Random Back Issues #112 - Fantastic Four #296

Yes, more of that.

The 25th anniversary issue of Fantastic Four feels like it's following up on the conclusion of The Thing's series, where Ben was mutating further and decided to go off alone to die (pausing briefly to save the West Coast Avengers in issue 10 of their book).

Here, though, Ben is rocking (no pun intended) his traditional look as he tromps through the rain to where Reed's defective rocket crashed down. Bemoaning how he's still a 'walkin', breathin' monster', Ben enlists pilot and childhood friend Hopper Hertnecky to fly him to Monster Island. Hopper then visits the FF to tell them, Ben asked to be left alone, because he knew Reed would track him down sooner or later.

On the way out the door Hopper also, correctly, points out it's Reed's fault Ben's how he is, and makes his own plea to drop the issue. While Johnny flies around stopping bank robbers and beating himself up about dating Alicia, Sue finds Reed brooding and tells him, no, it's not Reed's fault Ben was transformed by cosmic rays Reed swore his spaceship was shielded against, and that Ben has been tormenting Reed all these years by sulking over his fate. His fate of being transformed into a rock monster because Reed was too certain of his own genius to allow more testing on his ship before asking Ben to pilot it.

Amazing that Sue manages to be more unlikable than Reed. Of course, she's the one who called Ben a coward for expressing doubts about the cosmic rays in the first place. So maybe she's just covering her own ass. I'm starting to think Sue deserves being married to Reed Richards.

Anyway, Reed's determined to have it out with Ben one last time, so the Fantastic Three fly to Monster Island, leaving She-Hulk, Alicia, and Wyatt behind. They find themselves immediately overwhelmed by all the monsters.

On Monster Island. Because they didn't bring the super-strong member of their team. What genius is driving this clown car?

They wake up to find The Thing standing over them, dressed like his new pal. That's right, Mole Man's got an entire society for ugly people, and Ben's his general! Having found a place he thinks he belongs, Ben wants to apologize to Reed for 'taking it out on him all those years.' I choose to believe Ben's just saying this to get them to go the fuck away. The last thing Reed Richards needs is people apologizing to him. Ben decides to be a good host and give them a tour, including showing them the enormous machine Mole Man promises will cause a new island to form in the middle of the Pacific, just for their society.

Reed's suspicious, especially once Mole Man calls them back, worried about such a breach of security. Then Alicia shows up, having asked Hopper to fly her to Monster Island. Quite why he listened, after insisting they should leave his friend be, I don't know. I guess Ben Grimm just has lousy taste in friends. Before she passes out, Alicia mumbles she had to come, so great was her fear of what Ben might do to Johnny. Ben later has an unproductive conversation with Alicia, where she says he was too self-absorbed and she needed someone gentle and understanding.

Re-read those qualifications, then consider she's dating Johnny Storm. Alicia might just be an idiot.

In a sour mood, Ben finds Reed and Sue making a ruckus looking for Johnny. Reed of course insists Ben needs to listen, so Ben punches him in the face. But it turns out Mole Man took revenge for Ben, using some machine to make Johnny, gasp, physically unattractive! Ben orders the lot of them sent to the surface, but Reed, never one to know when not to poke the bull, is determined to go back down. He's sure Mole Man's machine is going to create a new island through vulcanism, the resultant tsunamis killing millions.

He also describes Ben as, 'an innocent dupe whose only mistake is putting his trust in the wrong man!' What else is new? Meanwhile, in trying to get answers out of Mole Man, Ben learns his buddy has a private holosuite where he pretends to hang out at parties with conventionally attractive women.

Confronted with the distressing reality his new friend would rather be with the pretty people up above and not the "uglies" he claims are like him, Ben is not in a great mood when he finds his old friends trying to trash island-maker. But he listens to Reed and helps wreck it, which causes the entire place to collapse. Johnny's hit by falling ceiling and Ben carries him to Mole Man's lab, and convinces him to undo what he did to Johnny. Matchstick can't be moved for 7 minutes, so Ben stands there holding up the ceiling while Mole Man retreats to seeming certain death in his crumbling dream world. He would, at minimum return in Byrne's second Sensational She-Hulk stint, trying to force her to marry him.

Reed, Sue, Alicia and Hopper watch the island collapse from an inflatable raft. Reed's determined to swim(?) down to get Ben and Johnny, over Sue's objections, but the guys surface and it's now six people, including a 500-pound rock guy, in one inflatable raft. But Ben seems willing to rejoin the FF rather than use Reed for dental floss, so, whoo-hoo?

{4th longbox, 112th comic. Fantastic Four #296, by Jim Shooter and Stan Lee (writers), Barry Windsor-Smith, Kerry Gammill, Ron Frenz, Al Milgrom, John Buscema, Marc Silvestri, and Jerry Ordway (pencilers), Windsor-Smith, Vince Colletta, Bob Wiacek, Klaus Janson, Steve Leialoha, Joe Rubenstein, and Joe Sinnott (inkers) Glynis Oliver (colorist), John Workman (letterer)}

Saturday Splash Page #53

 

"Light Show," in Uncanny X-Men #247, by Chris Claremont (writer), Marc Silvestri (penciler), Dan Green (inker), Glynis Oliver (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

The Australian era began with the X-Men's deaths. Fall of the Mutants required them to give their lives in a mystical ritual performed by Forge to seal away a trickster god (sadly, not Loki). But Roma undid it, because chaos is necessary, but only after everyone believes the X-Men are dead.

So the team leans into the idea, as Storm figures they can more effectively strike at those who mean harm to mutants if those foes think the X-Men are no longer a factor. That this includes not telling any friends or loved ones the truth is a bit sketchier, but I wouldn't say the plan woks terribly well anyway, so it's mostly academic. As usual, "proactive" superheroics fail.

The Outback era seems to be a polarizing one. I see people who love it, and people who hate it (often, but not exclusively, related to the team letting their loved ones continue to grieve). While there are more lighthearted issues, including one drawn by Rob Liefeld that spoofs DC's Invasion! event, the team seems cursed. While taking command of the Reavers' base in the middle of the Australian desert does limit attacks against their home, their being presumed dead doesn't convey a ton of advantages. They still seem to be performing triage.

Stopping a Brood plot that involves specifically targeting mutants that's already in progress. This is the era when Genosha as a pretty thinly (if at all) veiled apartheid South Africa is introduced, with a mutant underclass treated as test subjects to be experimented on and altered at the will of the homo sapien overclass. The X-Men only get involved because Maddy Pryor takes a job flying someone Genosha wants back, and they go ahead and abduct Maddy to keep her quiet.

The isolation doesn't seem to do good things to the team. Maddy accepts a demon's offer, thinking it's a just dream she's having, which eventually leads to the whole mess where she recovers her infant son, only to try and sacrifice him so Scott and Jean can be portrayed as the "proper" parents or some shit. Havok gets romantically involved with Madelyne, and that whole circumstance does a number on him (Claremont seems to abandon Havok trying to recover Polaris from Malice's grasp.)

With her powers neutralized, Rogue gets assaulted by Genoshan guards used to taking what they please, prompting Carol Danvers' psyche to take control, something it starts doing more regularly. That Storm in particular is not sympathetic to Rogue's situation puts more stress. I feel like it's telling that Rogue and Dazzler's relationship actually seems to improve to one of at least mutual trust, but it isn't like Alison has a lot of options for girl friends at this point.

(It's a running notion that Nightcrawler does horribly as a team leader, but based on the 50 issues after she sends Cyclops packing, there's plenty of evidence Storm sucks at it, too. The Morlocks would no doubt agree, if they hadn't been mostly murdered at the time.) 

Storm gets captured by Nanny and the Orphan-Maker, age regressed and eventually meets, ugh, Gambit. Logan has wandered off during all this to handle personal business, and by the time he comes back, the team is gone, because Psylocke has telepathically coerced them into giving up and retreating through the Siege Perilous. Logan gets shredded by Lady Deathstrike and the Reavers, and it's only Radical Teen Jubilee that manages to save him.

You could look at the whole stretch from 200 up to 255 or so as part of theme on how people react to constant high-levels of stress, with the answer apparently being, "badly". The X-Men are hurt and hounded and just trying to keep themselves together and find someplace safe for a while. So they hide away in the middle of nowhere, cut off all contact with anyone close to them, abandon any pretense of teaching or guiding the next generation of mutants (and I don't think X-Factor was doing much of that by this point, either), in favor of focusing on hitting back. The Australian era X-Men are almost a proto-X-Force, minus the pouches and firearms.

Marc Silvestri remains the primary series artist  up to about the time the team falls apart entirely. His works gets a bit stronger as he goes along, cuts out some of the excess cross-hatching and shading. But he seems able to handle the quieter or lighter moments better. It helps Claremont is occasionally able to go silent and let the art tell the story.

After the team shatters, we're into the Jim Lee era, baby! Psylocke body-swapped into an Asian ninja lady to be an assassin for the Mandarin, plus Jubilee wearing an outfit deliberately reminiscent of Robin's, while Wolverine talks to psychic phantoms of Carol Danvers and Nick Fury (weird Acts of Vengeance tie-in, to be sure)! Rogue running around in the Savage Land in relatively little! Gambit! Er, well, you know, it's a mixed bag.

Saturday Splash Page #4

 

"Everybody Wants Magneto," in X-Men vs. Avengers #2, by Roger Stern (writer), Marc Silvestri (penciler), Josef Rubenstein (inker), Christie Scheele (colorist) Joe Rosen (letterer)

No, not Avengers vs. X-Men, the 2012ish tentpole event that gave us Wolverine killing polar bears in Antarctica. I'm not touching that crock of shit with a ten-foot pole. 

This 4-issue mini-series from 1987, running almost concurrently with Fantastic Four vs. X-Men (see Sunday Splash Page #190), which started two months prior. That story focused a little more on the desperate situation the X-Men were in after Mutant Massacre. Hiding out on Muir Island, searching for some way to save Shadowcat's life, especially once Reed Richards turned them down.

That mini-series did spend some time on the difficulty Magneto faced trying to move to the other side of the tracks after joining the X-Men. The FF met his plea for help with suspicion and anything that started to go wrong only reinforced their doubts. This mini-series leans more heavily into that side of things, as well as the fallout of Magneto's interrupted trial in Uncanny X-Men #200. 

Parts of his old Asteroid M base fall to Earth, and Magneto goes to make sure some important devices he left behind are either destroyed, or don't fall into other hands. The Soviet Super-Soldiers are on his trail, determined to bring him in for sinking that Soviet submarine, dead or alive. Preferably dead. The Avengers are not OK with this, for various reasons. Thor thinks it's dishonorable, She-Hulk and Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau) question the legality of it. Captain America just really thinks Magneto needs to stand trial for his crimes, and does not agree with the finding of a previous court that this is a different Magneto from in his early years because of that Defenders story where Magneto got de-aged then grew up again from a baby.

I'm not sure about Roger Stern having Captain America compare Magneto to Hitler, when he says the world must not be denied its chance to see Magneto stand trial the way they were with Hitler. That feels like a bad analogy to use, for a host of reasons.

In the middle of all this are the X-Men, unsure where their responsibilities lie. Magneto is being cagey about what he's after, and keeps taking off alone. He's actually trying to keep the X-Men from being dragged into his mess, but since they're already dragged in, Wolverine feels like Mags is playing them for patsies and ditching them once they aren't useful. Should they make Magneto stand trial? Can he get a fair trial? He's been an X-Man for about five minutes, how much leash do they give him? Do they keep trusting him until he explicitly goes bad, and would that be too late?

On top of all that, they're outgunned. If not by the Soviet Super-Soldiers, definitely by the Avengers. Especially when you consider this is an Avengers' roster with Monica Rambeau, when she's being written by Roger Stern. Stern really plays her up as this weapon neither of the other teams has any defense against. She can slip through Magneto's force fields, and catch up to Rogue or the Blackbird effortlessly. Short out Titanium Man's armor when he's possibly overpowering Thor (who is under Hela's curse of having brittle bones at this point.) Although Stern came up with a vague excuse for Longshot and Psylocke not to be around (they "stayed behind" while the rest of the team went to lounge at a lake somewhere). I suspect a telepath would have leveled the odds at least a little against Captain Marvel, and leveling odds is what Longshot does best.

But this way it plays into the feeling of the X-Men being off-balance and just scrambling to stay alive while under attack from enemies on all sides. There's too many threats, too few people they can trust, no mansion in Westchester or any other safe haven. They just don't have enough firepower to stand up to it. So they have to play hit-and-run, try to hide and sneak around.

The last issue is written by Tom DeFalco and Jim Shooter, and drawn by Keith Pollard and Rubenstein, with three inkers. I don't know if there was some editorial difference of opinion leading to Stern and/or Silvestri getting pulled, or it was just a deadline crunch. It sure feels like they decided to change the ending for some reason.