Fantastic Four #579-582

Fantastic Four #579-582

Originally released in 2010

Written by Jonathan Hickman

Art by Neil Edwards

These issues mark the start of the Future Foundation and, seemingly, the start of where things get complicated. (time travel tends to do that)  The story starts off simply enough - Reed Richards is giving a speech, wrapping up a conference that he had set up years ago where Earth's brightest minds would meet and share their research.  He then proceeds to insult the research of everyone present (aside from She-Hulk, whose speech was cited as the sort of insightful, forward-thinking material that he had hoped to see when he established this discussion forum), as their topics make it clear that they're backward-thinking and terrified of the future.

To address that problem, Reed establishes the Future Foundation, the brightest of the younger generation, to give them the resources and freedom to solve the world's problems however they can.  The Future Foundation gets their own series, also written by Hickman; I'm not sure if it's required reading for Secret Wars, but I'll look into it.  The class includes Valeria Richards, some super-intelligent Moloids and representatives of the Atlantean city beneath the South Pole that were shown in earlier issues, along with Dragon Man (a robotic foe of the Fantastic Four who has had his mind upgraded), a young clone of the Wizard (another foe of the Fantastic Four who leads a team called the Frightful Four), and Alex Power, a member of the Power Pack.

The second issue is something of an interlude, establishing the first project of the Future Foundation - to make it so the Thing can become human again temporarily, after looking at the problem from a different way than Reed. (determining that there's no way to make a solution for Ben's situation all or nothing, as it's "like telling a dog to not be a dog" - they come up with a way to make it so Ben can be a normal human for about a week, though knowing how story-telling works, he'll unknowingly pick the worst week possible, where the Fantastic Four desperately need Ben to be his rocky self)

Meanwhile, Johnny Storm is looking after Franklin Richards, and going shopping for toys leads them into the deathtrap of a villain known only as Arcade, who worked with the Impossible Man (a classic FF villain) for a business deal after seemingly reforming.  Arcade sabotages his own business by turning it into a death trap, because he's addicted to turning things into death traps apparently, but when it's one guy who's obsessed with building death traps versus one of the Fantastic Four and two reality warpers (Franklin and the Impossible Man), it's hilariously one-sided.

The final two issues bring in Nathaniel Richards, the time-traveling father of Reed Richards, and this is where things get complicated.  It clears up the goals of the future version of Franklin that was introduced earlier - he's working with Nathaniel Richards and the future version of Valeria to change the past and prevent an apocalyptic future from happening.  Nathaniel's backstory has a lot going on at once - trying to stop a quantum-powered robot led to Nathaniel becoming ageless, gaining the ability to travel through time, and having every single version of Nathaniel Richards across the multiverse pulled into one universe.  A future version of Kang the Conqueror, named Immortus, viewed this as a threat to all time and forced every Nathaniel Richards across the multiverse to fight to the death.  The main Nathaniel had avoided taking part in this, but with only one other version of himself remaining, he can't stay out of it any longer, and he turns to the college-age versions of Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, and Victor von Doom to help him out. (why he doesn't just go to the Fantastic Four is unclear)

I decided to stop here because the next few issues build up to the death of one of the Fantastic Four, so I figured it would be best if I didn't cut off partway through that storyline.  The art here is good, though some of the close-ups of human faces can look a bit off at times. (the Thing, Dragon Man, and others that don't look human don't have that issue)

Hickman's weaving an elaborate tapestry, though I'm starting to wonder if there are too many moving pieces, and I'm hoping he can tie all of this together in the end because I'm concerned that it's only going to get more complicated from here.  There are brief shots of Nu-World (when I figured that plotline was done) showing that Hulk Junior becomes the evil future version of the Hulk who's known as the Maestro and there's some sort of Planet Ultron, and that's on top of everything else.  There's a lot going on at once, and this is only the first year of the story, so I'm hoping that Hickman sticks the landing, whether it's in this series or in Secret Wars.