FF #10

"Paint It Black"
written by Matt Fraction
art by Michael Allred
colors by Laura Allred

It's a slyly dangerous world in which the adults go on a meta-, madcap adventure and the children let yet another fearsome murderer out of his cell.

If it weren't so seemingly light-hearted but in fact so darkly ironic, the cameos by editor Tom Brevoort, writer Matt Fraction, and artist Michael Allred would be little more than a mildly clever gimmick.  They're affable enough.  Foul-mouthed Fraction and trench-coated Brevoort have a goofy, almost brotherly rapport, but it's Allred's casual confession to She-Hulk as he's whisked to safety by Medusa's hair—"I have always loved you" (FF #10: 18)—that's so winning.  Contacted by Darla's publicist, a calculating (sometimes literally) but shrewd man with a sharp nose for public opinion, the Marvel team is invited to create a comic starring the new FF, but find themselves on a microscale fun-fair ride with a microtiger stolen by Artie Maddicks and Leech from the local zoo.  It's a boppy, pop art adventure.

But the real promise of "Paint It Black" comes in the unseen threat of Doctor Doom.  We don't know this Old John Storm.  Even if he is who he says he is, he is also volatile and mercurial, often as foolish to trust his own intuition as to ignore it.  But, unlike the others, he sees Alex Power's treachery.  He sees Doom's hand behind his actions.

Presented with the task of killing John Storm, becoming a murderer himself, Alex Power tries to imagine this change.  He and Ahura lead a few of the other students to visit the Inhuman's schizophrenic uncle, Maximus the Mad.  In perhaps the world's most blundering contest of Twenty Questions, they unwittingly free the mad genius, compounding the problems already embedded in the FF.

[September 2013]