InsaneJournal

Reed Richards's Big Town: The Plot To Kill Pre-Utopia
Jonathan Hickman's Interdimensional House of Richards' made me remember Steve Englehart's Big Town, a 4-issue 2001 series set a nebulous ten years after the coming of the Fantastic Four, which asks a question:

" What if Reed Richards Wasn't Useless? How would the world change? And who wouldn't like it? "

(may not like the amount of scans under cut, just a note...)






(from issue 01, the only bit of it you'll say; the rest of it is so kinda interesting, I can't decide which to scan)

That, ladies and gentlemen.

New York, ten years after Reed went forward in back to the moon, is now a place where Tony Stark prosthetics are common, mechanical Hulk/Namor restraining capture bubbles line the grass of Hero Park, totally boss cellphones exist, and Reed Richards's Regeneratron can save people from massive head trauma.

It's a Big Town, though not as Big as I'd like.

Give it some more time, and we may just hit a little Big Planet. (sadly, there's not as much supertech as i'd've liked, so i'll mostly be showing the plots against Reed's utopia.)

However, there're some obstacles on that path:




Doom's got a world domination thing going on, sending his legions (headed by a mindcontrolled Silver Surfer) over to Reed's Shiny Fewcha to break it so that he can be the one to fix it all and be the man who fixed the world.

Or something like that, anyway- he's Doom, after all.




together, those three plus Magneto and the Red Skull... will bring down Reed's new world. And build their own from the ashes. Probably gonna be a lot of backstabbing in the process.

(Not really sure why the Hulk's there- guess he was bored.)

on the streets, Thor and the Black Panther have a discussion.




oh, Thor. You so Thor.

(guess who's running those Odin cultists.)

when suddenly:



(Frankie Juarez is a man who believes that all this progress is too much, too soon.. so much so, that he'll help supervillains bring the fewcha down.)



oh, Doom. You so transparent.

oh, Frankie/Magneto. You so not conversant in basic computing.

(give Ultron time, and he'd eventually hit Ultron-487, I'm sure.)



" I'm gonna lock you in your basement, bitch. SO HARD. "

oh, Red Skull. You so conversant in smacktalk.

anyhow, before we move on to the third part and Ultron successfully haxing the city, Sub-Mariner and Sue contending while Ultron does things:



oh, Namor. You so dramatic.



right, right, on to part 3 now.

the Knights of Doom and the mindwhammied Silver Surfer have come down to strike... but Mockingbird of the Avengers has a plan:



(hilariously, in issue 01, Clint and Bobbi had a YOU KILLED SOMEONE WHAT THE FUCK moment regarding one of the Knights of Doom. Some things never change.)



meanwhile, Namor has even more talkings with Sue, explaining why he's thrown in on this:



oh, Hulk.

also, jeez, Namor. You're Atlantean, I don't think they'll be trying to shove anything down your throat. Besides, it could only help your tourism.

elsewhere, Ultron confirms his hax while Johnny and his soon-to-be-wife Sally Juarez (Frankie's brother, and an original character) visit a clouted-by-Namor T'challa in the hospital:



when suddenly, those Odin cultists appear, as part of the attack Big Town plan, after Johnny's stepped out of the room to think about things related to stuff I'm not covering:



Doctor Blake, to be precise.

Doctor Donald Blake.

Which means, a few pages later?



Odin, Zeus, and Jove? Now that must've been a fight.

hoshit, dust of death.

Red Skull escapes, and Johnny can't follow, because:



Ice science? Heh, they figured it out, Skull..

but at the last pace:



Your science, Thor? Really?

But he's safe.

However, these attacks have been little more than a distraction for Doom's master plan, in the concluding issue (which is about 39 pages, if I'm reading it right, so 13 here):

Let's see it come down:



oh, Hulk.



that's Frankie and his dad, who the former did it for... look, there's some things I didn't cover. think of it as incentive to look it up, rather than me wanting to get to the cool stuff.

also, lol at some of Magneto's Brotherhood in this world.

Hey, when Charles Xavier's helping to run the X-Squad (artificial supercops numbering Flash Thompson and Speedball among them), I guess routes of destiny change....



Looks a bit cooler at night...



well, Doom, rather straightforward of you.

suddenly, Ultron attacks the two, projecting a hard-light copy of himself into the room:



uh...



Yeah, Ultron.



along with the Skull's cultists and Namor and co.

and now, a fight begins for Big Town.





(that's the X-Force in the uniforms, plus the rather familiar looking street gang known as the Mutts. Ah, fate.)



RANDOM DOCTOR STRANGE AND CAPTAIN EURO ARE RANDOM

anyhow, more superheroes fight, and I wish I could scan it all... but I've gotta wrap it up. So let's end on Reed finally breaking the Surfer free of Doom's control:



the Surfer dealing with Doom:



and an end, after all the plots I didn't get to post resolve themselves somewhat open-endedly (once again, pick it up if you want to know those things):



a rather nice read, all things considered: wish there was more awesome science, but perhaps the continuing stories englehart wanted to do might've covered that.

ah, what if.