sonotadream

Fantastic Four #16-21, Annual - Stan Lee/Jack Kirby

And we’re back to the Fantastic Four! Yay!

Doctor Doom returns. Again. And Ant-Man guest stars - he’s mentioned once and the ants tell him about it, so he fires himself on top of two flying ants and shows up at the Baxter Building.

The Fantastic Four are having a problem where they randomly shrink. Ant-Man doesn’t know what could be causing this, so he gives them a few drops of his serum they can use to return to normal.

Turns out the cause is Doctor Doom. After being hit by the shrinking ray, he ended up in a micro-world. The people there were peaceful and happy, which made Doom’s blood boil. He used his superior science to take over, imprisoning the ruling family in an underwater cell, where the Fantastic Four join them. Escape seems impossible because the water is acid, but Sue figures they can turn the interior panels of the cell into an escape pod, which they quickly do.

The Fantastic Four - along with Ant-Man - help the royal family regain power while Doom escapes back to the regular-size world.

The first phase of his revenge plan consists on sending four intangible “ghosts" to follow the team, disrupting their evening plans.

They disappear once Reed finds and disables the trackers Doom had implanted on them.

Phase two consists on kidnapping Alicia and blackmail the Fantastic Four into staying out of Doom’s business.

He then sends his demands to the US government, who refuses him, so Doom sabotages all fabrics around the country.

The government reaches out to the Fantastic Four for help and Reed has a plan.

He found Doom’s current lair - a ship hidden in a cloud above New York - and its defences. The four ghosts copied the Four's atomic and molecular structure, so if they approach the ship they'll be immediately destroyed.

However, when the Thing changes into Ben Grimm his molecular structure changes and he can bypass Doom’s defences.

Reed works tirelessly to develop his longer lasting formula yet and Ben makes it inside Doom’s lair by the skin of his teeth.

The Four deal with Doom’s traps, Johnny tricks him with very realistic fire figures and Sue saves Alicia. Doom jumps out of the ship to never be seen again. Or until next time.

Who's back in the next issue is the Skrulls. The Emperor spent the last year planning how to destroy the Fantastic Four and finally conquer the Earth.

The culmination of his plans is the Super Skrull, a warrior with all the Fantastic Four’s powers, but also stronger than them: he stretches more than Mr. Fantastic, flames on longer than the Human Torch, is stronger than the Thing and has one secret power to best the Invisible Woman (it's hypnotism, btw).

He lands on Times Square and claims the Earth for the Skrull Empire. People don't take him very seriously - he's just standing there - but he defeats the Fantastic Four and the mood changes.

The team retreats to the Baxter Building while Reed comes up with a plan. He discovers the Super Skrull's superior power is due to rays being sent from his home planet in the Andromeda galaxy. It's fine, the galaxy is only 2.5 million light-years away, of course the Emperor gets instant live footage and can supervise everything in real time.

Reed makes a small disruptor that'll prevent the Super Skrull to receive the power rays. The plan is to distract the Skrull while Sue plants it on him. It seems Lee and Kirby been trying to show Sue is not as useless as letter writers complain, which is nice.

The Four challenge the Super Skrull in a desert island, pull the plan off and trap him in an inactive volcano.

For the Annual, we get Namor. He has finally found his people and been re-crowned Prince of Atlantis (I think this is the first time Atlantis is named). He also reconnects with his betrothed, Dorma, and re-starts the war against humanity.

He starts by capturing the Fantastic Four so they can deliver his message: the Atlanteans control the seas, so no more ships or humans. He reassures Sue that, of course, she’s not included in his declaration of war, to which she says that she stands with the Fantastic Four, even if she doesn’t believe that Namor is bad, deep down.

Reed is pained about his relationship troubles, although he keeps defending Namor later when it comes to him harming Sue - he would never - but he puts it aside to call for an UN meeting on this new threat. During the meeting, a random professor stands up to explain Namor’s backstory. It’s basically what we got back in Marvel Comics #1, with a few added details: Namor’s mom was an Atlantean princess and the boats were bombing icebergs, not doing science by bombing the sea floor, which makes marginally more sense.

How does this random Professor knows all this? Well, psyche, it was Namor all along. Which he reveals once Reed pleads for everyone to get together and fight, not surrender. The Atlantean invasion force is ready and they quickly take over many coastal cities.

Unfortunately, Namor is the only one capable of breathing in both land and sea, so everyone has to wear helmets filled with water. Reed manages to construct a device that’ll evaporate that water (all over the world, I guess), so the invading army is defeated.

Namor decides the best course of action is to break into the Baxter Building and kidnap Sue. He bests Mr. Fantastic because he's temporarily incapacitated due to heavy machinery falling on top of him.

Namor takes Sue to his submersible and leaves her there to deal with the rest of the Fantastic Four, who follow on a new hybrid car.

Unfortunately, Dorma is also on the submersible and realizing there's something going on between Sue and Namor, breaks the widow to flood the vehicle.

Sue escapes and almost drowns, which interrupts the big fight. Seeing that she needs a doctor right away, Namor picks her up and takes her to land, betraying his own people in the process.

When he returns to Atlantis, the city is empty and he's all alone again.

Next up, it’s time to introduce Kang, the Conqueror, in his incarnation of Pharaoh Rama-Tut. Living in the peaceful year 3000, Rama-Tut is bored. He wants adventure - and to become a super villain, if we’re being honest. He finds plans for a time travel machine, designed by an ancestor of his (maybe Doctor Doom?), and travels back to Ancient Egypt, with the ship disguised as the Sphinx. Unfortunately, it’s damaged on arrival and he’s blinded. Fortunately, his ray gun enslaves people’s minds, so Rama-Tut becomes Pharaoh and heals his vision with some radiation-infused herbs.

Seeing hieroglyphs depicting this cure, Reed decides the Fantastic Four should travel in time (using Doom’s original time machine, still in his abandoned castle) and find the herbs, in order to help Alicia - she stays behind to operate the machine.

In Egypt, the Four don’t fare too well. Rama-Tut’s gun depowers them and he puts the team to work - Johnny as a jester - and plans to make Sue his queen. The Sun’s rays, however, are different from modern times, and change the thing back into Ben, breaking the mind control. He manages to take the gun back and use it on the others, while Rama-Tut escapes back into his machine and another time, leaving no trace of his presence behind.

The Four return to the present, but the (helpfully labelled) container with the blindness cure doesn’t, because time travel shenanigans.

The Watcher also returns, to warn the Fantastic Four about the Molecule Man: a nobody who, after a little accident in an atomic lab, gain the power to control molecules.

But only the inorganic ones, so the Four trick him by pretending to be statues. The Molecule Man is whisked away by the Watcher, to parts unknown (maybe until next time? He's not exactly a big name.)

We finish with the Hate Monger, featuring guest star Nick Fury. He and Reed were buddies during the war. Now, Fury’s with the CIA and wants the Fantastic Four to stop the Hate Monger from interfering with the democratic government of San Gusto (the US are well know for installing democratic governments in Latin America during the 60’s…)

The Hate Monger is a fascist who has been preaching hate and is holding an anti-immigration rally when the Fantastic Four confront him. He hits them with his ray gun (it spreads hate; not that he needs one, let’s be honest…) and the Four turn against each other, fighting in the street. Sue ends the fight, which makes her the winner, I guess, and the four go on their separate ways (flounce count: 5).

Still, Fury tricks everyone into going to San Gusto, they get hit with the antidote for the hate rays and defeat the Hate Monger, who turns out to be Hitler - or a lookalike.

Anyway, the FF are still my faves (although Spider-Man is coming up next) and their stories are still a lot of fun. I like there’s always two or three pages of slice of life stuff in every issue.

Some random stuff:

Sue thinks Ant-Man is cute.

Johnny is more enthusiastic about staying with the micro-world princess than the Fifth Dimension princess. He also keeps having his dates interrupted by superhero business.

Part of Doom’s plan in micro-world is to sell the Fantastic Four to aliens from a different planet. Is there an entire Universe at that scale? It’s not explained.

The President is JFK. We only see his forehead, though, and his wife in silhouette.

The way Alicia senses things around her is wildly inconsistent.

Ben punches Reed. He diffuses the force by stretching up.

The Fantastic Four are famous enough that they can't go anywhere without being mobbed by fans. They get free cruise tickets though.

Reed finds a desiccated seed inside a meteorite. He hopes to study it later as it could be proof of the existence of life in outer space.

Ben's feud with the Yancy Street gang continues. But they also help the team hide from the Molecular Man.

At one point, the Human Torch is practising his aim with a photo of Spider-Man.