In Fantastic Four: Life Story, Reed Richards’ obsessive mission to stop Galactus leads to the destruction of the most important thing in his life.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Fantastic Four: Life Story #2 by Mark Russell, Sean Izaakse, and Nolan Woodard, on sale now.
Fantastic Four: Life Story takes place in an alternate reality where time moved relatively realistically for the heroes of the Marvel Universe. And Fantastic Four: Life Story # explores how this world’s FF fell apart in the ’70s. Since the FF made their fateful trip, Reed Richards has been distracted, distant and obsessed by the impending invasion of Galactus and isolating himself from his family.
While Tony Stark and Hank Pym call him crazy, the only one who believes Reed is Victor Von Doom, who capitalizes on this moment of vulnerability to further his own agenda. While the two of them begin to work towards creating a weapon to take on the behemoth, Reed’s neglect of Sue makes a different kind of impact. As the years go on, the distance between the two grows, with Reed’s obsession leaving no room for her in his life anymore, causing her to leave him.
Since their face-to-face encounter through the subspace machine Reed created in the previous issue, Reed has been haunted by Galactus and his threat of journeying to Earth. He suffers from visions of destruction that become more pronounced and frequent the closer the world eater gets. Reed becomes obsessed with figuring out a way to protect the Earth from Galactus, giving his new endeavor all of his time and focus. As a result, Sue feels more and more neglected as the years go by.
Things begin to build up when Reed interrupts her social life so she can care for Franklin while he and Doom focus on Galactus. After learning that Reed has spoken for her to decline an invitation to go to a meeting of heroes, she is infuriated and storms off with Johnny to the meeting. Coaxed by Doom, Reed opts to continue working rather than trying to resolve the issue. During the meeting, Sue is introduced to Namor, who offers her the attention she craves.
The situation comes to a head at a United Nations meeting when the heroes are speaking to the world. With so many of the world’s defenders in one place, Doom sees this as the perfect opportunity to betray Reed and use the power suit they built to try to take the world by force. He’s almost successful with his plan, only to be thwarted by Sue in the end. Realizing Reed has been changed and warped by his obsession with Galactus, Sue leaves him and starts a relationship with Namor. Ben moves in with Reed to keep him company, while Sue moves into her own place with Franklin. The issues wraps up with Reed receiving a call from a colleague informing him that something big was picked up on the telescope, and it is heading for Earth.
While Reed has always been consumed by his scientific studies, his devotion to pure research never quite becomes the all-consuming obsession it does here. Not unlike the MCU’s Thanos-obsessed Tony Stark, Reed is a genius who sees himself as the only person who truly understands the gravity of the threat that’s heading their way. And in the same way that Stark’s obsession led to the creation of Ultron, Reed’s obsession has already unleashed Doctor Doom on an unsuspecting world.
Reed’s level of obsession has already been seen within the MCU. In The Avengers, after surviving the attack on New York and seeing what was on the other side of the portal, Tony Stark became obsessed with protecting the world from Thanos. He was traumatized by the whole experience which led to him building more suits in Iron Man 3, and was his justification for creating Ultron in the second Avengers film. While he ultimately had good intentions, he isolated himself in much the same way as Reed, leading to equally devastating results.
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