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Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. In issue #324, the Fantastic Three — Ben, Johnny, and the Sharon Ventura Ms. Marvel — are in the middle of the Inferno crossover, while also dealing with all the cosmic continuity dealing former Avenger Mantis. I’m sure this won’t be confusing at all.

To recap: Mantis (different from the one in Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2) sought the FF’s help to go to space and get back her abducted child. She was then kidnapped by time-travelling villain Kang. Also, demons are attacking NYC. We begin outside the city, where Johnny survived a crash at the Mountain of the Dreaming Celestial (which is where?) and he can’t turn off his flame. Instead, he’s out of control, burning hotter and hotter. Mantis escapes from Kang, and he can’t determine where she’s gone, so he time-travels to find out, leaving behind a bomb for the FF. Johnny throws the bomb into space, remarking that he’s burning so hot that not even the vacuum of space can put out his fire.

Kang finds the future in flux, thanks to the Inferno event, so he returns to New York, finding the whole city emerged in a fiery hellscape. The FF pursue, with Johnny’s fire continuing to blaze out of control. Both heroes and villain are drawn to the same spot, where they come across this odd scene:

That’s Necrodamus, an old Defenders villain. He’s a magic user in search of eternal youth, who in this issue has added world domination to his list of wants. The Inferno event is making magic powerful all over the world, so he’s going to sacrifice Mantis to the all demons for godlike power or some such. In addition to Inferno, there’s also a rare planetary alignment about to happen (because of course there is). Necrodamus surrounds himself with an impenetrable shield, which attacks with a familiar sound effect:

Sharon says she has a plan to defeat Necrodamus, whispering it to Kang. Kang promises to subdue Johnny’s flame, and teleports himself and Johnny away. The demon N’Astirh, one of Inferno’s main villains, appears before Necrodamus. Necrodamus pledges his loyalty to N’Astirh. Kang teleports Johnny to the planet Mercury, giving Johnny a high-tech device with instructions to bury it deep within the planet’s surface. Johnny is able to do this with his flame burning so hot. The device puts the planet outside of temporal alignment, so the planetary line-up doesn’t happen. This causes Necrodamus to fade away into nothingness.

Mantis is free, and once again asks that the FF help her rescue her child. In space, Kang betrays Johnny, leaving him all alone in orbit around Mercury. Even with his newly-increased powers, Johnny is certain he can’t make the 120 million mile flight back to Earth. Unbeknownst to him, help is already on the way. The Silver Surfer is in space nearby. He can sense that something’s happened to Mercury, so he’s off to investigate.

To be continued!

Clobberin’ time: Ben promises he’ll do whatever it takes to get Johnny back to normal. Johnny points out that’s what Reed always used to say to Ben.

Flame on: Johnny says melting his way through solid rock, which he does on Mercury, gives him a splitting headache. I don’t know if this was always the case, or a side effect of his new powers.

Fantastic fifth wheel: I’m at a loss as to how taking the planet Mercury out of space and time was Sharon’s idea. It’s good that they’re giving her more to do than just swing punches, but this is a stretch.

Commercial break: Two ways to win!

Trivia time: Writer Steve Englehart is credited in this issue as “S.F.X. Englehart.” The story goes that he asked for the name change because, allegedly, he says Marvel editorial changed so much of his script that the sound effects are all that’s left of what he wrote.

This being the Marvel Universe, I was surprised to see them visit the planet Mercury and find no aliens living there. I looked it up, and yes, there are Mercurians in the MU. Nikki of the original Guardians of the Galaxy is from Mercury.

Fantastic or frightful? Here’s yet another issue that wants to be cosmic grandeur but ends up a whole lot of nothing. I’ve gone from looking forward to these posts every week to dreading them.

Next week: I know space kung fu.

****

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Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Issue #323 has the Fantastic Three — Ben, Johnny, and the Sharon Ventura Ms. Marvel — encountering demonic weirdness, time travel, and one writer’s favorite character.

We’re still in the middle of the Inferno crossover, where the X-Men and X-Factor battled demons atop the Empire State Building. This caused demon-related fallout to occur all over NYC, including inanimate objects coming to life. That’s where we find the FF at the start of this issue, out on patrol on the city streets, trying to deal with all this madness. They round a corner and find Mantis fighting some living parking meters.

Note that Mantis in the comics is not the gentle alien empath you just met in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The original Mantis is Vietnamese, trained from a young age to be a great martial artist, and believed by the Kree aliens to be the “Celestial Madonna.” As such, she tends to take part in various space/cosmic Marvel stories. She has the power to control every part of her body, including autonomous functions, which makes her nearly unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat. She was briefly a member of two separate Avengers teams and she’s had romance with the Swordsman and the Silver Surfer.

It should also be noted that it was only a matter of time before Mantis showed up in this run of Fantastic Four, since writer Steven Englehart has quite a fascination with this character. Not only did he write her into almost every Marvel title he worked on, but he took her with him to other companies. When he wrote for DC, he introduced Willow (no relation to Ufgood or Rosenberg), who had come from another universe, all but flat-out saying that this was Mantis. Then, when he started his creator-owned work for Eclipse and Image, he introduced Lorelai, with her story picking up where Mantis and Willow’s left off. Lorelai even cameoed in one of Englehart’s novels. Why bring all this up? Because the next two issues are continuing an unfinished Mantis story Englehart began in Avengers.

Mantis catches the FF up to speed in a confusingly-written recap. She gave birth to a son, and her “old comrades” took the baby into space. She wants the FF’s help — specifically the FF’s spacecraft — to get the kid back. Johnny is still having trouble turning his flame off, and can only do so with much concentration. Elsewhere Aron the Watcher is still spying on our heroes, saying he needs the FF to enact his plan, while some other mysterious figure spies on him. In another elsewhere, we’re reintroduced to time-travelling supervillain Kang, who is also spying on our heroes. He wants revenge on Mantis for when she defeated him in an Avengers story.

Kang’s ship appears in New York. He attacks the FF, hitting them with a paralysis ray. He abducts Mantis and leaves a bomb behind. Ben, with the increased strength that came with his new mutation, throws the bomb into orbit, where it explodes without harming anyone. Aboard Kang’s ship, Mantis explains she no longer has her Celestial Madonna powers, but Kang says he’ll keep her trapped aboard his ship anyway.

The FF board a Fantasticar and pursue Kang’s ship. Outside of New York, Johnny’s flame is under control again. The strange figure who was spying on Aron is now secretly following the FF. Kang’s ship arrives at Diablo Mountain in front of a giant door he calls “the Door of the Dreaming Celestial.” The FF fight Diablo’s ship, not making much of a dent in its defenses. Johnny loses control of powers again, causing a huge explosion. This doesn’t damage the ship, but it sends Johnny falling off into the distance. Aboard the ship, Kang gloats about his victory, but then turns to see Mantis has disappeared.

To be continued!

Clobberin’ time: During the opening fight scene, the FF banter about their favorite New York sports teams. Ben’s team is the Mets…

Flame on: …Johnny’s team is the Jets…

Fantastic fifth wheel: …and Sharon’s team is the Giants.

Commercial break: Sequel to the Spielberg movie?

Trivia time: What else happened during Inferno? Mostly, the other Marvel heroes continued their ongoing stories, but with some added demon stuff. A brand new Avengers team formed after an awkward run of issues that had no Avengers. Daredevil got the crap beaten out of him, so he donned a badass covered-with-tattered-bandages outfit to fight back. The Power Pack kids revealed their secret identities to their parents, only for their parents to be mind-wiped and forget. (I think this happened a couple of times.) The Spider-Man books took the most advantage of the crossover, by using Inferno to turn the Lizard from a good guy back into a bad guy, and transforming the Hobgoblin (the second Hobgoblin, that is) from a guy in a goblin mask into an actual goblin.

Fantastic or frightful? This is a tough one to recap, because so much of the issue is Mantis and Kang explaining what happened in previous comics, but doing so in a way that’s so dense and overwritten it’s practically unreadable. The fight scenes have some fun bits, but other than that, ugh.

Next week: Infer-NO!

****

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Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. This era of the series is turning out not to be as weird and quirky as I remembered. Issue #322 finds our heroes caught up in an Inferno.

We begin in space, where supervillain Graviton is floating around on an asteroid. Graviton is a man who controls the power of gravity. He was once an evil scientist, but now believes himself to be a god. He recently fought the West Coast Avengers, who defeated him by flinging him into space. He’s traveling back to Earth to get his revenge, when he sees strange gravitonic anomalies in and around New York, so he investigates.

In NYC, the FF are currently the Fantastic Three — Ben, Johnny, and the Sharon Ventura Ms. Marvel. They’re out on the street, where inanimate objects are randomly coming to life. It’s more of an amusing annoyance than a crisis. One guy gets his hand stuck inside a mailbox’s “mouth,” bicycles are riding themselves, et cetera. (What this issue doesn’t say, but what readers are already expected to know, is that all these weird happenings are due to Inferno, an epic X-Men crossover, in which the mutants were fighting to keep demons from invading the Earth, among other things. All the weirdness happening in New York is fallout from those pesky demons.)

The FF decide that going “on patrol” is the best way to deal with all this craziness. As they do so, Ben and Sharon have a heart-to-heart. We see that Sharon has somehow mutated from her lumpy Thing form into a rocky Thing form. Ben reminds her that his mutations were partially based on his own psychological hang-ups. She agrees, saying her own psychological issues have her building a hard shell around herself to protect her from harm. Ben further states that he can’t turn back into a human because of his psychological block, but Sharon has no such block, so she might be able to turn human again.

Johnny, meanwhile, picks up Alicia (who is secretly Lyja the Skrull in disguise) and takes her to FF headquarters, where she’ll be safer. Along the way, they discuss the possibility of moving back into HQ and living there full time. They are secretly being spied on by Aron the Watcher, who recently collected cell samples of Ben and Sharon, and now says he needs Johnny’s cells to enact his evil plan.

Graviton shows up in NYC, fights a couple of demons that are running around, and then boldly proclaims himself to be the “master” of the whole city. Ben and Sharon step in, and the rest of the issue is one big fight. Using gravitational waves, Graviton is able to throw the heroes around telekinetically, and then increase their gravity, forcing them into the ground. Johnny joins the fight, but Graviton snuffs out Johnny’s flame by gravity-sucking the oxygen out of the air around him.

Graviton buries the three FFers deep underground. Johnny says he can burn his way out, but can’t so without also burning Ben and Sharon. Ben and Sharon say they’ll willingly endure the pain. Johnny escapes, and this time he’s able to fight Graviton. Johnny explains that while suns produce great gravity, they also produce great heat, therefore he and Graviton are equals. (Any scientists care to weigh in on this one?) Johnny does the same move that Graviton did on him, by using his heat to suck all the oxygen away from Graviton, weakening him long enough for Ben to punch him out.

Cut back to Aron the Watcher who has of course been watching all this. He comments that Graviton might have been the only one able to stop demons from invading New York. Back with our heroes, Johnny is about to flame off, only to discover he can’t. He is finally able to, after much concentration and effort, wondering if this is a bad sign.

Unstable molecule/Fade out: It was at this time that Reed and Sue became full-time members of the Avengers, in Avengers #300, alongside Captain America, Thor, and Gilgamesh the Forgotten One. Except that there was change in editorial and creative teams right after that, restructuring the team again, making Reed and Sue’s time as Avengers last only a few short issues.

Clobberin’ time: Ben’s nickname for Graviton is “Gravy,” which I find hilarious.

Flame on: Johnny says his powers don’t allow him to change the temperature during the NYC heat wave. But we have seen him draw flames away from the whole city during a crisis before. I guess his powers a different for open flame as opposed to just heat.

Fantastic fifth wheel: Sharon says part of her issues come from her father, who always wanted a son and who taught her to be the toughest kid in school, male or female.

The Alicia problem: Lyja says she keeps a suitcase packed and ready to go for those times when all of NYC faces a superhero-related crisis. Could she also be keeping this suitcase ready for a quick exit in case she’s discovered as a Skrull?

Commercial break: Quick shots!

Trivia time: Notice that we don’t see what happens to Graviton after Ben punches him out. Graviton doesn’t show up again until the Acts of Vengeance crossover, in which the Kingpin hires him to kill Spider-Man. There’s no word on how he survived Inferno or what he was doing in the meantime.

Fantastic or frightful? When West Coast Avengers debuted, Graviton was set up as one of the baddest of bad guys, but in this issue, he’s been demoted to random villain-of-the-month. That, plus the fact that Inferno is only starting and hasn’t yet gotten really crazy, make this one forgettable. Joe Sinnott’s inks give the art a fun retro-‘60s look, so I guess that’s nice.

Next week: “Mantis, look out!”

****

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Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. The previous issue gave us a decent-to-good Thing/Hulk fight. Well, Marvel now has a female Thing and a She-Hulk, so ladies get their go at it in issue #321.

We begin with Sharon Ventura (a.k.a. Ms. Marvel) breaking down the door of She-Hulk’s apartment, looking for a fight. The Hulk recently defeated Ben (in Incredible Hulk #350). Sharon wants revenge, so Sharon demands She-Hulk tell her where the Hulk is. She-Hulk says she and the Hulk (who is her cousin) have gone their separate ways. Sharon is furious, not listening to reason, and starts a fight.

As their slugfest moves from the apartment to the street outside, She-Hulk is unprepared for how strong Sharon has become. After exchanging some punches and throwing some cars at each other, She-Hulk defeats Sharon, as She-Hulk simply has more hand-to-hand combat experience. She-Hulk suggests they talk through their problems rather than keep punching each other.

Cut to a mysterious bald man wearing metal armor, watching the heroes from a distance, high up in a skyscraper. He says the fight ended to soon, interrupting his plans. The stranger blows a whistle and summons Dragon Man, who quite epically poses atop the Chrysler Building.

Sharon and She-Hulk compare notes. Sharon says Ben is in the hospital suffering from exhaustion, though he’ll be back to his old self within 24 hours. Sharon also says she spotted the bald man while on her way to She-Hulk’s apartment. Sharon and She-Hulk also discuss Sharon’s relationship with Ben, and the fact that Johnny and Alicia are married now. At the hospital, Alicia (who is secretly Lyja the Skrull in disguise) and Ben have a similar talk, with Ben saying her leaving him doesn’t hurt as much. Johnny, meanwhile, flies over NYC, thinking about how he loves Alicia, but part of him still loves Crystal, who recently left him to return to Quicksilver and live with the Inhumans on the moon.

She-Hulk and Sharon have another heart-to-heart about how Sharon’s monstrous form has been freeing for her, rather than traumatic. Then, Dragon Man swoops down to attack. Fighting! Dragon Man keeps focusing his attention on Sharon during the battle, despite both heroes landing punches on him. She-Hulk changes tactics, flirting with Dragon Man instead of fighting him. Confused, Dragon Man flies off. She-Hulk explains that when Dragon Man first fought the FF, Dragon Man developed a crush on Sue. Beautiful women, she says, are Dragon Man’s weakness.

Dragon Man returns to the mysterious stranger, who takes cell samples of Sharon off of Dragon Man’s hand, revealing this was his plan all along. We then learn this mystery man is Aron the Watcher. (Who? He’s a young Watcher who has gone rogue, not bothering with the “watch but don’t interfere” thing.) This would be a “To be continued” except it’s not going to be picked up again for a while.

Clobberin’ time: There’s no mention of how Ben got to the hospital, or who this doctor is that knows how to treat him. We’ll have to shrug it off as comic book logic, and an excuse for Sharon to have an adventure without him.

Flame on: In his only scene in this issue, Johnny ponders how he’s in love with both Alicia and Crystal equally, and feels huge guilt about it.

Fantastic Fifth wheel: This isn’t the first time Sharon and She-Hulk have fought. They duked it out when they met for the first time in Thing #36, and She-Hulk won that fight, too.

She-Hulk hadn’t been seen much in Marvel since the Avengers disbanded in Avengers #297. In Solo Avengers, she appeared before Congress to argue against the Mutant Registration Act, and in a special Christmas issue of Marvel Comics Presents, she fantasizes about beating up supervillains when spending Christmas alone. Shortly after this, she gets her own solo series from John Byrne, famous for its break-the-fourth-wall comedy.

The Alicia problem: Lyja tells Ben that her relationship with Johnny wasn’t planned, but that it just happened. I suppose this is true: She was meant to impersonate Alicia to infiltrate the FF. With Ben gone, she found herself in a relationship with Johnny. Some fans believe Lyja stuck to the mission, and that her love for Johnny was an act, but too much of this wouldn’t make sense if it wasn’t.

Commercial break: Airwolf! Stringfellow Hawke not included.

Trivia time: Aron the Watcher was previously introduced in Captain Marvel, where his presence helped absolve Uatu the Watcher of all the times he had broken his promise never to interfere.

The last time we saw Dragon Man was in Fantastic Four #300, where he was being mind-controlled by the Puppet Master. To my knowledge, it’s never been revealed how Dragon Man got away from Puppet Master and ended up under Aron’s control.

Fantastic or Frightful? On the plus side, I really like Ron Lim’s artwork. He draws great facial expressions on Sharon, making her feel like a real person under her rocky exterior. That said, this issue is frustrating because the whole Johnny/Crystal/Alicia/Ben/Sharon romantic quintangle should be over by this point, but they just keep rehashing without saying anything new, beating the same dead horse over and over. My memory of this era of FF is that it’s when things got quirky and different, but re-reading it now shows how directionless it all was.

Next week: It’s getting hot in here.

****

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. One of the big deals about this “new” Fantastic Four is that the Thing, in his spikey form, is as strong as the Hulk now. That means in issue #320 it’s time for another Thing/Hulk slugfest!

We begin in the desert outside of Las Vegas, for a secret nighttime meeting between Dr. Doom and the Hulk. Only, this version of the Hulk might be different from the one you know. After surviving a nuclear blast, the Hulk has reverted to a grey-skinned form, with (somewhat) normal intelligence. Instead of “mindless monster,” he’s now more of a “hard-fightin’ thug” type. As such, the Hulk now works as a Las Vegas mob enforcer, going by the name Mr. Fixit. This might sound ridiculous, but writer Peter David made it work, cranking out some of the all-time best Hulk stories ever during the Mr. Fixit years.

The Hulk is furious to learn that Doom is the one who’s secretly called him for this clandestine meeting, and the two have short fight. Doom incapacitates the Hulk with a device that scrambles the nerve impulses in the Hulk’s brain. (If this tech exists, why doesn’t everyone use it when they fight the Hulk? I guess Dr. Doom wouldn’t allow such a thing.) Doom says he wants the Hulk’s help in retaking his kingdom of Latveria back from the usurper Kristoff. In exchange, Doom offers the Hulk protection, wealth, status, and respect. The Hulk says he already has all of that as Mr. Fixit. Doom says he’ll recruit the Thing instead, because the Thing is now leader of the FF, and has become just as strong as the Hulk. Hulk gets furious, saying that he’s defeated the Thing every time they’ve fought, and he’ll do it again. Doom knows how to push Hulk’s buttons, saying that with increased intelligence comes increased cowardice. Hulk says he’ll prove he’s not a coward, and he leaves for New York, to pick a fight with Ben.

At FF headquarters, we’re still down the Fantastic Three — Ben, Johnny, and the Sharon Ventura Ms. Marvel. Johnny and Alicia (who is secretly Lyja the Skrull in disguise) invite Ben and Sharon to join them for an afternoon on the Staten Island Ferry, but Ben stays behind. Alone, he ponders what it means to be the leader of the team, and how he has responsibility to keep morale up. He heads up to the roof of Four Freedoms Plaza to overlook the city, where of course he’s attacked by the Hulk.

The rest of this issue is one big punch-em-up. Because the rest of the world currently believes the Hulk is dead, Hulk doesn’t say anything throughout the fight, fearing his voice will give him away. Ben somehow assumes this is a clone of the Hulk. They fall/jump from the rooftop down to the street, where they throw cars at each other. Ben is unprepared for Hulk being smarter and knowing how to really fight, while the Hulk is unprepared for Ben now having the same amount of strength he does. They fight down into the sewer and then back up onto the street, where Ben pummels the Hulk so hard that it appears Ben had finally defeated the Hulk. But then, somehow, a second Hulk appears! It’s the classic green-skinned “dumb monster” Hulk.

That’s the cliffhanger, to be continued in Incredible Hulk #350. Here’s a quick recap. The green Hulk is actually a Hulk robot from The Eternals miniseries, which Doom recovered and reprogrammed. Ben defeats the robot and deduces that Doom is behind this. Ben and the Hulk fight again. This time the Hulk wins, thanks to Doom encouraging him to fight dirty. Hulk and Dr. Doom form an uneasy alliance, promising each other power from their empires (Vegas for Hulk, and Latveria for Doom). The Hulk then leaps off, leaving Ben still unconscious, to crossover in an Avengers story before making it back to Vegas.

Clobberin’ time: Thing/Hulk fights famously end in either stalemates or are interrupted. That’s the case again with this one, where Ben wins the first round and Hulk wins the second.

Flame on: Johnny employs comic book logic, saying not to worry about Dr. Doom’s scheming the FF won’t have to mess with him again for a while.

Fantastic fifth wheel: Sharon is full-on girlfriend mode, jokingly saying she’s going to learn about Ben’s bad habits from Johnny and Alicia.

Commercial break: Look at Namor break the fourth wall. And he makes a pun! He’s wacky.

Trivia time: Because this is Marvel, even the Hulk robot has a convoluted history. It was built by a bunch of college students for use as their school mascot (!) only to become overtaken by the power cosmic (where Galactus and the Silver Surfer get their powers) and fought the Eternals. Much later, it’ll be revealed that the robot was built by the Mad Thinker, and merely found and reprogrammed by the college students.

Fantastic or frightful? There’s barely any story here, but it promises a Thing/Hulk fight and it delivers. Thing/Hulk fights are why we love comics, so I can’t hate this.

Next week: Even more Thing/Hulk fighting!

****

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