In Devils, the Fantastic Four once again tangle with their first enemy, the Mole Man, an event which might turn out to have unintended and far-reaching consequences. I’m not really sure I trust the storyline to go anywhere, though, since it was part of an annual, which issues tend to be further than usual outside the main story arc of any Marvel comic I’ve read. (On the bright side, they are never completely separated from it, either, which still keeps them ahead of my expectations.)

But then they tangled with a Renaissance alchemist called Diablo. And a lot of other alchemists who were less evil but also had a lot of magical powers nevertheless. So, apparently, there’s magic in the Ultimate universe, not just lots of freaky science accidents. I guess I’m less okay with this than I expected, and probably because it’s taken so long to appear. Still, it’s a comic, and I’ll get over it here soon. More disconcerting was how containedly episodic the entire sequence felt. I won’t really know if I’m wrong about that for quite a while, but it might be worse if I am, since it really wouldn’t make any sense to dig the storyline up again, so solidly was it concluded.

Well, okay, there was one reasonably cool loose end. And time travel, which is always fun, even when there are no apparent consequences.