Writing: Tom DeFalco
Art: Carlos Pacheco
What Went Down: We enter on Franklin Richards and Charlie—the mental projection Onslaught is using to trick Franklin—in the middle of a gypsy circus. A woman named Magda—most likely Magneto’s former wife and the mother of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch—warns Charles that the child is innocent. The entire circus turns out to be an illusion created by Franklin as a test of his reality manipulating powers. When he hears his family’s ship return, Franklin abandons the illusion and runs to greet them.
At this point in FF continuity you should know that the team is hanging out with a Skrull named Lyja and Mr. Fantastic’s father Nathaniel Richards. Professor X shows up at the FF’s waiting room asking to see Mr. Fantastic while the Avengers are calling on the com line. Scott Lang, the current Ant-Man of the time, answers the call from Bishop, Iceman, and a number of Avengers. They try to warn him that the Professor is a threat, but Onslaught knocks Scott unconscious.
In another room, Xavier insists that Franklin must join his School for Gifted Youngsters. When Reed and Sue refuse, Xavier reveals himself as Onslaught and attacks them. The X-Men/Avengers arrive, and all the heroes split up to locate Franklin, Onslaught, and Scott Lang. Crystal, the Human Torch, and Nathaniel find Scott Lang unconscious, but they are all defeated by Onslaught. Lyja tries tricking Onslaught by taking Franklin’s appearance, but she, the Thing, and Hawkeye are also defeated. Bishop and the Invisible Woman check Franklin’s room; they find Onslaught and appear to defeat him by having Bishop rechannel Sue’s invisible force fields as energy blasts. Xavier appears weakened, but it’s a trick and he takes out the two heroes.
Outside Four Freedoms Plaza, the Watcher and Apocalypse discuss the significance of Franklin and his powers to “rearrange the molecular structure of matter.” Apocalypse notes that this must be hard for Uatu because he actually cares about the Fantastic Four, but he is not allowed to help them.
Franklin is alone eating cookies when Charlie comes to take him. Iceman and Mr. Fantastic attack Onslaught, but the villain makes it so Franklin cannot see any of them. The other heroes recover, and they all attack Onslaught in unison. It looks like they’re going to prevail, but at the last second Onslaught lets loose an energy blast that knocks them all out. He takes Franklin away.
How It Was: Well Onslaught comes to capture Franklin as part of his master plan. What part of that plan? We’ll never know, but basically at this point he is just a plot device that lets the villain do anything and get away with it. Fantastic Four’s biggest problem is that it has too many extraneous characters that serve no other purpose in this entire crossover. Poor Lyja, Nathaniel Richards, and Scott Lang are left just standing around until the next issue of FF shows up to finish off all their subplots right before the title reboots. I do like the central idea of attacking the team through Franklin, their most innocent and vulnerable member, but surely capturing Franklin has been done to death after four hundred issues; it just doesn’t feel very exciting or original.
There are some major problems with the story structure as well. What possible reason would Onslaught have for pretending to be Charles Xavier when he’s supposed to be so powerful? It’s obvious from the start his ploy isn’t going to work, so really he is just wasting everybody’s time. The gypsy circus also feels like a waste; sure, I guess it’s supposed to be a subtle hint about Magneto’s connection to Onslaught, but it hasn’t really been established that Magneto or Magda were gypsies, only that their children were raised by gypsies. Also, the Avengers lose half their members between calling FF headquarters and showing up there, which is a strange tactic for facing the greatest threat ever to the Marvel Universe. And right after the X-Men and Avengers show up, they decide to split up? It really doesn’t feel like they’re treating this threat seriously if they’re leaving members like Wasp and Giant-Man behind and breaking off into groups of two and three. The fights are okay, but really they all boil down to one of the FF using his or her powers to detect Onslaught, followed by all the heroes getting thrashed. The mislead with Xavier feels forced since they could’ve just tried to knock him out. Even the end is a little bit of a dud when the heroes rally and then they’re all defeated in one panel.
Carlos Pacheco’s art is great when it comes to the heroes and the fortress itself, but I have to say he draws the weakest looking Onslaught of just about everyone at Marvel. His Onslaught seems small, and he doesn’t draw the face right, going for a red face with white features as opposed to the cooler shadowed face under the helmet that most of the other Marvel artists give him. This issue gets the job done, but it’s not exactly a gripping read. This story just feels rushed and it has too much baggage in the form of characters and plots that have nothing to do with the Onslaught story.
C+
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