Character find: Darla Deering

I've been far away from Marvel Comics for a quite a long time.  With time having proven me correct for my reasons to begin my boycott, and DC not wanting my money, I decided to give Marvel another chance, and it was obvious to me where I should start.  The Fantastic Four have always been special to me.  The first comic book I ever got was a Fantastic Four comic.  Marvel recently re-launched all of their titles in a bid to get those precious new readers, which I think is stupid but oh well, so I got on board with Matt Fraction's new run on boht FANTASTIC FOUR and its sister title FF.

Quick recap: the Fantastic Four are going off into space and it shouldn't be a long trip, but just in case they appointed a replacement team.

This brings us to Darla Deering.  She's a new character and was described as a celebritant like Katy Perry of Lindsey Lohan.  That induced quite as eyeroll, but the FF series was getting drawn by Mike Aldred, so I eagerly picked up the book.  That description of Darla does the character no justice at all.

She's on the team because Johnny forgot to pick a replacement for then they were on their trip and when he got reminded hey got ahold of the first person he could think of, which was the girl he was dating.  Shouldn't be a problem, after all they are only supposed to be gone for four minutes.  She is a pop star, and apparently a pretty famous one.  She has no powers at all.  Honestly, at first glance she has no place at all on the team.

Then we watch her a bit.

Reed takes Johnny at his word.  If he says that she is right for this, then that is good enough.  So there's Darla face-to-face with an in stasus Moon Boy who really needs to get back to his own time and she askes a very imporatant question: "Are we going to help him?"  There's this creature that looks barely human by our standards, but she empathetic to him.  So much so that she goes back in time with Johnny to help get him home.

She cares.  Great big heart-right-out-there-on-her-sleeve cares.

There she is in this whole new world that she's been asked to be a part of of surrounded by these amazing people.  She's awe-struck at times.  She's delightfully curious.  She's also quite scared.  More than anything that someone will get hurt because she does not think that she's cut out for the team.  Everything we've seen her do comes from one motivation: she cares.

From the adorable scene with Artie and Leech on the roof, to her crying her eyes out because she felt that she let people down.

She is delightfully and refreshingly human.  She's the character I want to follow through this great big weird adventure.