Random Back Issues #112 - Fantastic Four #296

Yes, more of that.

The 25th anniversary issue of Fantastic Four feels like it's following up on the conclusion of The Thing's series, where Ben was mutating further and decided to go off alone to die (pausing briefly to save the West Coast Avengers in issue 10 of their book).

Here, though, Ben is rocking (no pun intended) his traditional look as he tromps through the rain to where Reed's defective rocket crashed down. Bemoaning how he's still a 'walkin', breathin' monster', Ben enlists pilot and childhood friend Hopper Hertnecky to fly him to Monster Island. Hopper then visits the FF to tell them, Ben asked to be left alone, because he knew Reed would track him down sooner or later.

On the way out the door Hopper also, correctly, points out it's Reed's fault Ben's how he is, and makes his own plea to drop the issue. While Johnny flies around stopping bank robbers and beating himself up about dating Alicia, Sue finds Reed brooding and tells him, no, it's not Reed's fault Ben was transformed by cosmic rays Reed swore his spaceship was shielded against, and that Ben has been tormenting Reed all these years by sulking over his fate. His fate of being transformed into a rock monster because Reed was too certain of his own genius to allow more testing on his ship before asking Ben to pilot it.

Amazing that Sue manages to be more unlikable than Reed. Of course, she's the one who called Ben a coward for expressing doubts about the cosmic rays in the first place. So maybe she's just covering her own ass. I'm starting to think Sue deserves being married to Reed Richards.

Anyway, Reed's determined to have it out with Ben one last time, so the Fantastic Three fly to Monster Island, leaving She-Hulk, Alicia, and Wyatt behind. They find themselves immediately overwhelmed by all the monsters.

On Monster Island. Because they didn't bring the super-strong member of their team. What genius is driving this clown car?

They wake up to find The Thing standing over them, dressed like his new pal. That's right, Mole Man's got an entire society for ugly people, and Ben's his general! Having found a place he thinks he belongs, Ben wants to apologize to Reed for 'taking it out on him all those years.' I choose to believe Ben's just saying this to get them to go the fuck away. The last thing Reed Richards needs is people apologizing to him. Ben decides to be a good host and give them a tour, including showing them the enormous machine Mole Man promises will cause a new island to form in the middle of the Pacific, just for their society.

Reed's suspicious, especially once Mole Man calls them back, worried about such a breach of security. Then Alicia shows up, having asked Hopper to fly her to Monster Island. Quite why he listened, after insisting they should leave his friend be, I don't know. I guess Ben Grimm just has lousy taste in friends. Before she passes out, Alicia mumbles she had to come, so great was her fear of what Ben might do to Johnny. Ben later has an unproductive conversation with Alicia, where she says he was too self-absorbed and she needed someone gentle and understanding.

Re-read those qualifications, then consider she's dating Johnny Storm. Alicia might just be an idiot.

In a sour mood, Ben finds Reed and Sue making a ruckus looking for Johnny. Reed of course insists Ben needs to listen, so Ben punches him in the face. But it turns out Mole Man took revenge for Ben, using some machine to make Johnny, gasp, physically unattractive! Ben orders the lot of them sent to the surface, but Reed, never one to know when not to poke the bull, is determined to go back down. He's sure Mole Man's machine is going to create a new island through vulcanism, the resultant tsunamis killing millions.

He also describes Ben as, 'an innocent dupe whose only mistake is putting his trust in the wrong man!' What else is new? Meanwhile, in trying to get answers out of Mole Man, Ben learns his buddy has a private holosuite where he pretends to hang out at parties with conventionally attractive women.

Confronted with the distressing reality his new friend would rather be with the pretty people up above and not the "uglies" he claims are like him, Ben is not in a great mood when he finds his old friends trying to trash island-maker. But he listens to Reed and helps wreck it, which causes the entire place to collapse. Johnny's hit by falling ceiling and Ben carries him to Mole Man's lab, and convinces him to undo what he did to Johnny. Matchstick can't be moved for 7 minutes, so Ben stands there holding up the ceiling while Mole Man retreats to seeming certain death in his crumbling dream world. He would, at minimum return in Byrne's second Sensational She-Hulk stint, trying to force her to marry him.

Reed, Sue, Alicia and Hopper watch the island collapse from an inflatable raft. Reed's determined to swim(?) down to get Ben and Johnny, over Sue's objections, but the guys surface and it's now six people, including a 500-pound rock guy, in one inflatable raft. But Ben seems willing to rejoin the FF rather than use Reed for dental floss, so, whoo-hoo?

{4th longbox, 112th comic. Fantastic Four #296, by Jim Shooter and Stan Lee (writers), Barry Windsor-Smith, Kerry Gammill, Ron Frenz, Al Milgrom, John Buscema, Marc Silvestri, and Jerry Ordway (pencilers), Windsor-Smith, Vince Colletta, Bob Wiacek, Klaus Janson, Steve Leialoha, Joe Rubenstein, and Joe Sinnott (inkers) Glynis Oliver (colorist), John Workman (letterer)}

An Ecstatic Silver Surfer is Kind of Disturbing

Geez, Surfer, excuse yourself to the bathroom if you're going to do that. This is looking like one of those movies where the old college buddy comes to visit and annoys his friend's wife because he's still a slob or a bum or whatever. Which makes the Surfer Owen Wilson in this scenario? I'm not sure which of them should be more offended.

The comics have not arrived, so in the meantime I'm going through the back issues I bought in 2018, trying to figure out what's worth keeping. Which brings us to this story, from Marvel Fanfare #51, looking at how Steve Englehart's run on Silver Surfer could have begun, paired with John Buscema rather than Marshall Rogers.

In the run we actually got, the Surfer slips past the barrier Galactus had trapped him behind by. . . hitching a ride with the Fantastic Four, rather than trying to fly through himself. Either Galactus is an idiot for leaving that kind of a loophole, or he thinks the Surfer is. Given how long it took the Surfer to escape, probably the latter.

In this story, Surfer doesn't make it off-planet. Yes, I know it looks like he's in deep space in the panel above, but the story says he can't get more than 600 miles off the Earth's surface. I wonder if there was a space shuttle with Bruce Willis out there somewhere during this fight. If so, it probably got blown up, as the Surfer gets attacked by the Kree, because the Supreme Intelligence is sure he'll stop them from killing the "Great Terror". Which happens to be a cheerful young boy who wants to be Joe Montana. I guess the Kree were Bengals' fans. Sounds about right. Oh yeah, and he's half-sentient tree because his mother's is former Avenger (and future Guardians of the Galaxy) Mantis.

After the Kree attempts to kill the Surfer through a combination of sapping his energy, antimatter blasters, and mediocre smack talk come up craps, the Supreme Intelligence ups the ante by siccing Thor foe Mangog on him. Even if the Surfer was at full power, he'd be in trouble, unless he was willing to lay waste to the Earth to win. So he pulls the old "let my enemy absorb my power" trick, and the purity of his soul drives out Mangog's thirst for vengeance. Since vengeance is literally all Mangog is supposed to be - he's the desire for revenge of a billion billion beings, if I remember right from my dad's Thor comics - he basically falls apart. And then it looks like the Surfer was going to settle into domestic bliss with Mantis and her son, which I'm sure will just thrill the homeowner's association.

I'm not sure whether it's the coloring or if Buscema needs a heavier line, but his Mangog spends a lot of time in this issue looking like a barely defined yellow mass with pincers.

Sunday Splash Page #46

"Really Know How to Show a Lady a Good Time, Dane", in Avengers #264, by Roger Stern (writer), John Buscema (breakdowns), Tom Palmer (finished art), Christie Scheele (colorist), Jim Novak (letterer)

The first issue of Avengers I owned. At the time, it seemed like some random one-off issue about a woman swiping one of Hank Pym's old Yellowjacket costumes, only to eventually run afoul of a fairly irate Wasp. About a year later, Roger Stern and John Buscema would do their "Under Siege" story, and this new Yellowjacket would be part of Baron Zemo's massive Masters of Evil that tore the Avengers Mansion down, put Hercules in a coma, and left Jarvis badly beaten.

A few years after that, that same Yellowjacket would hitch a ride with the Guardians of the Galaxy back to the 30th Century and join the team.

So this issue was part of the build-up towards the "Under Siege" story, but I had no clue of that at the time. It feels like a breather issue, checking in on the status of the team in a quiet moment. What's on their mind, what's troubling them? Dane Whitman (the Black Knight) is starting to get interested in the Wasp. He convinced to let him play "Doctor". No seriously, he was helping her test her powers. Apparently she can maintain the wings at almost her actual size, give or take a foot. Reed, Sue, and Franklin Richards are living at Avengers Mansion (which I remember confusing the heck out of me). Namor is on the Avengers, too, so you know he's trying to flirt with Sue, while wondering whether being an Avenger is enough for him. Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau) helps her father rescue one of his firefighters from a burning building.

And that's fine. I didn't know most of these characters from anything at the time, so it was a good way to learn a little about them. Like Dane having spent years stuck in the Crusades (which may have been retconned to something else at some point). Stern is good at juggling subplots, making sure everyone gets some time, let the character show their worth, why they are on the Avengers, or to show us something about them, so we actually care about them.

Buscema and Palmer's art has a very slick feel to it, with a lot of expression. Dane has this hilarious stunned look when Jan, at insect-size, bends a 2-inch diameter steel pipe back on itself. Jan's nonchalant response that she doesn't show off the enhanced strength much because stinging people seemed more efficient and less messy than ripping off their arms is funny, too. But it works for the quiet stuff, Namor standing in front of window, stuff like that. And when there's fighting, well, the Buscemas always know how to someone throwing a punch.

It's strange though, I don't feel like this issue had as much of an impact on my impressions of the Avengers as a lot of other Marvel comics I got at the same time. Other than Captain America, and maybe the Wasp, I don't tend to think of the characters on this roster as core Avengers. I'm more likely to apply that to people who were on the West Coast Avengers in the first issue of that I owned.