Fantastic Four #583

"Three, Part 1: In Latveria, The Flowers Bloom In Winter," by Jonathan Hickman (w) and Steve Epting (a)

Rating: worth a read, then read the whole story

I'm not entirely sure how excited I am about Valeria Richards as a character. I'm still not entirely sure where she came from; I remember the Claremont story reasonably well, but it's been retconned a few different times such that her origins aren't as clear as I'd like. I was profoundly affected by John Byrne's story back in the 80's, when Sue lost the baby despite the best efforts of Reed, Bruce Banner, Hank Pym, and Otto Octavius. That heartfelt plea, of Reed pleading with Octavius to help his wife, was utterly amazing. As a character, she's always compared to that amazing storyline and usually comes up wantig. I kind of have her, as a character, along the same path as Amadeus Cho: the deus ex machina sort of young person. Fine in small doses, but not exactly someone I want to be a star. I'm more interested in Ben Grimm or Reed Richards or Sue Richards: a hero with flaws and warts and Imperfections.

However, in this storyline, I'm interested in her. Making a bargain with Doctor Doom is an interesting, ballsy strategy. Doom is, quite likely, my favorite supervillain because he isn't a villain per se. He's actually quite a good dictator, taking care of his people in Latveria over the years, substituting freedom for peace, prosperity, and happiness. His motives are pure: take care of his people, acquire personal power along that line, and take over the world. Crazy thing is, if Doom ever did win... we'd probably be pretty well off, long term. His flaw, besides his overwhelming ego, is his hatred of Reed Richards. His honor is always strong: if he promises Valeria that he's going to help her, then he will do exactly that. So: how will he turn it, and find his way to killing Reed?

I assume it's Reed that is going to die. I mean, all those other Reeds were just killed. That was revisited during this issue, when Valeria checked up on her father's activities and discovered a rearguard of Reeds continuing to fight the Celestials.

I'm intrigued by Valeria's conclusion that her father made the wrong choice by choosing her family instead of hopping universes and "solving everything" with the other Reeds. It's a logical decision, yet one that is uniquely childlike. Everything is black and white to young people, even those who have IQs north of a jillion, even those who's should and do know better. I'm intrigued by her choice of Doom to help her father, even though we know that her future self chose her. I'm also interested to see how the events of the last couple of issues will play out in this story.

The displaced order of storytelling was wonderful, in its Pulp Fiction-style stories. Interspacing Valeria's journey with her conversation with Doom and the FF's fight against Evolutionaries was interesting storytelling, and it helped keep me thoroughly engaged in the issue. I do hope that the new-look Thing, caused by the High Evolutionary's gas, reverts back to normal soon; not a fan of the Ape-Thing look. Any of the three stories could have been a feature story and perfectly appropriate for this cosmic-style book; told in this manner, it's a lot of fun.

I'm interested to see where this is going to go. Bravo, Mr. Hickman!


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