My Fantastic Four-Ay: Part Eleven.

So last time I told you mostly about what was supposed to happen in Fantastic Four #296, the triple-sized 25th anniversary issue of The World’s Greatest Comic. (And the time before that I just kept yappin’ about the Barry Windsor-Smith cover.)

Now, why triple-sized I’m not exactly sure. To use a variation of an expression I’ve used before, this was a 10 pound plot in a 20 pound bag, hardly requiring the space used for what the story needed. If it had followed John Byrne’s original plans, filling the pages with references to the team’s history, it might have at least made for a visual feast.

As it stands, it’s a Jim Shooter plot/a supposed Stan Lee script, and a parade of artists, starting with the aforementioned Windsor-Smith for a moody five pages focusing on ol’ Benjy Grimm:

…followed by a flashback to the origin, also drawn by Windsor-Smith but but with additional artwork by Kerry Gammill and Vince Colletta, giving it that retro-1960s feel.

It’s a strong kick-off to the anniversary issue, contrasting where we are “now” (i.e. 1986) and how things were at the beginning. Maybe a little long, given the 10 pages it takes out of the 64 total. And like i said, it’s not like there’s a whole lot of story here. In short, the rest of the FF discover that the Thing, alienated from the team and the world, has retreated to Monster Island, home of their old enemy the Mole Man, to live among the creatures there. They fly out to get him, fight a bunch of monsters, convince the Thing that the Mole Man’s plan to raise a new island is going to wipe out the U.S.’s Pacific coast, and Ben is back on the team. The end.

Of course, there’s usually more to a good Marvel story than just the plot, and that’s the characterization. I do like this bit where, prior to seeking out Ben, Sue Richards gives her husband Reed a good shouting at in regards to how he’s let the Thing guilt-trip him for so many years:

But Reed still wants to fly out to the island to settle things with his former best friend man-to-man.

And then there’s the Thing his own self…spending the issue giving the FF the cold shoulder, defending his new pal the Mole Man, determined to turn his back on his old way of life forever…but pushing back a bit when Moley calls his former teammates his “enemies.”

Speaking of the Mole Man, he is not unaffected by Ben’s decision to crash at his pad:

He also has his own private chamber that he absconds to time and again, but when Ben busts in to talk to him:

…he discovers that the Mole Man, despite his disdain for the surface world, finds comfort using holograms to pretend he is part of that world, and easily loses himself in that delusion.

It’s interesting little character bits like this that drive the story along, which, as I said earlier, feels a little overlong. While the various artistic contributions range from “nicely done” to “it relays the plot in pictorial form,” with Jerry Ordway’s lengthy participation probably being the best of the bunch next to Windsor-Smith, ultimately the story doesn’t feel that…special.

Byrne’s idea of visually including the history of the team in this issue would have at least been something. Mostly, though, this was a just a climax of sorts to some of the ongoing soap opera threads that Byrne had left behind due to his abrupt departure from the title. It wasn’t that long ago that I was talking about Justice League of America #200, and what a perfect anniversary issue that was, with the hook of great artists providing individual chapters in a storyline that celebrated the origins of the team while equally celebrating the characters that came later.

This FF anniversary was almost there, referring back as it does to the Mole Man’s appearance as the team’s very first adversary in issue #1. Plus, don’t forget that the team’s co-creator, Stan Lee, is attached to this new story. But the story just lacks…oomph. Aside from that wonderful Windsor-Smith cover, and some nice art and character bits inside, there’s nothing here that really grabs you. I don’t know how fast they had to scramble to assemble this issue, with Byrne bailing out so close to its publication, but the comic is simply…there. Not a celebration, not an exciting reflection on What Has Come Before and Where It’ll Be Going. It’s just a means to an end.

That end being that the ultimate upshot of the whole endeavor is to get Ben Grimm back as part of the Fantastic Four. He hadn’t held that position for a couple of years by this point, since the end of the Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars mini-series. It’s a restoration of the status quo, of sorts.

The one interesting thing this story does is that it doesn’t necessarily resolve the main emotional conflict, that Ben is alienated from the team. Superficially, yes, Ben had rejoined and it looks like everything’s back to normal, but…his old girlfriend Alicia is still romantically attached to his teammate Johnny, he’s still a “monster,” he still blames Reed, and Reed never really hashes out the whole guilt-trip thing with him. And when we get to the issues that follow, and the new creative teams that take over the book, we see that Ben’s emotional journey continues along a darker path.