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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.

Re-reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Issue #98 is an interesting beast. The fictional Marvel heroes had walked on the moon several times, and then Neil, Buzz, and company went and did it for real. This comic was created to address real life intersecting the fantastical comic world. So, hey, let’s go to the moon!

Although published in April 1970, a caption informs us that this story takes place in July 1969. The opening page has Reed deciphering alien symbols (where’d he get those?) that match what he knows about the Kree aliens. Reed is only able to translate one word, “Tranquility.” Then we get a couple pages of sitcom comedy as Johnny flies around Ben while Ben tries to read the newspaper. The paper catches Reed’s eyes, and he snatches it away from Ben. It’s a story about the moon landing, with “Sea of Tranquility” in the headline. Reed surmises that the Kree have been watching Earth from space, and they know about NASA’s efforts to put a man on the moon.

We then cut to a robotic Kree sentry, living on an island in the Pacific. He flies out over the ocean with a gun that can raise another island out of the water. He searched for a “stimulator” on this new island, which he says can create a map of the moon for him.

At FF headquarters, Reed, Johnny and Ben blast off in a rocket lent to them by NASA. Reed says they’re not trying to race the astronauts to the moon, just seeing to it that the astronauts get there safely. They fly straight to the island, and there’s some action where Johnny burns a runway into the ground before the rocket can crash. They investigate the island, finding it to be an exact replica of the surface of the moon.

Meanwhile, the NASA rocket takes off from Cape Canaveral, and there are a few fun panels where ordinary folks around the world are all tuned in to watch. Back on the island, the sentry has found his stimulator, a big alien radar-type thingie, but he is distracted by the FF’s arrival. And… fighting! Johnny is no match for the sentry, but Reed does a sweet move where he grabs the sentry and throws him at Ben, who promptly knocks him out. Yay, teamwork.

Reed still wants to know what’s going on, and Johnny helps by finding a hidden entrance leading underground. Ben stays behind to guard the unconscious sentry. Underground, Reed and Johnny find the stimulator, which is tracking Apollo’s progress to the moon. Every time Reed or Johnny try to get close to the machine, it sends out rays that weaken them. In space, Apollo is almost landing on the moon, with no idea the stimulator is targeting them. Reed, in his weakened state, calls out to Ben, who runs to their aid and punches out the machine, destroying it.

Of course the underground caves start blowing up, so Ben gets his friends to safety. The sentry also survives, flying off to fight another day. Finally, up in space, Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon and says that famous line of his.

Unstable molecule: Reed pursues the Kree message in order to save the Apollo mission, but at the end acts like he has no idea the Kree were sabotaging the moon landing. Maybe he was just being humble.

Fade out: Despite everything that’s going on, Sue wants the whole team to sit down for a family dinner.

Clobberin’ time: Ben makes a lot of jokes about wanting to stay home and watch TV, name-dropping both Walter Konkrite and John Wayne.

Flame on: At the start of the issue, Johnny is at the “air show” to help get his mind of off Crystal leaving him.

Four and a half: Alicia is still around, babysitting Franklin in this issue. Franklin still has brown hair.

Commercial break: Yes, this is a young Arnold Schwarzenegger, a whopping 12 years before starring in Conan the Barbarian.

Trivia time: Well, obviously, this issue is based on the moon landing. Marvel would later publish a mini-series, Marvel: The Lost Generation, which stated the moon landing happened before the Fantastic Four were formed, causing many a continuity headache.

Fantastic or frightful? It’s cute to tie the FF’s adventures into real-life events like this, but other than that, there’s not much there. The plot doesn’t make much sense and the sentry is hardly a threat.

Next: Soap opera!

****

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