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Today, we look at your picks for #48-45 of the greatest Fantastic Four stories ever told!
As always, you voted, I counted the votes and now we count them down, four at a time. If I don’t add a date for the series, it means it is the original volume of whatever series I’m talking about.
48. Fantastic Four (1998) #60 “Inside Out”
When Jack Kirby and Stan Lee introduced the Fantastic Four 60 years ago, that first issue was packed with stuff clearly designed to make it stand out. They practically threw everything at that issue to make it land and it obviously did. As the years went on, there rarely was ever quite that same sense of “we have to get so much across in this first issue” that there was in that original issue, but the debut of the Mark Waid, Mike Wieringo, Karl Kesel and Paul Mounts creative team in this issue come pretty darn close.
The book had a gimmick first issue price of 9 cents (nominally the cheapest a comic book could ever get, the comic was advertised as “The World’s Cheapest Magazine”) and boy, if you were ever going to basically give away a single issue of a comic book, this would be way up there in terms of getting people to come back, as it is just, well, fantastic.
The conceit of the issue is that the Fantastic Four has hired a new PR firm and one of their associates is sent to hang out with the FF to gain an angle on their marketing campaign, including a new Fantastic Four comic book. He thinks he is going to see one thing, but the FF take him on such a wild ride he realizes that, at the end of the day, the Fantastic Four are about family more than anything.
However, this leads to the big twist of the issue, a commentary on why Reed Richards is even bothering with a marketing firm. Why does he care so much about making the FF famous? As it turns out, Reed naturally blames himself for the accident that gave them their powers and he believes that if he could make his friends all celebrities, that would make things easier to deal with…
(The late, great Wieringo is so amazing in this issue. Just look at the little details like using his powers to make his daughter laugh. Tremendous)
He even named himself the outlandish Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four to take the heat, as it were, from the others. Make HIM seem like the guy with an ego so that people treat the other three even better in the press. Clever stuff.
47. Fantastic Four #28 “We Have to Fight the X-Men!”
Naturally, during the Silver Age, readers mostly wanted to see superheroes fight against each other. There was even an issue of Journey Into Mystery that is specifically about Thor talking to some young fans who are obsessed with who would win in a fight between Thor and the Hulk (amusingly, Thor is right there with him. It drives him nuts, too). The trick, though, was to get the heroes to fight in a way that would actually be clever and Jack Kirby and Stan Lee came up with a great one in this issue (inked by Chic Stone).
The Mad Thinker and the Puppet Master team- up and use one of Puppet Master’s puppets to take control of Professor X and through him, the X-Men. This leads to the X-Men visiting the Baxter Building and then attacking the FF…
Eventually, Reed figures out what is going on when the teams have a rematch and the Mad Thinker’s booby traps are making things even harder for the Fantastic Four. The sight of the Thing hearing that they had to go HELP the X-Men while the Thing was still smarting from fighting them is a delight.
46. Fantastic Four #503-508 “Authoritative Action”
After the events of “Unthinkable,” Doom is seemingly dead, leaving Latveria exposed and so Reed decides that the only safe thing to do is for the Fantastic Four to take over, whether they were asked to do so or not. When you have a country that is all about being ruled by a despot, deposing the despot with his most famous enemies “shockingly” doesn’t always come with the best PR, especially when your big announcement is accompanied by you putting up your own flag in the castle…
However, the more unhinged that Reed acts, the more clear it is that something else entirely is going on. Reed’s plan to stay here means REALLY staying there, as he has a plan that will make sure Doom will no longer ever be a threat but by doing so, Reed will be trapped for eternity as well! When the other members of the team naturally won’t let him make that sacrifice, it ends up with Doom taking over more than one of their bodies and ultimately one of the team….dead?! This storyline, written Mark Waid and drawn by Howard Porter, Norm Rapmund and Matt Milla, made a drastic impact on the FF.
45. Fantastic Four #280-284 “With Malice Towards All”
This Fantastic Four storyline by John Byrne, Jerry Ordway and Al Gordon was especially weird because a good chunk of it is sort of “simulcast” as part of Secret Wars II, which saw the Beyonder visit Earth. So fans got to see parts of this story in both series. The Hate-Monger is working along with the Psycho-Man (who had escaped from the Microverse) and the two transform Sue Richards into the evil (and powerful) , Malice, who almost kills She-Hulk before the dramatic reveal at the end of Fantastic Four #280….
After Reed breaks Sue out of the brainwashing they have done to create Malice, the key to the story is then seeing Sue seek out revenge on the Psycho-Man, even leading the Fantastic Four to the Microverse to hunt the Psycho-Man down and make him pay. It is a side of Sue that we rarely get to see and even more dramatic is how the trauma of the situations inspires Sue to change her name the Invisible WOMAN instead of the Invisible GIRL.
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