Wednesday, September 17, 2025

"Vent."

No prizes will be given for guessing what my vent "set" was made out of...But, generally speaking, the Fantastic Four's security system is as good as it needs to be for the story. One of the first, regular (non-reprint) FF books I ever read featured the Trapster getting into the Baxter Building while dressed as Spider-Man: FF #218, although that could have been human error. I also recall around either Englehart's run or Simonson's, Thor and Cap show up at Four Freedoms Plaza, and the security system yells at them until they get off the roof. Is the security good enough to stop the Black Cat? Not consistently, I'd say. I'd even guess that Felicia's "tests" were almost like a fun side-project for Reed, almost like playing chess by mail: he would make improvements, then see if or how she beat them, and then make changes accordingly, with both trying to think three steps ahead of the other. 

Reed probably wouldn't be onboard with letting Felicia use Doom's time machine, but we've seen before, Ben is. I didn't originally intend for him to show up, either; he just kinda did, but it's Ben and he's the coolest. Both Felicia and Ben tease Johnny more than a bit, but that's probably to keep him from getting a swelled head, since pretty consistently in the Marvel U. I think Johnny's had Beatle-like popularity. I'm thinking of that time he burned down Empire State University, which admittedly looks bad, but large portions of his fanbase would doubtless insist he did nothing wrong. Anyway, Ben is also there because while Felicia probably could access the computers for info on the TVA and such, it's more fun to get the dirt from Ben, who has got to be a font of vaguely disparaging knowledge: you name it, he's seen it, and probably been smacked around by it, before. He of course has seen both Death's Head and the TVA before, but one thing he hasn't seen: Sat holding that bottle, so I had to cut a line about "I thought that bottle looked familiar." (She had both hands free in the last strips with her and the FF!)

4 comments:

Mr. Morbid said...

Those vent shots were well-done. Bruce Willis would be proud (RIP. Yeah I know he’s still alive but does HE know he’s still alive? Poor guy)

I absolutely believe your personal theory about Reed & Felicia. That would definitely be up Reed’s alley. Just like I firmly believe Ben would be the most likely of the team to be easily persuaded to give access to things the rest of them probably wouldn’t because he’s just all-heart like that. On a related note, no news about that yearly summer Secret Wars reunion bbq? It’s the event of the season.

CalvinPitt said...

Reading that first panel, I initially thought Kurt had fallen facefirst in an alley in drunken despair over Satana's abduction. Which is more of a Deadpool move, but Kurt's allowed to wallow once in a while.

Anyway, the Thing is here, yes! Fingers crossed Owen Wilson Mobius is about to get clobbered in the kisser!

H said...

Ok, yeah- I have no idea what the vent is. I was going to say gum wrappers but they don’t stay up that well.

I’m a bit surprised Ben can change Johnny’s passwords and stuff, and that Johnny even has those anymore- I would have figured Reed would have everything on biometric scans by now. Most of the stuff on my phone I can do with my fingerprint and that’s ages behind what they’ve got.

Pretty appropriate that Kurt and Cat are going to the TVA through the FF’s time machine- wasn’t FF the first appearance of the TVA? I know I’ve got an annual somewhere, and they seemed to treat it like it was the first time in that one.

Anonymous said...

Yes, yes it was, during Simonson’s run.