The Fantastic Four are down to one, per the cover, and it’s up to Valeria to save the day. Of course, Doctor Doom would have told you that, but in this compelling one-shot style story, she’s up against a threat you’d never guess, and it could mean the end of every hero in our universe, and another.
Fantastic Four #32 picks up where we left off as the kids in the Fantastic Four are hurtling inside Invisible Woman’s protective fields. The shields don’t last, however, and last but not least, Valeria is taken into some kind of energy field. Thinking she’d be dead, she realizes her mind is in someone else’s body, butbeing stuck in New York with internet available means for an easy start to find her way back.
This is a good mystery issue with Valeria in the lead, looking for answers. She quickly learns Reed and Sue are alive, but with different kids, and soon she’s visiting them. In a creepy turn of events, they’re unemotional and simply state Franklin will “deal with it.” Creepy.
These kids must be holding onto so much trauma.
Credit: Marvel
Things go from weird and unnerving to downright dangerous and shocking. There’s a twist you won’t see coming and a promise connecting Franklin to the powers we’ve been told were never there. Less a science story and more of a horror tale, there’s a smartly thought-out twist on Franklin that doesn’t disparage the character, but makes him a victim of too much power.
With Valeria at the helm, writer Ryan North reminds us her powers are those of thinking and deducting, which leads to a clever plan and high stakes to pull it off. Throw in some non-616 universe superheroes, and there’s an adventure. Sure, that’s an adventure of heavy captions piecing together what happened and what comes next, but it’s still a fun Elseworlds tale. Valeria’s mission also cleverly connects back to the main problem of getting Thing’s powers back, making this side story an essential piece in the ongoing narrative.
The art by Cory Smith is detailed, grounding everything from a skyscraper-sized threat learning over a building to a character crumbling from a plan gone wrong. Thanks to the well-drawn moments in each panel, I never found the heavily captioned pages boring.
Fantastic Four #32 is a standout detour that balances eerie alternate-universe stakes with grounded emotional beats. Ryan North crafts a tale that blends horror, family drama, and multiversal intrigue, all while proving Valeria Richards is one of Marvel’s sharpest minds. With effective art and a meaningful link to the main arc, this one-shot-style story earns its place in the Fantastic legacy.
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