Fantastic Four (Vol. 4) #4
My Funny Valentine
Years ago....
Reed Richards is being shown around a home by Marygay Dinkins, as he is seeking to rent out a room while he is attending university. Reed examines the property but isn't totally sold until he looks out the window and sees Marygay's niece Susan Storm. It's love at first sight.
Now
The Fantastic Four continue their adventure through time and space with Franklin and Valeria. Reed informs Ben that they have made contact with a civilized world called Ayleth and have been invited to visit that world. Although they are exchanging information, Reed tells the Thing that visiting the world is important because experiencing their culture is important. When Ben sits down in his chair one of the legs snaps, setting off a prank that Johnny put into play earlier. The two almost come to blows, but Reed stops them, reminding them that their ship is much more fragile and the sort of shenanigans they got up to in the Baxter Building could mean their deaths in space. The Invisible Woman notices that Ben is pretty upset and when she asks him what's wrong, he tells her that he just feels cooped up aboard the ship.
Soon the Fantastic Four arrive on the planet Ayleth and are greeted by Drae, the ruler of that world. They are warmly greeted, but everyone is in for a shock when the people of Ayleth begin bowing before Sue and revealing her like a goddess. Drae tells them that the legends of Sue's arrival were spoken of in of in the ancient Caves of Faen, the starting point of their civilization.
The Past
It's the day that Reed Richards is moving into the room that he has rented. He has help from his best friend, Ben Grimm. Regardless, the boxes Reed carriers are heavy and Sue offers her help. Reed declines and ends up tripping over his feet and spilling the contents of the boxes all over the floor. As the two gather up the items, their hands touch for the first time, and Reed's feelings for his future wife began to grow.
Today
The Fantastic Four and the children are the guest of honor for a great feast. It is there that Drae tells them more about the Caves of Faen where paintings foretold their coming and how it is where their people learn to speak, write and create art. Impressed by this legend, the Fantastic Four inquire about seeing this cave and their request is granted. When the children protest, Sue tells them that it's important and will be educational.
The Past
Reed shows up at Aunt Mary's house to take Susan out on a date. When he and Aunt Mary are left alone, Reed tries to explain that he has nothing but honorable intentions for her niece. Mary is convinced as she is sure that he already loves Susan very much. Before they go out on their date, Aunt Mary tells them to wait while she goes to fetch a camera.
Now
It's nighttime and Reed is still awake thinking of those early days when suddenly Franklin cries out for his mother. This wakes Sue and both parents rush into the room where the children are sleeping. Franklin has had another nightmare about the family being bombarded by cosmic rays and warns them again that they shouldn't come to outer space. Sue offers to stay with the children to try and calm them down and Reed returns to their room alone. The next morning, Reed gets everyone ready to explore the cave. He learns that the Thing went outside to get some fresh air, and Sue is so tired she falls asleep at breakfast.
Later they go down into the cavern and are shocked to find a painting of the Fantastic Four on the walls. This comes as a surprise, even more so when Drae also decrees that the Invisible Woman will be worshiped as a queen. Later, Sue returns to the ship to find Reed hard at work. She found the entire day with the aliens tiring. After some thought, she tells Reed that she thinks Franklin is right to suspect that he is hiding something from the rest of them, but Reed doesn't entertain her suspicions.
The Past
Reed Richards is in the process of moving out of Aunt Mary's house and this has Susan upset because she thinks he doesn't care about her. However, Reed informs her that it is quite the contrary. Because he loves her so much she is a distraction to his work and his productivity is down 46%. He explains to her that if he doesn't go he will only think about her. This causes her to love him even more.
Now
Reed is thinking about all these past feelings and writing them down for his wife to read later. He thinks about the danger they could all be in due to the decay of the Unstable Molecules in his body. He also thinks about his relationship with his wife and realizes how much he takes her for granted.
Getting inspiration, Reed uses the time machine aboard their ship to travel back in time to Ayleth's ancient past. There Reed travels to the cave and is the one who makes the painting itself. With his work complete, Reed Richards returns the present leaving the ancient ancestors of the Aylethians to discover the painting. Returning to the ship, Reed wakes up his wife and tells her that she was right and they have something to talk about.
Continuity Notes
This story states that Reed moved into Marygay's home while Sue Storm was in her late teens. This refutes previous recountings in Fantastic Four #291 and Fantastic Four #543 that state that Sue was only 12 years old when she first met Reed. In the letter page from Fantastic Four Vol 4 #9, Tom Brevoort explains that they changed Sue's age because having a college-aged male falling in love with a pre-teen was inappropriate. However, this creates some issues with continuity, namely regarding Sue's physical age:
In Marvel Knights 4 #1 Sue states that she was 21 years old when she first went into space in Fantastic Four #1 and (at the time of the story in Marvel Knights #1) she was thirty. Based on the measurement of time per the Sliding Timescale of Earth-616, Sue would be roughly 32 years old at the time of this story.
Meanwhile, per Fantastic Four #605, at the time of this story, Reed is roughly 50 years old per the Sliding Timescale. This would make Reed about 38 years old around the time of Fantastic Four #1.
By the original version of Reed and Sue's first meeting, nine years had passed from the time that Reed and Sue first met, making Reed 29 at the time.
Sue's actual age is not mentioned in this story, but she appears to be a young woman who is at least 19 years old. This drastically ages Sue making her 28 at the time of the space flight and closer to 40 at the time of this story.
This drastically contradicts all of the events that Reed partook in after leaving State University. As such, readers could assume that while Reed did first meet Sue when she was 12, he didn't develop romantic feelings until they reconnected when she was older.
My Take on Reed and Sue’s Early Romance
I honestly think that Tom Brevoort was overreacting to the original telling that was plotted by John Byrne and says a lot more about him than it does about the story, in my opinion. If you take a look at Fantastic Four #291, the narrative of the story is told from Sue’s perspective. You see a young Sue fawning over an obviously uncomfortable Reed Richards. The narrative is pretty clear, while Sue clearly had a childhood crush on the much older Reed Richards, Reed was clearly not interested at the time and was very much uncomfortable with the attention he was getting from her. It’s not uncommon and actually quite normal for a young girl to have a crush on a male that is much older than them. Just ask any tweenage girl who has a crush on a movie star. What would have made it inappropriate is if Reed was pursuing a romance with her when she was 13, which is clearly not the case. So I don’t see what is “creepy” about it. Sure, it’s uncomfortable for an adult, but there is nothing sketchy about it.
That said, a lot of people I’ve debated this issue by saying that Marvel retconned this because Reed states in this story that he first met Sue when she was a young adult. As you can see in my continuity notes, that just doesn’t jive with the multiple points that reinforce the contrary. Furthermore, Marvel seldom makes such a sweeping retcon. For the most part, retcons are usually adapting a story so it fits with relative history, not flat out ignoring past events or flashbacks.
I would argue that both flashbacks are true. That Sue first met Reed when she was 13 and developed a crush on him and that Reed only first saw her in a romantic sense when she grew into an adult.
Well, how do you explain Reed saying that he “first” saw Sue when she was a young adult? Well if you bothered to pay attention to Reed Richards’ history, especially his history prior to the birth of the Fantastic Four, you’d know that he was a stereotypical absent-minded professor. Reed has often dismissed children and ignored them because they make him uncomfortable, he’s even done this with his own son, Franklin. So I choose to think that when Reed is saying he “first saw” Sue Storm as an adult, what he meant that it was the first time he really paid attention to her.
This also works if you pay attention to who is recounting past events. In Fantastic Four #291, it is Sue who is thinking back to when she first fell in love with Reed Richards as a 13-year-old girl. While in this story, it is Reed who is recalling back to when he fell in love with Sue, as an adult. It’s totally normal for two different people to have fallen in love with each other at different times. Love seldom works where two people fall in love with each other at the exact same time. That’s why I think both of these recollections can still be correct without negating the other.
That said, if a teenaged girl having a crush on an older man makes you uncomfortable then you’re the one with the problem. The only time something like that becomes inappropriate is when that older person takes advantage of the younger person which has never been the case with Reed and Sue. What’s clear in every telling of Reed and Sue’s early romance is that they were only romantically involved with one another once they were both consenting adults.
As a point of hypocrisy on Brevoorts part is that he has a problem with Fantastic Four #291, yet he was perfectly okay with FF (Vol 2) #4 (Brevoort was the editor on that book). That entire issue is about the Moloid children (Mik, Korr, Turg, and Tong) having a crush on She-Hulk and they get jealous when she goes out on a date with Wyatt Wingfoot. This is the same case where very young people (the Moloids) have a crush on a much older person (She-Hulk). One could argue that the only difference is that the gender roles are reversed where the Moloid children three of the four Moloid children identify as male and She-Hulk is female. The situation is pretty much the same, the romantic interest is entirely one-sided. Is it okay because most of the Moloids are male and She-Hulk is female? Or is it okay because the Moloid children aren’t even human? Granted, I hardly doubt that we’ll ever see a She-Hulk story where one of the now-adult Moloids ends up in a relationship and marries She-Hulk (That would take 40 years of publication for them to age up to adults based on the Sliding Timescale), but the same ethics are at play here.
