BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #210

It was at some point around this time that my local postal carrier delivered my subscription copy of the latest issue of FANTASTIC FOUR–though not before it had already gone on sale and was available at my local outlet. Not buying the book and waiting for my copy proved to be difficult, especially after other comic-book buying friends got their copies and wanted to talk about it. At least the subscription copies were by this time being mailed flat rather than folded in half, but they were still at the mercy of the mails and would occasionally turn up a bit dinged. I had swiftly worked out that even this free subscription might have been more trouble than it was worth, though I was never so flush for funds that I took the plunge and bought an early copy prior to mine being delivered, as I would certainly do today.

I was still enjoying FANTASTIC FOUR and it remained my favorite series. But there was a subtle sense of something being just a hair off and not quite as good as it ought to be. The book was being written by Marv Wolfman, a writer whose work I really liked during this period, and illustrated by artist favorite John Byrne under the steady embellishment of Joe Sinnott. So everything should have been firing on all cylinders. But somehow, the sum wasn’t as good as the individual parts. In particular, the combination of Byrne and Sinnott was somehow lightweight, rubbery, lacking in solidity and punch. In years to come, Byrne has said that he swiftly grew disenchanted with the stories he was illustrating during this run, so that may have been part of it. Another was that Sinnott’s strengths as an inker clashed a bit with Byrne’s. John had an expressive, cartoonish line that was still developing, and Sinnott brought that all back to FF standard but without adjusting any of the composition underneath it. The result was fine, but somehow lacking.

Plot-wise, the series had a lot going on. In deep space, the FF had witnessed the Sphinx gain cosmic-level powers and swear to use them to obliterate the world of his birth, Earth. Looking for a way to stop him, Reed hits on the idea of seeking out Galactus and enlisting his aid against the immortal villain. This despite the fact that Galactus has no motivation to help them. But Reed figures he’s got that covered as well–in exchange for the World-Devourer’s help, Reed will free him from his earlier vow never to consume the Earth. So it’s trading one menace for another, but the devil you know, right? Also, Reed, Ben and Sue are all still suffering the effects of a Skrull aging ray, which is making them grow progressively older at an advanced rate of speed. So on top of everything else, they need to save the Earth before they all collapse and perish.

This story opens with the Thing and the Invisible Girl protecting their spacecraft from a meteor shower while Reed and HERBIE the Robot compute a course through hyperspace. Ben figures that the ship won’t survive long enough to make the jump if he isn’t there knocking down stray meteors, so he tosses Sue back through the airlock and seals it shut. In order to rescue Ben and defeat his sacrifice, the Torch melts his way through the outer wall of the ship, which explodes outward, sending him shooting into space. The Thing is able to catch him, though, and get him back inside a pressurized atmospheric environment inside the ship before he can perish. The science here is a little dodgy, but the scene is really about character and the strong bonds between the protagonists. Anyway, with that drama played out, the FF’s craft makes the hyperspace journey to Galactus’ World-Ship.

Along the way, Wolfman does a little bit of continuity clean-up, as the last time the FF encountered Galactus, he was seemingly destroyed. Which would seem to put a crimp in Reed’s whole plan. Reed therefore recounts how he was monitoring Galactus’ resurrection months before. In any event, the team enters the World-Ship and tracks Galactus down. But no matter what they do–including throwing things at him and zapping him in the face with fireballs, Galactus does not deign to notice them. His built-in security devices do almost murder Sue and Ben along the way, though, providing some incidental action. But the problem now is to get Galactus to parlay with the FF.

But Reed’s got a plan to get Galactus’ attention. Earlier on, the group passed a menagerie of specimens of assorted space animals, and so Reed proposes that they break them all out and herd them towards Galactus’ chamber. This they do, and as expected, Galactus isn’t pleased by this sudden outbreak of chaos. He’s able to restore his bestiary with scant effort, but the disruption is enough to get him to start conversing with the Fantastic Four–which is what Reed wanted in the first place. Of course, as Reed lays out his initial proposition, Galactus is uninterested–he doesn’t care whether the Sphinx destroys the Earth one way or the other. Reed’s proposition that he’ll rescind Galactus’ earlier oath about not consuming the Earth does intrigue the cosmic giant–but he wants something else as well before he’ll render assistance.

And that something else is a new Herald, to replace the silver Surfer, Gabriel the Air-Walker and Firelord, all of whom turned against Galactus at some point. Galactus already has the proper candidate in mind, but he wants the FF to go forth and bring him back. The close here, with the team being teleported away to the herald’s location, feels abrupt to me, as though the story simply ran out of pages–this final page crams a lot of back-and-forth into it in a somewhat surface manner. But that’s where the story was To Be Continued at this juncture. The story wasn’t bad, but it was certainly missing something, and there is the sense that Wolfman and Byrne aren’t entirely pulling in exactly the same direction. It’s possible and even probably that having been co-plotting X-MEN with Chris Claremont and having strong feelings about the Fantastic Four himself, John expected to have more leeway in the storytelling here.