BC: GIANT-SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR #3

My buddy David Steckel and I were both enormous fans of the Fantastic Four, which was one of the things that brought us together in the first place. So we’d regularly let one another borrow and read the assorted issues that we had that he other did not. Which is how I wound up taking this issue of GIANT-SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR #3 home with me at one point to enjoy. This was the only issue that David had in his collection (much of which he’d inherited from some older relative who had outgrown comics) so it was weird and novel to me–like an Annual but definitely not an Annual. Steckel had a few issues of GIANT-SIZE SPIDER-MAN as well, which helped to contextualize this book to me as something that had been part of a now-discontinued line at one point. But how it fit in, I had no real idea.

I’m pretty certain that it was in the pages of this GIANT-SIZE that I got my first look at the somewhat off-brand Fantastic Four of the years immediately preceding when I had started to follow the book. In this period, Medusa had replaced Susan Storm, who had grown estranged from her husband Reed and had left the team. Also, Johnny had started wearing a red FF costume in emulation of the Golden Age Human Torch, which even then I knew had to have been a Roy Thomas-driven decision. Consequently, this period, which fell between the time of the stories being reprinted in MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS and the present was fascinating to me, for all that I didn’t entirely love the couple of stories i was able to sample from this period, this one included. It felt like a relic of another era, even though it had been published in 1974, a time when I was already reading comics, albeit exclusively DC’s at that time.

The story in this issue was co-plotted by regular writer Gerry Conway, who had taken over from Roy and who continued to push the series forward. He was pushing in a bit of a wrong-headed direction in my opinion, but give him points with not being content to stick with the established status quo. Marv Wolfman, then at the outset of his Marvel career, co-plotted and scripted this adventure. And it’s a bit of a strange thing, as there really isn’t any concrete explanation given as to just what the titular Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are. Are they aliens? Gods? Cosmic beings? The text really doesn’t specify. So as usual, just roll with it–they’re badass guys who ride horses through space and who each represent one of the biblical plagues that will precede Armageddon. And the Fantastic Four are going to punch them.

The artwork on this oversized special was the work of penciler Rich Buckler and inker Joe Sinnott. Buckler is a cartoonist who started off showing a great deal of promise, but who quickly fell into a pattern. He had proven adept at aping the visual style of Jack Kirby (often swiping Kirby figures and poses directly in his work) so he was encouraged to steer into that style on FANTASTIC FOUR. so his work often felt like a weak cover band that didn’t have much to offer on its own. (Rich would simultaneously swipe Neal Adams figures on his other assignments. Occasionally, he’d swipe both masters on the same page, leading to a weird visual discordance.) Sinnott did his typical masterful job of keeping the final product looking slick and attractive–he had inked many of the pages that Buckler was using for inspiration, after all, so he was in familiar territory.

The story opens with the aforementioned Four Horsemen returning to Earth after eons away. They promptly move to reclaim the planet, due to the fact that “is the nexus–the celestial center of the civilized worlds”. Which sounds good, if utterly vague. Anyway, to conquer all of the other worlds they’re after, Earth has to be taken first. So Pestilence puts the entire population to sleep for two days with his Coma-Pox, giving all of humanity terrible nightmares. Upon waking, there are riots everywhere, and the Fantastic four take to the streets of Manhattan to try to bring about order. There, they’re attacked by a bunch of random demon-monsters without explanation, who are working for Pestilence, who has set up on top of a skyscraper. Pestilence gives the FF a detail-laden but ultimately sketchy account of the Horsemen’s history before Ben Grimm is able to punch him into oblivion. Reed helpfully explains that Pestilence was simply a disease, not a living being that Ben just killed. Whew! No moral gray area after all, thank the Comics Code!

From there, the FF split up to go after the next two Horsemen, War and Famine. The Torch and Medusa head to Africa where a massive military conflict is taking place. Johnny and Medusa ae, after a setback or two, able to unseat War and remove his helmet–where they find that his visage changes into the likeness of each of them–war is, after all, in all of us. Then he disintegrates just like Pestilence. Meanwhile, Reed an Ben have gone to Cambodia, which is suddenly experiencing a debilitating famine–this despite the presence of food, which nobody can seem to see. Reed and Ben force one guy to eat the rice that’s in front of him, thus breaking the spell and bringing Famine to them. And when Reed wraps Famine up in his elongated body, Famine also disintegrates. But more important life lessons are learned.

Then it’s into the home stretch as everybody converges on the big magilla, Death, at Mount Everest. Death conjures up the death-images of the FF to do battle with them, but Reed is smart enough to have them all trade foes so they aren’t coming into contact with their own demise. In the end, Medusa throws the Thing’s death into Death itself, causing it to vanish as well, and Reed explains half-heartedly that the race that had banished the Horsemen eons before must have left a failsafe in place should they return–one that they activated simply by battling the Horsemen. Yeah, sure, Reed. if you say so. But, hey, the story is wrapped up, so that’s something. It contained a couple of memorable moments, but the big takeaway for me was just how slipshod the plotting seemed to be. The rules of engagement seemed to be whatever the story needed them to be at any given moment and the victory conditions just kind of happened after a requisite number of pages had been reached. In other words, i found this issue to be profoundly underwhelming, for all that it featured my favorite team.

But there was a back-up reprint story, and that one was better. Stemming from FANTASTIC FOUR #21, it showed the FF falling under the sway of the H-ray of the Hate-Monger, a bigot and dangerous demagogue. Also helping out was a pre-SHIELD Nick Fury, who was stated to be working with the CIA as he had since WWII ended. (He had already been promoted to Colonel, though.) The action moves to the small nation of San Gusto, which the Hate-Monger is trying to take over as the hub of a potential empire. But the FF and the old Howler clean his clock, and on the final page, after he’s been killed by a hate-crazed subordinate, the Hate-Monger is unmasked as Adolf Hitler himself! This was a popular end beat in a lot of stories post-WWII, and here scripter Stan Lee adds in some copy to at least raise the notion that he might just be one of the Fuhrer’s many stand-ins rather than the genuine article.