The Invincible Woman, Part Five
Cover to “Fantastic Four #10” (published May 6th, 2026) written by Ryan North with art by Humberto Ramos and Victor Olazaba and colors by Edgar Delgado
Cover art by Humberto Ramos and Edgar Delgado
We’ve been watching the horrifying Invincible Woman for some time now and we’ve finally reached the point where it’s do or die for the Fantastic Four. Can Marvel’s First Family somehow defeat a dark mirror of one of their own? Let’s find out as I break down this issue!
Warning: this article will contain spoilers for “Fantastic Four #10”.
Earth Versus The Invincible Woman
The book wastes exactly zero time jumping right into the frenzy! Sorcerer Supreme, Wanda Maximoff aka the Scarlet Witch leaps into the fray against alien invaders as she’s joined by her fellow Avengers and Maria Hill and S.H.I.E.L.D. running interference. Bullseye - or one of his clones? (don’t ask) - is brought before Wanda while in custody as part of a grand plan to return the Fantastic Four from across the universe. The plan is novel one: Wanda plans to create a powerful spell to teleport the Fantastic Four back to New York, but simply casting the spell isn’t enough. The spell needs to actually hit its intended target. That’s where Bullseye comes in. Wanda plays to his ego, suggesting he could make an otherwise impossible shot no one else can, which results in him doing exactly that. Augmented by Wanda’s magic, he fires the shot that hits the spaceship the F4 are in, bringing them back to New York in a moment…along with the Invincible Woman.
The Fantastic Four immediately leap into action against the invaders as the Invincible Woman does the same, effectively easily disposing of Val’s Doombots (that she notably didn’t destroy and instead reprogrammed) and crushing the alien’s space ship, prompting them to NOPE the hell out of New York. With Earth saved from the aliens, everyone’s attention turns towards the Invincible Woman. Colossus hurls Deadpool and Wolverine in a two-for-one Fastball Special towards the twisted Susan Storm. She effortlessly catches the two of them and then proceeds to torture them in gruesome fashion, mocking their respective healing factors and immortality as she cruelly experiments by flaying their skin. Fortunately, Ben comes in for the save and swings a steel beam at her, which she shrugs off before turning her attention to ol’ blue eyes. She throws a ton of cars towards Ben…to which impossibly, none of them happen to land.
Enter the Black Cat! We see that Felicia Hardy is also on the battlefield and is using her luck based powers to effect the probability of Invincible Woman’s attacks missing. This is courtesy of Iron Man and Val, who somehow happened to build a machine to augment Black Cat’s powers. Invincible Woman turns her attention to the machine to try and destroy it, but she’s quickly beset by Reed and then Johnny, using their powers to disrupt her focus to prevent her from using her powers effectively. This only serves to upset her to the point where she decides to cook the Earth. Literally. She begins gathering a ton of microwaves, enough to end all life on Earth twice over before releasing said energy.
But we find out that in the ensuing chaos of the battle, the Future Foundation was able to sneakily move an electromagnetic reflector onto the scene, made invisible and silent thanks to the Invisible Woman we know and love, to encase her evil doppleganger in. As such, once she released those microwaves, the energy was reflected back to her, effectively knocking her out. We soon find out that her brain activity is effectively null and void, resulting in her being in a coma-like state. But the Fantastic Four aren’t quite done yet. Instead, Susan asks Maria to have Wanda teleport them back to Galactus, who is in dire straits since Invincible Woman tortured him and left him for dead. Maria protests, but Reed is quick to point out that Galactus is a universal constant and that his death would be disastrous for the universe.
The team returns to Galactus and attempts to perform cosmic scale surgery on the Devourer of Worlds, needing to remove a literal singularity in his body to save him. Their collective efforts are in vain, even with them using their powers in creative ways. But Galactus then bestows Susan with the Power Cosmic, effectively turning her into a silver skinned herald. Susan again tries to save Galactus, but it’s only by collectively bending all light in the universe towards Galactus that she succeeds, effectively being able to perform the surgery needed to rescue Galactus. We flash forward an undetermined amount of time to catch up with Ben checking up on Susan in the wake of their latest adventure, reassuring her that she’s not her broken alternate self and that her powers are assuredly much less formidable. But as our story ends, we see how a compass in Susan’s hand suddenly spins the opposite direction, hinting that she may indeed have more in common with the Invincible Woman than we previously thought.
The Implications of Power
A gruesome fate for two of the most notoriously hard to put down characters in Marvel. Don’t worry, they’re fine.
Fantastic Four's "Invincible Woman" arc has come to a close and I certainly have thoughts about it. Ultimately, this arc - given to us from current F4 scribe Ryan North - gives us a kinda sorta return of Malice, Susan's evil alter-ego but whereas Malice was a dark personality shift of Susan from Earth-616, Invincible Woman is an entirely different entity from an entirely different universe. Not only is she clearly very disturbed, but she's several orders of magnitude more powerful than Susan with the explanation being that she trained and honed her light bending powers to eventually include mastery of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, which enables her to use microwaves, gamma waves, and other forms of energy that her mainstream counterpart typically doesn't.
As an antagonist, Invincible Woman is certainly powerful enough to threaten the First Family and more so there's no issue on that front. While some folks might take exception to the implication that Susan could potentially become a threat the likes of which that could single handily torture Galactus, the whole issue of power scaling appropriately is inconsequential as far as I'm concerned for this story. As far as motivation goes, however, now that this arc has completed, her character runs kind of thin. She was driven mad due to losing control over her powers and wiping out all life on Earth and proceeded to lobotomize herself to erase her guilt over it. It would be a disservice to simply call her "crazy" but given she's traveling across from her universe to the 616 universe literally just to kill things, it wouldn't be entirely inaccurate.
The Invincible Woman releases enough microwaves to annihilate all life on Earth twice over.
Obviously, our heroes manage to subdue and defeat this souped-up, twisted version of Susan, which outside of being a colorful display of the various abilities taken into account between the F4 - and their allies - also thematically reinforces the idea that the Fantastic Four is greater than the sum of their parts...even when they're fighting a much more powerful variant of one of their own members. Now, there's only so many times you can reiterate the importance of family and working together in the general sense, especially within the pages of the Fantastic Four given we have literal decades worth of stories that do just that. But North manages to hit upon these thematic issues without feeling repetitive or redundant, which is a testament to his strong grasp on the team.
The ending of the issue is likely to leave readers with thoughts, however. Beyond the fact that the Invincible Woman was defeated in a rather sudden manner, the idea that 616 Susan might just possess the same power potential is certainly telling. For years, decades even, it's been common knowledge that the Invisible Woman has been the most powerful member of the team. Most people, I'd imagine, don't take issue with that. But the growing concern among some fans is the "power creep" involving Susan and her powers and this arc, in a way, highlighted what her potential could be under specific circumstances. Now, it's entirely possible that we don't revisit this tease with Susan displaying potential electromagnetic manipulation, but the implication is there and canonized for either Ryan North to explore later in his run or for another writer to tackle in the future. Personally, I don't think Susan should effectively become Magneto-esque and possess such a wide array of types of energy she can interact with and manipulate, let alone to the scale of which Invincible Woman displayed them. Power scaling and feats take a backseat to the story and narrative for my tastes, but at the same time Susan shouldn't become so powerful that the rest of the team more or less becomes irrelevant. To clarify, I don't think that this is the intent here, but the door is certainly open, even if only by a crack.
The cameos here help service the story and there's a specific scene here I want to touch on in the form of Bullseye and Scarlet Witch. It's such a random pairing, one that would feel so out of place literally anywhere else, but given the context here, it just works. More than that, it works, well, fantastically. I love seeing characters with no business working together doing just that, especially when they pool together their respective skills and abilities. Wanda using her magic and playing to Bullseye's ego to make an otherwise impossible shot was well done and the kind of guest appearances I like to see in comics. Obviously, the book delivers more cameos than those, including the brutal torture of Wolverine and Deadpool, but this was the pairing that really captured my attention and deserved a specific shout out for.
Susan Storm’s ability to bend light is exponentially augmented with the Power Cosmic.
Moving on to the art, Humberto Ramos and Victor Olazaba (pencils and inks, respectively) continues to deliver to give the title a very distinct and fitting visual identity. It's very kinetic with expressive emotions from its varied cast of characters, coming together in a pretty thrilling spectacle to wrap up the Invincible Woman arc. Whether you think Evil! Susan is overpowered or not, it's hard to deny that her power set doesn't make for some pretty radical panels and splash pages and is a great way for Ramos to flex their artistic muscles. The colors, brought to us by Edgar Delgado, are bright and vibrant, capturing the kind of frenetic energy and high-octane tone that has carried the title since the first issue. Together, the team unites in providing the backdrop to North's narrative and dialogue, further contributing to the issue's identity that remains consistent with the title overall to date. I think the most thrilling pages in the book from an artistic perspective is probably seeing a briefly empowered with the Power Cosmic Susan performing surgery on a dying Galactus. It’s entirely over the top in terms of spectacle and scale, but altogether fitting within the pages of a Fantastic Four book.
Final Thoughts and Review
Fantastic Four #10 wraps up the Invincible Woman arc and effectively sets up a possible follow up in the sense of exploring Susan’s potential growth. Ryan North has doubled down on what previous writers have done in the sense of clearly portraying Susan Storm as the most powerful and most dangerous member of the Fantastic Four and has set the stage for her perhaps becoming even more powerful.
Final Review: 7.5/10
Moments before Susan’s world expands.
The Invincible Woman arc comes to a close within the pages of Fantastic Four #10 as Susan and the rest of the family return to Earth just in time to deal with both an alien invasion as well as her twisted double. A bevy of familiar faces join the book as we get a solid, if not somewhat sudden conclusion that leaves the door open for both a new villain and the evolution of the Invisible Woman herself.