Sunday, December 10, 2006

Man, the Fantastic Four need an in-house daycare.
Is it wrong to think Sue's hair looks great in that last panel?
The late pick-up charges alone must be killing them. Even though she's the one stuck arranging and handling child care, Sue should still be above this kind of hassle. When most parents are late picking up their kids from tired, cranky, dead-eyed minimum-wage daycare providers; their excuses are always the same and always lame:

"I was tied up at work."

"Traffic was terrible today."

"The slots were on fire today!"

"I'm having an affair, and have pretty much checked out of my family. Hey slugger! Did you eat already?"

Sue here is contending with Annihilus and the immenient anti-matter obliteration of the entire universe. Pretty sure you can watch Franklin until 6:00, Agatha.

This is one of the relatively few points on which I don't disagree with Civil War: lots of bloggers cried out that Sue would never leave Franklin (and probably Valeria, I guess: that kid should be the Maggie Simpson of the Marvel Universe, since after Claremont wrote Teenage Valeria I never want to hear her talk again) behind with Reed, but that seems the safest route. Even if Reed will just build bigger and bigger robot nanny babysitters like H.E.R.B.I.E, which is a mild step up from a wire mother, a lateral move from a Teddy Ruxspin, and surely no worse than leaving the kid in front of the TV.

From Fantastic Four #109, "Death in the Negative Zone!" Story by Stan Lee, art by John Buscema and Joe Sinnott. Reprinted in Marvel Selects: Fantastic Four #3, with an Alan Davis cover. There's also a nice editorial page in the reprint on the Negative Zone, and it points out that this issue was the fourth time in a decade that Reed was seemingly doomed to hit the 'exploding atmosphere' of the Zone.

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