great run on this book.
Issue #543 is billed as an “epilogue,” but it’s really a celebration of the team’s 45th anniversary. It’s got several stories. One is by Dwayne McDuffie, who will be taking over this book now that JMS is gone. It has Sue and Reed uncomfortably reconciling.
They then quit and Black Panther and Storm take their place.
Interesting. The married couple is replaced by a married couple.
The other stories further the tradition of creators appearing in their own books–something that began with Stan and Jack in the FF. Stan himself writes one of these stories, and we also see Joe Quesada, Mike Allred, and others. Stan meets Franklin, and brings a lame gift.
One story is by the great Paul Pope!
And Johnny gets back to hot rod racing!
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