The Fantastic Four #1 - Atop the Fourth Wall

Welcome to Atop the Fourth Wall, where bad comics burn. In this episode, Linkara takes a look at the origins of the Fantastic Four!

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Originally uploaded November 14th, 2011.

ORIGINAL INFO: Secret Origins Month continues with the Fantastic Four! Marvel at how they use their powers to cause as much damage to people and property around them!

RUMINATIONS: So if I was so overwhelmed from the Entity finale, why exactly did I start up a new storyline RIGHT afterwards? Two reasons, one less important, one moreso.

The first, less important reason, is that any time you have something that might attract newcomers to the show with the topic, stuff like, say, Batman or Transformers or, in this case, Pokemon, something that gets the attention of people who wouldn’t normally watch the show, you want to give them incentive to come back. If they liked the review and storyline stuff already, why not give them a bit more? It’s the same as the momentum gained by the Mechakara finale from a few years back – keep that energy going and keep bringing people back. You’d think this would be a bigger reason, but of course there’s no guarantee people will actually give a crap about the storyline stuff.

The second and more important reason is that I hadn’t ended a storyline before February before. Sure, there were only the two, but it had established a pattern. And I still wanted SOMETHING to have for a double feature when the time came, thus I needed to come up with something. “His Blue Soul” was the result, at first supposedly hinting at Mechakara’s return, but referring more to Pollo in reality. I couldn’t stretch the storyline too long, since there wasn’t much to it, but it would be enough to fill in the intervening months between Halloween and the proper storyline finale. And once I knew what the storyline would be about, certain pieces NEEDED to fall into place – stuff like the new Pollo body going up to Comicron One, the stuff that happened in the Star Trek II reviews… it all made sense in that regard, taxing as it may have been on me.

The explanation for Mechakara’s supposed return here, while it turns out to be false in regards to THIS instance… was actually also a DIFFERENT subtle hinting. To Boldly Flee was in the advance stages of planning at this point and it had been decided Mechakara would be in it, so I needed SOME explanation of how he had come back to life after the Power Rangers Zeo #1. As such, I decided on the fakeout of the main storyline, but that indeed Linkara’s speculation about the magic coin granting him new abilities would be true. In this case, he had survived the battle (minus one hand) and had instead gone off and followed the Critics during the events of Suburban Knights, claiming Malachite’s Hand in the end and leading us to To Boldly Flee.