He must, he must, he must increase his bust. This issue is actually a reprint of Fantasitic Four #107. This was a formative book for me when I was ten and found it under my friend Ira's bed. I stole it from him and read it over and over. It was so good, it had everything you could ever want from a FF comic.
Weird-ass experiments involving the Thing. That's the Human Torch piling the pressure on old Reed.
But Reed gets fed up and starts bitching out on everyone. "Shut up kid! Ben you fucking lazy wanker!" Reed Richards is always at his best when he's telling people to shut up or calling them names.
Like so. "Don't go feminine on me!" Yeah!
So the Thing gets the ability to change back and forth from his human identity. This, apparently turns him into a massive prick. Also, I guess he and Alicia are swingers, hyuck, hyuck.
Then the Torch flies to the top of one of those awesome wooden water towers and mopes about not having a girlfriend, or something.
Then the two storylines collide in this great non-fight scene. "Don't make me flame on!"
Half-Thing is really creepy and gross to me. He's all orange and fucked up but he's got hair and brown pants. UGH
Anyway Reed stops the fight because there's bigger things to worry about.
Some dude wants to go to the negative zone for some reason. This give us an opportunity for a flashback featuring one of my favorite bad guys Annihilus. (by the way, I never figured out why the dude wants to go see Annihilus or whatever. )
This is the dude. His name is Janus, as in "the sensational clue to the mystery of..." seen on the cover.
Spoiler alert:
there's no clues, sensational or otherwise, to anything in this issue.
One of my favorite things about the Fantastic Four was that creepy old nanny they had watch their kid. Why bother with daycare when you can have you baby watched by the strangest woman on earth? Also we get to see the first indication that Franklin is some sort of demon baby that can see invisible things. Check out his creepy Village of the Damned eyes.
Then, the best part of any Marvel book of this time. The Hostess ad.
That Iron Man movie would have been so much better if he'd battled the Hungry Battleaxe.
Then there's the back cover ad.
There's something so pleasing to me about the colors on this ad. and Those prizes look pretty tempting. You can get a complete archery set for god's sake. But then you notice that you'll be selling seeds. SEEDS!
And this testimonial was kind of a deal breaker for me. This kid must have been an idiot. They named their baseball team "the American Seeds?"
what he doesn't tell you is that his team got beat to shit at their first game for having such a retarded name. Then their equipment got stolen by The Michigan hellbrains"
In closing I can't really say what kind of influence this book had on me but I read it cover to cover many times when I was younger. I only owned a handful of books and I read them and re read them compulsively. I must have a read a single Beagle Boys story a hundred times when I was just learning to read.
Elijah J. Brubaker, Cartoonist, Bon Vivant.
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