Ultimate FF #5

[nomadicwriter]

The penultimate issue, and, well, it's a weird one.

So the issue picks up where the last one left off, the arrival of Miles Morhames from the Ultimate Spider-Ham universe, where all our heroes and villains are humanoid animals.

Apparently, his universe was hit by the same rifts as the Ult FF have been dealing with; their version of Doom came up with a plan that involved killing billions of people to save mere millions, and their version of Sue, who'd fallen in love with him after a painful breakup with Ben, went along with it despite the terrible price. (Victor is far more concerned with the fact he is apparently "Ducktor" Doom in the Spider-Ham-verse than any talk of him falling in love with Sue. Others are more concerned about the practicalities of a love story between an ape and a duck.)

It seems Miles has visited many universes, and the only ones that survived were the ones where Sue had a child with Reed Richards, creating Franklin Richards and his reality warping powers. Sam and Tony debate whether the fate of the universe can really come down to who Sue Storm's dating, and whether 616 universe is an anomaly; Doom tells them to shut up: "All you see is math. You don't understand poetry." (Maybe he's coming around to the whole "dating Sue" thing.)

Ben has had enough, and starts a fight with Victor. Victor claims that the false Doctor Doom that Ben killed was Sue and Johnny's scheming mother, Mary Storm. (Speculated by some at the time, since she was shown to be working with Doom shortly before. Maybe this is the cause of Ben and Sue's 'painful' breakup in the other universe?) Ben wants to believe that he's lying, but Victor claims: "Your anger is misplaced, Grimm. The things you blame me for were never me... Doom always tells the truth, no matter how little you want to hear it."

Sue, meanwhile, is understandably brooding about the whole 'must have a child with your evil ex to save the universe' deal. She goes off to the ruined Baxter Building, where Reed has holed up. They briefly talk about Reed's visit to Galactus's home universe (possibly 616? I didn't read Cataclysm) where the other version of Reed and Sue were happy and had kids. Reed tries to apologise to Sue for the mistakes he's made, but she doesn't trust him, and says "We aren't those people, Reed. We look like them, and we talk like them - but they aren't us. Not really. I wish they were, because they could handle this."

Then, in a pretty disturbing twist, she uses her powers to trap Reed, telling him she's going to perform 'surgery', and saying, "I need something from you, and I need both of us to be very brave. We are going to do something terrible, but we're going to save the world."

So, erm, well. That happened. Not quite sure how to react, especially considering there's only one issue left to go. The hints of future Victor/Sue are vaguely interesting, but probably never likely to be followed up on now; the ending with Reed and Sue is real horror story stuff, and I can't see how wrapping it up in the space of one issue can possibly go well. (Especially since I think I read that Fialkov couldn't write it for some reason and there's a fill-in writer.) Will Sue be stopped before she does anything too extreme, or... what?

Still the same artist as last time; art's better than the early issues, but basically just kind of functional, without much I can think of to say about it.

I await issue #6 with something of a morbidly fascinated cringe.