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Rereading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. I don’t dare suggest the legendary Jack Kirby ever phoned it in, but here, in his last few issues before his contentious departure from Marvel, it sadly kinda/sorta feels like he’s phoning it in. Case in point, the generic monster movie riff in issue #97.

We begin in the middle of the story, with Reed, Ben and Johnny in the ocean in their mini-sub, dolphins swimming all around them. (See, I can’t really say Kirby was phoning it in, because those dolphins look great.) Reed explains that there have been a lot of ships disappearing in the Lost Lagoon, and the U.S. Navy has asked the FF to investigate. (How is the “lagoon” in middle of ocean?)

With the exposition out of the way, our heroes are attacked by giant sea monsters. One of the sea monsters is humanoid. There’s some lip service paid to the fact that it could be Namor or Triton, but probably isn’t. The mini-sub converts to a mini-plane and flies over the water’s surface, and Johnny flies to the beach under his own power.

On the beach, Johnny is surrounded by swimsuit-clad ladies, in awe of his celebrity, but his mind is still on Crystal. He misses her after Medusa took away a few issues ago. He catches up with Sue and lil’ Franklin. Turns out the team was on vacation when Reed agreed to go monster hunting. They’re joined by Reed and Ben, while the humanoid monster watches from a distance.

Here’s where things get a little confusing. The monster, a green, scaly guy, swims to an underground cave. Turns out he can talk, and he has a container with a strange liquid in it. He drinks the last vial and transforms into a human, exclaiming, “Once again, I am a breather of air!” He swims through another tunnel, where he ends up inside a Sea World-like water park, where he works as an animal handler. The FF is there, but just as tourists. The man, who still isn’t given a name, swims around with the dolphins, putting on a great show. Reed, however, suspects that this might be the same person who attacked them earlier.

Reed stretches his hand into a water tank to investigate, so the man sends a whale to strike him. If it weren’t for his stretching power, Reed’s arm would’ve been crushed. Reed approaches the man, who now doesn’t speak, and asks for a guide to the underwater caves in the area. Reed announces that man agrees to help, though I don’t know how Reed knows this, since the guy is just standing there.

Back underwater, the mini-sub enters one of the larger caves. The stranger leads the sub into a deep bog, and then he escapes the sub by punching his way out of it. Reed tries to use a harpoon gun to escape, but there’s not enough air. Ben grabs Reed and Johnny and swims them to an underground air pocket, thinking about how he doesn’t matter but that he’s not going to let his pals die.

Now in an underground cave, with air, Ben confronts the monster. Then, fighting! The monster is strong and fast, a good match for Ben. Johnny and Reed recover from almost drowning and join the battle. The monster runs off deeper into the caves, and our heroes pursue. There, they find him with a strange craft that looks like a big piece of coral. Reed, always the genius, immediately deduces that the monster is from another planet, one that is water-based. He’s carrying big globes of water into the ship, where he has a hot mermaid-type girlfriend inside. The monster coincidentally finishes his repairs at just that moment, and he takes off back to his homeworld. Just like that, the issue ends.

Unstable molecule: He’s supposed be on vacation, but Reed just has to go fighting monsters. But, I guess that’s “fun” for him.

Fade out: Sue sits this one out, staying at the beach with Franklin.

Clobberin’ time: Ben goes into “poor me” mode while rescuing his teammates, thinking “I’m just a crummy pimple on the acne of life.” Soul of a poet!

Flame on: Johnny’s so torn up over Crystal’s absence that he turns away a whole group of bathing beauties on the beach. He does stop long enough to remind them (and us) that his clothes don’t catch fire because they’re made of unstable molecules.

Four and a half: Franklin says his first words! When Johnny picks him up, Franklin says, “Fwamm omm!”

Commercial break: What’s going on in this ad? Ordering raccoons, hawks, skunks, and wolves through the mail?

Trivia time: The monster, who is never given a name, will be back in issue #124, where his personality/background gets expanded on a little more.

Fantastic or frightful? A lot of this doesn’t make sense. Why does the monster speak when he’s alone, but not when around someone else? If the monster is an alien crash-landed on Earth, how the heck did he land a job at Sea World? And yes, this whole thing is totally riffing on Creature from the Black Lagoon and its sequels. Ben rescuing his teammates is a great moment, but other than that, there’s not much happening here.

Next week: Moonstruck.

****

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Rereading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Need a quick and easy story idea to crank out a comic on deadline? Evil twins!

Issue #96 begins with some comedy shtick as the Yancy Street Gang has mailed Ben a “Muscles Galore in Six Easy Lessons” book. Ben crushes the book in his hand and whines about how superheroing is boring when there are no bad guys around for him to clobber. Reed and Sue take off for a night on the town, and Johnny shows up, having just returned from an auto rally. He’s not acting like himself, though, and he zaps Ben with a high-powered stun blast.

Not-Johnny exposits that the real Johnny was taken out just as easily with an ice ray while at the rally. He opens a door and a Ben lookalike walks in. The two of them talk about how everything’s going according to plan. The duplicates are androids, and we turn the page to learn they’re working for the Mad Thinker. He says the FF always manage to defeat him because of some small detail he overlooks in his brilliant plans, but this time he think he has them.

Sue is shopping in the “young marrieds” department of some fancy store when she’s attacked from behind by her duplicate. Reed’s duplicate attacks Reed just as his car passes an alley. The Mad Thinker plans everything out to the second, remember, so he knew just when Reed would drive by this spot. The android has the same powers as Reed, and they fight. It’s hard to tell what happens in a flurry of stretchy arms and fists, but the android wins, knocking Reed out.

The Mad Thinker makes his way inside the Baxter Building. (A line of dialogue says the Thinker built this hidden entrance back in issue #84, while our heroes were in Latveria. You’d think Reed and company would have noticed it by now.) All four androids are there with him, and he boasts about how all the FF’s secrets are his. But wait, the Reed android punches him out. That’s no android — it’s the real Reed!

Reed says that although the android could stretch like him, it didn’t have his training or battle tactics, and this gave Reed the edge. The other three androids then attack, and it’s several pages of fighting. Reed finds Ben, wakes him, and Ben joins the fight. There’s a great series of panels where the two Bens fight, just wailing on each other. Ben and Reed defeat the androids, but the Thinker says he still has the upper hand, because Sue and Johnny are still his prisoners.

Reed remembers the secret entrance. They follow the Thinker down into it, where they fight a bunch of the Thinker’s henchmen, with Ben taking out the Thinker himself. Reed finds Sue and Johnny, and he wakes Sue with a kiss, just out of a fairy tale. Aww…

Unstable molecule: I know Reed is a super-genius and all, but where, exactly did he learn advanced “battle tactics?” Could this be another reference to his rarely-mentioned past as a WWII vet?

Fade out: Sue’s “intuition” warns her of danger, but not fast enough. Also, she mentions that Franklin is still with his nanny, and she won’t see him until the weekend.

Clobberin’ time: Ben makes with the comic relief big time. His final defeat of the Mad Thinker is to throw the Thinker at his henchmen while cheering, “Strrrike!”

Flame on: Johnny only appears in one panel, after his teammates find his unconscious body at the end. The rest of the issue is his android clone pretending to be him.

Commercial break: It’s Hulkerific!

Trivia time: The Mad Thinker has been busy since the last time we saw him. He formed an alliance with Puppet Master and Egghead (yes, there’s an “Egghead” in the Marvel Universe) and they fought Captain Marvel, the Avengers, and the Sub-Mariner. Puppet Master’s influence seems to have rubbed off on the Thinker, as he called his androids “my puppets” at one point in this issue.

Fantastic or frightful? A fun issue with a lot of big action, but nothing of any real substance. It’s an “all they do is fight” story, and an indicator of the more generic stories we’re going to get now that we’re in the middle years.

Next week: Wait, which lagoon?

****

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. The so-called “middle years” are famous (infamous?) for introducing a bunch of hokey, one-off villains, and that’s the case with issue #95.

We begin with a man on the street taking photos of the FF as they stand on the roof of their building. (Heck of a zoom lens on that camera.) He’s a member of the foreign press corps, and he’s there to shoot a visiting delegation of world leaders. The Baxter Building is located right by the U.N., it seems. This man, however, has a sinister plot brewing, thinking that he has to get the delegates and the FF out of his way before he can enact his plan. The fellow calls himself the Monocle (no, really) and his camera secretly contains a “neutrak ray.”

On the rooftop, Reed, Sue and Ben are gossiping about Johnny. They say that he and Crystal are having troubles. The Inhumans want Crystal to rejoin the Inhumans, but Johnny wants her to stay. The hop in the Fantasticar, with Reed saying that they have to protect the delegates, because one unfortunate incident could trigger World War III. The Monocle uses his camera to zap the Fantasticar, disintegrating it. Reed heroically pilots the falling Fantasticar to the river, so as not to destroy New York. He stretches into a soft round shape to protect him and Sue from the impact on the water.

Ben, meanwhile, had split off his portion of the Fantasticar before the attack. He comes across a collapsing building. He uses his awesome strength to hold the structure in place so the people inside can be safely evacuated. The Monocle watches this, revealing via his thought bubble that his neutrak ray was what wrecked the building. The U.N. delegates arrive, saying they’re here to resolve “the crisis.” The Monocle, still in his thoughts, exposits that he’s going to use this incident to kick off an atomic war. He plans to hide out in an underground bunker, and, after all the bombs have fallen, he’ll come back to the surface and become the world’s new ruler. Villain logic!

There’s a funny bit where Reed and Sue return to the Baxter Building wrapped in big blankets after their dip in the river. Reed insists on finding out what happened to the Fantasticar. Then we catch up with Johnny and Crystal. She says she doesn’t want to leave, but the Inhumans need her. Note that Medusa, who is both her big sister and the queen, is standing right there during this conversation. Medusa says Black Bolt, the Inhumans’ king, has ordered Crystal to come home. On cue, a teleportation/portal thingie opens, and Medusa says it’s time for Crystal to leave. Johnny resists, but Medusa uses her super-hair to throw him around the room. She then wraps Crystal in her hair and takes her through the portal. Just like that, Crystal’s gone.

Reed and Sue enter the room, and Reed says finding the mysterious attacker has to take precedence over pursuing Crystal. Johnny reluctantly agrees, and takes off, flying over the city in the hopes of somehow finding the culprit. The Monocle spots him, and attacks, trashing various buildings and landmarks around the city. Johnny realizes that someone’s just trying to distract him, and he deduces that the U.N. conference is where the real action is.

At the U.N., the delegates are about to discuss the “crisis,” and the Monocle is inside, among all the other reporters. He is about to fire his camera and kill the delegates, which he believes will set off nuclear Armageddon. Then, something destroys his camera, before he can pull the trigger. It’s Reed, holding some weird-looking weapon. He says neutrak rays are nothing new, and that’s he’s been working on them for weeks. This allowed him to invent a “reversal ray,” to negate the Monocle’s camera. The Monocle pulls out another gun, and fires concussion blasts at Reed. The Monocle tries to escape, dodging an invisible Sue and her force fields, and then leaping out the window, with little flying devices on his shoes. Too bad that Johnny is there. Johnny burns off the flying machines, and Ben catches the Monocle to turn him over to police. The issue then ends abruptly, with Reed saying the world has now earned a second chance.

Unstable molecule: Reed guiding the Fantasticar into the river to save lives is a great hero moment for him, as is his confrontation with the Monocle at the U.N.

Fade out: Sue almost catches the Monocle while invisible, but he gets away from her with a Judo move. This was after Reed said to Sue, “Only you can stop him now!”

Clobberin’ time: Many fans have said that Ben holding up the falling building is one of the character’s defining moments. Still others have argued that it’s a metaphor for the character’s struggles, carrying the world on his shoulders. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but it is a great scene.

Flame on: Although broken up over Crystal leaving, Johnny nonetheless is quick to figure out that the Monocle is messing with him. Nice to see him use his brains.

Fantastic fifth wheel: We’re not told why, exactly, Medusa and Black Bolt demand that Crystal return, especially after they (presumably) gave permission for her to stay with the FF in issues 82-83. Crystal says she’ll find a way to return to Johnny, but the breakup still seems pretty final. This storyline will be revisited in issue #99.

Commercial break: I always wondered what these things were — cardboard standees, or something more?

Trivia time: The Marvel Wiki says the Monocle is a German spy, who was hired by someone else to attack the U.N., but that’s not in this issue! In the actual story, it’s his own plan to start a war and then take over the world after the bombs fall. Not cool, Marvel Wiki.

Fantastic or frightful? This Monocle guy is D-list, but the book is smart enough to know he’s D-list. Once the FF figure out what’s going on — and they’re quick to do so — the Monocle doesn’t stand a chance against them. So there’s not a lot of suspense or high stakes in this one, but it’s kind of fun to see the heroes take out a villain who stands no chance against them.

Next week: The duplicators.

****

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. Generally speaking, fans divide the first 300 or so issues of FF into three eras, the Lee/Kirby years, the “middle years,” and the John Byrne years. Although Kirby is still with the book with this issue, #94, for me it always represented the beginning of the “middle years,” thanks to the introduction of one of the book’s weirdest, wackiest supporting characters.

The story begins with the FF at home, where Reed and Sue announce that they’ve chosen a name for the baby — Franklin, after Sue’s father. They further reveal that lil’ Franklin’s middle name is Benjamin, after the Thing. Ben gets all teary-eyed after learning this, the big softie.

 We then catch up with the Frightful Four, who are still a team, but still bickering with one another. The Wizard is secretly spying on the FF, saying he wants his revenge on our heroes, while Sandman hesitates about putting the baby in danger. Then Paste Pot Pete, um, I mean the Trapster shows up with Medusa, so the original Frightful Four is back together. (Wait, isn’t Medusa a good guy now?)

Reed announces that he’s found a “child-rearing specialist” to help take care of the baby while the FF are having adventures. They fly the Fantasticar to the Adirondacks, to a big gloomy mansion that Reed tells us is the home of Agatha Harkness. Harkness, Reed says, has a world-famous reputation as a child specialist. We meet Harkness, a creepy old lady with a black cat named Ebony. She says she’s coming out of retirement, because she couldn’t say no to the famous Fantastic Four.

Harkness’s mansion is of course a big scary house with creepy antiques and paintings all over the place. She does the horror movie “I’ll show you to your rooms” thing. While horsing around in his bedroom, Ben finds a hidden door leading to a secret passage, where he’s attacked by the Wizard. Ben is lifted off the ground from one of the Wizard’s anti-grav discs, and then knocked unconscious by an energy blast. The Wizard and Sandman attack Johnny next, dousing his flame with Sandman’s sand. The Trapster’s paste gun seals the only door to Reed and Sue’s room.

The Frightful Four reunite inside the house, and the Wizard announces that now that the FF is trapped, it’s time to dispose of them permanently. That’s when Medusa strikes, attacking the Wizard with her super-powered hair. Turns out she secretly only joined them to protect the FF, if needed. (Fooled you!) It’s a short fight, after the Trapster traps Medusa in the paste.

 It looks like the fighting is over, but Harkness appears at the top of the stairs. Ebony transforms from an ordinary cat into a giant panther. There’s a strange bit where Ebony chases the Wizard out of a window, and as the Wizard flies off into the sky, Ebony’s face fills the entre sky around him. (Magic, I guess?) Sandman tries to attack Harkness, but she transforms him into hard, solid rock. The Trapster runs for it, but a big demonic monster blocks the exit, and Trapster faints with fear.

We turn the page, and the “demonic monster” was really Ben, who didn’t even lay a hand on the Trapster. The sand, anti-grav disc, and paste have all disintegrated. Medusa is freed as well. They find Sandman and Wizard both paralyzed with fear. Reed and Sue are out of their room, and everyone rushes to Harkness’s room, where the baby is. They find everything is OK — the baby is sleeping and Harkness is sitting there, knitting. Ben sees a book in the room titled “Tales of Old Salem,” and he suspects that Harkness is a witch. She voices his suspicion before he can say it, suggesting that she read his mind, so Ben freaks out and runs out of the room, Scooby-Doo style.

Unstable molecule: It’s never mentioned how Reed learned about Harkness or why he decided she should be the baby’s nanny, but everyone goes along with it.

Fade out: Sue insists several times that the baby must be kept somewhere remote and distant, to keep him safe from the FF’s many enemies.

Clobberin’ time: Despite being a teammate to a genius, Ben is the only one who suspects there’s something supernaturally weird going on with Harkness.

Flame on: The villains’ plan is to take out Johnny fast, before he can summon up his flame. I wonder why more baddies don’t try this approach.

Fantastic fifth wheel: Although Crystal stays behind in New York in this issue, Medusa makes sure to ask how Crystal is doing, setting up the next issue.

Four and a half: The famously blonde Franklin has brown hair in this issue. A panel showing the exterior of the Baxter Building shows funky blue energy crackling all around it as the FF discuss Franklin’s future safety. Could this be foreshadowing Franklin’s powers?

Commercial break: Glo-Gloop?

 Trivia time: This is actually not the first time readers learned Franklin’s name. So many readers had written into the letter’s page suggesting the name that Stan Lee more or less unofficially spilled the beans in the letters months earlier. Also, Sandman previously appeared in Hulk #114, where he was turned to glass. A line of dialogue in this issue says the Wizard turned him back to normal.

 Fantastic or Frightful? As a comedic haunted house story, this is an amusing little romp, but the fact that so much stuff happens for no reason shows us that we’ve entered the directionless, meandering storylines of the “middle years.”

Next: They call him “One-eye.”

****

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