Midnight Fantastic Four: Marvel's darkest First Family

Marvel's First Family has never been this dark. Screen Rant's breakdown of Midnight Fantastic Four describes a reboot where the accident that scars Victor Von Doom is Reed Richards' fault.

The book is one of three series in Marvel's newest universe, and Screen Rant calls it the strongest of the recent Midnight titles. The writer is Benjamin Percy, whose credits include Deadpool. Kev Walker (New Avengers) draws it, and Frank D'Armata (Venom) colors it.

Everything below comes from Screen Rant's reading of the series. The theories in it are Screen Rant's, not the comic's.

Reed is fired, and he does not stop

In this reboot, Reed loses his job at the New York Institute of Technology. He does not look for another one. He waits for night and goes back to campus to keep working on the doorway he built to the Negative Zone.

His research assistant is a graduate student at the same school, Victor Von Doom, and this Victor believes in Reed's work. Reed is also addicted to pills. He was on them the night he opened the gateway, so he did not notice Victor standing in front of it.

The result burned and mangled Victor's body. Reed's first question was about the experiment, not about the man. He asked what Victor had seen on the other side. Victor's answer, as Screen Rant quotes it, was one word. "Hell."

The pills appear to change how Reed sees the world and how he runs his calculations. Screen Rant treats the first effect as confirmed on the page and the second as unproven, because something beyond his world is already communicating with him.

The explosion lands Reed in prison. The charges go away when Susan Storm, the owner of Storm Systems, pays for a new building at the university. Screen Rant describes that payment as a bribe, and the condition was that Reed join one of her projects.

He hesitates, Screen Rant reports, because he does not want to build rockets that carry rich people to space. What Sue wants is more disturbing than that.

The rockets and the purple Cthulhu

The rocket tests take place where the Manhattan Project set off its first nuclear explosion. During one failed flight, cameras caught the mushroom cloud at its highest point. The images show something that looks like a purple Cthulhu.

Sue's response is to have Reed open the gate to the Negative Zone.

Screen Rant reads her as more than a client. The piece argues that Reed's negligence caused Victor's burns, then asks whether Sue sabotaged the experiment herself. It calls her a genius who seems to be up to something. That part is speculation, put as a question rather than as a fact from the page.

Latveria, and what is behind the wall

After the accident, Victor is taken to Latveria. His mother wears an iron mask and wakes him with a machine. She apologizes for his pain and says she needed to know what he and Reed were doing in the lab.

Inside the story, reports place Galactus on the other side of the Negative Zone wall. Screen Rant notes a second presence too. A group called the Lightkeepers recited an oath to Reed while he was recovering from withdrawal.

Screen Rant's guesses about them, offered as possibilities rather than reported facts: the Heralds of Galactus, with the purple lights standing in for the Power Cosmic, or the Inhumans, or the Watchers.

The one thing to know

In the original comics, Victor blames Reed for the accident. Screen Rant points out that Reed had actually tried to warn him his calculations were wrong. In this universe, the scars are Reed's fault, and that is the point of the reboot.

Screen Rant says the mystery is what makes the book work, and it names it the strongest of the recent Midnight releases.

For a younger reader, the same pages carry a badly burned body, a drug addiction and a prison stay. This is not the friendly version of the team.

• comics
• Doctor Doom
• Fantastic Four
• Marvel
• Reed Richards
• Susan Storm