Editor's Desk 
Space travel can be tricky. You go where no one has gone before, usually boldly, and sometimes you run across whole planets of civilizations who are not technologically advanced enough to understand the concept of a spaceship. Who better to grapple with the question of the Prime Directive than the Fantastic Four? That’s just where Ryan North takes us in Fantastic Four #16.
This fun Star Trek-style story is fairly self-explanatory, so SPOILERS ABOUND AHEAD!
Fantastic Four #16 opens on an alien world with blue-skinned aliens living in their own Industrial Revolution. Three blue aliens with uncannily familiar names make their way through a market, only to finally reach their hidden base and reveal themselves to be Johnny, Sue and Alicia. A Sue-narrated issue, it’s revealed that the FF have crash-landed on this planet by accident, and they’ve tried to hide themselves in plain sight as best as possible. With Invisible Woman’s ability to reflect the light around her and the others, she can easily make them look the same blue as the alien species.
This issue is a science/history lesson in the invention of the record, with the First Family accidentally discovering the clay on this planet is a higher density and holds sound in vases and similar craft-work, listening to vases that recorded the sounds of the days they were made.
Such a discovery at first glance seems to be nothing but a fun novelty for their blue-skinned disguises to reveal as traveling scientists. However, the clay-molded vases of the world contain far more than just light small-talk. Entire religions crumble with reveals hidden in the clay, families tear themselves apart and enough secrets to topple an entire civilization.
Marvel
Nothing short of Spock’s worst nightmare.
To stop the self-implosion of an entire planet, they incriminate themselves and make it all look as though the Fantastic Four tricked the entire planet into a fake scientific discovery.
Like most children, theirs are surprised to see that the resolution to a space adventure is to tell a lie. But sometimes, a lie is safer than the truth. And the truth was something that was going to tear apart a planet simply because the Fantastic Four showed them something they weren’t ready to see.
Marvel
There’s so many little details that show the incredible work put into this story, especially in Edgar Delgado’s coloring. There’s a stark contrast in hue between the aliens from another time and the First Family, the colors brighter and deeper every time the five exist in spaces away from the planet. The distinction is clear and emphasizes how out of place the gang is on this planet.
Ramon Rosanas and Delgado’s combination of pencils and colors drop the reader right into the alien planet, showing us how similar and dissimilar it is to our own world, the volume of the FF’s actions on full display with the ‘before’ and ‘after’ their meddling in the linear timeline of a planet.
In the plot itself, North looks at the darker side of a scientist’s hypothesis and tunnel-vision in seeing if a theory is true. While making such a discovery is a once-in-a-life-time opportunity, their revelation nearly disrupted the entire natural progression of the planet. Real consequences narrowly escaped by the FF’s own fast-thinking brains, but a consequence nonetheless. And now, to save the natural progression of a planet, they’ll be remembered as villainous charlatans. Until, of course, somebody comes along and discovers the truth in the clay.
All in all, a fun journey through space and its consequences for the Fantastic Four. A good classic-style story before the DNX crossover begins!
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