Today is the 60th anniversary of the release of the first issue of Fantastic Four, so I thought it only proper to start our countdown of YOUR votes for the greatest Fantastic Four stories ever told today.
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.
60. FF #1-5 “Tomorrow”
The concept of FF (the opening arc was by Jonathan Hickman, Steve Epting, Barry Kitson and Paul Mounts) was that the Fantastic Four felt that it could no longer truly BE the Fantastic Four following the seeming death of one of its founding members, the Human Torch. The team had already begun to work with a group of super-intelligent young people known as the Future Foundation and so the FF just adopted that name, while still maintaining a superhero group within that structure, with four people on it. Spider-Man joined the team in honor of his late friend, the Human Torch (Spider-Man was also smart enough that he fit the other structure of the team). One of the big shocks in the first issue was that Valeria Richards invited Doctor Doom to join the team. Reed begrudgingly went along with it and they helped Doom recover his memories. We soon learned that in exchange for helping him with his memories, Doom agreed to help bring down Reed Richards.
Well, the twist was that the “Reed Richards” that Doom was talking about was a group of four members of the so-called “Council of Reeds,” a group of Reeds from alternate realities who had all managed to get to the point of being able to contact each other, but only our Reed, of all of them, still had the love of his family in his life. A lot of the Reeds tuned bad and in FF #4, Reed holds a meeting of various enemies of his to try to figure out how to take down, well, himself…
The opening arc ends before everything is resolved, with the return of the Inhumans to Attilan.
59. Fantastic Four #357-358 “The Monster Among Us”
Tom DeFalco, Paul Ryan and Danny Bulanadi began their run on the Fantastic Four with a seemingly innocuous team-up of the Thing and the New Warriors, but at the end of the issue, he was given some information by the Puppet Master, the father of Alicia Masters. Alicia Masters, of course, had been the longtime girlfriend of the Thing, but the Thing had broken up with her soon before Secret Wars and he had pursued other relationships while he stayed behind on Battleworld after the events of Secret Wars ended. While Thing was gone (She-Hulk filled in for him on the Fantastic Four), Alicia and the Human Torch, Johnny Storm, grew close and began to date. The Thing wasn’t happy about it when he retuned, but he eventually got over it and in Fantastic Four #300, Johnny and Alica got married.
Well, when DeFalco, Ryan and Bulanadi took over, their big twist was that Johnny and Alicia actually DIDN’T get married! You see, the “Alicia” that Johnny was married to was a Skrull spy!!
Lyja was a Skrull who was assigned to spy on the Fantastic Four, but as soon as she replaced the real Alicia, the Thing broke up with her and so she adapted and started dating Johnny. Of course, she actually fell in love with him, but Johnny can’t believe her. The Fantastic Four head to Skrull territory in Fantastic Four #358 (the 30th anniversary of the series) to go rescue the real Alicia. DeFalco/Ryan/Bulanadi would remain on the book for over 50 issues!
58. Fantastic Four (2018) #12-13 “The Honeymoon Crasher”
Many years later, in the current volume of the Fantastic Four, the Thing and the real Alicia Masters finally got married. Their honeymoon, though, was quite the scene. In Fantastic Four #12 (by Dan Slott, Sean Izaakse and Marcio Menyz), Ben and Alicia were about to spend some time together flesh-to-flesh, as during the Hickman run on Fantastic Four, Ben gained the ability to become human for a day (and that was gradually expanded to being two weeks), and the transformation was just about to kick in when, well, the Hulk showed up!
The Hulk was being controlled by Alicia’s stepfather, the Puppet Master, who was not happy about the marriage and so a brutal fight broke out. Ben knew that he had to finish things very quickly or else the Hulk would literally kill him when he turned back to his normal self, plus, the best time to defeat a Hulk is early, when the Hulk hasn’t gotten angrier (and thus stronger) and so the Thing just put all of his might into one punch and successfully knocked the Hulk out, while shattering his own arm in the process. Ben spent his whole two weeks as a human in the hospital in a recuperative coma!
57. Fantastic Four Annual #17 “Legacy”
Sharon Selleck was an interesting supporting character. She was the roommate of Johnny Storm’s one-time girlfriend, Frankie Raye, and she just sort of popped up here and there. Well, in this tense story, she is stuck in a small town that clearly doesn’t want her there. Things are really creepy there. This is John Byrne doing the Twilight Zone by way of the Fantastic Four and it is brilliant.
The Fantastic Four eventually make their way to the town where they discover the truth behind the town’s bizarre behavior (and, well, you know, shape-shifting). Way back in the second issue of the Fantastic Four, the Fantastic Four defeated the shapeshifting Skrulls and Reed hypnotized them into becoming cows (it was pretty much that or death).
Well, sure enough, this town’s milk supply was Skrull cow “milk” (which wasn’t really milk, of course)! This clever idea later influenced the Skrull Kill Krew by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar.
Come back tomorrow for the next batch!
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