In Empyre Fallout: Fantastic Four #1, Marvel reveals there’s a bigger, more ancient threat than the Celestials the Unseen calls “the First Race.”
WARNING: The following contains spoilers from Empyre Fallout: Fantastic Four #1 by Dan Slott, Sean Izaakse, Marcio Menyz, and VC’s Joe Caramagna, on sale now.
Empyre Fallout: Fantastic Four #1 picks up right where Empyre #6 left off. Now that the battle against the plant-like aliens known as the Cotati is won, it’s time for the superheroes of the Marvel Universe to tie up any last remaining loose ends, rebuild, and look at what comes next. In the issue, we find the members of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four questioning Quoi, the Cotati’s leader, about the weapons they used to wage war on Earth.
Tony recognizes that these weapons are highly advanced and more powerful than anything the Kree and the Skrulls were armed with. He knows the Cotati didn’t build them, so he wants to know who made these weapons for them.
Quoi, of course, doesn’t give an answer — and little do the Avengers know that this, in truth, is the start of a new cosmic mystery because, as we learn in the closing moments of Empyre Fallout Fantastic Four #1, these weapons were actually built by an ancient people called “the First Race.”
When Iron Man asks Quoi where the Cotati got their weapons, the leader of the defeated aliens relishes the superhero’s ignorance. “You don’t know, do you?” he taunts. “That must really annoy you, you poor, dumb piece of meat.”
In a bid to get answers elsewhere, Reed Richards calls in the Profiteer, one of the Elders of the Universe the Fantastic Four ran across on the Casino Cosmico, just before the start of Empyre. Since the Profiteer knows all there is to know about the Kree and the Skrulls, and since she is one of the oldest beings in the universe, Mr. Fantastic hopes she may offer some answers about the weapons. And while she asks for something in return, she agrees to help.
Later, the Profiteer returns to meet the Avengers and the Fantastic Four on the Moon, but she only has partial answers. She doesn’t know who built these weapons because, as she explains, the technology used to create them predates even her and the other Elders of the Universe.