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Re-reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. After reading issue #100 last week, this week we’re taking a detour. In 2001, a whole slew of well-known comics pros collaborated on a 12-issue miniseries, Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Comic Magazine.

The story was intended to be a speculative “what if” there had been a proper finale to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s run on the title before Jack left Marvel. This series takes place between issues #100 and #101, with everyone writing and drawing in a pastiche of Stan and Jack’s styles.

Here’s the lineup. Artwork by: Bruce Timm, Erik Larsen, Keith Giffen, Jorge Lucas, Ron Frenz, Gordon Purcell, Tom Scioli, Shannon Denton, Mike Manley, Rick Veitch, Graham Nolan, Bill Wray, Paul Ryan, Frank Fosco, Dave Ross, Al Milgrom, Steve Rude, and Dan Jurgens. Written by: Erik Larsen, Eric Stephenson, Bruce Timm, Tom DeFalco, Kurt Busiek, Jeph Loeb, and… Stan Lee!

The story begins with the FF returning to New York in the NATO plane they hitched a ride on in issue #100. They’re immediately attacked by a small robot sniper. Reed is obsessed with trying to find out who sent it, but the rest of the family drags him out of the lab so they can all go visit Franklin, who’s still with his witchcraft-y nanny Agatha Harkness. Along the way, they’re attacked again, by an unseen energy blast. We cut to Latveria, to learn that Dr. Doom is behind the attacks. He’s keeping the FF occupied as he travels to the US and orchestrates a break-in, stealing a ton of Reed’s equipment, not to mention all of Doom’s tech Reed had previously confiscated, including Doom’s time machine.

From here, the first half of the miniseries is Doom sending random threats the FF’s way, so they are distracted from what he’s up to. This gives us several issues on tour of the Marvel universe at the time. A visit to the X-Men has Johnny and Ben goofing around the mutants’ danger room, and then both teams fighting some Sentinels. In Harlem, the FF joins the Falcon and Captain America in a fight against M.O.D.O.K. and A.I.M. The team then fights a duplicate of the hulk, only for the real Hulk to join the battle. While this is happening, Doom uses the time machine to retrieve the Cosmic Cube from just before it was destroyed. The Cube, of course, grants its wielder godlike powers.

Reed finally figures out that Doom is behind all this craziness, and that Doom’s next step to visit the moon and steal the Watcher’s “cache of galactic wonders.” Doom does just that, threatening the Watcher with the Cosmic Cube. The Watcher says that although he’s sworn not to interfere, there’s no way he’s letting Doom steal his stuff, so they battle. With the help of S.H.I.E.L.D., the Black Panther, and the Silver Surfer, the FF make it to the moon as well. Doom uses the cube to summon cosmic replicas of a bunch of the FF’s villains, and it’s a lot of fighting. Doom successfully steals the Watcher’s “ultimate machine.”

There’s a huge explosion, and Doom thinks he’s won. But, no, Sue saved everyone in an invisible force field. (If Doom’s so smart, why didn’t he think that might happen? His famous arrogance, I suppose.) While all this was going on, Crystal was whisked away back to the Inhumans’ city, to learn that a powerful Inhuman artifact was stolen. She returns to find Doom in Reed’s lab, helping himself to more of Reed’s science goodies. On a roll, Doom also steals Namor’s horn from Atlantis, and uses it summon all of those giant undersea monsters to attack New York, like they did way back in issue #4. The FF and the Inhumans are reunited, while the Avengers and the Silver Surfer battle the Atlantean monsters. (Note that this is the second group of Avengers, with Captain America, Goliath, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch.) Namor joins the battle, being mentally controlled by Doom, and there’s a great bit where Ben uses Captain America’s shield to knock him out.

All this was but another distraction, though. While everyone was fighting in New York, Doom entered the Negative Zone for the next item on his list. Perennial superhero sidekick Rick Jones shows up at FF headquarters to tell them this. He knows because he’s psychically linked to Captain Marvel, who’s already on the case in the Negative Zone. Doom is after Annihilus, hoping to steal the big bug’s cosmic control rod. Reed, Ben, Johnny and Crystal join the fight. Sue stays behind at HQ, where a new version of the Frightful Four attacks, with Blastaar taking Medusa’s former place. There’s a lot more fighting, and it ends with Doom getting the rod, Sue abducted, and the rest of the FF trapped in the Negative Zone. The Frightful Four’s infighting gives Sue the opportunity to free her teammates and take out the baddies.

Way out in space, Dr. Doom confronts Galactus, who has just successfully devoured a planet. Doom uses all his stolen goodies to steal the power cosmic from Galactus. Reed has figured out what Doom is up to, so the team goes to Thor for help, saying that the raw power of Galactus can only be matched by the gods of Asgard. After some back and forth, Odin and the Asgardians (band name!) agree to help. Using Asgardian tech, Reed sends a message to everyone — the Avengers, the X-Men, S.H.I.E.L.D., the Inhumans, Atlantis, and even the U.S. army. Doom appears in the sky over New York, and you know where this is going: Everybody fights!

The combined might of heroes from all over the Marvel universe put up a good fight, but Doom swats them all away, one by one. He convinces the army guys to lay down their weapons, and, just like that, Doom proclaims himself the ruler of the Earth, as no force in existence can stop him.

The FF hide out in their headquarters, trying to find some way to undo what’s been done. Reed looks at a bunch of old comic book covers and gets an idea. Reed sends Johnny out to look for Galactus, who is in a weakened, human-like state without his powers. Everyone then gathers in Latveria, with the human Galactus. Doom is there, and he gets attacked by giant monsters from the comics. These would be from the monster comics Marvel once published before getting into superheroes, giant beasts with names like Fing Fang Foom, Sporr, and the Living Colossus. (Sorry, Guardians of the Galaxy fans, but the original Groot does not make an appearance.)

The FF are mentally controlling the monsters, using the same tech that Doom used to control Namor earlier. Basically, Reed is using Doom’s own tactics against him. Doom wins the fight, but loses the Cosmic Cube. He then begins to feel the same hunger that Galactus once felt, so he decides he has no choice but to devour the Earth. Reed recovers the Cosmic Cube and steals away all of Doom’s powers, shouting “Sic Semper Tyrannis!”

Reed uses the power of the cube to restore everything back to the way it was. This means repairing all the damage done to New York and elsewhere, but it also means returning Doom to Latveria and giving Galactus his powers back. Galactus admits feeling “something akin to what men call gratitude,” and he returns to space. Reed gets the final speech, of course, saying, “In the vast and endless universe, does a world exist where we all can live in peace?”

The miniseries doesn’t have a “The End,” but a “to be continued” in issue #101, which was published about 40 years earlier.

Unstable molecule: Reed says Doom’s nanotech is to blame for why it took him so long to realize Doom is behind all this. Uh-huh, sure. His one-time catch phrase “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” is Latin for “Thus always to tyrants,” commonly misinterpreted as “Death to tyrants.” It’s odd that they would use it here, because it’s a phrase most associated with not-nice people like John Wilkes Booth and Crazy Joe Davola.

Fade out: There are a lot of references in this series to how Sue might be the FF’s most powerful member, which we’ll later see in the John Byrne years and beyond. It’s true that she gets left behind during the Negative Zone chapter, but she saves her teammates just as well.

Clobberin’ time: Ben picking up Captain America’s shield and using it in a fight. So cool.

Flame on: Johnny doesn’t do a whole lot except fret about Crystal every time she goes off on her own. Clingy, much? He uses his super-powerful nova flame against both the Hulk and Namor.

Four and a half: Franklin puts in only one appearance, showing that he’s still being cared for by Agatha Harkness. If we’re to take this miniseries as continuity, this is the first time he has blonde hair instead of brown.

Fantastic Fifth Wheel: When Crystal finds Doom alone inside Reed’s lab, she first attacks him, and then tries to reason with him. One thing’s for sure, she never once shows any fear of him.

Trivia time: The creators really did their research to make sure the whole series lines up with what Marvel was doing in 1970. This is when Dr. Strange was wearing the costume with that blue mask, and the Falcon had that weird one-gloved green and yellow costume. This was also the time when the Avengers headquarters wasn’t a mansion, but a nondescript Fifth Avenue apartment, and we see that as well.

Fantastic or Frightful? As part of the ongoing FF saga, there’s not much here — just a lot of running around and fighting. As a pastiche, however, it’s great. The artists and writers to a great job of aping Stan and Jack’s style, including Stan himself, who wrote the script for the final issue. The whole series is a fun and charming love letter to early Marvel, which why I wanted to spotlight it here.

Next week: Bedlam… again!

****

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

Rereading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Time for a milestone: Issue #100!

Our heroes are returning from meeting with the Inhumans last issue, when something destroys their flying saucer. Crystal uses her powers to float everyone safely to the ground. There, they fall under attack from the duo of Kang the Conqueror and Dr. Doom. They fight, and the Reed discovers that it’s not really Doom and Kang, but lookalike androids. As the FF wonders what’s going on, we cut to Puppet Master and the Mad Thinker, where Puppet Master is cranking out a bunch of living puppets out of his radioactive clay.

Johnny finds some camels (where are they?) which the FF use to cross the wilderness, only to have them be attacked by more of their foes from previous adventures. Reed has gone ahead and deduced that the Puppet Master is behind this, and that he’s found a new source of radioactive clay to create the androids. From this point, the whole issue is one fight scene after another, with the FF duking it with replicas of their rouge’s gallery. Here’s the lineup:

•  The Senty (gets beaten up by Ben)
• Dragon Man (Johnny traps him in a volcano)
• Namor and a bunch of Atlantis warriors (Blown back to sea by Crystal)
• The Hate Monger (Sue trips him (!) while invisible)
• Diablo (Sue hits him with Hate Monger’s shield)
• The Super Skrull (blown out to see with the Atlantis guys, I think)
• The Red Ghost (Falls into a hole in the ground created by Ben)
• The Wizard (Crystal sucks him into a tornado)
• Paste-Pot Pete, um, I mean the Trapster (Sue uses her force field to cover him in his own super-paste)
• Sandman (Sent into the sky with one of the Wizard’s anti-grav discs)
• The Red Ghost’s Super-Apes (Again with the anti-grav discs)

Back in the lab, Puppet Master unveils his Hulk android, which he says is the most powerful of all. But the Hulk, as we know, cannot be controlled. He Hulks out, destroying the lab. Puppet Master fires a gun at the Hulk, not realizing that the Hulk is standing in front of a bunch of explosives. This destroys the entire lab in a huge blast. (I guess we’re to assume that Puppet Master and Mad Thinker are dead now, but we all know better, right?)

The FF hitch a ride on a passing NATO jet (!) where Reed reaffirms his teammates/family that they are “the greatest team ever!”

Unstable molecule: Reed does nothing in this issue, except announce who each villain is, and figure out that Puppet Master is behind it all.

Fade out: After so many issues of sitting on the sidelines, Sue finally gets in on the action, singlehandedly taking out Hate Monger, Diablo, and the Trapster.

Clobberin’ Time: In the fight, Ben’s first thought is his friends’ safety, picking them up and throwing them away from danger before clobbering the baddies.

Flame on: Johnny’s flame is powerful enough to bring a dormant volcano to eruption.

Fantastic Fifth Wheel: This one’s a showcase for Crystal, with her using her elemental powers in all kinds of ways. She uses “heavy” air currents to save the FF, she uproots a giant tree to crush Kang and Dr. Doom, she summons winds to create a tornado and to blow several villains out to sea.

Commercial break: This issue begins an odd experiment that had comics on the top of some pages, with ads on the bottom — an experiment that, thankfully, did not last long.

Trivia time: The story goes that this was originally going to be a double-sized anniversary issue, but it was changed at the last minute to a regular-sized one. As such, it had to be hastily rewritten and redrawn, cramming most of the action into a nine-panel grid.

Fantastic or frightful? I never like it when superheroes are just going about their day, only for villains to show up out of the blue and attack them, and that’s what happens here. I also don’t like when the villain is undone by his own bumbling instead of by the hero’s actions, and that happens here as well. There is a novelty factor to seeing a bunch of villains in one issue, but other than that, this is a disappointing way to celebrate 100 issues.

Next week: World’s greatest.

****

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. Hope you like relationship woes, because that’s what you’ve got in issue #99.

We begin with some sitcom comedy shtick as Reed and Sue barge in on Ben as he’s dressed in a skiing outfit. He says he’s preparing to take Alicia on a ski trip. So I guess they’re a couple again. Also, no mention is made of Alicia being blind, and whether that affects her ability to ski. She really is capable! Reed says they’ll have to cancel the trip, because Johnny has taken off, and might be in danger. He’s flying around the world, hoping to return to Crystal, who left him to return to her people the Inhumans back in issue #95.

Johnny is flying around the world at extreme speed, zipping over France (obligatory Eiffel Tower appearance). He then passes into Russian space, apparently, because the “commies” fire missiles at him, which he avoids. It starts to rain, so he takes shelter in a cave in the Himalayas. (He’s making record time on this flight.) As he sleeps, a mysterious stranger finds him. At headquarters, Reed, Sue, and Ben take off in the team’s repurposed UFO from issues past, and hope to catch up with Johnny by shortcutting through the Earth’s upper atmosphere. Once in orbit, however, their ship comes under attack by meteors, knocking them off course. (The movie Gravity totally ripped off this scene. Totally.)

Back in the cave, the stranger who found Johnny is — are you ready for this? — the Abominable Snowman! But wait, it’s not the Yeti, it’s an Inhuman, who thinks Johnny is one of them. He flees from Johnny, inadvertently leading Johnny to the Inhumans’ new digs, an underground city. A whole bunch of Inhumans attack Johnny, including a flying guy with fireproof wings, but Johnny takes them all out. The battle is interrupted by the Inhuman royal family — Black Bolt, Medusa, Triton, Karnak, and yes, Crystal is there too. She begs Johnny to leave, saying he doesn’t understand what’s happening. Johnny argues that the Inhumans have brainwashed Crystal, and then there’s more fighting.

Johnny avoids one of Karnak’s karate chops, only to learn that it was a fake-out, so he’d jump right into Medusa’s hair. There’s a surprisingly dark moment where he threatens to burn her hair to escape. Meanwhile, the FFers have landed in the Himalayas to repair their ship, and to meet some locals, who are all dressed like someone from Genghis Khan’s era (sigh). Back to the action, Johnny confronts Crystal. He goes all emo, saying he wanted to leave with Crystal, but she wanted to go alone, and that means he never meant anything to her. Wah, wah, wah. She flips out, and says she can lose her temper too, unleashing her elemental powers on him. She immediately regrets blasting him, and the other Inhumans argue that Johnny should hear her out, but he doesn’t. He flies off, back out into the city.

Johnny flies up into the sky above the city and generates a massive fireball. So… he is going to kill them all? Someone fires a strange, rod-shaped device into the fireball, diffusing the flames. Turns out it was Reed, who has arrived on the scene with the others, and brought his newly-invented “heat absorption rod” with him. Johnny is still going nuts, as he attacks his teammates, saying “I’m through being everyone’s pigeon!” (Pigeon?) Sue, ever the heart of the group, finally gets Johnny to calm down, appealing him to act like the man he is, and not a spoiled little kid.

The Inhumans then reveal the truth. Crystal had to come home to save Black Bolt. He was injured in a radiation experiment and needed “vibrations” to survive. Crystal took care of him while Inhuman Gordon (who once singlehandedly defeated the FF, let us never forget that) went on an adventure for a tube of strange liquid that can heal him permanently. Why they didn’t just say this back in issue #95 is unknown, but Johnny nonetheless apologizes to Crystal. She says that even though she has to stay with her people for now, she accepts his apology.

Unstable molecule: I find it interesting that Reed has this heat absorption device that Johnny knows nothing about. Wouldn’t he have used Johnny’s help to test this in his lab? You don’t suppose he developed this thing in secret, in case Johnny ever went to the bad side, do you?

Fade out: Sue is the only one who can get Johnny to calm down and listen to reason. She also laments having to pursue Johnny around the globe instead of spending the day with Franklin.

Clobberin’ time: Ben’s skis have apparently been designed just for him, extra wide with huge metal boots for his big ol’ feet.

Flame on: This issue raises the question of just how fast Johnny can fly. We’ve seen him zipping around New York, but here he’s flying around the entire world in a single day. The Marvel wiki says he can fly at “supersonic” speed, which I take to mean faster than the speed of sound, but that’s still not a definitive answer. (There’s a Marvel “wikia,” which says Johnny normally flies at 140 miles per hour, and can accelerate to supersonic speed on occasion, but this doesn’t appear to be an official Marvel site.)

Fantastic fifth wheel: This issue has a reputation of being the one where Johnny and Crystal break up, but that’s not the case at all. I did a little reading ahead, and Crystal is going to be around for quite a while.

Commercial break: Turn your bike into a dragster! Then, get beaten up at recess!

Trivia time: This issue was revisited in Marvel: The Lost Generation #7, published in 2000, in which we learn that time traveler Cassandra Locke was in the cave with Johnny and the Yeti, secretly observing their battle. That mini-series also revealed that the Yeti’s name is, in fact, “Yeti.”

Fantastic or frightful? What’s interesting about this issue is that Johnny is the villain. He’s the unstoppable, destructive force that the FF and the Inhumans have to work together to defeat. After a few phone-it-in issues from Jack Kirby, his art in this one really shines, even though he was fed up with Marvel by this point. Maybe this means he had real affection for the Inhuman characters? It’s nice to have a really great story this close to the end.

Next week: One hundred maniacs.

****

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