Today, we look at your picks for #52-49 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.
52. Fantastic Four #257 “Fragments”
There is a strong argument to be made that this should be lumped in with the “Trial of Reed Richards” story that occurs a few issues later, but A. I’m already breaking up the initial #242-243 Galactus stuff with the #261-262 Galactus stuff, so might as well break this one up, as well, B. Plenty of people voted for it on its own and C. I think it really DOES stand on its own (as an aside, if you really insist that this shouldn’t stand on its own, the story that theoretically got “bumped” from the Top 60 is the Frightful Four/Brute story rom the late #170s/early #180s).
The main focus of the issue is on Galactus coming to terms with whether he should just allow himself to die, as if the universe would be better off if he just kicked the bucket. He is then visited by Death herself, who convinces him that he serves a purpose (this would be an important focus in Byrne’s later “The Trial of Reed Richards”).
Meanwhile, we also see that Nova has become less and less human, demonstrated when she leads Galactus to the Skrull throneworld where she helps him destroy it (after Galactus decides that, okay, he DOES have to continue eating).
The title, “fragments,” relates to the fact that there are multiple stories involved in the issue, with Johnny Storm getting his own bachelor’s pad and Reed and Sue deciding to move out of the Baxter Building, as well, to try to live a normal life in the suburbs with Franklin, but in a twist (Byrne loved to do twists on standard tropes), they WOULDN’T be leaving the team, they would just commute from Connecticut.
51. Fantastic Four #66-67 “When Opens the Coccoon”
This storyline by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott is fascinating because it goes to show you that the Fantastic Four was such a good comic book that even when Stan Lee would “mess up” Jack Kirby’s plots, the stories were still really good. In this storyline, Kirby came up with the idea of a group of scientists who were Objectivists, with Kirby very clearly satirizing the positions of Objectivism, as the scientists create the “perfect being” and when they create him, they are shocked to discover that he finds them terribly flawed and kills them.
Lee almost certainly thought that the edge of the story was too sharp, so he turned the scientists into typical criminal scientists and when they met their creation (then known as Him, later known as Adam Warlock), he teleports them away rather than kills them…
It’s still a strong two-parter, with stunning Kirby art and a great role for Alicia Masters (once again, she is the tether to humanity for an alien being).
50. Fantastic Four #32 “Death of a Hero”
This issue by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Chic Stone sort of shows how almost manic the early days of the Fantastic Four were, when there was this sense that you would never know where the next issue would go next, since ideas were coming fast and furious to Kirby at the time and since comic books were still mostly one-shot stories, the idea of procedural dramas was not quite as attuned (but obviously Kirby and Lee saw the importance of a shared universe by this point and that soon led to more and more multiple part stories) but here, we met Sue and Johnny Storm’s prisoner father in the previous issue and now, he has ostensibly escaped prison and has taken on the identity of the Invincible Man and Sue and Johnny naturally have some trouble taking on their father, so the people of New York were very understanding of thi…oh wait, this is the Marvel Universe, so nope, the citizens all quickly turned on them…
Of course, we readers already saw that the Invincible Man is an impostor of Franklin Storm and Reed figures out that he is secretly the Super-Skrull and so they get Franklin Storm back from the Skrulls, but those shapeshifting jerks booby trapped Storm and so he sacrifices himself to save his children and he literally dies a hero.
49. Fantastic Four #267 “A Small Loss”
As I noted above, John Byrne loved to play against tropes during his epic run on the Fantastic Four, and one of his most famous examples was the one-off story, “A Small Loss,” where Sue Richards’ second pregnancy is having a problem, just like her original pregnancy did back in Fantastic Four Annual #6. As per typical Marvel tradition, there is someone who can help her, but it’s someone that you would be hard-pressed to imagine would help – Doctor Otto Octavius!
Doc Ock was dealing with some severe mental issues at the time, so Reed had to break through to get him to help him and Reed impresses the other psychiatrists by showing that he is truly a Renaissance mind, as he knows enough about mental health to get through to Otto in a way no one else could. However, Octavius’ subconscious believes that this is all a trick, so when Reed comes to bring Octavius to Sue, Octopus’ arms break free and they go on a rampage and are reunited with Octavius.
However, Reed eventually convinced Otto that he legitimately just needs his help in saving his unborn child. Otto is touched and agrees to help. They rush to the hospital where they arrive to learn that…Sue has already miscarried…
What a stunning final page and what a shocking turn of events, with Byrne playing with conventions in a way that few superhero books were doing at the time (later writers would somehow come up with a way to reverse Sue’s miscarriage, which is why Reed and Sue have two children).
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