The Fantastic Four are one of the most highly educated teams in all of comics. Mister Fantastic alone has enough degrees and doctorates for a dozen superheroes. However, the team’s latest adventure found them saving the world not with their educations, but with an idea taken from a retro video game.
Fantastic Four #18 by Ryan North and Carlos Gomez found the titular team investigating the destruction of a forest. They concluded that a meteor strike was responsible. Worryingly, none of the astronomers or satellites who watched for such things noticed the impact. This led to the inescapable conclusion that someone had aimed an invisible meteor at the Earth from deep space.
Invisible Woman was able, barely, to repel a second invisible meteor. Unfortunately, the Fantastic Four determined that more of the invisible meteors were incoming and there was little they could do against simultaneous impacts. The Human Torch would set the atmosphere on fire trying to burn up so many meteors. Mister Fantastic wasn’t strong enough to bounce them all back into space with his rubbery body. And while the Thing might have been able to knock one meteor back into orbit, he couldn’t hit them all.
How Fantastic Four’s Gaming Skills Save the Day
The solution cam from The Thing’s wife, Alicia Masters, who recalled the classic video game Missile Command. The game was based around shooting atomic bombs out of the sky. Alicia suggested that, by pooling their powers, the Fantastic Four could do the same thing with the meteors.
With Human Torch using his powers to generate the brightest flame possible, Invisible Woman refracted the light into intense lasers. She then channeled that energy into targeting systems, worn by The Thing and Mister Fantastic. As trained fighter pilots, the two had the reflexes and experience needed to target and shoot down the meteors before they could endanger the Earth.
Fantastic Four #18 is now available online and at comic shops everywhere.
