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Re-reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. The villains take center stage in issue #57.

The story begins right in the middle of the action, with a lot of info to take in on the first splash page. The FF are visiting the state prison, only to find the guards all knocked out and the Sandman sneaking up behind them. Ben exposits that the Sandman and the Wizard, his former partner in the Frightful Four, called the FF there because they were ready to “sing.” Cue two pages of fighting, after which the Sandman escapes through a vent. The Wizard shows up, surrounded by guards, saying this was all part of his escape plan.

Cut to Latveria, where the Silver Surfer is brooding on a mountaintop (he does that a lot). A tiny rocket invites him to visit the nearby castle. Now who do we know who lives in a castle in Latveria and has access to futuristic tech? Yes, it’s Dr. Doom. (He’s ballsy enough to sign his letter, “Doom Rex.”) The Surfer flies to Doom’s place and they chat. Doom says he seeks knowledge and wants to learn about the Surfer’s flying surfboard. The Surfer buys it, and explains that board is made of pure cosmic energy, the same cosmic energy that gives the Surfer his power. Doom asks for a demonstration, asking the Surfer to create a weapon. He does, some sort of club. Doom tests it out and finds it incredibly powerful, able to destroy an entire wall (that’s your castle, Doom) but the Surfer is smart enough to dematerialize the weapon before Doom gets too in love with it. Doom then leads the Surfer farther into the castle, saying, “We have matters of great magnitude to be discussed!”

Back in New York, Ben is flying around the city in that flying motorcycle thing searching for the Sandman while Reed and Sue monitor him from inside the Baxter Building. But, surprise! Sandman isn’t out in the city, he’s breaking into Reed’s lab. A few more pages of fighting, and the Sandman sneaks into Reed’s advanced equipment storage unit, locking himself inside with Reed’s “impregno-lock.” Reed says it will take him several minutes to get it open. (There’s a real naughty joke in this somewhere.) Reed gets inside, only to learn the Sandman has escaped once more. He’s stolen something, but we’re not sure what.

We’ve seen Reed’s lab lots of times, so next it’s a look at Dr. Doom’s science lab. In true Jack Kirby style, it’s full of outrageous scientific wonders. The Surfer believes Doom is creating world-destroying weapons, and he doesn’t approve. Doom gives him the big speech about how his weapons actually preserve peace and freedom, is all. “I am the gentlest, most unambitious of monarchs!” he says. The Surfer still isn’t buying it, especially after seeing Doom snap at his servants. But Doom has the Surfer figured out as well. He shows the Surfer an “actual temporal photo” of outer space, and the Surfer is mesmerized by it, because he still longs to be out in space instead of exiled to Earth. There’s one panel where the Surfer has this huge grin on his face, uncharacteristic for him.

Doom then makes his move, sneaking up behind the Surfer with a pair of high-tech inductors. In two pages of amazing Kirby action (complete with Kirby dots!) Doom draws the cosmic energy out of the Surfer and into himself. “Now let mankind beware,” Doom says, “for Doctor Doom has attained powers without limit!”

Turn the page, and we’re in another subplot. Johnny and Wyatt Wingfoot are still teleporting all over the place with Lockjaw, the Inhumans’ giant dog, in the hopes of finding a way to free the Inhumans from their domed city – and so Johnny can be reunited with lady love, Crystal. Lockjaw has taken them to an alternate dimension, where they encounter some dinosaur-like monsters. This doesn’t last long before teleporting away again. Then, we check in with the Inhumans. Black Bolt is still unconscious after the last escape attempt, but he appears to be recovering. As the rest of the Inhuman royal family gathers at his bedside, the evil Maximus enters with more crazy ramblings. “When Black Bolt speaks, you’ll all be free!” he says.

Back in Latveria, Doom is taking his new powers for a test drive, flying around on the Silver Surfer’s board, firing cosmic blasts into the forest, and terrifying the local villagers. Then the issue ends with our heroes still fretting about Sandman (well, Reed and Sue are fretting, Ben is watching TV cartoons for some comedy shtick). Sue says she has a premonition that something a lot more terrible than Sandman is on the way. Reed won’t admit it, but he feels it too.

To be continued!

Unstable molecule: Reed stretches into a disc-like shape that’s sharp as a knife to slice Sandman’s arm in two (it’s sand, so the arm just grows back).

Fade out: Sue’s “super-woman’s intuition” is unfortunately hokey. She makes good use of her force fields when battling Sandman, though.

Clobberin’ time: Ben and the Sandman are pretty evenly matched once Sandman does that thing (heh) where he makes himself as hard a rock. Ben’s flying around the city brings to mind his past as a pilot in the military.

Flame on: Johnny has made a lot of headway in domesticating Lockjaw, as the big beastie acts as a protective watchdog for him and Wyatt when they’re attacked by dinosaurs.

Trivia time: The TV cartoon Ben watches is 1966’s Marvel Super Heroes, a real-life series, and Marvel’s first foray into television. The show’s animation was severely limited, taking actual panels from the comics and just adding slight movements and voices. It was kind of like today’s motion comics, except a lot crappier. The main characters featured on the show were Captain America, the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and the FF’s enemy, Namor.

Fantastic or frightful? The Fantastic Four are barely in this Fantastic Four comic. The Sandman stuff is a subplot, while all the good stuff is the battle of wits between Doctor Doom and the Silver Surfer. There’s some good stuff here, but, really, this issue exists just to set up the real action in the next few issues.

Next week: The dregs.

****

Want more? Check out my book, CINE HIGH, now available for the Kindle and the free Kindle app.

Re-reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. In annual #4, the FF meets a familiar face from Marvel’s pre-history. What’s “pre-history,” you wonder? That’s when Marvel references the grey area in its history, mentioning stories published before the Marvel Universe officially “started” with the publication of Fantastic Four #1. Confused? Don’t be, let’s just read the comic.

The fun begins at the Baxter Building, where Reed, Sue and Johnny are answering the FF’s fan mail. One letter asks about the original human torch, and Reed informs Ben that there was another man calling himself “Human Torch” 20 years earlier.

Mail time is interrupted by a burst of energy. The Inhumans’ giant teleporting dog, Lockjaw, appears. He’s brought Johnny and Wyatt Wingfoot with him. Remember that in the last couple of issues, Johnny and Wyatt found the big dog while searching for a way to rescue the Inhumans from their city, imprisoned under a huge dome. Lockjaw’s been trained to keep people away from the dome, which is why he’s sent Johnny back to the Baxter Building. Johnny is despondent again over being separated from his lady love, Crystal, who trapped with the rest of Inhumans. Reed tries to feed some milk to Lockjaw, only to have Lockjaw drink too fast and zap everyone with a bolt of electric energy.

We cut from there to some secret lair of an old FF foe, the Thinker (still not called the “Mad Thinker” except for the hyperbolic splash page). He has a man in glass cage. The Thinker, whose deal is making deadly androids, says that this man is the first android ever created, and that he’s been searching for him for a long time. The android flashes back to 20 years earlier, when he was created by a Professor Horton. He was dubbed the “Human Torch” because of his fiery powers. Fearing his creation was dangerous, Horton tried to destroy the Torch, but the android escaped. Back in the present, the Thinker says he’s given the Torch control over his powers, so he no longer bursts into flame by merely being exposed to oxygen. The Thinker then threatens to destroy the Torch if the Torch does not obey him.

Back with our heroes, Johnny leaves Reed to experiment on Lockjaw, flying off on his own to try an alternate means of freeing the Inhumans. He flies out to a remote desert to see if he can burn to peak intensity. He burns hotter and hotter, but his flame is snuffed out by what appears to be a random tornado. No, it’s not a tornado, it’s the original Torch. He announces that he’s there to kill Johnny.

The fight scene that happens next is pretty spectacular. Sure, the two guys are both fireproof, which negates each other’s powers, but it’s still great to see all kinds of explosive flame effects in each panel as they duke it out for several pages. The fight ends up underground, where the fires hit a patch of natural gas, causing a massive explosion. Elsewhere, the explosion shorts out the Thinker’s monitoring devices, and now he can no longer watch the battle.

Here’s where things get kooky. The Thinker walks over to a big machine and declares, “Quasimodo!” A disfigured face appears on the machine’s screen, and says, “I could serve you better than he!” The Thinker clearly has great disdain for this… machine? Creature? Quasimodo wants a human body, but the Thinker refuses, saying it was a mistake even to give Quasimodo a face and a name. Originally, he was just a “Quasi-motivational Destruct Organ.” The Thinker demands that Quasimodo stop thinking of itself as a person, but poor Quasimodo can’t help it, saying he can reason and feel, and that he longs for the freedom of movement. The Thinker won’t have any of that, and he zaps Quasimodo with a “discipline ray.” He then says that if the original Human Torch fails in his mission, Quasimodo must kill the android with the “destruct switch,” and Quasimodo is forced to obey.

Back in the desert, more fighting! While the Torches duke it out, the original Torch has a crisis of conscience, wondering if he should take Johnny captive instead of killing. He reveals to Johnny that he’s working for the Thinker. Johnny argues that they have a common enemy and should be working together.

The rest of the FF then arrive, courtesy of the teleporting Lockjaw, who, we’re told, can teleport along thought waves, knowing where someone wants to go and taking them there. (Convenient!) Just as everyone stops and compares notes, Lockjaw teleports again, taking everyone to the Thinker’s lab. It’s here that Reed calls the Thinker “the Mad Thinker” for the first time. The original Torch stands up to the villain, saying “I would rather return to the nothingness of an android’s death than stand idly by while murder is done!” Then, Quasimodo attacks, hitting the destruct switch. (How this happens is he fires a beam from his eye onto an actual switch and flips it. So, I guess his power is super button-pressing.)

The destruct switch activates (what else?) a destruct beam. The original Torch puts himself between it and the others, sacrificing his life to save theirs. “Men may have called him an android, but he died as human as any,” Reed says. The Mad Thinker escapes in an “aqua chamber.” (I guess this secret lair of his is underwater). Then Lockjaw prepares to teleport again, and Johnny takes this as his cue to whine about Crystal some more. Johnny and Wyatt teleport away, and Reed lets them go, saying Johnny will be all right. In another room, all alone, Quasimodo appears to be dying, saying his circuits are fading and that he wants to know what it’s like to be human, if even for just a moment. Then, as the lights fade, he also swears revenge against the Fantastic Four.

Unstable molecule: Before breaking up the two Torches’ fight, Reed has the rest of the FF and Wyatt covered head to toe with an “anti-burn lotion.”

Fade out: While answering fan mail, Reed jokes that at least they letter aren’t bills, and Sue responds that more bills are on their way because she recently went shopping. She also serving the guys tea as she says this. Feminism!

Clobberin’ time: Ben is reduced to comic relief in this one, basically standing around in the background being sarcastic while everyone else does all the fighting.

Flame on: Johnny proves he can throw punches as well as fireballs, as the fight against the original Torch goes into hand-to-hand combat. He’s also able to appeal to the original’s better nature.

Trivia time: The original Human Torch debuted way back in 1939, as Marvel (then called Timely Comics) desperately tried to come up with hero characters to compete with DC’s mega-popular Superman. The Human Torch and Captain America were two more successful attempts, with others like the Blue Blaze, Dynamic Man, and the unfortunately-named Flexo the Rubber-Man faring not as well. Once reintroduced to the Marvel Universe, the original Torch came back, became involved in the origins of both the Vision and Ultron, and later joined the West Coast Avengers.

Behind the scenes, the story goes that the creator of the original Human Torch, Carl Burgos, wanted to get the copyright to the character back. Marvel prevented that by using the character in this issue, reestablishing the Torch as a Marvel property. According to legend, Burgos later burned all of his Marvel comics in protest, and in front of his daughter no less.

Quasimodo would later get a body, and he’ll mostly appear in outer space-type stories, fighting the Silver Surfer, Captain Marvel, and Rom the SpaceKnight.

If this story seems a little too short for a stormtrooper an annual, that’s because when originally published, the second half of the comic was a reprint of Fantastic Four #25, which you’ll remember was that great Thing/Hulk fight.

Fantastic or frightful? The Torch vs. Torch fight is more awesome Jack Kirby action, and the interaction between the Mad Thinker and Quasimodo is wonderfully quirky. Beyond that, though, this one’s a little thin on plot. The drama picks up in a big way next issue.

Next week: Sand and surf!

****

Want more? Check out my book, CINE HIGH, now available for the Kindle and the free Kindle app.

Re-reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Issue #56 picks up on a lot of subplots left dangling in previous issues, including a new look for a noisy villain.

We begin with some sitcom-ish yuks, in which Sue is cooking a roast (not a euphemism) and can’t find Reed anywhere. The only place she hasn’t looked is the “Space-Time Room” in Reed’s lab. The door is locked, so Sue uses the “Space-Time Research Visi-Phone” to look on the other side. Ben is in there, and her warns her, “It’s almost H-hour!”

Inside, if I’m reading this right, Reed has opened a temporal field in the hopes of making subspace travel possible. Basically, he’s opened this doorway into some other world where weird-looking monsters are flying. Reed theorizes that travel through subspace could free the Inhumans, whose city is still trapped under an impenetrable dome. (This subspace business is what will later be known as the “Negative Zone,” except in this issue that phrase is used to describe the Inhumans’ dome.)

Reed continues to tinker, only to have the lab explode in a sonic boom. After that, they’re sealing behind a wall of solid sound. That’s when Klaw, master of sound, emerges seemingly out of nowhere. The last time we saw Klaw, in issue #53, He was an ordinary human, except for the metal hand, who used sound-based tech as weapons. He disappeared into his own sound converter as it was destroyed. Now, he’s back, in a much different, less human form. He wants the same thing he wanted last time – to go back to Wakanda and steal the Black Panther’s precious vibranium metal (also not a euphemism).

Then we cut to the Inhumans, to resolve their cliffhanger from issue #54. Black Bolt tried to use a powerful absorba-bomb to escape the dome, but he failed, and merely knocked himself unconscious. Maximus is out of his cell and hanging around, bragging that he knows the way out of the dome, since he invented it, but the others can’t have the solution because he’s gone crazy! Medusa gives in to despair, fearing the Inhumans will never escape.

At the Baxter Building, Klaw attacks Sue, and then exposits how the sound converter didn’t kill him, but gave him a new body made entirely of solid sound. “I have become the most powerful being on Earth!” he says. (Oh, how I wish the Hulk or Thor would’ve randomly walked through the door as he said that.) Sue grabs Reed’s neuro-stun-gun (still not a euphemism) and fires it, Meanwhile, Reed and Ben are having trouble escaping, with the walls sealed by pure sound. Reed just happens to have a “counter-sonic harness” lying around, which he attaches to Ben. With the harness, Ben is able to escape, leaving Reed behind.

Sue tries to escape Klaw by turning invisible, but makes it so her footsteps are incredibly loud, giving away her position. Ben shows up and attacks Klaw. Thanks to Reed’s invention, Ben can fight back against Klaw’s most powerful sonic blasts – so powerful they cause a blackout throughout New York City.

We cut from there to the Himalayas, picking up a subplot from the previous issue, where Johnny and his musclebound Native American friend Wyatt Wingfoot have reunited with Lockjaw, the Inhumans’ giant teleporting dog. Wyatt theorizes that Lockjaw was kept out of the dome intentionally, to keep humans from finding it. He then believes that if he and Johnny befriend the big dog, it’ll be just as loyal to them as it is to the Inhumans. So… super dog training.

Back to the action. Ben is dazed after Klaw’s attack. Klaw then lets Reed out of the lab so he and Sue can reunite. It looks like Klaw has the advantage, but then a “packet missile” flies through the window. Inside are two vibranium bands. Turns out that while Ben and Sue fought Klaw, Reed sent a message to Wakanda, and Black Panther responded by sending this super-fast missile around the globe in seconds. Reed wears the vibranium bands like a pair of brass knuckles, beating the crap out of Klaw.

Reed then puts the Black Panther on a speaker phone, thanking him for the last-minute save. Reed says the police will be able to keep Klaw held in a vibranium cell (I’m sure that’ll go well). Then, the issue ends on an ominous note, somewhere far away, where a mysterious figure is spying on the Silver Surfer…

To be continued!

Unstable molecule: Here’s yet another example of Reed saving the day with super-science, but only after his super-science got the team in trouble in the first place.

Fade out: Sue is on the defensive the whole time, not much of a match for Klaw. Even as she’s defeated, though, she still refuses to give in to his demands.

Clobberin’ time: Early on, Reed briefly mentions that he’s still working on a way to turn Ben back into a human, only to have Ben say, “I’m beginning to feel like my normal loveable self.” We’re definitely in the era where Ben has accepted his fate and is even enjoying being a monster.

Flame on: Johnny takes the first step toward domesticating Lockjaw by heating up some strange local plantlife for the big dog to eat.

Trivia time: While not anyone’s favorite villain, this version of Klaw will go on to have a lengthy history in the Marvel universe, visiting Project Pegasus, the Nexus of All Realities, and even being a major part of the first Secret War. According to the Marvel Wiki, his first name is “Ulysses,” and he was born and raised in the Netherlands.

Fantastic or frightful? One of my favorite aspects of the Fantastic Four is mystique of Reed’s lab. Up there in that skyscraper, there’s this wondrous lab full of cosmic scientific wonders. So, it’s a real delight to have an entire issue take place inside just the lab. Klaw is not that interesting of a baddie, and it’s tough to depict sound in a visual medium, but this one’s nonetheless a lot of fun.

Next week: Too many torches!

****

Want more? Check out my book, CINE HIGH, now available for the Kindle and the free Kindle app.

Re-reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. We’ve reached a big one with #55, one of my all-time favorite issues. Hopefully, I can make a good case for it.

The issue begins at the Baxter Building, where Reed and Sue have returned from their honeymoon, happy to report that nothing dangerous or weird happened while they were away. (That’s very superhero-ish. You’d think they’d run into some kind of supervillain or mystery while honeymooning, but no.)

Ben, who was apparently with Reed and Sue the whole time (!) is anxious to see Alicia again. Remember, the last time we saw them together was at the end of the Galactus trilogy, when he mistook her for romancing the spacey Silver Surfer. He actually left her in that story, but now I guess he’s forgiven her because he can’t wait to see her again. When Ben can’t get Alicia on the phone, he worries she’s found a new beau, someone who’s not a giant rock monster. Reed and Sue tell him not to worry about it. Sue suggests Ben visit her in person, so he takes off on the FF’s jetcycle.

Elsewhere, a couple of mountain climbers are scaling one of the world’s most inaccessible peaks, only to find the Silver Surfer already standing there. He’s still exiled on Earth, and sees this planet as his prison. Still, he’s willing to accept this as his destiny. With that in mind, he too decides to pay a visit to Alicia, the one human who has shown him kindness. See if you can guess where this is going.

We finally catch up with Alicia, who’s left her Manhattan apartment and is now staying at a beach house on the Atlantic coast. (How much do sculptors make, anyhow?) The Silver waxes philosophic about how she’s the only good thing she’s seen since he’s been on Earth. Earth, he says, could be a paradise, except for all the humans’ greed and corruption.

While the Surfer has his “poor me” moment, Ben arrives. He enters the house and encounters a woman named Mrs. Binns. They’ve apparently met before, as he already knows her. He hears a man’ s voice coming from Alicia’s room (how does he know it’s her room?) and he heads up the stairs, his temper growing with each step. He finds the Surfer talking to Alicia, and he promptly flips out, punching the surfer through the wall and outside the house.

Time for fighting and lots of it. Ben is outraged, full of jealous fury, demanding that the Surfer fight him. The Surfer does fight back, but he elucidates the whole time about how Earthlings are all violent and warlike. As the two exchange blows, Ben realizes he’s pulling his punches even though he’s trying to force himself to hate the Surfer. The Surfer lets atomic energy build up inside his body, turning into a walking a-bomb. Ben knows this is trouble, and back on the jetcycle, hoping to lure the Surfer away from a populated area before any bystanders – including Alicia – are harmed.

In the abandoned warehouse district (convenient!) Ben and the Surfer battle it out some more, punching each other through more walls. Ben gets his hands on the Surfer’s surfboard, but he can’t break it in two. Ben then makes like the Hulk, smashing up the entire building, bringing the whole thing down on the Surfer. He’s about to cause even more destruction, but Reed and Sue arrive, stopping him. Alicia called them and asked for help. Reed relays a message from Alicia, saying Ben is the one she really likes. The Surfer, an alien, means nothing to her. The Surfer frees himself from the rubble, and Reed makes Ben apologize. Before flying off, the Surfer uses his powers to repair Ben’s jetcycle. He then creates some silver flowers out of nowhere for Ben to give to Alicia, so Ben can apologize to her as well.

Unstable molecule: Reed breaks up the fight by getting Ben to listen to reason. Early in the issue, he uses his stretching powers to carry in the luggage from the honeymoon, in the closest thing this issue has for the excuse-for-the-characters-to-show-off-their-powers-in-the-first-few-pages gag.

Fade out: Sue describes Ben as “obdurate.” I looked it up. It means resistant to the influence of others, stubborn, or unmoved by pity. Sure, why not? (Ben, hilariously, responds to Sue’s declaration of “obdurate” with, “My religion’s got nothing to do with it!”)

Clobberin’ time: While the Silver Surfer is set up as one of the most powerful Marvel characters, Ben nonetheless puts up a good fight. The Surfer describes Ben’s initial attack as “savage, unthinking brute force,” and Ben twice succeeds in separating the Surfer from his cosmic surfboard.

Flame on: While all this is going on, there’s a three-page subplot with Johnny and his musclebound Native American friend Wyatt Wingfoot. They’re in the Himalayas, investigating reports of a monster. That monster turns out to be Lockjaw, the Inhumans’ teleporting dog. This is good news for Johnny, because if Lockjaw escaped the dome that has the Inhumans trapped, then maybe Crystal and the other Inhumans can escape as well. More in this in future issues.

Trivia time: This issue is well known for being reprinted in 1974’s Origins of Marvel Comics, one of the first comic book trade paperbacks. Or, at least, one of the earliest to be widely read. Issue #55 is the “now” following the first issue’s “then.” The trade also has origins and follow-up issues for Spider-Man, the Hulk, Thor, and Dr. Strange.

Fantastic or frightful? OK, so why is this issue one of my favorites? If you look at just the plot description above, you might think Ben comes off as just an angry jerk, but it all succeeds in the dialogue. Stan Lee’s playful sense of humor is on every page, and Ben has one amusing line after the next after the next. Such as:

“C’mon, ya blasted silver skunk!”

“I figured that’d bring ya down to Earth, you crummy Casanova!”

“You ain’t exactly playing potsy with no campfire girl!”

And so on. Ben, with his rough and tumble ways, makes a perfect foil for the elegant poetic Silver Surfer, and with him Stan Lee gets to write as flowery and 1960s hippy-ish as he wants, with lines like these:

“I, who have crested the currents of space, who have dodged the meteor storms and who have outdistanced the fastest comets, I must resign myself to this prison that men call Earth!”

“Your courage is laudable, but you are like a child, attempting to battle the elements themselves!”

“You have forgotten than I am not bound by the physical laws of Earth! You still do not see that I can increase my extra-terrestrial energy to almost any degree that I require!”

And so on. Sure, a lot of comes across as silly — perhaps intentionally — but it’s the dialogue that nonetheless fills these two guys with personality. Two completely different characters, with two completely different fighting styles, with two completely different ways of speaking, make this an all-time great Lee/Kirby slugfest. It’s just that much fun to read.

Next: Don’t be so negative!

****

Want more? Check out my book, CINE HIGH, now available for the Kindle and the free Kindle app.

Re-reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. We’re making our way through an exciting time, as previous weeks have had the debuts of Galactus, the Silver Surfer, the Inhumans, and the Black Panther. Issue #54 gives us the historic first appearances of… Prester John and the Evil Eye! I guess they can’t all be winners.

As the story begins, our heroes are still visiting the African nation of Wakanda, where they have invited the Black Panther and the Wakandans to join them in a friendly game of baseball, which is this issue’s excuse-for-the-characters-to-show-off-their-powers-for-a-few-pages thing. We actually haven’t had one of those in a while. Later, everyone enjoys a fancy dinner at the Panther’s palace, but Johnny doesn’t seem interested. His friend and tagalong Wyatt Wingfoot suspects something is wrong. Johnny is, of course, pining after Crystal, the one-time love of his life who is now separated from him.

On that cue, we rejoin Crystal and the rest of the Inhumans, with their entire city still trapped under a giant impenetrable dome. The Inhumans’ silent leader, Black Bolt, is determined to find a way out. The only person smart enough to escape, the Inhumans say, is the one created the dome – Black Bolt’s evil brother, Maximus. Problem is, Maximus’s brain has reverted to a childlike state (when did this happen?), so he just sits around his jail cell making high-tech kites. Gorgon (remember him? He once singlehandedly defeated the FF) tries to convince Maximus to invent something that will shatter the surface of the dome.

Back in Wakanda, the Black Panther gives our heroes some wondrous gifts. Reed and Sue get clothes, which Reed says are the latest fashions from Paris (!), Johnny gets a supersonic fishing net (?), Wyatt gets a book of athletic records that mentions his famous athlete father (the Panther just had this lying around?) and Ben gets a cool-looking exercise machine to make him even stronger. By now, the Black Panther can also tell Johnny has the blues. That’s when Johnny drops the bombshell – he’s not going home with the rest of the team. He wants to go back the Inhumans’ city and find a way through that dome. Wyatt agrees to tag along and help him. (The Native American Wyatt actually compares himself to Tonto in one line. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.) Then the Black Panther makes with another gift, a futuristic Gyro-cruiser! It’s like a spaceship enclosed in a glass dome. The Panther says it runs on “a magnetic-tension element energized by friction.” Because of course it does.

Johnny and Wyatt take off in their new ship (it must be really easy to fly) and they are immediately caught in a sandstorm, which draws them deep into an underground cavern. There, they go exploring and come across a giant crypt. Inside, they find a man dressed as a medieval knight, apparently sleeping. But no, the knight wakes and catches them by surprise, zapping them with an eye-shaped weapon. His name is Prester John, and he’s been asleep down there for 700 years (the “chair of survival” kept him alive the whole time).  John is from Avalon, ancestral home of the knights, which in this story was rules not by King Arthur but by King Richard. John traveled the world, soaring on flying carpets and battling yetis. To protect the wonders of Avalon from the outside world, the wizards of Avalon created John’s weapon, the Evil Eye. The Eye can fire powerful disintegrator rays, and it traps Johnny and Wyatt in a barrier just like the one holding the Inhumans.

Speaking of the Inhumans, we cut back to them, where we learn the aquatic Inhuman Triton now has an apparatus that allows him to exist outside of water. (He’s a real boy now!) Gorgon is outraged that Maximus has invented this instead of a way out of the dome. Gorgon is about to attack Maximus, but Black Bolt intervenes, protecting his brother.

Back with Johnny, then. Prester John’s attack was just a demonstration of his power, and he says he would not actually hurt Johnny or Wyatt because of his chivalrous code. Johnny wants to borrow the Evil Eye, believing it can free the Inhumans. Prester John refuses, so the Torch takes the Eye by force and flies off with it (Never thought I’d write that sentence). Prester John freaks out, because if the Eye is out of his control for too long, it will overload and explode.

Then we’re with the Inhumans again, where Black Bolt has decided to go to extreme lengths to free his people, by entering the “cyclo-electronic chamber.” (Being mute, Black Bolt doesn’t say any of this, so it’s up to the other Inhumans to follow him around and narrate everything he does.) Inside the chamber, Black Bolt channels all of his power and energy into an “absorba-bomb,” but the pain is too much for him and he screams. That right, Marvel fans, he screams. On that note, the Inhumans’ subplot ends. We won’t learn the outcome of this for quite a few issues.

The scene shifts again, this time to Wyatt and Prester John aboard the Gyro-cruiser. Prester John is at the controls (!) and they catch up to Johnny, flying through the air. Wyatt uses a polarizer gun (where’d he get that?) to shoot the Evil Eye out of Johnny’s hand, after which it explodes like a nuke, with Johnny, Wyatt, and the old knight barely making it to safety. Then, the issue ends with some high drama, where an infuriated Johnny, believing this was his last chance to save Crystal, cries, “Maybe it would have been better if you hadn’t saved me!”

Unstable molecule: Reed and Sue sit out most of the issue, with one throwaway line of how they still haven’t taken their honeymoon.

Fade out: During the baseball game, Sue turns invisible and trips Reed to punish him for cheating. What do you call playing while invisible?

Clobberin’ time: Ben’s weightlifting gizmo is described as “the most powerful portable exerciser on Earth.” He grouses about it, but then thinks to himself that it’s pretty great.

Flame on: This is pretty much a Human Torch solo issue, which showcases the new “grown-up” Torch, willing to sacrifice anything to save the girl he loves.

Trivia time: The character of Prester John is based on one out of actual folklore. There are a lot of stories about the guy, but the gist of it is that he was one of three knights, or three magi, who guarded a vast and amazing treasure. I can’t possibly be the only one reminded of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, am I?

Prester John never became a Marvel mainstay, but he’s shown up from time to time over the years, having adventures with Thor, Iron Man, and even Deadpool!

There are references in this and previous issues to Black Bolt being “mute” and “unable to speak.” This goes against what is later established about his powers, and I wonder how/when the big reveal will be handled.

Fantastic or frightful? What a crazy issue! With Wakanda, the Inhumans’ city, and Avalon, there are three secret, high-tech cities hidden away from the rest of civilization, all in one story. What really makes the issue work, though, is Jack Kirby’s eye-popping art (he’s really off the chain by this point, and every page is a stunner), and Johnny’s heartbreak at the end, which is a total gut-punch.

Next: Ya blasted silver skunk!

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