MRL - Fantastic Four (1961) #28-30, Annual #2

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Fantastic Four (1961) #28-30, Annual #2 - Stan Lee/Jack Kirby

 

It’s the Fantastic Four vs the X-Men! But only because the Mad Thinker and the Puppet Master are interfering.

The Mad Thinker has come up with another plan to destroy the Fantastic Four. First, using his powers, he deduced the appearance of the leader of the X-Men - Professor X hasn’t been photographed in action, unlike his students. Second, the Puppet Master sculpts a doll of the Professor with an extra dose of his radioactive clay - which is an interesting look at how his powers work.

He takes some effort, but the Puppet Master takes over the Professor’s mind and the Mad Thinker’s plan is put to execution.

The X-Men take their helicopter to the Baxter Building, where the FF are happy to receive them - at first. With the element of surprise on their side, the X-Men attack and manage to take Sue hostage. They take their helicopter to a seemingly empty plain, that just happens to be booby trapped against the FF.

The Dreadful Duo make their appearance, in order to gloat. The X-Men - who had not been very happy about the Professor’s orders to fight the FF - are dismayed to learn he’s under the Puppet Master’s control. They receive a mental command to sleep, but Beast is strong enough to resist it and destroys the Professor’s doll.

The X-Men and the Fantastic Four briefly team-up to fight the Mad Thinker’s Awesome Android - who can absorb and use the powers used against him - while the duo escapes. Professor X uses his mental powers to defeat the android and the two teams depart in friendly terms.

Nest, the return of the Watcher - and the Red Ghost and his Apes. The story starts in Yancy Street, where the FF are investigating crime reports - and being “attacked” by the Yancy Street Gang. They return home, defeated for the moment.

Alicia and Ben have a bit of trouble - both think they should break up, because the other would be better off - but they work things up. Johnny tries to distract everyone from the mushiness with the mail, and the FF get lured back to Yancy Street.

Only, it wasn’t the local gang, it was the Red Ghost, looking for revenge. He kidnaps the FF - although Johnny is the taken hostage this time - back to the Moon, where he plans to abandon them.

Sue protects the team with an invisible shield, trapping enough air that they can (barely) make it to the Blue Area, where the Watcher lives. The Watcher isn’t home, but he projects his image from a distant galaxy, and warns the FF to be careful with the many inventions that are too advanced for them to understand.

Still, there are some things Reed recognizes. He uses a power ray to bring the Red Ghost’s ship back down and the FF fight the Apes to a stalemate. The Red Ghost confronts Reed, Sue tackles him and the Red Ghost falls trough some kind of portal. The Apes get the ship working again, leaving the FF stranded - until the Watcher interferes, because he doesn’t want squatters in his place.

The FF take a vacation to Transylvania, where they hear about Diablo, an alchemist so dangerous he has been trapped in his castle for a century. Unfortunately, he manages to put the only person strong enough to release him on a trance. The Thing then pledges to serve Diablo for a year, in exchange for a potion that returns him to normal - he’s halfway there already, and it’s firmly uncanny valley fuel.

Diablo starts peddling his potions, promising all kinds of miracles, to everybody. The problem is they only work temporarily. Once they start wearing off, the FF feel free to attack him and rescue Ben. He’s imprisoned in an unbreakable glass coffin and, guess what? The potion wears off, Ben gets free and chases Diablo back into his crypt. He then makes the castle collapse on top of it and Johnny melts the rubble, trapping Diablo forever - or until next time.

The Annual is all about Doctor Doom. First, backstory!

Doom’s father was a Romani healer who couldn't save a Baron's wife. Fearing retribution - rightly so - he runs with little Victor. The Baron's men don't catch up with them, but the weather does, and the older Doom dies due to exposure.

The younger Doom swears revenge on the world. And he has the means to accomplish it: smart, charming, good looking and with a chest of magical artefacts, inherited from his sorceress mother.

Doom grows up and his inventions seem to fall in two camps: snake oil/trinkets to mess it other Latverians or arms to defend his tribe. He attracts the attention of an American professor, who invites him to attend college in the US.

Doom accepts, dreaming of what access to better tech will allow him to do.

In the first day of college, Doom meets Reed Richards and it's enemies at first sight. On Doom’s part - Reed was just trying to befriend a fellow scientist, but Doom has no time for his inferiors, i. e. everyone else.

Reed befriends Ben Grimm instead and they're both the better for it.

Doom does a dangerous experiment and gets himself disfigured.

NB we never see his face. His disfigurement could be on par with movie!Phantom of the Opera and Doom’s ego is just filling out the rest.

His recklessness gets him expelled from college, so Doom travels to Tibet to study the mystic arts - not with the Ancient One, to be clear. There he forges his armour and his mask, with a secret mechanism so that only Doom can open it.

Then he returns to Latveria and becomes its secret ruler - secret in the sense that there's a prime-minister and there's also rumours that the real ruler of Latveria is a mysterious tyrant in an iron armour.

It should also be noted that every time we see Latveria, the story is suddenly set 100 years in the past.

Last time we saw Doom in present day, he was hurling away in the deep space. Lucky for him, Rama-tut is passing by and rescues him before Doom runs out of oxygen.

The two men talk long enough to realize they might be related. After all, Rama-tut inherited his time travel machine from his ancestor, Doom. Doom wonders if they're not, in fact, the same man and, in that case, they being together might cause some sort of temporal snafu. (Also, wouldn't one of them remember time travelling to become the other?)

Still, they leave in good terms, each to his present time. Rather remarkable for two egotistic villains.

Back in New York, Doom comes with an infallible plan to destroy the Fantastic Four, once and for all. Again.

We find our heroes almost crashing the Fantasticar in the middle of the highway. Fortunately, only one car suffers light damage. The owner is very displeased, though, which sets Ben off and he causes greater damage to the car.

A bystander intervenes and buys the car. He then asks the Thing to finish destroying it, hoping to get a modern art piece out of it.

The FF receive an invitation to attend a dinner in their honour at the Latverian embassy. Sue is excited about showing off a new evening gown, but they’re asked to attend in their uniforms.

The next step in Doom’s plan is a toast to the FF with a special drink.Reed is the only one suspicious enough not to drink and, therefore, is the only one not to be plagued by Doom engineered visions.Ben and Johnny start a fight and Sue sees Reed kissing another woman and then making fun of her for being distraught.

This could be the end of the Fantastic Four, but Doom takes a moment to angst and looks at his face for the first time in years. It looks the same and he fires a gun at the mirror, breaking the tension between Sue and Reed.

They burst into Doom’s room and Sue uses her shield to protect Reed and to force Doom - who wasn't aware of this power - out of the window.

Sue and Reed make peace, despite her foolishness - because, you know, when Sue acts upset or emotional, she's a female; when Ben and Johnny fight up and down the hallways over a joke, it's just business as usual. Later on, Reed tries to leave Sue behind for the final confrontation with Doom, to which everyone objects, rightfully. It's like Reed decided to channel the worst aspects from the Fantastic Four Season One comic and I don't like it.

Anyway, Doom is waiting for the FF in the Baxter Building, protected by a force field. Reed has a device for such an occasion, but he needs Johnny to charge it with his nova flame. Johnny doesn’t let go in time, leaving out of combat, but Doom is susceptible to both Ben and Sue now.

But his real fight is with Reed. He offers Doom a toast, before they embark on a mental contest with the Encephalo-gun: the participant with lower intellectual ability will be destroyed.

Doom believes himself the winner and leaves victorious, but Reed had spiked his drink with same berry juice Doom used on the FF and proves to have the greater mental capability.

Unlike Doom, he has no need to gloat. And he still hopes Doom can change. Which is a better note to end on than the chauvinistic crap from earlier.