Fantastic Four: A Death in the Family #1

Mar 10

Mar 10 Fantastic Four: A Death in the Family #1

Johnny is awoken from a dream by the Thing who warns him that Sue is on a cleaning rampage and she is on her way to his room to make sure that he has tidied it up. Horrified by the fact that he has slept in and his room is a mess, Johnny tells Ben to run interference. After listing his demands, Ben agrees to do just that. Confronting Sue in the hallway, Ben tries to keep her distracted but she sees right through the ploy. Pushing past the Thing and entering Johnny's room both are surprised to find it in proper shape. However, Sue sees right through her brother’s ploy and uses her powers to render the Torch's bed invisible, revealing that all the junk in his room was stuffed under there. The Invisible Woman tells her brother to clean up his room while she goes and checks on her husband's progress with cleaning his lab and then to prepare chili for supper. Johnny offers to make chili instead, pointing out that he is better at making it than her.

When they enter Reed's lab they find that it also appears to be clean. When the discussion about responsibilities around the house is done and Sue mentions making chili, Reed suggests that Johnny help her. When Johnny tells him he can't because he has to clean his room, Johnny opens the door to the closet by mistake causing a bunch of Reed's inventions -- carelessly crammed in there to evade cleaning duty -- come tumbling out. Sue surrenders and agrees to let Johnny help her prepare supper. As Reed and Ben continue working in the lab, one of Reed's inventions begins to come to life. In the kitchen, Johnny and Sue get to talking and he explains that he learned how to cook while his sister was busy raising them as children. Suddenly their moment of bonding is interrupted when an alarm sounds from Reed's lab.

In the lab they find that one of Reed's devices has summoned a massive Cephalopod from another dimension. During the fight with the creature, the beams it fires can pass through Sue's force field, striking her in the chest and killing her instantly. While the Fantastic Four deal with the shock of Sue's sudden death, Johnny refuses to let his sister die like this. Going to the Time Platform, Johnny sets it to go back in time a few hours so he can prevent this tragedy from happening, ignoring Reed's pleas to Johnny that he cannot change the past.

A few hours earlier, the future Johnny appears before his past self while he's scrambling to make his room appear clean. Future-Johnny uses a device to put his past self to sleep and hides him under the bed. When the Thing and Invisible Woman come in the room isn't clean because Johnny was forced to hide his past self under the bed. Johnny then says whatever is necessary to placate his sister and then suggests that he make them chili for supper before Sue can mention it. When they go into Reed's lab, Johnny becomes nervous because this is the moment before the creature appeared in Reed's lab. This time, Ben tries to exit out of the closet causing the devices in it to tumble out. Not willing to take any chances, Johnny uses his powers to melt all the devices to slag, much to the surprise of others.

Johnny then goes with Sue to the kitchen to prepare dinner and goes through the same conversation that he had with his sister earlier, only this time Johnny's a little sadder. When Sue asks him if everything is okay, he tells her that they will be. As if on cue, the alarm in Reed's lab goes off and when the Torch and Invisible Woman arrive, Johnny is dishearted to see that the creature still appeared in Reed's lab despite his best efforts. Sue doesn't listen when Johnny tells her to stay back. However this time when the creature fires its beams at Sue, Johnny gets in the way of the blast, saving her life. By this time the present Johnny has woken up and joined the fight. This creates enough of a distraction for Reed to calibrate a weapon to send the creature back its own dimension.

Present-Johnny is furious at his future-self, thinking him an impostor. However, the Torch believes his future-self after he relates the dream they had that morning. Explaining why he came back in time, the Fantastic Four assists future Johnny back to the Time Platform and send him back to his own time. In the aftermath of the battle, Reed explains that the Johnny that just visited them couldn't change his own past, only created a divergent reality where Sue lived, while the Sue of his reality would remain dead. Johnny understands this but believes his alternate self wanted to go back to make sure at least one version of himself didn't have to suffer that sort of loss.