Marvel 1978 Week--Fantastic Four #201

You youngsters out there may not remember this, but there was a time when the Fantastic Four was actually published on a monthly basis!! That's right, my incredulous friends, "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine" didn't appear only 7 or 8 times in a calender year back then--how quaint!!

And, in a twist for Marvel of December 1978, the FF had creative teams who didn't need fill-in issues!!

So let's see what we have to work with today:

Well, it's not the most beautiful cover out there, but it does get the job done--and every scene depicted on the cover actually happens on the inside!!

And our creators:

Marv Wolfman was in the midst of a long run of the FF. We just missed issue #200 (dammit), a multi-part epic that ended in a classic Reed vs. Doctor Doom fight to the finish (another history note: back in the day, Doom wasn't a lackey who sat around tiny tables waiting for marching orders from a failed Spider-Man villain--I know, who woulda thought?!). And Wolfman was about to embark on an 11 issue arc that would take the FF gallivanting around the galaxy, show us the empowerment of Terrax as Galactus' new Herald, bring us an epic Galactus vs. Sphinx showdown for the fate of the Earth, resolve plotlines from Wolfman's sadly-canceled Nova series AND bring in a Tomb of Dracula villain (really!!). Wolfman was nothing if not ambitious.

And nothing against Keith Pollard, but the art star here is Joltin' Joe Sinnott, who for seemingly a million years managed to give a consistent look to the FF universe, no matter who the artist was. This just looks Fantastic Four, down to its very fibers.

So anyway, given that we're between epics, Wolfman & Co are going to give us a nice little cool down story:

Yup, Doctor Doom is defeated, and Latveria is a democracy!!

Yeah, that'll take. (PRO-TIP: Zorba, democratic leaders usually don't wear crowns...just a thought...)

I won't oversell this story to you...as you can no doubt tell from the title, it's going to be the old "our HQ's defense systems turn against us" chestnut. But the main focus of the issue is reuniting our heroes as one big happy family:

So Reed is still Reed:

Johnny and Sue are still Johnny and Sue:


And Ben...well, of course he's Ben!!

It's comfort food for the soul to see the FF like this. But wait: does something sinister lurk in our newly happy home?

But before we get to the menace, here's something you don't see much of these days: a schematic of the Baxter Building!!!

As is wont in this type of story, each member of the team must be attacked by a manifestation of technology gone wild. Reed must deal with an out of control science experiment...



Benjy has to deal with wayward exercise equipment...



Sue is having more wardrobe troubles...


And Johnny is getting hosed.


Fortunately, through team work and good luck, our heroes manage to escape:


(although they never do tell us how Reed escaped from Microbe 201-B...there's a great ret-con idea...for the past 30 years it hasn't been Reed Richards, as he was replaced by the dastardly microbe...) (except they later acknowledged their flub and explained Reed's escape in the letters page in #204...sigh, there goes my No-Prize)

Anyway, Reed gives everybody their Die Hard tasks...

...which inevitably means running a gantlet of techno-based terror, including gas...

...lasers AND sonics...

...and of course, robots.

Sue saves the day!!

And Reed and company decide to remain a team!! (Oh, by the way, remember how it was apparently forbidden to show Clark and Pa Kent quaffing a brew on a recent Action Comics cover?!? Well, to hell with that--the FF is swilling champagne, baby!! That's how we roll, Marvel Style!!)

Man, I love the jumbo-size glass Ben has.

Anyway, we don't figure out why the Baxter Building was malfunctioning, until:

...a question we're still asking in 2008. But seriously, it turns out that Quasimodo the Living Computer tapping into the FF's computers for his own nefarious purposes....

Well, there we are. Not a brilliant issue, but a fun time-wasting romp, reuniting and repurposing our heroes for the next buncha issues. It's like comfort food (unlike the Millar and Hitch FF, which is like bland take-out food, and the delivery man never gets there, and when he does the food is cold and tasteless...)

On the letters page:

That's right, Bart Watts, that fall would see the debut of the Torchless FF, with...Herbie the Robot!!


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHLesson: appreciate the cartoons you have today...they're soooo much better than what I had growing up...

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

Thor #278 was the final issue in the first part of Roy Thomas' awesomely ambitious run on the God of Thunder. In this first part of the arc, Odin went about creating a "false"Ragnorak to trick the forces of evil into attacking before the proper time, thus whooping them and moving the "real" Ragnorak further back. He went so far as to create another Thor, Red Norvell, to die at the hands of the Midgard Serpent. But that was only the beginning, as, after a handful of fill-in issues, Thomas unleashed an 18-issue epic, one insanely long story that worked the Eternals and Celestials into Asgardian continuity, explained the part Thor and Odin played in Wagner's Ring Cycle (seriously), and finally told us who Thor's mother was (Odin schtupped the Planet Earth!!). Oh, and Thor saved the Earth from the Celestials' judgment.

It was crazy long, it involved a lot of characters who were never really popular, it tied Thor's continuity into a bunch of operas--no wonder nobody remembers it. But it was one of the great, unheralded runs on Thor...