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fyeahfantasticfour · 7 years

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REED RICHARDS: A DEFENSE, PART ONE

Because I have just seen someone actually blaming Reed for the space-flight accident that gave his family powers, and I am floored that anyone could be so infuriatingly ignorant of Fantastic Four canon, let’s get a few things straight, followers:

Reed did not “force” anyone to go with him on that spaceship. There is absolutely no evidence for that ANYWHERE in canon. None of the various revamped origin stories allow for that interpretation.

In Fantastic Four v1 #1, Sue, for one, is depicted as willingly accompanying Reed out of a sense of love and loyalty but also patriotism – she wants the US to beat Russia to the moon. Johnny goes because Sue does, and where his sister goes, he follows. Ben goes because of his own toxic masculinity, because Sue calls him a coward, and Ben – who was already a decorated war hero – felt the need to prove her wrong. Could he not simply have pointed to the WWII medals on his wall, or explained that he is an experimental test pilot, which requires a fair amount of bravery?

And can I point out that it’s been canon since Fantastic Four v1 #1 that Reed tried to talk BOTH Sue and Johnny out of going because he and Ben were experienced at that sort of thing and they weren’t, but Sue and Johnny both insisted on going despite Reed’s warnings? Where from these panels does anyone get “HE FORCED THEM TO GO OMG HE’S SO AWFUL”??? I am truly baffled at how anyone can read these panels and see that. They all had their own reasons for going. No coercion was involved.

If you are going to accuse a character of something, you might want to, I don’t know, actually read the story in question. Just a suggestion.

More beneath the cut!

As a matter of fact, Fantastic Four: The Wedding Special makes clear that Sue’s adventurousness had much to do with encouraging Reed to leave the lab, and that without her egging him on, he never would have dared try to steal the spaceship. Reed, nevertheless, tried to convince her not to go:

What do the Reed haters want Reed to have done, deprive Sue of her right to make her own decisions by knocking her out and tying her up so she couldn’t do as she wished? I can see that the anti-Reed crowd is a HUGE proponent for female agency and autonomy. /sarcasm

Sue went on that spaceship because SHE wanted to. She was bored with her life, she wanted an adventure, and, suffice it to say, she got one. The adventure of a lifetime. Reed did not force her to do anything, for fuck’s sake. He simply respected her decision – and the fact that it was her decision to make – which is more than I can say about the anti-Reed crowd. When even a male character from the 1960s is more of a feminist than you are, you know you’re pretty damn sexist.

Personally, I hate it when people pretend that Reed forced Sue to tag along because it very misogynistically erases the fact that Sue loves exploration and discovery every bit as much as Reed does, if not more. People who make that argument do not understand Sue or her motivations in the slightest and are doing her character a great disservice, unsurprising since they clearly do not understand Reed either, and, I suspect, have never cracked open a Fantastic Four comic in their lives, since they do not know even the basics about Reed and Sue’s lives and personalities. Sue goes on adventures with Reed because she loves them, him, and believes in what he’s doing, in their joint project — trying to make the world a better place through a combination of scientific advancements and philanthropic endeavors. So stop underestimating and mischaracterizing her.

Let me also point out that it’s been canon since Fantastic Four v1 #2 that Reed feels TREMENDOUSLY guilty over the accident, even though, again, IT IS NOT HIS FAULT.

People. There is a huge difference between a character BELIEVING something is their fault and it actually BEING their fault. Why is it that so many people seem incapable of telling the difference?

Reed feels so guilty over the accident, in fact, that no matter how emotionally or even physically abusive Ben becomes towards him, Reed simply accepts it and doesn’t even try to defend himself, because he honestly believes he deserves the punishment, as we see in Fantastic Four v1 #66:

Reed, there is a point where you stop being responsible for Ben’s actions, and that point is when he starts physically assaulting you.

But, then again, that’s who Reed is. What he does. Takes responsibility for everyone and everything around him, as he makes clear in Fantastic Four Special 2005:

That is a line that sums Reed up fairly perfectly.

I think people miss that Reed takes responsibility for all of the FF in ways they’re not necessarily even aware of. In Thing v2 #1, Reed tells Johnny that he’s ensured that Ben’s always lived like a millionaire, even if Ben didn’t know it:

And in Marvel Two-In-One v1 #37, after the FF has temporarily broken up, Ben’s arrested for destruction of property and sent to jail, and we discover that the only reason he hasn’t been in the past is because Reed stepped in and paid for all of the damages, every time. He protects Ben as best he can, and kept him from being sent to jail long ago and treated like a monster. Without Reed’s protection and support, Ben is ostracized and imprisoned and treated like a monster.

And we see Reed’s guilt crop up again in Fantastic Four: First Family, which takes place immediately after the crash. Reed is so traumatized by the accident and paralyzed by his guilt that he is catatonic for days:

until he sees another inmate of the military prison he and his family were taken to killed in front of him and realizes his life and his family’s are all in danger:

and then he immediately tries to behave as nonthreateningly as possible, even apologizing for his “off-putting” catatonia:

But he does take the time to beat himself up over the accident:

Reed understands, the moment he sees the other inmate murdered, that he and his family are going to be considered non-human “freaks” by unsuperpowered humans. He understands that he needs to protect his family, and that’s what he does. He makes them heroes, makes them celebrities, so the world will be able to look past the terrifying powers and see who they really are – the best and bravest people Reed’s ever known, which he says in Fantastic Four v3 #60. This is where Reed explains that his entire life — everything he ever does — revolves around protecting his family and ensuring their happiness. He tries to keep them wealthy and famous and give them everything they could ever want because he loves them, but also because of his guilt, because he cannot bear the knowledge that he has, as he sees it, destroyed their lives and put them all in constant danger:

People miss — people always seem to miss — that Reed thoroughly despises himself for what he perceives as his many failures, chief among them his failure to protect his family during the space-flight accident. Reed’s guilt isn’t an invention of Mark Waid’s, either, as I’ve seen people argue -- it’s been canon almost as long as Reed has existed. It is even, I’d argue, one of his chief motivations for his superheroics and virtually everything he does.

Honestly, I could pull dozens if not hundreds of panels that span the breadth of over fifty years of Fantastic Four canon that demonstrate that Reed never forced anyone to go on the space flight with him, that the crash wasn’t his fault, that he feels deeply guilty about it regardless of that fact, and that he has dedicated his whole life to making amends for something that he had no control over and was just as much a victim of. If you don’t understand that Reed hates himself and blames himself for the space flight accident, my god, you do not understand the first thing about Reed Richards. The Reed Richards you are describing — a man who would EVER force the people he loves to do anything against their will — simply does not exist in the pages of Fantastic Four comics. He is purely the product of your imagination.

So, for fuck’s sake, stop demonizing Reed over something for which there is zero, I repeat, ZERO canonical evidence. If you don’t believe me? Go read Fantastic Four comics and try to find a SINGLE, I mean just ONE, moment in canon that even so much as implies that Reed did any of this on purpose, or that he is in any way glad that it happened. I challenge you to do so, but I assure you, you will not find it. I mean. There is literally a comic – Fantastic Four vs the X-Men – that floats the idea that Reed possibly engineered the space-flight accident on purpose, but it turns out that it was all part of a trap set up by Victor Von Doom. So the idea has been presented in canon and thoroughly debunked. In other words, you are dead wrong – even laughably so, for people who have actually read the damn comics, which I am so very sure you have not – so, again, stop accusing Reed of something he very definitely did not do.

Part Two, or ‘Sue Very Definitely Loves Reed And Does Not Just Stay With Him Because Of The Kids,’ may be following shortly. How does Part Three, or ‘Why Victor Von Doom, Tyrant, Mass Murderer, Torturer, and Rapist, Is Definitely A Worse Person Than Reed Who Is None Of Those Things, AKA, I Can’t Believe I Actually Have To Say This, What’s Next, Why The Red Skull Is A Worse Person Than Captain America?’ sound?

#fantastic four #reed richards #mister fantastic #susan storm #johnny storm #ben grimm #invisible woman #the thing #human torch #comics #mod: lamujerarana #if you find someone making this argument #either point me in their direction #or just copy/paste this link into a reply #i don't mind #but i am very sick and tired #of this nonsense argument #prime marvel universe

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