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Re-reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Issue #19 features freaky time travel craziness and Egyptian wildness.

The tale begins with Reed, Sue and Johnny tooling around the city in the Fantasticar, looking for Ben. They stop by Alicia’s apartment, but no one’s there. Johnny finds Ben and Alicia walking in the park. Ben is about to light a cigar, but Johnny burns it away for a cheap laugh. At this point, modern-day audiences respond, “Ben smokes?!?”

With Ben back at headquarters, Reed explains what was so important. He says that during a recent museum visit, he noticed something interesting in some ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. It looks ambiguous to me, but Reed deduces that the Egyptians had a radioactive herb that could cure blindness. (That’s awfully specific for a hieroglyphic.) How did the Egyptians have radioactive tech? Reed further deduces that when Dr. Doom abandoned his castle, he must have left his time machine still operational.

At Doom’s empty castle, the time machine is indeed still operational. The four head into the past, leaving Alicia behind with instructions to bring them back in 24 hours. Alicia says she can operate the machine solely by touch. The four end up right at the base of the Sphinx, which looks brand new. A bunch of Egyptians, wearing horned helmets for some reason, attack. Ben says to them, “Who do you think you are, Christian Dior?” The fight is over pretty quick, with the FF using their powers handily against their attackers spears and swords. Just as it looks like they’ve won, suddenly the four lose their powers and pass out.

They awake in the throne room of our villain du jour, Pharaoh Rama-Tut! Not only does Rama-Tut know who the FF are, but he has sapped their powers with his high-tech diode ray gun. He’s actually from the year 3000. In flashback, he explains that the future is the perfect civilization, an era of peace. This bored him, though, as he longed for days of excitement and adventure in the past. Knowing the superstitions of ancient cultures, he built a time machine in the shape of the Sphinx, and went back to ol’ Egypt to become ruler of all mankind.

Rama-Tut’s ray gun continues to make the FF powerless. He makes Reed, Ben and Johnny his slaves, while deciding to make Sue his queen. (Sigh…) Ben is put to use rowing a giant boat, Reed is a lookout on the city walls, and Johnny is Rama-Tut’s new court jester. The ray gun is also mind control, apparently, as Sue is unable to fight back as she’s dressed in Egyptian finery.

Aboard the boat, the ray gun further affects Ben, transforming him from the Thing back into a human. This somehow also frees him from the mind control. He fights his way off the boat and then does the Ben-Hur thing by riding a chariot through the city back to Rama-Tut’s palace. (Ben was in the Air Force, right? Do they teach chariot racing in the Air Force?)

While Rama-Tut does the “gloating villain” thing in front of Sue, Ben sneaks in and snags the ray gun. He gives it to Sue after turning back into the Thing, and she uses it to free Johnny. Rama-Tut escapes through a secret passage as his guards attack. More fighting! Reed is freed from the ray’s influence during the battle, and our heroes head straight for the Sphinx.

Inside the Sphinx, the FF fight through a bunch of booby traps and make it to the control room. Rama-Tut escapes in a “satellite pod,” which he says will take him to another dimension, and off to more adventure. He further says he’ll leave the Sphinx behind to forever mystify mankind. (That was thoughtful of him.) Inside the Sphinx, Reed finds the radioactive device that can cure eyesight. It disappears, however, on their trip back to the present, where Reed exposits that the time machine is unable to transport radioactive materials. Everyone’s sad that Alicia is still blind, but Reed says every adventure is a learning experience, and Alicia is thankful they put their lives on the line for her. So, kind of a happy ending, I guess?

Unstable Molecule: How Reed figured out the whole plot from that one hieroglyphic, I’ll never know. His stretching is put to use atop the city’s guard towers.

Fade Out: Sue gets taken captive, so ugh. Wearing her Egyptian gown, she’s not able to turn it invisible, so by this point in the book’s run, she can only turn herself invisible, and not anything else. (Remember, her costume turns invisible too, thanks to those pesky unstable molecules.)

Clobberin’ Time: Ben saves the day and fights off a bunch of bad guys, Spartacus-style, all after temporarily transforming back into a human.

Flame On: Johnny is humiliated as Rama-Tut’s jester. He later gets around a lot of the Sphinx’s booby traps by burning through the walls.

Trivia Time: Rama-Tut drops a hint that an ancestor of his built the time machine. This is a mystery that won’t be resolved for many, many issues to come. Rama-Tut further adventures will introduce Kang the Conqueror into the Marvel Universe, who becomes a major adversary for the Avengers.

There are a lot of callbacks to previous issues in this one. Doom’s time machine was last seen in issue #5, and Reed’s promise to cure Alicia of her blindness was first mentioned in #16.

Fantastic or Frightful: Rama-Tut is an interesting villain. Mind-control aside, is he really that evil? All he wants is exploration and adventure. Similarly, that’s just what he gets in the end, so you could say he wins. The Egyptian setting gives artist Jack Kirby a chance to try something new, and the big fight scenes are a lot of fun. Overall, this one’s a great read.

Next week: A nerd… with the power of the gods!

 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. After spending the last two issues outsmarting Dr. Doom, the FF take on a more physical threat in issue #18, a baddie with souped-up superpowers.

The issue begins with the FF sitting around watching television. (Excitement!) A newscaster talks about the team’s recent defeat of Dr. Doom. Just before showing Ben on the air, the show cuts to a commercial for dog food. Ben is upset, asking “What’ll I tell my public?” Again, here is another example of Ben accepting the fact that he’s a monster, wanting the celebrity his teammates have, instead of hiding himself away from others as he did in early issues. Reed announces that he and Sue are going on a “date” to Hawaii – with the team’s personal long-range passenger missile, they can get there in only 30 minutes. Johnny also has plans, using the Fantasticar to joyride through Central Park.

 What our heroes don’t know is that they’re being watched. Back at the skrull homeworld, which we’re told is in the “fifth quadrant of the Andromeda Galaxy,” the skrull leader, referred to only as “Supreme Majesty,” demands revenge against the Fantastic Four after the FF prevented the skrull invasion a while back. He’s then introduced the Super Skrull, the finest example of skrull science and engineering. The big shocker is that the Super Skrull has all the powers of the Fantastic Four combined. This issue’s version of the “characters-spend-a-few-pages-showing-off-their-powers” thing is subverted in that it’s one other person showing off their powers.

A week later, the FF are out shopping (why not?) and are busy avoiding their adoring fans. They get news that an alien spaceship has landed, and they rush off to the scene. The Super Skrull has landed in Times Square (there’s only one billboard, and it reads “Cola”) and he says he’s there to claim the Earth on behalf of the skrull empire.

 This next part is easy to summarize: Everybody fights! The Super Skrull uses Johnny and Reed’s powers against them, in ways they never imagined. He also uses the skrulls’ shape-changing powers to turn his head into a huge battering ram to take out the Thing. After round two with Johnny, the FF retreats. Back at headquarters, Reed does the science thing, and determines that no creature can be that powerful. He further deduces that the Super Skrull gets his powers from “ultra-sonic power rays” from space. Reed invents a miniature jammer that will block the Super Skrull’s powers.

More fighting! The FF confronts the Super Skrull on a deserted island, teaming up to fight him all at once instead of one at a time. The Super Skrull surprises them with an additional power, super hypnotism! Sue invisibly places the jammer on the Super Skrull, robbing him of his powers. He tries to catch her, only to fall into a dormant volcano crater. Get this: Johnny seals up the crater and then the FF just leaves him there! “By the time he gets outta there, he’ll be too old to menace anyone again,” Johnny says.

Unstable Molecule: Reed puts up a good fight against the Super Skrull, but gets his arm severly hurt in the fight. Being Reed, he turns to science to defeat his enemy.

Fade Out: Picking up where Reed left off, Sue then saves the day with her invisibility, and she doesn’t get taken captive this time.

Clobberin’ Time: Ben enjoys, or at least tries to enjoy, his celebrity status as a member of the team, rather than sulking about being a monster.

Flame On: Johnny fights the Super Skrull three times, and gets beaten each time. So, maybe it’s not that out-of-character that he’d leave the skrull sealed in a crater.

Trivia Time: The skrulls were last seen in issue #2, referenced in this issue. It’s the first appearance of the Super Skrull, who’ll go on to have a somewhat convoluted history, including the fact that there’s not just one Super Skrull, but several. Another is Prince Xavin, who later joins the Runaways.

This one features three modes of FF transport in a single issue. There’s the Fantasticar, the passenger missile, and the pogo plane. I wonder how they decide which one to use when?

Fantastic or Frightful: The Super Skrull doesn’t have a lot of personality, but he puts up a good fight, so much that our heroes don’t know what to make of him. Kirby’s excellent art carries the issue through the “all-they-do-is-fight” story.

Next week: Walk like an Egyptian!

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. Most villains come up with an evil plot, but it takes a one-of-a-kind villain to come up with multiple evil plots throughout the course of a single story. That’s our boy Dr. Doom in issue #17.

The issue kicks off right where the last one left off, with our heroes just having returned from the microverse and Dr. Doom on the loose on Earth. We know this because the first couple of pages on a recap of what happened in the last issue. From there, we see Reed has developed a “highly refined radar sensitive to human flesh covered by steel.” (That’s awfully specific.) The other three team members head out into the city to search for Doom themselves, which is this issue’s the-characters-have-an-excuse-to-show-off-their-powers-for-a-few-pages thing.

Turning up no clues, the four decide to get back to their social lives for a night out on the town, only to have their front door blocked by their adoring fans. One of the building’s janitors, a guy with sunglasses, a pipe, and a huge beard, helps the four into the freight elevator. Predictably, and ridiculously, the janitor is Dr. Doom in disguise. He affixes a tiny plastic disc to each of the four.

Here’s where things get just a little crazy. Doom unleashes a group of lighter-than-air robots, which look like floating bald ghosts after them. One of them goes after Johnny as he’s on a date with a girl named Helen. He attacks the robot, only to pass through it. Another robot hovers above Ben. When he tries to fight it, he too passes through it. A polka dotted robot (!) pursues Sue, able to follow her even when she’s invisible. Another one follows Reed, so he lures it back to his lab. Reed finds the little discs Doom planted on them, and the robots vanish. Cut to Doom’s headquarters – where that is, I have no idea – where he explains that all this has allowed him to watch and follow the FF’s every move.

Doom zeroes in on Alicia, with a villain monologue about how even with his vast intellect he can’t understand how someone like her can fall for someone as ugly as the Thing. This leads to his fretting over his own horribly scarred face. Doom activates his “grappler ray,” levitating Alicia off of a city street and up into the air, where we learn Doom’s hideout is actually a spaceship-like “floating laboratory.”  Doom contacts the FF and says Alicia is now his prisoner. He says now he can do anything he wants, and the FF don’t dare try to stop him for fear of harming Alicia. Among Doom’s threats are an “illusion-ray” and fast-growing spores that can destroy the city in minutes. Doom then exposits that he will demand a position in the president’s cabinet. (What, no world domination?)

We get a scene inside the White House, where the president (his back is to us the whole time, but it’s obviously Kennedy) says he will not meet the demands. After that, machines all over the country start failing, and people everywhere are terrified of what Doom will do next. There’s even a scene behind the Iron Curtain, where the dictator known only as “Comrade K” worries that Doom will come after him next. (Nobody suggests sending the Air Force to blow Doom out of the sky. Maybe they don’t want Alicia harmed, either.)

Back at Fantastic Four headquarters, Reed explains that Doom’s floating ghost robots studied the FF’s atomic structure, and that Doom’s flying lab is equipped with disintegrator rays attuned to the four’s atomics. If any of them go near the craft, they’ll be disintegrated. Reed then comes up with a plan – turn Ben back into a human, and that way he can pass through the rays. It works, and Ben is human again. He pilots a small craft toward Doom’s ship. Halfway there, he starts to turn back into the Thing, but fights it long enough to breach Doom’s ship. Once he’s inside, his three teammates are able to follow.

Dr. Doom was prepared for this, apparently, because he has a series of death traps set up for our heroes. A spinning room sucks out all of Johnny’s flame. Reed narrowly manages to squeeze out of a room filling with quick-drying cement. Ben almost falls through a trap door, but climbs back up through sheer determination. Doom then thinks he has Ben, Johnny, and Reed trapped, and he sends them to another dimension. Instead, the three attack Doom, but Doom remains safe behind a force field. Johnny explains that he created three “flame images” he created of his teammates for Doom to attack.

Elsewhere, Sue finds Alicia, and the two switch outfits, allowing Sue to trick Doom into thinking she is Alicia. It works at first, but then Doom traps an invisible Sue behind some moving bars. She fights her way out of them, and even roughs up Doom with some judo moves she learned from Reed (!!!). The other three FFers arrive, so Doom, rather than fight all four of them at once, jumps out of an escape hatch and disappears into the billowing clouds below. Alicia is rescued, and all is well.

Unstable Molecule: Reed’s giant, clunky radar doesn’t appear to have any effect on finding Doom. He does come up with the plan to get inside Doom’s flying fortress, and his powers come in handy in escaping Doom’s deathtrap.

Fade Out: Sue doesn’t have to be rescued this time, and instead clobbers Doom with her judo moves. Has her martial arts training ever been referenced again?

Clobberin’ Time: Like last issue, we get a scene in which Ben turns human, but chooses to go back to being the Thing, which shows how much his character has progressed since the series began.

Flame On: Johnny is the only one who fails to defeat Doom’s traps, but makes up for it later by tricking Doom. Speaking of which…

Trivia Time: …Johnny’s ability to use his flame to create illusions was last seen in issue #10. Similarly, the fact that Sue and Alicia are look-alikes was last referenced in issue #8.

Fantastic or Frightful: So, Dr. Doom has just plain lost his mind by this point, right? He’s in full-on “Duck Amuck” mode here, with new dastardly plans on every page, each one crazier than the last. The issue might be overstuffed with action and weirdness, but it’s just not Stan and Jack at their best.

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. Things get crazy in issue 16, with the introduction of a whole new universe. (No, not 1986’s New Universe, that’s a post for another time.)

Both the cover and the splash page spoil that Ant-Man guest stars and Dr. Doom is back at the villain. But, wait. Doom was last seen in issue 10, when he got in front of the wrong end of a shrink ray and shrunk down to nothingness. How could he possibly return from that? Just you wait…

The action begins with Johnny flying toward FF headquarters in a panic, because his three teammates aren’t responding to his signal. (Why he signaled them in the first place is never explained.) Inside, it appears deserted, until a tiny hand stretches up from the floor. Reed, Sue, and Ben are tiny! They’ve been shrunk down to a few inches tall and are about to be sucked into an air vent. Johnny rescues them, and they return to regular size. The four compare notes, and everyone admits they’ve all had shrinking problems (heh) over the last few days. Thus begins the characters-have-an-excuse-to-show-off-their-powers-for-the-first-pages thing. Sue shrunk while appearing on a talk show, Johnny shrunk while working on a car engine, and Ben shrunk while weightlifting three tons. (Shrunken Ben also fights Reed’s pet guinea pig, to which I respond, “Since when does Reed have a pet guinea pig?”)

To solve their random-shrinking affliction, Reed says they must contact Ant-Man (or, as Reed calls him, “The Astonishing Ant-Man.”) Reed has no idea how to contact him, but, fortunately, a nearby ant hears him. Through a city-wide “secret communication network” known only to ants, word gets to Ant-Man that the FF needs his help. Ant-Man receives the message in his lab, where the caption describes him as, “A handsome, grim-faced, helmeted man.” The Wasp is there for one panel, as Ant-Man explains he’s leaving to help the FF.

Ant-Man shrinks down to ant-size, climbs into his tiny cannon, launches himself over the skies of the city, landing on the backs of two flying ants. (Ant-Man’s solo comic, also by Lee and Kirby, was filled with these wacky descriptions of the tiny Ant-Man getting from place to place with the help his ant pals.) At FF headquarters, after some wackiness of Ben thinking Ant-Man is an ordinary bug, Ant-Man gives our heroes a sample of his serum, which can return them to regular size should they shrink again.

This next part is very interesting: Ben and Reed are at Alicia’s apartment, where Ben is helping Alicia move her piano. This is the first reference we’ve had to Alicia showing any sort of musical talent. Reed announces that he’s developed a new cure for Ben. Ben takes it and, simply enough, he turns human again. Alicia freaks out, saying she doesn’t like the change. Ben says he loves her so much, he wants Reed to turn him back into the Thing. Before we can consider the further meaning of this, everyone hears Dr. Doom’s disembodied voice speaking to them.

With a simple declaration of “We’ll go after him!” the Fantastic Four takes Ant-Man’s serum and shrink down to nothingness, and somehow this allows them to follow Doom’s path. They fall through a vortex (just go with it) and they end up in “The Micro-World of Dr. Doom.” At least that’s what Doom calls it, as he’s sitting on a huge throne in front of them, surrounded by alien-looking armored soldiers. Ben starts to attack, but Doom activates a shrink ray, which shrinks the FF even more, bringing them up only to Doom’s ankle.

Villain speech time! Doom monologues that after being shrunk, he found himself in this new world, a peaceful and primitive place. Doom worked fast, developing new technology and earning the trust of the king and his hot daughter, Princess Pearla. He sneakily invented a “molecular ray apparatus,” which means he now has a shrink ray of his own. He used it on the king and princess, usurping them and taking over as ruler. And, yes, he was the one behind the random shrinking that started the issue. A fight breaks out, and the FF, although tiny, make short work of the guards. Doom was ready for this, and blasts the four with some knockout gas. (Why didn’t he do this to begin with?)

The FF wake up in an underwater prison, only it’s not water, it’s deadly acid. Locked up with them are the king and Princess Pearla. The princess explains that Doom wants to marry her, and that he has plans to sell the FF as slaves to aliens from the planet Tok. Also, she and Johnny hit it off big time. (Gotta love jailhouse romances!)

Back on Earth, Ant-Man returns to FF headquarters (guess they left the door unlocked), and deduces that the four have shrunk down to nothingness, and he follows them. He fights and is abducted by the guards, who bring him before Doom. Doom doesn’t recognize Ant-Man, but plans to sell him to slavery as well. Back inside the jail, our heroes devise a plan to use the acid-proof walls of their own cell as a tool for their escape, converting the walls into an airtight capsule to float to the surface, and to freedom.

Our heroes use the shrink ray to re-size themselves, not back to Earth-size but back to micro-world size. In an awesome display of strength, Ben uses a control tower as a giant baseball bat, swatting the Tok spaceship out of the sky. Invisibly, Sue frees Ant-Man. Reed, Ben and Johnny mop up the guards, but Doom escapes through the vortex back to Earth. Pearla asks Johnny to stay, but he can’t – though he promises to return to her someday. As the FF and Ant-Man return to Earth, Ben speechifies that they still have to nab Dr. Doom, which is where the next issue will kick off.

Unstable Molecule: The Reed/Doom rivalry is downplayed in this issue, so much so that they don’t even exchange dialogue. Reed helps out here and there, but this one is more about his teammates and the guest star, with him along for the ride.

Fade Out: Sue does quite a lot in this issue. She’s the one who comes up the idea for escaping the acid jail, and she rescues Ant-Man.

Clobberin’ Time: Ben rejects being human and decides to remain in his rocky, monstrous form, all for Alicia’s sake. This marks a major turning point for the character, one that we’ll see more of in the next issue.

Flame On: Johnny’s romance with Princess Pearla never went anywhere, although their love-at-first-sight meeting foreshadows how he and Crystal will later fall for one another.

Trivia Time: This is our intro to the Microverse, as it will later be known. It’s home to Marvel B-siders the Micronauts, and is often used as an excuse for any time Marvel writers and artists want to get all weird and trippy.

Sue is a guest on the “Molly Margaret McSnide Show.” I really hope someone brings this character back to Marvel continuity.

The Fantasticar gets another redesign, seen briefly in a few panels. This version is a single-seater, with fins and curved windshield. Very early-1960s.

Fantastic or Frightful: Dr. Doom’s history is fraught with him constantly coming back from the dead, but this is one of my favorite comebacks of his. The Microverse gives Jack Kirby another chance to go really nuts with the art, creating a crazy alien world from scratch. Even Ant-Man is good, coming across as helpful, and not totally useless. Fun stuff all around.

Next week: Dr. Doom strikes back… with floating, polka-dotted ghost things.

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