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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.

Re-reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Issue 15 has the team battling an evil genius, a giant android, and their own ennui.

On the first page, the caption states, “You are now experiencing one of the most exciting moments in magazine reading: The start of an all-new Fantastic Four adventure.” Tall order. The action begins when Reed fires the “4” signal into the sky, altering his teammates to come running. This of course kicks off this issue’s the-characters-have-an-excuse-to-show-off-their-powers-for-a-few-pages routine. Sue is in the middle of getting her hair done, Ben is getting pranked by the Yancy Street Gang, and Johnny is in a parked car with a girl (hubba-hubba). Back at HQ, Reed informs the others that something big is going on. Police have informed him that all the mobsters and gang leaders of the city are up to something.

Cut conveniently to the secret hideout of our villain du jour, the Thinker, where all the mobsters are arriving on schedule, just as he predicted. That’s his thing – he uses his high-tech computers and advanced mathematics to calculate all probabilities in any given situation, eventually giving him the most likely outcome, which he then uses to his advantage. So, basically, he can see the future. He does so not with magic or with time travel, but with math. Get this: The Thinker’s plan is to use all the mobsters to take over New   York and declare it an independent nation with him as its ruler. Before he can do that, though, he’s got to take out the Fantastic Four.

  The FF, apparently having forgotten that business about mobsters gathering, find themselves unknowingly falling into the Thinker’s traps. Reed is offered a job from a high-tech research group, Ben is offered a part in a pro wresting circuit, and Sue lands a role in as an actress. Then there’s Johnny who is contacted by his “cousin Bones” who runs a circus, and asks Johnny to join him. Calling it a “vacation” the four go their separate ways. Then, a meteor lands just outside New York, knocking out the power. The Thinker predicted this would happen, and the power outage gives him the opportunity to break into the FF’s now-empty headquarters.

The private sector/wrestling/Hollywood/circus thing ends up being a disappointment, so our heroes reunite, only to discover a crystal shell has been erected around the BaxterBuilding. Here’s where the issue stops being silly and starts being genuinely exciting. They fight their way inside, with the Thinker taunting them the whole time. The Thinker uses Reed’s inventions against them, and every time they defeat one, the Thinker is on hand to say he knew that would happen, and that it was all part of his plan.

Hey, what about that android? It’s here, all right. As it shows up, Reed exposits that it’s actually his android, that the Thinker it created from Reed’s notes. The android has mimicry abilities, able to recreate Reed’s stretching and Ben’s rocky exterior. Reed manages to slow it down, long enough for Sue to invisibly subdue it by using her “sensitive touch” to press the “motor nerve terminal” under its arm. So… she tickles it? Well, it works, and the android is out for the count.

The FF reach the Thinker, who has a bunch of weapons aimed at them. Weapons of Reed’s invention, which could rob the FF of their powers. The weapons unexpectedly blow up in the Thinker’s face, allowing the team to capture him easily. Reed explains that before the team’s assault on the building, he left a message for their mailman, Willie Lumpkin, to press the doorbell outside at a specific time. This, Reed says, activated a “circuit breaker,” which rendered the weapons useless. The human element, Reed says, is the one thing the Thinker couldn’t predict. The police arrive to haul off the Thinker, and the FF are back together again.

Unstable Molecule: This issue raises a lot of questions about what, exactly, goes on in Reed’s lab. In the first few pages, we see him creating a new life form in a Frankenstein-like DNA experiment. Then, we see that his lab is full of deadly weapons the Thinker can use against our heroes.

Fade Out: Sue is the one who defeats the monstrous android. Earlier in the book, there’s a scene with her volunteering to help orphans. She stays busy.

Clobberin’ Time: The Yancy Street gag is a good one, with them sending Ben a picture of him in a tu-tu. This issue has what I believe is the first reference to Ben as a pro wrestler, something that will come up again and again throughout his history.

Flame On: OK, who is this “Cousin Bones” who has a relationship with Johnny? Is he also Sue’s cousin? Is he working with the Thinker, or did the Thinker merely predict his arrival? Too many unanswered questions here.

Trivia Time: Our two villains, in their first appearance, are only called “The Mad Thinker” and “The Awesome Android” on the cover and the splash page. Throughout the rest of the comic, they’re merely “Thinker” and “android.” Future appearances, though, will have them both using the longer monikers.

Making return appearances are the Yancy Street Gang and Willie Lumpkin. It could be argued that Willie is the one who saves the day in this issue, and he didn’t even need to wiggle his ears to do it.

Fantastic or Frightful: We get some good character development in this issue, as the four heroes go their separate ways, only to learn they really want to be back with their teammates. Other than that, though, the first half of the issue is pretty ridiculous. The second, with the FF breaking into their own headquarters, is really solid – classic Jack Kirby action at its best.

Next week: The Microverse!

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 14 is another supervillain team-up… of sorts.

The story begins right where the last issue left off, with the Fantastic Four returning from their trip to the moon. A crowd of fans and reporters are waiting for them and mob them upon arrival. This is the issue’s “the characters show off their powers for a few pages to get new readers up to speed” thing. Reed stretches away from his fan club (Reed has a fan club!?!), Ben tosses a phony wrestler from a promotional scam into a trash can, Sue of course turns invisible to sneak away from the crowd, and Johnny finally does the fly around in a circle and create a vortex thing, using it to get everyone back to headquarters.

Back home, Reed decides to check in on Sue, only to find her using his “experimental roving eye apparatus” to spy on the bottom of the ocean. Reed surmises that Sue is looking for Namor, the Submariner. Cue the angst! Reed mopes because he thinks that, despite all his accomplishments, Sue likes Namor better. Sue meanwhile, mopes because she can’t decide which hunk she likes better. (If these had been published today, would fans have divided into “Team Reed” and “Team Namor” camps? Let’s hope not.)

Elsewhere, a stranger is released from a sanitorium, and immediately starts plotting revenge against the Fantastic Four. It’s revealed to be the Puppet Master. He breaks out the ol’ radioactive clay and starts crafting a puppet of the Submariner, because Subby is the one villain the FF haven’t flat-out defeated yet. At the bottom of the ocean, we catch up with Namor, who is still searching for the lost people of Atlantis. The Puppet Master’s mind control takes over Namor’s body, and here’s where we’re introduced to an ongoing theme in this issue — insanely impossible sea life. He uses a “mento-fish” to send a telepathic message to Sue, asking her to meet him. She goes to the docks, where Namor is waiting for her. He then uses a flying “hypno-fish” to hypnotize Sue. The hypno-fish seals Sue inside a “globule” (I swear I’m not making this up), and Namor takes her to the bottom of the sea.

Puppet Master then commands Namor to send a projection of himself to the other members of the FF, challenging them to try to rescue her. On the way to the rescue, Ben takes a side visit to Alicia, where there’s two pages of comedy bits about a jerk charging Ben way too much to park the Fantasticar in his lot. Alicia fears that if Ben dies, she’ll have no one to be with. To quell her fears, Ben somewhat questionably decides to take Alicia with him on the rescue. Why? Because the plot demands it, I guess.

Reed, Johnny, Ben and Alicia take an “experimental bathyscope” to the bottom of the sea, fighting more crazy sea life on the way, including an undersea porcupine and a giant “scavenger clam.” They reach Namor, to find Sue still trapped in the globule, and threatened by not just an octopus, but “the mightiest octopus of the seven seas.” Of course a fight breaks out. Namor defeats Johnny using a “ravenous unthinking flame-eater” (we’re supposed to believe that’s a type of sea creature) to douse his fire. Namor then uses a “dagger-needle coral” against Ben. Somehow the coral transforms into a fungus, immobilizing Ben. Reed stretches his arms around Namor as a cage, and, amazingly, this works.

Now free from the fungus, Ben fights the octopus, sending it swimming. Puppet Master is watching all this from his private submarine (where’d he get that?), and decides it’s not enough for Namor to defeat the FF, he must go the distance and kill all four of them. Alicia says she can sense her father nearby, and that’s all the exposition Reed needs to figure out what’s happening. Namor is about to douse our heroes with poison gas, but tries to resist the Puppet Master’s control, thanks to his having the hots for Sue. Puppet Master wins out, though, and Namor fires the gas. The FF survive, thanks to the unbelievably convenient “flex-o-glass packets” Reed just happened to have on him.

The octopus shows up again and smashes up the place. It then turns its attention on the Puppet Master’s sub, grabbing it and dragging it down the depths. This frees Namor from P.M.’s control. Namor demands everyone else leave — everyone but Sue, that is. Sue turns him down, saying she hasn’t yet decided where her heart lies, but for now her loyalty is with Reed.

Unstable Molecule: Reed puts up a good fight against Namor, restraining him for some time. His “flex-o-glass” protects the team from the poison gas.

Fade Out: She gets captured again, and this time doesn’t engineer her own escape.

Clobberin’ Time: Ben fights a giant octopus and a giant octopus, but his biggest achievement in this issue is chewing out that overcharging parking lot guy.

Flame On: Johnny bends physics all over the place, first with creating a vortex, and then by flying around underwater with his “white flame” protecting him.

Trivia Time: Continuity gets all messed up here. When we last saw Puppet Master, he had fallen out a window, seemingly to his death. Reed in this issue even does the old “I thought it was dead” routine. Did no one check P.M.’s pulse or anything? How did he get in the sanitorium? How’d he get his own submarine? And so on.

Fantastic or Frightful: Not a standout issue, but nothing necessarily wrong with it, either. Basically, it’s an excuse for the FF to duke it out with Namor again, and for Jack Kirby to draw all kinds of crazy undersea monsters. Nothing wrong with that.

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