In a distant, alternate future, Doctor Doom escapes imprisonment and gets alternate reality versions of Sub-Mariner and Black Panther to go back in time with him to stop Reed Richards from doing something that will create a terrible future. The dialogue when they initially meet is very strong.
What is he going to do? The answer is in a secret from full of Reed Richards’ ideas.
Okayyyyyy….So Reed is a bit crazy? It’s called the “room of 100 ideas,” and it is “infamous” in the future.
Have we heard about this room before? I don’t recall if we have. I don’t love time travel stories but this one offers a solid explanation for Reed’s behavior during the Civll War: He believed that joining on Iron Man’s side, even at the expense of his marriage, was the only way to prevent a future disaster.
Nicely done, Mr. McDuffie.
Anyway, the 100 Ideas are actually okay. It’s the 101st idea that causes problems in the future. What’s that?
“Fix everything.”. Namor tells the FF that Reed did in fact fix everything. Poverty. Disease. Hunger. All of it. But it drove him a bit nuts and Sue left him. As Namor starts to talk about the break up of his marriage, Reed responds to Namor thusly…
So…Reed is in fact a bit crazy.
Eventually this all regresses into fisticuffs. They’re pretty good fisticuffs though.
Throughout, Doom fights and hurts Reed but the real torture is that he doesn’t share what he knows about Idea #101. Reed can’t stand not knowing.
The future Fantastic Four arrive and the big fight becomes a bigger fight…It’s a little disappointing because the first two acts of this arc were very thoughtful and provoking. But there is a good punchline.
When it’s all over, we realize that Doom never told Reed what it was that he did that messed up the future. The punchline is that Doom was just jealous. He thought HE should have been the one to fix everything.
It ends with future Reed telling present day Reed to go ahead with idea #101. Thus setting the stage for what will eventually become the Fantastic Foundation in the “FF” series.
This was a surprisingly great story–McDuffie ends his run on a high note. It’s also an important one. The 101st idea will be something the FF return to many times in the coming years.
English (US) · 