Fantastic Four #575-582 Annotations

[The Prime Elements]

Fantastic Four #575 - "The Abandoned City of the High-Evolutionary" [1/27/10]

• There is chaos in the underworld!
• Mole Man! Moloids!
• High Evolutionary! Abandoned City! Darwin Bubble!
• Prose is kind of confusing: Mole Man says that when HE activated the Ascension Engine, it started de-evolving everyone, so they had to escape. But since they didn't turn it off, the city kept going up. Some Moloids ended up arriving in the city and getting de-evolved into humans. But shouldn't that mean they were evolved? He even says that if HE had stayed in the city, he would have had extreme intelligence. That should mean that the city evolves instead of de-evolving!
• Oh dang! The Galactus from 2509/Old Man Logan Universe!
• So the Moloids devolving enhances their intelligence and reverts them to human-like beings, but everybody else gets de-evolved.
• So the FF adopts those evolved Moloids, while the risen Forever/Future City attempts to establish it's own sovereignty.

Fantastic Four #576 - "The Old Kings of Atlantis"

• The Peak: secret off-shoot Atlantis in the South Pole, Antarctica.
• Three Old Kings: Crab (Mala), fish (Uhari), shark/eel (Chordai).
• Susan is elected as the representative of humanity.
• King Ul-Uhar.
• OHHHHHHH! The reason why it has to be her is because her connection with Namor!
• The Spiral device to communicate.

Fantastic Four #577 - "Universal Inhumans"

• What! Crazy crazy dumps!
• So TLDR, the Kree didn't just experiment on Earth, they went to four other planets!
• The Kree's plan is to use the Inhumans as a harvesting ground to prevent the Kree from genetic stagnation.
• Horse people Kymellians, fin headed Centurions, lizard-like Badoon, and the crab Dire-Wraiths.
• These four Inhuman cultures live on the Inhuman City-Ship and have arrived on the blue area of the Moon. They are each led by a respective queen, and all of the queens are wives of Black Bolt, the Midnight King of all Universal Inhumans.
• Black Bolt and the earth-Inhumans have departed from the moon with Attilan and gone to Hala, the Kree hom-world, to jump the Supreme Intelligence.
• And when he comes back, he wants to make Earth a haven for Inhumans, a new Hala!
• Eldrac the Doorway!
• Dal Damoc, the Summoner, The Wayfinder!
• The Light Brigade: six of the greatest Inhuman warriors formed to take part in the Offering, a ritual where they face an endless number of trials to prove the worth of the Inhumans. The Offering ends when the last member of the Brigade dies.

Fantastic Four #578 - "The Cult of the Negative Zone" [4/28/10]

• Annihilation Aftermath: Annihilus was killed by Nova but left behind eggs to hatch a new body.
• Blastaar takes over the Negative Zone, and has expanded his territory, including annexing the prison known as 42.
• YOOOOOOOO!
• Cool spin on the Negative Zone being an inverted universe: reverse Big Bang, cold to hot, the universe is living instead of dying. It's not expanding, it's shrinking. It's getting hotter!
• Other-Side of Zero club, Cult of the Negative Zone, Anti-Priests.
• New & improved Negative Zone portal in the Baxter Building.
• Prison 42 has been transformed into a city by the reborn forces of Annihilus.
• Give us a battle we cannot win! Epic! The Light Brigade enters the Negative Zone to war against the Annihilation Wave!
• The War of Four Cities has Begun!

[To Do The Impossible...]

Fantastic Four #579 - "The Future Foundation" [5/26/10]

• "The future of man is not here... it is out there."
• Oh my god. That might have been one of the greatest speeches I've ever read in comic book prose. Reed has been cemented as Hickman's avatar; I could feel him coming through the pages and speaking to me. Easily one of the best moments of the run so far.
• What did Sue ask the old kings for? = revealed at the end of this issue to be two Atlantean foreign exchange students who join the newfound Future Foundation!
• Moloid role call! Turg (floating head), Korr (baby), Mik (blue shirt), Tong (sweatshirt).
• They discover that there is a curved axis connecting three of the cities, and a radius that reflects onto the location of the Negative Zone portal.
• Ted is still on Nu-World, but makes a bubble to protect him and his stuff from the time dilation. He creates a new synthetic Alyssa Moy.
• Alex Ultron and his robo-peeps colonize an uninhabited moon and begin terraforming.
• Natalie X is still on Nu-World, and she evolves her power to become a hive-mind for the remnants of humanity still left on Nu-World.
• Lightwave dreams of serving Galactus.
• Banner Jr continues to grow older.
• So Artie, using the helmet the kids gave him, can project the internal blueprints for any object.
• Loved the interaction between Reed and the Wizard. His biblical metaphors are wonderful!
• What could he be hinting at? How will the world burn if Reed doesn't solve everything? What did he see in his visions!?!
• The Future Foundation is born!

Fantastic Four #580 - "The Frank-Tastic Four"

• "I promise... I've given up games of murder."
• What is the problem the FF have found a solution to that Reed never could = SO the kids found out how to cure ben! One week a year sounds like a great deal to me.
• Nu-World Update! Ted finally perfects the synthetic Alyssa Moy-2515 who can access the original long-lost memories of the original Alyssa! He and Nu-Alyssa leave a Moypilot to man the World-Ship's orbit around the singularity as they depart back to Earth. He also dumps 640+ years of info into his brain (which I'm assuming he collected while in the time bubble).
• Planet Ultron is complete after Alex Ultron finishes terraforming the moon.
• Natalie X becomes the collective conscious of humanity, a World-Mind.
• Lightwave is still dreaming of serving Galactus while Banner Jr becomes a version of the Maestro Hulk.
• The brawl in the arcade toy store was so much fun. I love Impossible Man, and pairing Franklin and Johnny is perfect. Can't forget about my boy Leech as well!
• Eager to see more dynamics between Franklin Valeria and Reed; that conflict of Franklin feeling put to the side needs to be explored!

Fantastic Four #581 - "When Everything's Lost, the Battle is Won"

• Val: "So we have a deal?"
• Johnny: "I don't wish it any more than you do."
• Doom: "Here I can build."
• SHIIIIIII
• Future-Franklin and Future-Val are working with Nathaniel Richards!
• So did Franklin remove something from his past self's mind to restore his powers? Some kind of mental block?
• Where are they? Franklin says he's going to use this weird void to build a pocket reality as an escape hatch. It's a new Eden at the end of time!
• How will Val fix the past?
• How will Nathanial fix the future?
• Nathanial Richards history lesson: He dipped on Reed to go and work for the SHIELD. When trying to stop Night Machine from detonating (See SHIELD #2), he became immortal and was given the ability to travel through time. However, every single incarnation of Nathanial Richards from across the multiverse was pulled into reality 616. They landed 600,000 years in the future, and were confronted by Immortus, a being empowered by the TVA to police time. Seeing all these Nathanials with temporal abilities as an obvious threat to the timestream, he devised a compromise where they would have to choose only one Nathanial to live while the others die. All of the variants turn on each other, and 616 Nathanial refuses to take part in this great hunt, opting instead to run and hide across the timestream/multiverse.
• We meet the last Nathanial, and he's built a Frankenstein-playground made up of artifacts from human history called Chronopolis. 

Fantastic Four #582 - "...Because of All These Things I've Done" [8/25/10]

• So the last Nathanial is called The Beast.
• The Chrononauts are a task force put together by Kang according to the Marvel wiki. More connections between Nathanial Richards and Kang-thanial!
• So if Nathanial has never killed anyone, does that mean it was Howard who killed Night Machine in the pages of SHIELD?
• Loved proto-Doom! Him smashing in the Beast's face in was hilarious!
• OH MY GOD THE LONG GAME! VALERIA IS LITERALLY TALKING ABOUT SECRET WARS 5 YEARS BEFORE IT HAPPENED!
• Could the bad future they've been mentioning since the beginning of this run be the Old Man Logan future that they're trying to prevent from Millar's run? = Nope!
• Val and Franklin and Nathanial have made changes to the timeline to prevent some cataclysmic future, but they won't survive to see it.
• I love it! Franklin kicks Nathanial out of the White-Space because he wants Reed to be with his dad! Every boy needs his father!
• Val says only Sue can hold the F4 together! There will be a moment when she wants to give up, but she must look to the sky and remember that the price was paid.
• Val gets back to the pocket-Eden in the white-space, but they won't make it to the new future before the revision wave hits. They decide to hit what we Brazilians call a "Jacare" beneath the wave and tunnel their way through. They jump into the void!