WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Annihilation - Scourge: Fantastic Four #1 by Christos Gage, Diego Olortugui, Juan Vlasco, Cam Smith, Scott Hanna, Erick Arciniega and VC's Travis Lanham, as well as Annihilation - Scourge: Nova #1 by Matthew Rosenberg, Ibraim Roberson, Carlos Lopez and VC's Corey Petit, which are both on sale now. 

The newly released tie-in specials, Annihilation - Scourge: Fantastic Four #1 and Annihilation - Scourge: Nova #1 continue the events that began in Annihilation: Scourge Alpha, revealing a crucial key to defeating the Scourge.

Before this, it seemed as if the hordes of tentacled, zombie-like creatures were unstoppable as a result of their origins within the Cancerverse. Unlike traditional zombies, who exist in a perpetual state of death and decay, the undead Scourge hail from a universe of unchecked life. This means they are all but impossible to kill, re-animating and sprouting horrifying tendrils if anyone manages to mutilate them.

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However, the recent Fantastic Four and Nova tie-ins seem to confirm that if the Scourge minions are completely vanquished in the Negative Zone, the universe's strange properties can keep them from continuing their onslaught.

Annihilation - Scourge: Nova #1 most explicitly explains this concept during the adventures of an unlikely team-up. Panicked and hopeless after the Scourge invades the Negative Zone, Annihilus flees to the positive matter universe to try to see if its heroes can hold off the forces of the Scourge. Richard Rider finds Annhilus' burned-out husk of a ship, along with the bug king himself and a garrison of his troops that were transformed into members of the Scourge. When Nova blasts the head off of one of them, the Scourge's trademark tendrils pop out of the open hole. Rich, who has spent significant time in the Cancerverse, is needless to say, terrified.

Nova and Annihilus agree to travel to the Negative Zone together to try to stop this threat. With the help of Franklin and Sue Richards, they manage to work their way inside the infected area, helping to fight back the Scourge invaders. While there, Nova realizes that attacking the creatures doesn't lead to the same gruesome results as before when he was in the positive world. Annihilus points out that in the Negative Zone "things work differently. [..] What cannot live thrives. What cannot be killed dies."

It's an odd, paradoxical way of thinking about the strange place, but it's all Nova needs to reassure himself to fight his way through an army of the Scourge. At this point, we still don't have an entirely clear reason as to why the Negative Zone would stop the Scourge from re-animating, but we can look at the universe's established quirks and traits to try to explain the phenomenon.

Although it is established that the Scourge is able to corrupt the inhabitants of the Negative Zone and thus still pose an immense threat, the Zone's inherent anti-matter makeup and constant state of contraction seem to act as a counter-balance to the Cancerverse's sickly overgrowth. Beings whose sole purpose is to create a perverse vision of eternal life don't fare well in a world that is under the perpetual threat of extinction.

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Annihilation - Scourge: Fantastic Four #1 expands upon this idea, albeit even more loosely. The issue pits the Fantastic Four against corrupted versions of themselves called the Ftahgn Four, which the Cancerverse uses -- by way of Reed Richards' elastic limbs -- to bind itself together. They seem impossible to defeat at first, but Johnny Storm manages to use Reed's Memorium Device to project his memories onto the group. This causes the corrupted Ben Grimm and Sue Storm to experience emotional distress as they realize that they can never experience change and grow individually as human beings. In a fit of rage and frustration, the Cancerverse Johnny incinerates all of them together.

Reed notes that the Scourge probably cannot come back to life in the Negative Zone, but also mentions that the Ftaghn Four may just be re-growing in the Cancerverse. Whatever the possibility, it seems as if, like in the events of Nova, the Negative Zone has worked against the Scourge. It's even possible that the Zone's tendency to negatively manipulate emotions helped to cause the Ftaghn Four to turn on each other.

Still, the threat of the Scourge has diminished little. The creatures are difficult to eliminate, as evidenced by Johnny failing to torch a corrupted Crystal. Meanwhile, the Sentry and the rest of the superpowered Scourge still pose a threat to both the Negative Zone and the positive matter universe. Hopefully, our heroes can successfully confirm an effective weakness.

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