Fantastic Four Vol. 1 # 557 - Who Is The Anti-Galactus?

“World’s Greatest” concludes! It’s the ultimate engine of peace pitted against Reed Richards’ most lethal invention, for all the marbles! And a shocking final page that’ll have you feeling every minute of the thirty-day wait until the next issue!

#SPOILERS#

• Reed smashes Alyssa's robot with his even-bigger robot.

• Then he turns Alyssa down.

• And goes on a time-travelling anniversary dinner with Sue.

• Johnny finds his criminal girlfriend lying naked on his bed with strategically-placed money she just stole from a bank, and still can't help himself.

• Doom arrives at the Baxter Building, demanding to see Reed Richards...

Hmm, interesting. Looking over Millar's whole first arc, there's a lot of approve of, but some quibbles with the execution of the threat. CAP is totally perfunctory, and not even Millar in this issue seems to really be all that invested in him. "World's Greatest" serves as a platform to introduce Millar's various long-term plots, and CAP is blatantly only here to give the Fantastic Four someone to fight. His defeat is not particularly creative (Reed smashes the big robot with his ever-bigger robot), though it does play into the whole issue of Alyssa's feelings for Reed (namely, that Alyssa put Reed's name on the list of people CAP can't hurt). Around that, though, there's a lot to like here; following CAP's loss, we get a series of epilogues, all of which work great; the characterization is good, and Sue and Reed's anniversary dinner is a particularly fun mix of sci-fi and romantic comedy. All this plus the promise of lots of Doctor Doom in the next issue.