Captain America 11, Fantastic Four 12, Indestructible Hulk 13

Captain America 11
Remender (w) and Pacheco and Janson (a) and White (c)

Cap has returned twelve years later back to the present day of Earth. Drs. Banner and Pym run all sorts of test on him and do what they can to remove any remaining Zola influence and fix any remaining injuries Steve has while Maria Hill questions him on his time in the other dimension and the whereabouts of Sharon. Hill recommends Cap stay in touch with SHIELD to help him recover but he prefers to get back in the field. In another room, Fury is questioning Jet Black who is proving difficult. Eventually Cap retrieves her and takes her back to his old home, which is stuffed with memorabilia of his past. He promises he'll help her start a new life here and tells her that she has to let go of the past. She points out the irony in this as they stand in his museum-like house and he concedes the point. Not one to be a hypocrite, Cap gathers everything and piles it on the roof, setting it aflame in the rain. Meanwhile, broken Weapon Plus Program participant Nuke has decided to continue a war America thought failed in Eastern Europe, which will no doubt come to a head in the next issue.

There's a lot of memory out of Steve here as he recalls the death of his mother and the lessons she left him with, including letting go of the past and never giving up the optimism that this country brings. It's a really nice backstory to make Steve's family not that far removed from immigrants so they have the hope and ideals of the country so ready, even if they haven't particularly succeeded yet. It gives a nice optimism to Steve's history and puts him closer to the classic idea of the American dream than a lot of other heroes have been. The memories also serve as a nice story for Steve to fall back on to ground him again in the present after so much in his life has, once more, changed. He's able to use the memories of his mother and what she instilled in him to reorient himself in this different world. It's, presumably, what he had to fall back on to find himself when he was unfrozen after WWII. Overall, it's a nice characterization and it fits with Steve's longstanding character as well as the character that's been established with memories and the like by Remender in his short time on the book. Putting him against Nuke and alongside Jet will be an interesting storyline as it gives Cap someone on his side (hopefully) who knows what he's been through and who is dealing with similar problems of her own while pitting him against someone who feels abandoned and has fought all of his life for ideals. Exciting things to come.

Fantastic Four 12
Fraction w/ Sebela (w) and Bagley and Rubinstein (a) and Mounts (c)

The Fantastic Four is still separated, with the Johnnys, Reed, and Val stuck in Celeritas' past and Sue, Ben, and Franklin looking for them with the not-so-helpful help of the Preservation Front. Eventually the two groups find one another, meeting up pretty far back, between the Big Bang and the dawn of man on Celeritas. Of course, that means dinosaur fights, so there's a good amount of that. The Preservation Front, preferring not to be arrested, leave without the F4, stranding them in the past up against a slew of dinosaurs with their powers going in and out. Ben's rock skin starts to break, Sue has an episode which allows the Front to leave, the Johnnys seem okay but the air  in Celeritas is different than they're used to, etc. The team manages to hold off just long enough for help to arrive in the form of the grandchildren of the Preservation Front who detest their grandparents' ways and love the F4, going so far as to repair their ship for them and bring it back to this point in time, as time travel is readily accessible in Celeritas' future. The issue ends with a lot of question marks, still mostly regarding the powers of the F4 and future John Storm, with the immediate problem being Ben's rapidly breaking down body.

The powers going haywire continues to make for some compelling storytelling and Ben's rocks breaking off makes him a weaker (physically) character more prone to injury and fatigue while still looking like Thing. Kind of the worst of both worlds, if it keeps up. The question of John Storm is the more intriguing one, though, as he keeps hinting to events in the future, both of the team and kind of of his own future. It's particularly interesting because we also have the future John Storm in FF. Is this John Storm from a point before or after that John Storm? Is this one who knows the outcome of the team? Is this, in fact, a completely different entity also posing as (or believing itself to be) another John Storm? No questions have really been answered about him with any sort of definition; both Johns have been identified by people close to them (Wyatt Wingfoot for the FF's John Storm, Johnny himself for the F4's John Storm) but even that's not a definite. Still a lot of places to go with this book even as Fraction's time on the book winds down (not sure if he's still providing story or some scripting from this point on; my thought was that he was off the book but I thought he was off after this one and he's still listed on the preview of the next one).

Indestructible Hulk 13
Waid (w) and Scalera w/ Jacinto (a) and Staples (c)

Hulk and the Bannerbot have arrived in the time of King Arthur to find that the Chronarchists have expelled Arthur and his knights from Camelot in an attempt to take over Europe at a very formative time for the world. Holding power now, he could completely alter major events following the Middle Ages. On top of that, he's upped his game from bringing dinosaurs as weapons to bring major warriors and weapons from all over the timestream to defend his new kingdom. Working alongside Arthur, Merlin, and the knights, Bannerbot gets Hulk in position to attack the Chronarchist and, with the help of the Ebony Blade, rips this one back into the timestream as well, restoring the legend. As Bannerbot tries to keep Hulk enraged (to keep him as Hulk), he's interested to learn that Hulk is staying Hulked out but seems to have a higher intellect, which makes him believe the Chronarchist is toying in Hulks timeline now. This proves true as we see some tampering at the gamma bomb site where Hulk was created.

Another interesting issue that deals with the ramifications of past events on the future. There's maybe a little overkill in explaining that and, in truth, a bit much by way of summarization of where we are and why we're doing what we're doing. It's not so much that it's particularly bothersome but it's enough that it starts to pull the reader out far enough to say "hey, yeah, we get it." The same is true, I would think with most comic readers, as we keep getting into the butterfly effect, though it's toned down well enough to simply serve as a reminder of what's at stake. Otherwise, the issue is another solid one as Waid continues a team-up of Banner and Hulk and as we start to see Banner becoming more comfortable working with Hulk. It's a weird sort of buddy cop plot in that the two are so different but that the straight man knows the wild one so intimately. It's a neat little formula and it's working out so far. I expect it to move nicely forward into the next issue. It will be interesting to see if Hulk has Banner smarts at this point in his timeline and if the two get along worse for it. In and of itself it's a cool idea, putting Hulk and Banner inside their own timeline as the Chronarchists attack their attacker a little more aggressively. Neat story.

Thor: God of Thunder 11, Fantastic Four 11

Thor: God of Thunder 11
Aaron (w) and Ribic (a) and Svorcina (c)

How do you beat a bomb that kills every single god through every second of time and that's going off RIGHT NOW? You kind of don't? That's the immediate takeaway here and it's certainly what Gorr would have you believe but fortunately for every god ever, present Thor doesn't buy it because he's wielding two Mjolonirs. What can possibly stop him? Turns out not much. He fights through the pain of dying in every second of his life to take on the godbomb, sparing the other gods by taking the weapon unto himself. As a result, a Thor cloaked in the black weapon, revealed to be called All-Black the Necrosword (in a rather phone-it-in naming attempt), emerges to defeat Gorr once and for all. Gorr's levels of crazy go unabashedly up as we hear he created his wife and child out of all of this mess and it was his own created child, a part of him, who betrayed his plans to Thor. Then the whole thing is written away as the narration explains that these gods would, in short time, forget the events that had happened here (hence why present and future Thor don't know how this ends from their own past).

Let's get this out of the way first: the art here is stunning. Esad Ribic has immense talent and Ive Svorcina does too. The two combined created a story of epic scale to fit the wide-ranging events that take place in this arc. The story ends a little flatly, beyond the two Mjolnirs and Thor cloaked in All-Black. Up to that, I was totally onboard. It's the several pages of narration that follow that weakened it for me. I don't really know how you avoid clearing a few things up (like the memories of gods) but, while it provided a fine denouement, it felt a lot like Aaron responding to questions that I'm not sure anyone was asking. I, for one, accepted it when the Thors way earlier said that, having been alive for millennia, they don't remember everything in their past; it was a kind of weak explanation then but it's serviceable so I'm not sure why you draw attention to it again, attention which makes me just go "hey yeah, wait, he really forgot the time that every god in history almost died in every second through time and then a version of him used two Mjolnirs to take that pain himself? He died! And was, of course, immediately resurrected! The narration even says he died for the fourth time which is kind of a cheeky nod to the comic public who is aware of rampant resurrections in comics but instead it now feels a little like 'hey, he's only died four times, not four thousand, how could he forget ONE IN FOUR?'" It's true. I said all of that upon finishing this. Even when it got meta and my questions asked questions. Good arc, good ending right up until that second half of the ending. Still took a little long for my liking. Next time, Jason Aaron takes Thor back to Earth!

Fantastic Four 11
Fraction and Sebela (w) and Bagley and Rubinstein (a) and Mounts (c)

Val is still mad at Reed but she has to put that aside because Reed needs her help. However mad she is, and however right she is to be mad, she's brilliant and a fresh set of eyes for Reed's problem. She demands they go to the futuristic development planet, Celeritas, which has, with its vast intellect and abundant resources, decided to turn inwards and improve itself rather than helping other planets. Val knows if there's an answer, she can come to it there. However, things quickly go awry on the planet when time terrorists calling themselves the Preservation Front strike and open up a portal to send the building Reed, Val, and Johnny are in to the end of the planet's timeline. The Preservation Front hate the futuristic society of Celeritas and want only to restore traditions, which they attempt to do by displacing parts of this world in time. It sets both teams of F4 members (Val, Reed, and Johnny in the future and Sue, Ben, and Franklin in the present) to work trying to figure out a solution. That's not all for surprises: Johnny arrives in the future to find future John Storm there, like the one in FF right now. What. Is. Happening.

For people who aren't fans of too much pipe-laying and soft science, PARTICULARLY soft time-travel science, this book is kind of a major miss. I'm not really one of those people (at least where soft time-travel science is involved, too much pipe-laying is never a good thing) but even I felt its weight here. It's a little tricky to get through and there's frankly too much introduced here for a standard 20-page book. We're meeting a new planet and trying to understand that, we're seeing jumps in time, we're meeting new enemies, we're meeting new possible friends/enemies (in future John Storm), we have a crisis within the F4 (in their powers deteriorating) and now a crisis with future Celeritas (where the planet is quickly being eaten away by time, essentially, and Val wants to create more time. It's all very strange). There's a lot happening here, is what I'm saying, and there aren't enough panels in a book to get it all efficiently across. I think the book is certainly weaker for that but it's still not a particularly weak book. One of the impressive feats of both Fraction and his predecessor Hickman has been making  Val and Franklin essential members of the team and showing us why they're necessary while not letting them get too precocious or childlike WHILE FURTHER allowing them to remain children. This issue helps bring that forward too, so I'm not about to be upset with it. You can be. That's your call.

Fantastic Four 10, FF 9

Fantastic Four 10
Fraction (w) and Bagley and Farmer (a) and Mounts (c)

The news is breaking now amongst the family that their powers are killing them. Sue is the newest member of the F4 to see her powers breaking down as her invisibility is on the fritz, making her skin invisible but not her internal organs and the like. Reed explains what's happening and what he's been doing and why he hasn't told them. As expected, it's not met well. Reed doesn't exactly have time for that, though, as he's decided that the breakdown of their powers isn't natural; it's an attack. The F4 end up in 1776 on the trail of a Skrull messing with the Declaration of Independence (oh, Skrulls). Now they have to deal with in-fighting, Skrulls, and power breakdowns all while trying to figure out how to save themselves.

Fraction has been pretty phenomenal at making this team feel like a family, which is at the heart of what makes the Fantastic Four different. It's not unlike what he's doing with the FF but this team is actually a family so it resonates a bit more. He's had them face petty squabbling, he's had them ignore one another, he's had them focus too much on one another, he's had them fight, he's had them love, and it all feels like a real family (to an extent, assuming your real family is headed up by the smartest man on Earth and he's maybe not that good at human emotions). That makes it particularly palpable when Val tells Reed that he's a jerk and she hates him. Of course, it's not all Fraction, it goes back to series past where we've built this relationship that Fraction inherited and, I think, improved on, but it's well engineered and it's the cornerstone of what makes this book interesting. Granted, we have an interesting plot all by itself with the degradation of their powers and with the added intrigue of it being an attack rather than the natural progression of their molecules, but it's firmly held together by the family itself. A Fantastic Four book can't work any other way.

FF 9
Fraction (w) and Quinones (a) and L. Allred (c)

The FF has been restored to the way it was at the start (with new additions to that team in Ahura and Luna of the Inhumans) for the first time since Alex ran off and Medusa was mind controlled. The entire group is invited to a pool party at Julian Enterprises by CEO Charles Cotta and, despite the strange circumstance, decide to find out what it's all about (and go swimming). Meanwhile, Bentley-23 is making a documentary in what he's decided is the style of Werner Herzog for an assignment She-Hulk gave them that required they understand another culture by talking with fellow FF members. He's chosen the Uhari, Vil and Wu. He decides that there's something dark and sinister to them and he wants to get to the bottom of it. While he makes his documentary at the pool party, Charles Cotta reveals to the adults of the FF that he's actually the alien who posed as Julius Caesar back in Fantastic Four 5 and he'd like to help the FF the way the F4 helped him.

It's another very entertaining issue. The kids of the FF are wholly interesting and well personalized but Fraction has clearly realized that Bentley-23 is the spirit of the group. He's essentially Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes but he's not ready to classify himself as a hero the way that Calvin instantly has. Here's the thing though: Calvin and Hobbes is great, so it's hard for Bentley not to be great. Add to that the previously hinted re-emergence of Caesar to the story and what options he brings the team with the F4 gone long past what they had assumed (we learn why in F4 10) and we have ourselves a solid story. I've liked Michael Allred's art in this book and Joe Quinones has done a great job whenever he's had the shot to fill in. Quinones emulates Allred's style well while also adding his own touches and flair to the story. I'm also a little biased towards Quinones as my girlfriend went to the same school he did and, guys, that's pretty cool, you know?