Tag: thething

Fantastic Four Volume 3 Review

Posted MaceLeave a commentPosted in Omnibus Reviews
Fantastic Four Omnibus Volume 3 Cover Art

Here we are again, this time with my review of the 3rd Volume of the Fantastic Four omnibus. This one contains issues 61-93 and annuals 5 and 6. It says annual 7 is also included but annual 7 is actually reprints of older issues so all thats included from the 7th annual in this omnibus is staff photos. Nothing too exciting but its cool to see Stan Lee 50 years ago! As far as I know this is also the end of Stan Lee’s run on the FF as the next omnibus is John Byrne’s which happens somewhere in the #2xx issues. 

I enjoyed this omnibus a lot. Having 60+ issues of the FF under my belt from the time I read the first omnibus I can understand why people have been fans of the team for so long. This omnibus kicked off with Reed getting sucked into the negative zone which he had been studying, and Crystal of the inhumans deciding she would rather pursue her love with Johnny Storm than continue being a member of the inhumans. 

After she finds them, she returns to the inhumans and recruits the underwater breathing Triton to enter the negative zone and save Reed.  However on the way out a creature from the negative zone knopwn as Blastaar followed them out. He would make an unlikely duo with the Sandman before both ultimately get defeated by the FF and return Blastaar to the negative zone. The FF decide to go on a vacation which ends up being an ancient Kree base station. A Kree god mind probes into the FF and tells them they have destroyed Kree property and Ronan The accuser makes his first appearance but is defeated by the FF. 

In annual #5 we find out Sue is pregnant and we get a team up consisting of the FF, the inhumans and black Panther as they work to take on Psycho man, a micro sized being who is planning to take over earth. The Silver surfer also got mixed up with the computer life-form Quasimodo and gave him a human body. Reed continues his search for a way to turn the thing permanently back into Ben Grimm. They enlist in another doctor who is actually the mad thinker trying to overcome the FF. He tricks Ben into being angry with the FF for not being able to help him. The FF defeat the mad thinker but awaken his android defender in the process, which Reed defeated by baiting into the negative zone. 

We get a crossover where Daredevil gets body swapped with Dr. Doom and appearances from Spider-Man and Thor, I always love seeing the characters crossover into each others comics. The Silver Surfer also steals the spotlight for some issues when has a change of heart and decides humans are ungrateful and do not deserve the planet of Earth.  Naturally in a fight with the FF they prove to him the strength and resilience of humans and make him fall back in love with humanity. Then Galactus sends his punisher to retrieve Silver Surver to return him as his herald. The surfer hid in the microverse while the FF held off Galactus’ punisher. FF go after surfer and have a show down in the microverse and they convince surfer to return to being Galactus herald. Although Galactus decides to leave him on earth in case he is needed again down the road. 

Finally, Reed comes up with a way to turn the Thing into Ben Grimm once and for all. While out on a date with Alicia Masters, she seems less interested in just plain old Ben. He happened to be carrying around power gloves the FF got from the wizard just in case anything happened. He uses the power within the gloves to revert back into the Thing as that is the life he has grown used to. Doctors become concerned with what effect Reed and Sue’s powers might have on the birth of their child. We also saw the return of an old friend, well Johnny’s old friend when the FF get a call from Wyatt Wingfoot. His people are being harrassed by an aboriginal God named Tomazooma and he calls on the FF for help. When the FF arrive though it turns out its truly a Russian Oil company trying to run the natives out of their land for oil. 

Finally in annual #6, the baby who has yet to be named by the of this omnibus was born. Reed and Johnny ventured into the negative zone to find a cure for his potential birth hazards. They encounter Annihulus (whom I understand becomes quite a big deal down the road) and make a deal with him to bring the matter back to Earth and save the baby. 

Fantastic Four #78

With Sue having to take care of the new born, Crystal decides to throw on her FF outfit and indicate her desire to be a member of the team. The Wizard creates some new gloves to counter the abilities of each of the FF’s members but never anticipated Crystal being a member so she was able to defeat him with her elemental powers. Upon returning to the Inhumans to request permission to completely become a member of the FF, they find Maximus has imprisoned the rest of the Inhumans and is somewhat of a Mad King type. He is also able to trick the FF with a form of hypnosis and make them his prisoners as well. Black Bolt shouts to shatter the glass which is trapping the Inhumans and overthrow Black Bolt. 

On their way home to the US, shield stops the FF and sends them on a mission to Latveria to recover some hostages. Upon arrival Dr. Doom is welcoming of the FF and wants to treat them like guests in his nation. When Reed tries to leave he triggers a forcefield and an alarm and Dr. Doom threatens anybody that leaves will be killed and his doombots start attacking citizens at random. Doom hypnotizes the FF to be afraid of their own powers making them subconsciously not as effective. The FF team up with citizens of Latveria and we find that Doom didn’t actually activate the doombots himself and they are acting freely. Reed realizes the cause of their powers being suppressed and helps the team overcome it. After defeating the doombots, Doom himself activates a bomb which is meant to destory the entire landmass of Latveria. However a mysterious force field prevents the bomb from harming anybody or anything. The mysterious force field ends up actually being Sue Storms invisibility ability and she reveals herself. 

Doom decides to invite the FF over as guests to a dinner party since everyone is still trapped in Latveria at Dooms discretion. Dooms evil scientist gets angry and attempts to kill the FF using a flamethrower and nearly ignites Dooms art collection with it. This makes Doom quite unhappy and he decides to kill the scientist and send the FF home unharmed. 

Upon returning home the FF move into a house in the secluded woods where they can avoid having the celebrity status they had in New York. It turns out to be a trap set up by none other than the Mole Man himself. Reed nearly sacrifices his life to stop a buzzing emission that is causing everyone to be blind, leading to the FF’s victory and moving back to the Baxter Building. This leads us into the final story arc where a Skrull showed up and impersonated Reed to convince Ben to come on a ship with him. He ends up kidnapping Ben to be a slave in a fight to the death on a neighboring planet full of earthly gangsters. Reed modifies the Skrull ship the FF obtained in the first omnibus and they track down the Thing and save him. Also causing a revolution on the gangster planet to overthrow the leaders. 

This was a very fun omnibus I would recommend to any FF fan. Having read roughly 100 issues and the first 3 omnibus, I would consider myself a fan of the FF now more so than ever before. Though I still don’t know who or what Yancy Street is other than a bunch of hoodlums the thing doesn’t seem to like. And the poor child of Reed and Sue has gone nearly 20 issues without a name. I wonder when he will finally get named! 

Thanks for reading! So long! 

Fantastic Four Volume 2 Review

Posted MaceLeave a commentPosted in Omnibus Reviews
Fantastic Four Omnibus Volume 2 Cover Art

Its that time again, back with another review! This time of the second Fantastic Four Omnibus and boy what a wild ride it was! I felt the stories in this one all tied together a little better and Lee and Kirby had  really found their stride. I think I enjoyed this a lot more than volume 1! I’m also quite ashamed that my volume 1 review didn’t even mention the yancy street gang once! (Thing always bring them up, but I still have no idea who or what the yancy street gang really is!) 

Anyways, lets get right to it. This omnibus opens with FF Annual #2 which gave us the origins of doctor doom, as well as a battle between him and the FF. Ultimately Reed hypnotized him and made him think he had won the battle and therefore would leave people alone … temporarily. 

With that, there is no shortage of things to talk about but I’ll try to keep things relatively brief!

Mr. Storm, the father of Johnny and Sue was featured in the first few episodes and ended up dieing. We also got introduced to the Superskrull and a bunch of Villians came together to make the “Frightful four”. One of their members is Medusa, who ends up being part of the inhumans. People reading this in 2019 might know full well about the inhumans given their recent rise in popularity but I myself wasn’t too familiar. The inhumans come to take Medusa back to their land ‘The great refuge’  where they have been hiding and we also get introduced to the likes of Blackbolt, Maximus, Crystal, Triton and a handful of other inhumans. 

Maximus ends up firing an ‘atmo-gun’ at earth which causes constant vibrations and ends up causing Galactus to become aware of the earth. Galactus is an ancient being who consumes planets for energy and he sends his Herald (also an epic first appearance) the Silver Surver to check things out. Maximus also ends up creating a negative zone around the great refuge which turns it into a completely solid dome which nobody can penetrate, trapping the inhumans inside, possibly forever….

The Silver Surfer ends up meeting Alicia, Things blind girlfriend. She opens his eyes (figuratively) to the fact that earth doesn’t need to be destroyed and that life on earth is valuable. He agrees and decides to fight Galactus off as earths defender. The watcher also assists in helping the FF and more specifically Johnny storm obtain a weapon to defeat Galactus. Johnny ends up trading it to Galactus in exchange for earths safety, and Silver Surfer is banished to earth. 

The book continues to get even more wild from there, the Black Panther (also first appearance) invites the FF to Wakanda so he can hunt them. They ultimately end up becoming allies and that friendship pays off a ton in this book and I’m sure will continue to do so throughout years of Marvel comics. We also get the origin story of the Black Panther which isn’t exactly the same as it was in the MCU but still pretty close. Klaw kills the Black Panthers father Tchaka and the young Black Panther crushes Klaws hand. The FF return to their regular lives, Johnny attends school, Reed and Sue have a honeymoon (Oh yeah, I totally forgot to mention annual #3 where Sue and Reed got married and everyone showed up! Even spidey managed to snag a piece of cake from the window :P) and Thing goes to make up with Alicia after being upset he saw her with the Silver Surfer (come on thing, this guy is like a cosmic God, your girl ain’t got a shot with him!) 

Johnny, along with his new friend Wyatt end up going after the inhumans, Johnny believes he fell in love with Crystal and will stop at nothing to be with her again, amazingly despite them only briefly having met, the feeling is mutual. Klaw ends up coming to NYC to fight the FF with the power of sound but with the technology provided from the Black Panther (vibranium bracelets) they are able to defeat him! While this is happening the original human torch from like the 1940’s is resurrected and has a battle with Johnny. The Silver Surfer, having been banished to earth decides it is his duty to travel the planet and learn everything there is to know about earth and its residents. He ends up meeting Doctor Doom who has a device that is capable of swapping his powers with the Silver Surfers. Doom begins toying with everybody and the FF are even forced to retreat. Meanwhile, Black Bolt the true leader of the inhumans screams so loudly he is able to shatter the negative zone and set everybody free. 

Reed, being the genius that he always proves to be. Realizes what is happening and tricks Doom into following a device into outer space, however because Galactus had banished the Silver Surfer to earth, Doom was unable to leave and their powers reverted back. The Silver Surfers board returned to the Surfer and Doom was nowhere to be found. Total cliffhanger. Avengers Volume 2 is next on the list but I’m super excited to get back to the FF. 

Thanks for reading! 

Fantastic Four Volume 1 Review

Posted MaceLeave a commentPosted in Omnibus Reviews
“If you weren’t a female, I’d demolish ya!! But the only thing I can do to a nut like you is give ya the spankin of your life!!” 
Fantastic Four Omnibus Volume 1 Cover Art

Ugh, I’m so bad at writing these reviews. I finished the book a while back but have just been too busy to write up a review. I’ve been keeping up on reading though and am nearly done Doctor Strange Volume 1 so hopefully I’ll be posting a review for it sooner rather than later!

I’d also like to take a minute to say Rest in Peace Stan. He passed away recently and if you don’t know he was basically the father of Marvel comics as we know it. He will truly be missed. 

Well here we go. I feel like a lot of my writing starts with that. So I’ll work on a different opener, but for now you’re stuck with it. The Fantastic Four! This is one of the Marvel teams and characters I know the least about, or knew the least about going into this first omnibus. If there was ever a cartoon (I believe there was but too lazy to look it up at this second) I never watched it! I’ve seen bits and pieces of the two movies but never sat down and watched them start to finish but if they end up in the MCU you can bet I’ll watch those movies.

This Omnibus collects Fantastic Four #1-30 and Annual #1. If you don’t already know, the fantastic four consists of Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), Johnny Storm (The Human Torch), Sue Storm (The Invisible Girl) and Ben Grimm (Thing). The four of them went into space in an effort to win the space race and ended up getting blasted with some cosmic rays that granted them their abilities. 

The book itself was a bit slow and probably the toughest omnibus I’ve read so far but still highly enjoyable and glad I was able to read it!

I think the biggest reason I slowly got through this book and took me longer than others is the lack of ongoing story lines. Most issues are completely standalone stories that have no cliffhanger or something that makes you crave that next issue. Marvel was still figuring out their formula at this point so its to be expected. I’ve also heard others say the silver age stuff can be a bit wordy which can make issues take longer to read. The issues as individuals are quite good though, don’t get me wrong. But for me personally I’m looking to invest in some long term story lines. Which is why I decided to pick up a lot of these characters from their origin stories and not just jump onto the most popular arcs that become movies etc. 

Fantastic Four #14 Cover Art

This omnibus introduces us to some of the fantastic four’s greatest foes like the Mole Man, Namor the Sub Mariner, the Puppet Master and of course Dr Doom. I personally always thought Namor was more of a good guy but the amount of issues he shows up as the antagonist in this book would leave me to believe otherwise. However I’m still behind about 50 years on Marvel lore so anything can happen! 

Namor is constantly trying to win over the love of Sue Storm and surprisingly enough to me anyways she seems torn between Namor and Reed Richards. Throughout the omnibus she witness’ enough from both of them that her love for Reed is quite clear by the end however it was an interesting dynamic I had never known about before reading these books. 

I almost completely forgot to mention the other couple present in the fantastic four. Thing and Alicia, the blind daughter of the puppet master. They have a funny dynamic of constantly not feeling good enough for the one another. Thing with his grotesque rock man like features and Alicia with her blindness. SPOILER WARNING but I think in the current FF run these two actually just got married. So its cool to see how it all began almost 60 years ago! 

This book also had some great guest appearances from some marvel favorites such as Spider-Man, The Avengers, The X-Men, and some epic showdowns between the Hulk and Thing.

This panel, where Thing tells Jean Grey of the X-Men that he is going to give her the spankin’ of her life absolutely astonished me in 2018. It is truly a sign of a how much the times have changed since the 60’s.  I don’t think anything that they let kids read would have anything close to an adult male spanking an adult female. It just wouldn’t be accepted in todays society. 

One other character that shows up in this omnibus that I wanted to talk about is the Watcher. When the Fantastic Four go to explore the moon and end up on a collision course with a Russian scientist, they end up having an encounter with the Watcher. The Watcher is a cosmic entity who is never allowed to interfere with the dealings of the creatures of the universe but will observe. He ends up breaking that rule though and helping the Fantastic Four by taking Molecule Man with him to an alternate dimension so earth can be safe. 

All in all its an exciting series of stories that is only beginning to scratch the surface on what will become the Marvel Universe and I couldn’t be more excited to read through them! 

Thanks for reading my review! Nuff said 😉