Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. What to do when you’ve got a new team lineup? Put them up against some classic villains. The Frightful Four are back in issue #548.

Recap: After the ever-tumultuous superhero Civil War, Reed and Sue left the team to reconcile their marriage, with Black Panther and Storm taking their place in the FF. Reed and Sue’s “second honeymoon” on Titan was interrupted by a message from aliens called Odopodians, whose society is (was?) under attack by rival aliens the Contrasepsis. Reed returned to Earth to work with the FF and Hank Pym on this. Back on Titan, Sue was attacked by the Frightful Four. Their leader the Wizard planted a bomb on Reed’s ship, blowing it up.

This issue begins with Sue bound by a device that cancels her powers, while the Wizard boasts about killing Reed. He insists that she admit he is Reed’s superior. She refuses. Wizard continues to boast that Black Panther and Storm are “c-listers” who pose no threat. Sue refuses to concede, even when the Wizard threatens to kill her.

Back on Earth, we see that the FF and Hank Pym survived the explosion, of course. Black Panther suspected that the ship had been sabotaged so he remote-piloted it away. The FF’s new Fold Ship, built for space travel, is being prepared, and Black Panther says there’s something they can do in the meantime. They broadcast a hologram of Reed to Titan, where he offers the Wizard a chance to beat him one-on-one. The other Frightfuls – Titania, Hydro-Man, and Paste-Pot Pete, um, I mean the Trapster – want to retreat, but the Wizard believes this is their chance to take down the FF once and for all.

In space, the FF fill Black Panther in on the Wizard’s background. On Titan, Wizard again boasts about how no one can sneak up on them, when Black Panther does just that. The Wizard promises his teammates $1 million for killing any of the FF, as long as they leave Reed to him. There’s a big fight, where Johnny buries Titania in melting metal, and then he burns part of Hydro-Man into steam. Black Panther knocks out the Trapster while admitting his traps are clever tech.

Reed confronts the Wizard, only for the Wizard to hit him with a neural disrupter. Wizard has a camera on them both, to broadcast Reed’s death back to everyone on Earth. Storm turns the rest of Hyrdo-Man into steam, and now the FF have the Wizard surrounded.

The Wizard says he has prepared for an eventual confrontation with Black Panther, and he pulls out a weapon. It crackles to life, revealing itself to be the sonic weapon used by supervillain Klaw. And then Klaw himself returns to life.

To be continued!

Unstable molecule: Reed is initially resistant to the Wizard’s electric blasts. But then Wizard has a second weapon that affects Reed’s central nervous system, and that does the trick.

Fade out: We’re not told what this device is that can neutralize Sue’s powers. Remember that in the previous issue, Wizard had tech that allowed him to walk through Sue’s force fields. I think we can assume this is that same device.

Clobberin’ time: Ben can’t punch Hyrdo-Man, and the villain nearly drowns him. It’s only after Johnny burns part of him that Hyrdo-Man goes from liquid back to solid, allowing Ben to knock him out.

Flame on: There’s an additional bit where Storm uses her wind power to toss the Trapster’s traps into the air, lining them up so Johnny can easily burn them. It’s a fun example of characters using their powers together in clever ways.

Fantastic fifth wheel: In the conversation about the Wizard, Reed says he did nothing to warrant the Wizard’s anger toward him, and that the villain’s jealously is unfounded. It’s hinted that Black Panther has had similar encounters. What’s not said is he’s thinking about his longstanding rivalry with Klaw, foreshadowing the end of the issue.

Storm’s defeat of Hydro-Man shows Marvel’s effort at this time to power her up, in that she doesn’t just control the weather, but can control the very atmosphere on a molecular level.

Titania says she joined the Frightful Four because the Wizard promised her the means to defeat She-Hulk. So there’s a third example of unwarranted jealously in this issue.

Trivia time: Klaw was the villain in Black Panther’s first appearance, first as a big game hunter, and then as a sonic-powered madman. Black Panther has developed quite the interesting rogue’s gallery over the years, but somehow Klaw usually tops the list.

The Wizard says that Jupiter is 1 billion miles from Earth. Google tells me that it’s approximately 376 million miles. We’ll chalk that up to “Wizard isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.”

It’s not said why Hank Pym stays behind on Earth. We’re just a short time away from Secret Invasion, which will reveal that he’s been a Skrull this whole time, so maybe that has something to do with it.  

Fantastic or frightful? As comics lean more toward modernized, cinematic storytelling, the classic hero vs. villain slugfests have gone out of style. But this issue is a good old-fashioned brawl, and it’s a lot of fun. This is especially because of smart uses of the characters’ powers, and all the personality bits they show throughout. It feels like classic Marvel.

Next:  The sound of… sound.

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