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Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. We met them in the last issue, now in issue #348 we see them in action. Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, and Ghost Rider — the New Fantastic Four!

To recap: De’Lila is a Skrull fugitive who has succeeded in incapacitating the Fantastic Four. A battleship full of Skrulls is on Earth to pursue her. They have taken over the minds of all the monsters on Monster Island to help them catch her. Posing as Sue, De’Lila has tricked Spider-Man, Wolverine, the Hulk, and Ghost Rider into thinking that the rest of the FF are dead. The four newcomers are now the New Fantastic Four (with a capital N) and are off to fight the Skrulls.

The New FF take off in a Fantasticar with the Hulk piloting (is the grey Hulk a pilot?) while Spider-Man has a scanner tracking the source of the monster invasion. Wolverine says they’ll trust the rest of the world’s armies and superheroes to deal with the monsters themselves. On Monster Island, the Mole Man shows while investigating what happened to his monsters. He finds the Skrull ship parked there.

De’Lila wakes Reed, and it’s revealed that she’s not just a Skrull, but a telepathic Skrull. She uses mind control on Reed, saying she needs his help to find an egg. Inside this egg is an “Inorganic Techno-Troid,” or ITT for short. The ITT is so well-hidden, only Reed’s science genius can find it.

Stories come in about the monsters attacking all the world’s major cities. In Washington DC, the New FF fight a big insect-like beast as it attacks an airplane. Hulk and Ghost Rider do all the punching while Spidey saves everyone on the plane. Once the fight is done, the New FF continues following the energy source, into the Bermuda Triangle. On Monster Island, the Mole Man creates a sinkhole to suck the Skrull ship underground.

De’Lila and a still mind-controlled Reed track the ITT to a location in the Catskill mountains. They find a hidden tunnel in one of the mountains. On Monster Island, the New FF have also found a hidden tunnel, leading to the underground chamber where the Mole Man, one of his giant monsters, and an army of Moloids are confronting the Skrulls. There’s a bit of comedy as the monster steps on the Hulk’s foot (!) causing the Hulk and Wolverine to fight it.

The Skrull captain tries to escape by shape-changing into the form of a rock, until the Hulk and Wolverine threaten to destroy all the rocks. Ghost Rider uses his penance stare (sweet!) on the captain, who reveals his crew is in search of some Skrull rebels who intend to assassinate the Skrull emperor.

One of the Skrulls then notices Spider-Man’s scanner — the one De’Lila gave him — recognizing it as Skrull tech. Spidey and Skrull realize that Sue is really De’Lila in disguise. That’s when De’Lila and Reed show up. (Does this mean the cave in the Catskills leads directly to an island in the Bermuda Triangle? The comic doesn’t say.) Reed, still being mind-controlled, says the only way the New FF will get Sue is through his dead body. The Hulk, believing Reed is also a Skrull in disguise, answers, “It looks like you’re going to get your wish.”

To be continued!

Unstable molecule: Reed still has some thoughts to himself as he’s being mind-controlled. He thinks De’Lila is “exciting” (!) and he tells Roberta the robot secretary (remember her?) to “tell it to the marines” as he leaves. This is foreshadowing for the next issue.

Flame on: While he’s unconscious, Johnny is shown with a large grey hood covering his head. I guess we’re meant to think this prevents him from using his powers.

Fantastic fifth wheel: There are two schools of thought on the New Fantastic Four. One is that they’re a blatant cash grab. The other is that they’re a parody of a blatant cash grab. (This issue’s cover boasts “The world’s most commercialest comic magazine,” suggesting that Marvel is in on the joke.) The big question for this blog is whether the New FF means these four can now be considered alternate members of the Fantastic Four. It’s always been my opinion that the New FF is its own team, separate from the regular FF. Ben would agree, it seems, because in the Thing series from 2006, Spider-Man mentions the New FF, and Ben says, “You think that counts?”

Commercial break: This never worked, did it?

Trivia time: The New FF would later re-team to fight the Sinister Six in Amazing Spider-Man, with Sleepwalker taking Ghost Rider’s place. The New FF also appeared in Secret Defenders and Fear Itself. In the video game Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, it’s possible to play as the New Fantastic Four, with the game’s narrator announcing them as such.

Fantastic or frightful? This is such a fast-paced issue with so much going on that there’s little sense of how this new team works as a team. It’s a bad issue for Wolverine fans, as Wolvie keeps getting sidelined in favor of the other three. On the plus side, the issue is packed with a lot of humor and action — and who doesn’t love giant monsters?

Next: Battle “four” all.

****

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Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. One of the most famous (infamous?) FF stories of the 90s is the New Fantastic Four (with a capital N), which begins in issue #347.

Art Adams temporarily takes over artwork duties from Walt Simonson, who is still scripting. Adams brings his trademark cartoony style to FF. We begin with a damaged spaceship crashing on Earth. An alien woman, whose face we don’t see, survives the crash and swears revenge on those who forced her to come to Earth.

At FF headquarters, Reed and Sue are playing with Franklin, who appears to have recovered nicely from the events of Days of Future Present. Johnny is spending most of his time in isolation, not speaking to Alicia (who is secretly Lyja the Skrull in disguise). This is because Johnny is still haunted by thoughts of Nebula, after she took over his mind a few issues back. Similarly, Sharon doesn’t want to spend time with Ben, because she’s having a tough time being a Thing after temporarily becoming human again in the last few issues.

Out in space, a Skrull battleship is on the way to Earth. The Skrulls are in pursuit of a fugitive named De’Lila. Although not stated outright, it’s clear that De’Lila is the space woman from the opening scene. Back at HQ, De’Lila takes the shape of a beautiful woman to seduce/sneak her way past security. Using a stun device she wears as a ring, she works her way through the whole team. She shape-shifts as Nebula to stun Johnny. She shape-shifts as Alicia to stun Ben. She shape-shifts as Ben to stun Sharon, and she shape-shifts as Namor to stun Sue. Finally, she shape-shifts as Sue to stun Reed, but the stunner doesn’t work as well on Reed’s elastic form. They fight, until she succeeds in knocking him out.

The Skrulls arrive on Earth, tracking what they say are some “Skrull-like” creatures. It’s all the monsters on Monster Island, which you’ll remember is the home of the giant creatures controlled by the Mole Man. The Skrulls use “slave darts” to take over the monsters’ minds and use them to help find De’Lila somehow. Underground, the Mole Man learns about this and swears revenge.

At HQ, De’Lila is still in the form of Sue, sees a news report about giant monsters on the move, and she knows this means her pursuers have come for her. She starts researching other Marvel heroes. Later, Spider-Man shows up, saying his spider-sense has somehow drawn him to FF HQ. He meets Wolverine and the Hulk outside the building. They have similarly been drawn there. A security guard meets them at the door, saying Sue (really De’Lila) had summoned four heroes, and wonders where the fourth is. On cue, Ghost Rider comes riding up.

Note that this is Danny Ketch, the second Ghost Rider, who had just recently been introduced. The other characters don’t yet comment on this. There’s a little bit of action as Spidey, Wolverine and the Hulk chase Ghost Rider into the building. There, they meet De’Lila in disguise as Sue, who convinces them that Reed, Ben, Jonny, Alicia, and Sharon are all dead. Ghost Rider kinda/sorta confirms this, using his ability to sense whenever innocent blood has been spilled.

De’Lila explains that she summed the four heroes with Reed’s “mental alarm resonator” for help. Further, De’Lila says the FF’s killers are the ones who summoned the giant monsters. She gives Spider-Man a “sub-photonic spectro-analyzer” to help them find these assassins. Spider-Man, Hulk, Ghost Rider, and Wolverine agree to work together, with Wolverine announcing, “Just call us the New FF.”

Unstable molecule: We see Reed in the lab, working on the Rad-D device, which kicked off the time-travel plot back in issue #337. He says his modifications will give time travelers an emergency exit immediately back to the present in case anything goes wrong.

Fade out: Sue mentions she learned that Namor had recently devoted himself to saving the environment, referencing Sue recently guest-starring in Namor #3-4.

Clobberin’ time: Ben buys Sharon tickets for the Desert Rose Band, a real-life country/rock hybrid band formed by Chris Hillman, formerly of the Byrds. Not sure why this reference made it into the comic, but okay.

Flame on: Johnny is so overwhelmed with thoughts about Nebula that he burns up a book in his hands. Alicia/Lyja doesn’t seem too alarmed by this.

Fantastic fifth wheel: This story arc finds members of the New FF just wrapping up some big stories individually. Spider-Man just recovered from the Powerless storyline that had him be an ordinary human for a while. Wolverine just got his freedom back after being a prisoner in Genosha during X-Tinction Agenda. The Hulk is here dueling three personalities — his smart-but-brutish grey form, good old Bruce Banner, and the classic “Hulk smash” green Hulk. Danny Ketch just recently became Ghost Rider, and is still mourning the death of his sister Barbara.

Four and a half: Reed has a line of dialogue about giving Franklin “the power of his birthright.” I’m assuming this refers to Franklin absorbing the powers from his future self during Days of Future Present. Also, in Power Pack the same month as this issue, Franklin begins public school, where he’s smart enough to attend class with kids a few years older than him.

The Alicia problem: Lyja can tell right away that De’Lila is a Skrull, and De’Lila takes out Lyja with a punch instead of the stun device. Is it possible that De’Lila figured out Lyja’s secret?

Commercial break: This game was prominently featured in an episode of Stranger Things. Now I really want to see the Stranger Things kids wearing these sweaters.

Trivia time: It’s not mentioned in this issue, but all Skrulls have recently regained their ability to shape-shift. It happened in the second Kree-Skrull war, in which the Silver Surfer, the Super-Skrull, and Skrull Empress S’Byll restored their powers.

Fantastic or frightful? Is this story arc an obnoxious cash grab, a mere excuse to get a bunch of better-selling Marvel characters in this book? We’ll dig deeper into answering that in upcoming issues. As far as this one goes, I’d argue that it does a good job up upping the stakes, making readers feel that four heavy hitters are needed.

Next: Mutants and Hulks and demons, oh my.

****

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. Annual #23 was part one of the Days of Future Present crossover, which got a lot hype at the time for being the big follow up to the classic X-Man tale Days of Future Present. It has the FF’s Franklin sharing center stage with the X-Men’s Rachel Summers.

The FF are returning home from a picnic (!) to find that their new headquarters, Four Freedoms Plaza, has disappeared and is replaced by a recreation of the original Baxter Building. The FF fight their way through the building’s old-school security devices, marveling at how it’s a perfect recreation of how it looked when they started their superhero careers. They then confront another Fantastic Four, perfect replicas of the team from their early issues.

The classic FF defeats the new FF (or perhaps the new FF lets themselves be defeated) and the two Reeds try to sort out what’s happened, theorizing either time travel or an alternate dimension. Classic Sue mentions her son Franklin, and out walks a fully-grown adult Franklin. Adult franklin freaks out when he sees the new FF, and he flies off, using destructive new superpowers we’ve never seen before. The FF find themselves back in Four Freedoms Plaza as if nothing had ever happened, except the building is now surrounded by a force field, preventing them from leaving.

We cut to a lighthouse in coastal England, home of the X-Men spinoff team Excalibur. There, mutants Rachel Summers and Meggan are relaxing in the sun, wearing what appear to be togas. Rachel talks about her hazy memories of the post-apocalypse future she came here from. Rachel feels a jolt of energy, saying she’s being called somewhere.

In New York, X-Men Banshee and Forge are out for a stroll, when the adult Franklin appears before them. Franklin freaks out again, thinking the two are dead. He flies off again. In a place located “between here and now,” a mysterious figure is notified of a “code red time emergency.” The mystery man tells his computer to launch a Sentinel attack.

Banshee and Forge show up at FF headquarters, just as the sentinels attack the FF. These sentinels are all in the form of miniature spaceships — look closely and you can see one is a tiny Enterprise from Star Trek. Sue traps the Sentinels in a force field, and they self-destruct rather than be taken apart for information. This also destroys the barrier around the building.

The FF and the two X-Men track down adult Franklin at the Power family’s apartment, where he and the Power Pack kids are innocently playing hide and seek. The kids assume that the adult Franklin is a dream projection of young Franklin’s dream powers. As the FF prepare to take adult Franklin back to headquarters, adult Franklin vanishes. We then see that there’s a new building in the place of Four Freedoms Plaza, with a huge letter X on the side.

That’s the “to be continued” for this story, which crosses over into New Mutants annual #6, X-Factor annual #5, and Uncanny X-Men annual #14. It’s revealed that the adult Franklin is a dream-projection, sent back in time by the real adult Franklin just before he died in Rachel’s post-apocalyptic future. He’s traveled from the future in hopes of fixing everything that’s gone wrong in his timeline. The mystery man is Ahab, who was Rachel’s master when she was a brainwashed mutant-hunting “hound” in the future. The FF and a whole bunch of mutants fight and defeat Ahab. It ends when adult Franklin’s dream-self dissipates, his powers transferred into his younger self.

Back to annual #23, it also has two backup stories. The first is a Volcana solo story, where she learns she a small amount of the Molecule Man’s powers, which he gave her before he took off with the Beyonder. The second backup shows what happened after Molecule Man and the Beyonder merged to form a new cosmic cube. The cube transforms into a female cosmic being named Kosmos. (So… does this mean she’s their daughter?)  She meets up with fellow cosmic being Kubik. He teaches her all about the other Marvel cosmic beings, such as the Watchers, the Celestials, and Eternity. Kosmos is then left to explore, and find her own place in the universe.

Unstable molecule: Reed and Forge use Forge’s able-to-build-anything powers to soup up the Fantasticar, so now it has highly advanced scanning gear.

Fade out: Sue still has her elevator signal device in her belt from the original Baxter Building, even though the building was destroyed some time ago. She says she’s hung onto it for sentimental reasons. It does conveniently help them get into the building.

Clobberin’ time: Throughout the crossover, the mutant characters still call Ben “Thing,” even though he’s human now.

Flame on: In the FF vs. FF fight, the two Human Torches are somehow able to hurt each other with just their fire powers. I guess this is because one of them is a dream construct.

Fantastic Fifth Wheel: In a later part of the crossover, Sharon meets everyone from X-Factor for the first time, except that they already met, back in the Fall of the Mutants crossover. It’s almost as if these X-Men crossovers are hard to keep track of.

Four and a half: Again, during this time it’s hard to pin down just what Franklin’s power are or how powerful he is. Adult Franklin can create living creatures from his dreams, which can apparently think and live independently from him, which is scary. Franklin being able to rewrite reality like this will come again later. On a more amusing note, young Franklin is seen holding a stuffed tiger that’s a dead ringer for Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes.

Commercial break: Ninja!

Trivia time: The big dramatic moment in Days of Future Present is when Jean Grey meets her future-daughter Rachel for the first time. It doesn’t go well, leading to that X-Men soap opera drama we all love. Days of Future Present is also the first time that all the X-Men (other than Storm) meet Gambit for the first time.

Fantastic or Frightful? Days of Future Present is an intriguing story, full of time travel and far-out dream worlds, but the artwork is a disaster. Allegedly, the assigned artists couldn’t meet deadline, so they were replaced with others to get pages drawn as hurriedly as possible. It shows, and the wholly ugly artwork makes the whole crossover unreadable.

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

****

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. This time travel storyline that started ten issues ago finally comes to an end in issue #347.

As the result of all their time traveling, the FF have ended up on a time-displaced island with some soldiers and a whole lot of dinosaurs. The island rapidly being sucked back into the dinosaurs’ time, so our heroes have to find a way off, quick. Further complicating matters is that nobody’s superpowers work on this island, so Sharon is human again and Ben is carrying the team in his Thing-shaped exoskeleton. The issue begins with Reed and the soldiers building a raft in hopes of heading out to sea, and hopefully outside whatever time bubble the island is caught in. Ben and Sharon have a heart-to-heart where she reveals that she is enjoying being human again, and that she feels reborn.

A tyrannosaurus attacks, so we get a couple of pages of fighting. Sharon tries to sacrifice herself to save Ben, only for Ben to rescue her. They have another heart-to-heart, where she says she’d rather be a living monster than a dead human. Ben promises to talk to Reed about a cure for Sharon when they get home.

While this has been going on, the island has been experiencing temporal storms, causing the volcano at the center of the island to erupt. Everyone leaves the island on the raft, only to be pursued in the water by a Kronosaurus (one of the largest plesiosaurs, the comic informs us). Everyone fights the dino just as the raft passes through the time barrier back into the present.

The raft falls apart, only for Sue to create a new one with her force fields, revealing that the FF now have their powers back. Johnny flies ahead signal a passing ship for rescue. Sharon turns back into a Thing. She breaks out in tears over this, but Ben says he thinks she’s beautiful no matter what, and he promises a second time to help find her a cure.

We end with a one-panel epilogue, depicting an office environment in a place “where time has no meaning.” This reveals that all this business with the island was the result of a bureaucratic error, and that the temporal disruptions have been repaired. This would appear be a one-off joke in the style of Douglas Adams, but it’s actually the first appearance of the Time Variance Authority, who will show up again in just a few issues, and who will later complicate life for the Avengers, She-Hulk, and even Deadpool.

Unstable molecule: Reed spends this whole issue wearing U.S. military duds, after sacrificing his FF uniform to distract a dinosaur last issue.

Fade out: Every time Ben and Sharon have a heart-to-heart, it’s accompanied by Sue insisting that the rest of the team let them have their privacy.

Clobberin’ time: One of the soldiers suggests that Ben enlist, but he says he’s too busy being a superhero. What’s not mentioned is that Ben was an Air Force pilot before his FF days.

Flame on: There’s one panel devoted to Johnny still being obsessed with evil space babe Nebula, after she took over his mind a few issues back. He worries about how he’ll tell this to Alicia.

Fantastic fifth wheel: It seems inconsistent the way Sharon goes back and forth from wanting to be human versus not wanting to be human. I suppose that, realistically, she would have conflicted feelings about her situation, but an indecisive character is nearly impossible to write well.

Commercial break: Be a superstar!

Trivia time: The Kronosaurus was a real dinosaur from the Cretaceous period. It was approximately 30 feet long and weighed approximately 11 metric tons. In 1977, a nearly complete Kronosaurus fossil was found in Columbia, and is currently on display in a museum there.

The Bullpen Bulletins page in this issue announces a new venture, The Marvel World of Tomorrow, which would later become Marvel’s 2099 line.

Fantastic or Frightful? Another issue that’s mostly cool dinosaur fights, and little else other than the ongoing Ben/Sharon drama. But, if you’re only in it for the dinosaur fights, then you’re good.

Next: Days of future when?

****

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