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Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. It’s writer-artist Walt Simonson’s last issue on the series. His run on the comic is defined by time travel stories, and his finale in issue #354 is no different.

The FF have been arrested by the otherworldly bureaucrats of the Time Variance Authority, who intend to place our heroes on trial for authorized time travel. The FF isn’t having it, attempting an escape. The TVA agents offer Ben a deal — to rewrite history so the Fantastic Four never existed, allowing Ben to re-live his life an ordinary human. Ben considers the offer for a second, but then remembers that the FF stopped Galactus from devouring the entire universe in issue #341. He says that without the FF, there’s no one to stop Galactus, and he calls out the TVA officials, saying they knew Ben’s universe would be destroyed if he took the deal.

The TVA sends their Minutemen cyborgs after Johnny and Ben, for several pages of fighting. Meanwhile, Justice Peace, the TVA’s top enforcer, searches for Reed and Sue, who are hiding behind an “invisibility sphere” created by Sue. Reed says he’s reverse engineered the TVA’s tech to create a computer virus to attack them. Justice Peace spots them and uses a high-speed gun that can break through Sue’s force field faster than she can regenerate it. Then the virus starts working, splitting the TVA’s timeline into multiple parallel timelines. (This is depicted in the art by having the other timelines “splitting off” in smaller panels to the left and right of each regular-sized panel.)

We catch up with Sharon, who reveals that she let herself be taken captive by the TVA. She uses a wrestling move to get away from her captor. She reunites with Ben and Johnny who then reunite with Reed and Sue. Then, in this crazy story, things take an even crazier turn. Our heroes end up in a railroad yard, full of old-timey trains. Reed identifies this as the Cross-Time Central Railroad. It’s run by an alien named Casey, who explains he is enamored with antique Earth trains.

Casey offers the FF a ride in exchange for “certain goods.” The train flies off into space, with Justice Peace and the Minutemen in pursuit. There’s another big fight, and Justice Peace manages to hold his own against the FF. The train is then pursued by a “reality wave,” depicted as a large white surface covered with cracks. Reed says this is another part of his virus, which is erasing all references to the FF’s universe from the TVA’s database, so the TVA will never again bother Earth. With the rules of reality being rewritten, Justice Peace says the FF have no longer broken any laws. He leaps into the wave and vanishes.

The train then reenters the FF’s universe. Casey reveals that the “goods” to pay for the trip are the FF’s uniforms, which he intends to turn into railroad worker uniforms. So the FF strip down to their undies and return to Four Freedoms Plaza. We see that Ben has mutated from his spikey form back to his classic rocky form. As he and Johnny banter, Reed comments that everything’s back to normal.

Unstable molecule: Maybe it’s too much of a stretch (heh) for Reed to create a computer virus that can alter reality, but he’s doing this with the TVA’s own tech, so I guess that explains it.

Fade out: The comic would have us believe that Sue and Reed cannot be seen inside her “sphere of invisibility,” even though that’s not how her powers work. A few pages later, Justice Peace is able to spot them, revealing that they’re not invisible after all.

Clobberin’ time: Absolutely no reason is given as to why Ben reverts from his spikey form to his more-familiar rocky form, except to say, “somebody up there just likes me better like this.” This is a not-so-subtle jab at Marvel editorial’s efforts to undo all the big changes of the last hundred issues or more and get back to Silver Age Fantastic Four.

Flame on: Johnny doesn’t like Ben calling him “Flame Brain.” Ben apologizes, saying it’s getting harder and harder to come up with good insults.

Fantastic fifth wheel: Sharon uses wrestling moves to escape a guard, remembering that she got her start in the goofy Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation.

Commercial break: This is three years after the movie came out.

Trivia time: The rumors state that Walt Simonson’s wife, writer Louise Simonson, had one too many feuds with Marvel editorial over her work on X-Factor, so she was leaving Marvel, and Walt left with her. He returned a few years later to work on Iron Man 2020 and Heroes Reborn: Avengers. Mostly, though, he became a DC Comics mainstay, working on Orion, Hawkgirl, Batman: The Judas Coin, and Michael Moorcock’s Elric, among many others.

Fantastic or frightful? What started as a Douglas Adams-style romp ends with a lot of running around, and a wacky cartoon space train. Fortunately, Simonson’s artwork is so good, it carries the lack of a real plot. It would have been nice to have Simonson on the series for more, but this is as good a sendoff as any.

Next: Out with the new, in with the old.

****

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

Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Writer-artist Walt Simonson really had a thing for time travel stories, because our heroes are time travelling it up yet again in issue #353.

Recap: Dr. Doom retook the Latverian throne and tricked the Fantastic Four into a time travel fight with him. This caught the attention of the Time Variance Authority, an otherworldly bureaucracy that monitors time travel, who put our heroes under arrest. Meanwhile, Ben has become the Thing again just as Sharon transformed from a Thing back into a human — like Gift of the Magi but with orange rock monsters.

The issue begins when Justice Peace, the TVA’s chief enforcer, delivers the FF to the TVA board. What follows is a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo with words like “time” and “temporal” thrown into the mix. The gist of it is that the TVA is putting the FF on trial for all their unauthorized time traveling, saying that their timeline should have been destroyed already if not for their meddling. Reed asks why the TVA has never gone after the Avengers, the X-Men, or Kang for similar offenses. The TVA places the FF in custody, saying further investigations are needed.

“Custody” for the TVA is a big white space where the FF float weightlessly. Reed admits he was just stalling for time. Reed and Sharon contact their guard and ask for a tour of the gigantic TVA facility. The guard agrees, after Sharon pretends (or not?) to flirt with him. On the tour, we meet the robot-like Time Police, and the Hall of Discontinued Realities, where unaccounted-for items from destroyed universes are kept.

The next stop is the Hall of Chronometry, the location of the endless sea of desks we’ve seen in the TVA’s previous appearances. There, Ben pretends to bump into a desk. While their guide chides him, Reed and Sue sneakily swipe some chips from inside the desk. Back in “custody” Sue turns invisible to trick the guards into thinking she’s escaped. This allows the FF to break out of their cell and fight all the Time Police. Ben and Johnny run around causing a lot of destruction while Reed and Sue stealthily research the TVA’s software tech.

Ben and Johnny reach a power generator room (called a “power substation” a few pages later) where the Time Police reveal they’ve taken Sharon hostage. Ben is not going to play ball, so the Time Cops sweeten the deal. They offer to change time so that the FF’s original spaceflight never actually happened, and Ben can re-live his entire life as a human. Johnny doesn’t buy it, but Ben stays quiet, contemplating taking the deal.

To be continued!

Unstable molecule: When Reed is arguing with the TVA, he mentions the X-Men’s Days of Future Past event, calling it by that name. In that story, the X-Men fought the Brotherhood in Washington DC, so that would’ve made the news, but how does Reed know time travel was involved? This once again raises the question of whether the superhero teams ever compare notes.

Fade out: Sue uses her invisibility powers for theft in this issue, something that seems natural, but she rarely does — even when it’s in the name of stopping the bad guys.

Clobberin’ time: During the fight with the Time Cops, Ben references the 1991 Iraq war. The Marvel heroes haven’t been involved that much in Iraq. Iron Man and Wolverine have had covert missions there, and Spider-Man’s friend Flash Thompson served in Iraq. He was injured there, eventually leading to his becoming the new Venom.

Flame on: Johnny is the key to the escape plan, with the team needing him to blast through the door and take out as many Time Cops as possible so the others can have a chance to get out.

Fantastic fifth wheel: Sharon flirting with the guard and then getting taken hostage seems out of character for her, but we’ll see next issue that this is all part of the plan.

Commercial break: Shots fired at the Ninja Turtles!

Trivia time: Look closely. The Hall of Discontinued Universes contains two familiar characters. One appears to be Alex Power of Power Pack after he was transformed into an alien. The Power Pack comic was cancelled before that storyline could be resolved. (Turns out the alien Alex was actually an Alex clone.) The other figure is Supergirl, who was written out of continuity in DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. Supergirl later came back as the Matrix alien in the ‘90s, and then the original was finally reintroduced in the early 2000s.

Fantastic or frightful? The Time Variance Authority once again provides some amusing Douglas Adams-style comedy/satire, but other than that, the issue sets up the pieces to be knocked down next issue.

Next: It’s about time.

****

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

Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Issues #351-352 offer cosmic weirdness, time travel fights, bewilderment drama, and experimental page layouts.

Issue #351 is a filler issue, in which we’re reunited with Kosmos, the godlike being who was created when the Beyonder and the Molecule Man merged into a single being. She’s on a tour of the universe hosted by fellow cosmic being Kubik. The two of them take the Fantastic Four out of the timestream, watch them escape from a maze, and then return the heroes back to where they were with no memory of what this happened. This was all to teach Kosmos about the courage and resilience of Earth’s heroes. Or something.

Issue #352 then picks up where #350 left off. Dr. Doom has retaken the Latverian throne, with his usurper now acting like his sidekick. Doom defeated the Fantastic Four, and offered Reed a challenge — a one-on-one fight between the two of them, outside of the timestream, between mere minutes. Meanwhile, Doom turned Sharon human again, and Ben transformed back into the Thing to come to her rescue.

How to read this comic: Issue #352 has two stories being told simultaneously. The main FF story is read linearly, like any comic would be. The Doom vs. Reed fight, meanwhile, is non-linear. Each panel in their part of the story has a time stamp, and readers have to read them in order of the time stamps, regardless of what page they’re on.

In the main story, Ben wakes up after being knocked out by Doom. He takes Sharon, who is still unconscious. He gets Sharon to safety, and then frees Johnny from the tank of water where Doom had trapped him. After a short fight with a robot, they then revive Sue, who had been knocked out with gas. Sharon wakes up, disoriented. She’s not able to understand how she’s changed, leading to a weird bit of business where Ben wears her FF uniform to convince her that her Thing form has disappeared.

If you’re having trouble following the puzzle-like Reed and Doom story, you’re probably good, because it’s mostly the two of them throwing punches at each other. Reed at one point dons a suit of armor he finds to give him an edge in the fight. Reed finally deenergizes the time sequencer devices that allow them exist outside of time, bringing them back to the present. Somehow, this gives Reed the advantage, as he beats the crap out of Dr. Doom.

At this point, a bunch of robots appear, courtesy of the Time Variance Authority, the otherworldly bureaucracy that for some reason monitors time travel throughout the multiverse. They want to put everyone under arrest for unauthorized time travel. Doom destroys the robots, but then is blasted to death (to death!) by Justice Peace, the red-white-and-blue clad chief cop of the Time Variance Authority. Justice Peace teleports himself and the FF out of there, so they can stand trial for their time traveling.

Then, a second Dr. Doom steps out of the shadows. Turns out Kristoff was the one fighting Reed this whole time, and was killed by Justice Peace. Doom then exposits that this was his plan from the start, to trap Reed into a time-travel caper, just so the Time Variance Authority could sweep in and remove the FF from the Earth… forever.

To be continued!

Unstable molecule: Reed says he was able to out-punch Dr. Doom because Doom “overlooked” Reed’s stretching ability. Perhaps this was hint that it was really Kristoff Reed was fighting.

Fade out: When Sue discovers that Ben has mutated into his spikey Thing form, she tells him, “I don’t think I’ve ever known anybody braver than you.”

Clobberin’ time: Ben said Dr. Doom’s robot hit him harder than he’s ever been hit, and that includes his fights against the Hulk.

Flame on: After rescuing Johnny, Ben and Johnny take a few panels to exchange some jokes. It’s a fun little character moment that gives the sense that escaping from Dr. Doom’s deathtraps is just another day at the office for these two.

Fantastic fifth wheel: Sharon’s confused metal state harkens back to the PTSD storylines from when she first joined the team. She does, however, promise to love Ben no matter what he looks like.

Commercial break: Again, I dare somebody to call this number:

Trivia time: Look closely, although the time stamps begin at 1:00 a.m., one of Dr. Doom’s energy blasts gets a 12:30 a.m. The idea is that this beam went back in time to issue #350, where it freed Reed from his underground cell. This issue’s cover gets into the act, depicting Reed escaping, also with the 12:30 time stamp.

No, Kristoff isn’t really dead. He’ll return later… as one of the good guys!

Fantastic or frightful? The “puzzle-box” nature of this issue is amusing, but other than that, very little happens other than a lot of punching and Sharon being confused.

Next: Desk job.

****

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

Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Issue #350 begins a four-part tale that is controversial but also wildly ambitious.

 This story arc is controversial for rewriting (or not?) Dr. Doom’s history. Also, Kristoff is prominently featured. Comic book fans often name Kristoff as one of the all-time worst Marvel characters, citing this story as one of the reasons why. It’s also been criticized for being too confusing, adding time travel and cosmic beings into the mix, while also being a major shakeup for the main FF characters. On the plus side, though, it’s writer-artist Walt Simonson pushing the limits of comic storytelling with some really experimental stuff. Just hang in there, we’ll get through this.

 So, Kristoff is a child brainwashed to believe he is Dr. Doom. Wearing a Dr. Doom-shaped suit of armor (!), Kristoff succeeded in taking over the Latverian throne and convincing the world he’s actually Dr. Doom. The real Doom, meanwhile, has been running around the Marvel Universe with various plots to retake his kingdom. As issue #350 begins, Doom eschews all the sneaky plots and launches a frontal attack on the Latverian castle. It’s several pages of fighting between the two of them. They’re interrupted by a third Dr. Doom, wearing a new suit of armor. This is the real Doom, the attacker is just a Doombot acting on its own. (This new armor, by the way, is made of enchanted Promethium metal, which Doom got in an issue of Excalibur just before this.)

 Doom says a code word, “Ouroboros,” which is the trigger that undoes Kristoff’s brainwashing. Doom takes off his mask and shows his scarred face to Kristoff (but not to the reader) to prove he’s the real one. Doom says he’s been far away for a long time. Now back in charge, Doom’s first action is to sit down at the computer and see what the Fantastic Four has been up to in his absence. He is surprised to learn that Johnny is married to Alicia, Ben is human again, and Sharon has joined the team as a Thing.

 You might be thinking these are continuity errors, as Doom has encountered the FF several times since the wedding, and he’s faced off Kristoff a few times without using the code word. The explanation is that Walt Simonson wrote this issue to establish that past stories of a kingdom-less Doom trying and failing to retake the throne didn’t feature the real Doom, but inferior Doombots. But Simonson leaves it up to the reader to decide which appearances were the real Dr. Doom and which were Doombots, casting doubt on every Dr. Doom appearance from at least issue #278 to the present, if not earlier. Yeesh.

 At FF headquarters, Ben has been hanging out wearing his Thing-shaped exoskeleton in the hopes of making Sharon feel more comfortable about being a Thing, now she’s developed a desire to be human again. It doesn’t work, as she feels even worse, demanding a cure from Reed. Reed says a cure might not be possible. Sharon leaves, and encounters a stranger on the street who offers her help. Intrigued, she follows him to a nearby hotel, where Dr. Doom is waiting for her. Doom offers to cure her, saying the knowledge of genetic engineering he will gain from doing so will help turn around Latveria’s economy. Sharon will not get any money, but she will be human again, so she agrees.

 Days pass, until Doom is ready. Using a combination of science and magic, he finally turns Sharon human again. While Sharon is unconscious, Doom explains to Kristoff (who is his sidekick now, apparently) that the money talk was false, just to ensure Sharon’s trust. At headquarters, Ben is overcome with worry about Sharon. Desperate to take action, he sneaks into Reed’s lab and steps into one of Reed’s machines in an attempt to turn himself back into the Thing. He tells the others that he did it so Sharon wouldn’t feel so alone. A robot shows up out of nowhere, inviting the FF to Castle Doom, to meet with Doom and Sharon.

 At the castle, the FF are attacked by Doombots, and separated into four rooms, each one containing a trip designed to negate their powers. Johnny is underwater, Sue is gassed into unconsciousness, and Reed is caught a corridor with shrinking walls, giving him no room to stretch. Ben reveals that he’s the Thing again, saying “I gave up my humanity for Christmas!” which I guess establishes that this isn’t his exoskeleton.

 Ben finds Sharon still asleep. He is ambushed by Dr. Doom, and there are several pages of them fighting. Ben transforms from his rocky form to his stronger spikey form, and is about to defeat Doom. Then Sharon wakes up and electrocutes Ben, so he cannot harm Doom. Doom knocks ben out. Reed shows up, having escaped his trap. Doom challenges Reed to battle, with the lives of Ben, Johnny, and Sue on the line. He produces two time machines, small enough to be worn on their belts, which will allow them to time travel “between the seconds” where they will fight. The two of them disappear outside of time, and that’s…

 To be continued!

 Unstable molecule: Reed says he escaped Doom’s sealed room thanks to “old masonry and a sharp belt buckle.” Two issues from now, we’ll learn that was a lot more to his escape than that.

 Fade out: Sue mentions that she trains “relentlessly” in the gym to be prepared for battles, which helps her against Doom’s robots.

 Clobberin’ time: Before turning back into the Thing, Ben takes a second to look at his human hands one last time, a moment of genuine sadness among all the superhero action.

 Flame on: Once again, Johnny is defeated by water, despite him having overcome that weakness several issues back. Maybe they’re drawing a difference between being wet and being fully submerged in water.

 Fantastic fifth wheel: The comic remembers that Sharon is a budding scientist, so she is able to be persuaded by Dr. Doom because she admires his science genius.

 Four and a half: In one scene, Reed performs tests on Franklin to determine what Franklin’s super-powers currently are. We’re not shown the results of those tests.

 The Alicia problem: If Dr. Doom knows that Alicia is really Lyja the Skrull in disguise, he doesn’t say so in this issue.

 Commercial break: I wonder who won this thing, and what it actually looked like:

 Trivia time: The “Dr. Doom was really a bunch of Doombots for the last hundred issues” thing continues to be a controversy among fans all these years later. It’ll later be addressed again as being mere propaganda on Doom’s part, but that doesn’t seem to be the intent of this issue.

 According to the Marvel Wiki, the robot who deliver’s Doom’s message to the FF is named “Message.”

 Fantastic or frightful? This issue has a lot of action and a lot of big drama, but it’s brought down by the Doombot retcon, and by how the rest of the characters other than Ben don’t seem to care at all about Sharon’s disappearance. File this one under “good, but could have been better.”

 Next: Time twisty.

****

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Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Just after introducing the New Fantastic Four, their story already wraps up in issue #349.

Recap: De’Lila is a telepathic Skrull fugitive. She’s come to Earth in search a device called an ITT, which she hopes to use to assassinate the Skrull emperor. She’s being pursued by a group of Skrulls who have taken over the minds of the monsters at the Mole Man’s Monster Island to attack the Earth. De’Lila successfully incapacitated the Fantastic Four, and tricked Spider-Man, Wolverine, the Hulk, and Ghost Rider into becoming the New Fantastic Four (with a capital N) to fight the Skrulls. As this issue begins, De’Lila has mind-controlled Reed to do her evil bidding, and they’re confronting the New FF, the Skrulls, and the Mole Man in caves beneath Monster Island. Got all that?

The issue begins with De’Lila revealing to everyone that she’s not really Sue. She tries to convince the New FF that she’s on their side, and the other Skrulls are their enemy. The Mole Man believes her, saying he has sympathy for those who are ostracized. Ghost Rider, however, says he can sense evil and treachery in De’Lila’s words even without using his penance stare. De’Lila and Reed escape deeper into the caves, as Spider-Man deduces that Reed is not a Skrull but the real Reed under mind control. The New FF and the Mole Man venture deeper underground in pursuit.

De’Lila slows down the New FF by setting off a bomb, burying them under tons of rock. Hulk does his Secret Wars trick of holding up just enough rock to save his fellow heroes. Ghost Rider uses his super-cool flaming chains to burn a path through the rock. De’Lila full-on seduces Reed with a big ol’ kiss. She explains that the ITT isn’t one device, but a whole army of “Inorganic Techno-Troids” buried beneath the Earth.

At Four Freedoms Plaza, the Fantastic Four are now awake, to find that De’Lila has tied them together in such a way that if one of them uses his or her powers, there’s risk of harming the rest of the team. Franklin shows up having merely slept through De’Lila’s attack, and he frees the team. Roberta the robot receptionist recalls Reed’s “tell it to the marines” comment from last issue, and that somehow inspires her to track down Reed’s location at Monster Island.

Back in the caves, De’Lila and Reed find a buried spaceship, the source of the ITTs, discovering it to be long-lost Deviant technology. (The Deviants are cosmic characters from Marvel’s Eternals comics.) Reed, who still has some use of his brain despite being mind-controlled, theorizes that all the monsters on Monster Island might be long-lost Deviants. The New FF shows up, and De’Lila holds Reed hostage, forcing the Hulk to use his strength to break into the ship and retrieve the ITT.

With the New FF’s help, the Hulk retrieves an egg, which I guess will hatch into the ITTs. (It’s getting confusing up in here.) The Mole Man is the next to show up, alongside an army of Moloids, demanding that the egg belongs to him. Then the original FF show up (perfect timing!) to join the fight.

A big fight breaks out. De’Lila shape-shifts into Mary Jane Watson in an attempt to distract Spider-Man. It only works for a second, until he gets the egg away from her. It ends up with two of the monsters, a male and female. The egg hatches, and out comes an ITT (just one, not an army) in the form of a three-armed robot. The ITT imprints on the two monsters, who appear to adopt it as its child.

Reed and De’Lila kiss again, shocking his teammates. He then regains his stretching powers, and punches out De’Lila. He reveals that he still had some mental control, fighting against her telepathy the whole time. When she kissed him, he pickpocketed the disputer device she used to keep him from using his powers. Reed then kisses the real Sue, reassuring her that she’s the only one for him.

Ghost Rider further defeats De’Lila by giving her his penance stare (so cool) and the Skrull soldiers take her into custody. The Mole Man and the New FF call a temporary truce, as a Hulk vs. Moloid army fight would like destroy his entire kingdom. As the heroes leave, we see the Punisher flying overhead in a black helicopter with a skull painted on the side. (Where’d he get that?) De’Lila had also summoned him to join the New FF, but he sees his help isn’t needed, so he flies off. Cameo!

Unstable molecule: Once again, it’s inconsistent whether Reed’s genius gives him the ability to resist mental telepathy. This issue does not that De’Lila is a “low-level telepath.”

Fade out: When Sue sees De’Lila kissing Reed, she threatens to flat-out murder De’Lila. It’s established that Sue has a dark side, but would she really have followed through with that threat?

Clobberin’ time: Ben, wearing his Thing-shaped exoskeleton, fights side-by-side with the Hulk, despite their ongoing. Hulk even says he’s glad to see Ben.

Flame on: Alicia asks Johnny what form De’Lila took to trick him. Johnny lies and says it was Alicia, not admitting he’s still obsessed with Nebula after Nebula took over his mind a few issues back. (So much mind control in these comics.)

Fantastic fifth wheel: After this story, Wolverine went on to have some time travel adventures in his solo series, followed by a space adventure in X-Men, where fought a bunch of Skrulls again. Not to be outdone, the Hulk’s next adventure in his series was also to fight a bunch of Skrulls!

This Ghost Rider is the recently-debuted Danny Ketch version. Along with his role in the New FF, his next adventures were fighting the Wrecking Crew with Thor, fighting the Hobgoblin with Spider-Man, and fighting demons alongside Dr. Strange.

It was back to business for Spider-Man after this. Along with his Ghost Rider team-up, he fought Cardiac, Carnage, and a bunch of classic villains given new gadgets from Justin Hammer.

Four and a half: It’s awfully convenient that Franklin was merely asleep during De’Lila’s initial attack on the FF. Perhaps that’s just his cover story, because in this month’s issue of Power Pack, he and the Power kids were busy fighting — are you ready for this? — the Adolescent Microwaved Shellshocked Amphibians.

The Alicia problem: Alicia, who is secretly Lyja the Skrull in disguise, is the one who tells the FF that De’Lila “must be a shape shifter.” Takes one to know one.

Commercial break: The Silver Surfer video game, famous for being so hard that it’s unplayable.

Trivia time: This New Fantastic Four story arc would later be revisited in the 2010 Spider-Man/Fantastic Four miniseries. That story takes place minutes after this one, where De’Lila briefly escapes and causes trouble about the Skrull ship until the heroes put her in her place again, all while a mysterious time traveler takes a “sample” from the ITT back to the future. The miniseries ends by revealing the time traveler is Kristoff, who in 2010 is hoping to retake the Latverian throne.

The Marvel Wiki insists that the male monster who co-adopts the ITT is Giganto, the same monster that famously appears on the cover of Fantastic Four #1. While Giganto had numerous appearances after this, this story arc is the last time we see the ITT. I guess we can assume the ITT is just lumbering around Monster Island with the rest of the monsters.

Fantastic or frightful? A fast-paced, plot-heavy issue with the character development only happening on the edges of the story. It becomes about the Reed-Sue-De’Lila triangle, so that the New Fantastic Four are reduced to mere cash-grab guest stars and not a real team at all. Wolverine fans will be especially disappointed to see him not pretty much nothing. On the plus side, Art Adams’ artwork is terrific, and there is an overall “high adventure” feel that we want from Fantastic Four — new or original.

Next: One Thing leads to another.

****

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