Sue or Medusa? What a difference a decade makes!

Recently,  commenter Anonymous opined that Reed should have hooked up with Medusa
back when Sue left him, and I agree!  Regrettably, that never came to pass--that would have been one hell of a storyline--but as a consolation, here's a rollickin' Rich Buckler panel from Fantastic Four #157 with Medusa doing her best Sue imitation. 

I'd say the marvelous Madame M. looks pretty good alongside Mr. Fantastic, don't you think? ;)

Fantastic Four #45 - Jack Kirby                                        Fantastic Four #157 - Rich Buckler

Family Matters: The Fantastic Four's Triumphs and Tribulations, part 6

Part 6 – Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Fantastic Four # 149

August 1974

“To Love, Honor, and Destroy!”

Gerry Conway, Rich Buckler, and Joe Sinnott

Doug: What a great splash page! As we go through these issues, I find Rich Buckler to be either home run or so-so. I really think this splash, with its triangular orientation of figures, the dynamic poses, and the intensity of Namor’s posture to be fine rendering. Sue looks good, the lackey looks menacing, and you just can’t beat a good ol’ battle cry: Imperius Rex!

Doug: Hmmm… about Page 2. Reed’s in character – tense, willing to fight (although as my colleagues have argued in prior postings, is it “too little, too late”?), Ben’s for the most part in character… but something about Johnny’s take throughout this has bothered me. I have wondered where the “blood is thicker than water” instinct is. To me, Johnny should have remained loyal to Sue. I understand why Ben has stuck with Reed, and Medusa is caught in the middle but with her loyalty being toward service to the team. Johnny just seems a little dense in regard to the magnitude of the decision Reed made about Franklin.

Karen: Well, Johnny’s always been a bit dense, hasn’t he? What really creeped me out was his thought in the previous issue, about a sister being “almost as close as a wife”. Uck.

Doug: Medusa using a little of that “woman’s intuition”? What did you think about her line that Namor has never been vicious? Hel-lo!! Ever read any Golden Age books, Sweetie?

Karen: The whole thing with Medusa is odd, until the reveal at the end. This picks up on the Medusa-Torch story from a few issues back, where they were going to the Hidden Land, because Blackbolt had called for her - hmm, they never did get to Attilan. Geez, Conway really did drop a lot of plot threads!

Sharon: Let me get this straight—back in FF#145, Reed tells Medusa he received a message for her from Black Bolt about a “Project Revival.” In light of the reveal in #149, it seems like the mention in #145 was supposed to be a signal to her that this plan is being set in motion. So why does she act like she’s all of a sudden figuring things out in #149?

Sharon: And if “Project Revival” was a really plan to get Sue and Namor back together, why did Reed tell her Black Bolt wanted her back in Attilan, and why did she go through the trouble of dragging Johnny along with her? And then after the mayhem that ensued (in #145 and #146), their trip to Attilan was then dropped—so poor Johnny didn’t get to see his beloved Crystal before her wedding after all. It appears Stan was not the only one with the faulty memory back then, eh, Roy Thomas (editor) and Gerry Conway (writer)?

Doug: As the battle begins, I’m thinking of that mid-80’s series Damage Control. When these super-powered types get after it, there is a lot of destruction that takes place! And how about the taxpayer bill, for the police, etc.?

Karen: Apparently folks like Blackbolt and Namor don’t concern themselves over such things – I mean, why have Sue and Reed sit down and talk when you can destroy half the city instead?

Doug: “Sue’s force field – It appeared so suddenly, there was no time to swerve away!” Umm… appeared?

Karen: Reed must have had his special invisibility detecting glasses on….

Doug: I thought Ben’s trip down memory lane was well-crafted and a very nice addition to the story. Sometimes I don’t care for flashbacks – seems they just take up space. But this fits perfectly, and Buckler’s art reflects an early Silver Age feel during these panels.

Sharon: Buckler does a nice job here recreating the Kirby scenes from FF #4—an instance in which swiping is appropriate and is, in fact, expected.

Doug: There are some really outstanding splashes and two-page splashes in this little arc.

Doug: As for the battle, I became aware that most of the fighting was mano a mano – not a lot of property destruction. It began to seem like something was amiss. Although no one on the FF’s side ever spoke of Namor pulling his punches, I just had to wonder what was really going on.

Doug: The conversation between Ben and Sue was great – in my opinion, this type of writing is lacking in many of today’s comics. These panels conveyed a history between these two characters, a depth of emotion that seemed real. Today’s comics often just run from battle to battle with a cheesecake shot in between with no real concern for character development.

Karen: I’d agree that I’d like more interaction between characters in today’s team books, but honestly, Sue’s reaction to Ben’s comments just seemed a little too convenient. She’s felt that Reed is distant and neglectful, but because he’s willing to fight over her, suddenly she’s back in love with him? Then again, people are unpredictable emotionally. So I’ll let it pass.

Doug: The big reveal at the end was a nice surprise, although I did feel that Medusa’s role in it remained unclear and somewhat clumsily handled. It was good to see Triton, and the proximity of this story to the coming wedding of Crystal and Quicksilver seemed to dovetail nicely.

Karen: Yes, the whole Project Revival idea here (with the Inhumans and Namor teaming up to get Reed and Sue back together) seems about half-baked. Namor in particular seems out of character. It feels like Conway didn’t have a good idea of how to achieve the couple’s reconciliation, so he just threw in a big fight and poof! They love each other again.

Doug: Overall, this last arc was a fun, sentimental read. Looking at it in a short timeframe, I’m still uncertain as to why Conway chose to insert the Frightful Four fight in between the stories in #147 and #149 – perhaps that was the only vehicle he could think of to get Thundra into #149? And she proved indispensable to the events concluding this issue, as Conway chose Ben to be the one to reason with Sue – someone had to occupy Namor so that Ben could steal away.

Doug: As to an impression of this entire series, it has really been a nice trip through Marvel history, and is a summation of why Marvel has for years been (in my opinion) so far ahead of DC. Marvel took the time to craft an inter-related universe with “real” characters – people with feelings, emotions of pride and resentment, and life events that occur in the everyday world.

Karen: It seems to me that the Reed – Sue breakup started out pretty well, but sort of fell apart here at the end. The early issues (even before the ones we reviewed) gave good reasons why the split occurred –particularly after Reed zapped Franklin. But these later issues never truly felt solid; they seemed to be poorly developed. While attempting this type of subject matter was laudable, the execution of the story was lacking.

Karen: And speaking of Franklin – where the heck was he all this time? Sitting inside Namor’s ‘Tomazooma’ fortress? I’m surprised Sue would let him out of her sight!

Sharon: Maybe she made him invisible, to keep him out of harm’s way? ;)

Family Matters: The Fantastic Four's Triumphs and Tribulations, part 5

Part 5 – Marital counseling – Marvel Style

Fantastic Four # 148

July 1974

“War on the Thirty-Sixth Floor!”

Gerry Conway, Rich Buckler, and Joe Sinnott

Doug: Near the end of this story, Gerry Conway refers to this issue as an “interlude”, “a brief respite… between one tempest of emotions and the next”. Boy, would I agree! This story, while OK, just comes at the reader right out of nowhere. Not having read this in many a year, I’d forgotten that this was a part of our little Subby hate-fest!

Karen: I don’t know why this story was in #148. It makes no sense to me. If he wanted to do a Frightful Four story, why not put it in 149? I’d love to know why it was felt necessary to wedge this in between the parts of the Namor story, because it really feels awkward.

Doug: I guess the standout points in the story are the plot gaps. From the splash page on, I have several bones to pick – we don’t know why the FF left Namor’s undersea fortress, we don’t know how the sideplanes on the Fantasticar were restored (Johnny had intentionally wrecked one when attacking Namor), we don’t know how the Frightful Four infiltrated the Baxter Building, and we don’t know why or how Thundra shows up to rescue the FF (even though Reed specifically asked her). So while this book is a fun battle royale between the FF and some classic villains, it seems to be in the way of the greater, more pressing resolution of the Reed/Sue/Franklin/Namor situation.

Karen: Doesn’t it seem weird how Thundra keeps popping up during Conway’s run? Every time she shows up, she makes some statement about how she’s going to eventually beat the crap out of Ben, then helps the FF, and disappears! I wonder if Gerry or Roy really knew where they were going with her.

Sharon: It would have been interesting if the powers that be had developed a Ben-Thundra romance. I get a kick out of Thundra's attraction to, or fascination with, Ben. 

Doug: We’ve mentioned other writers’ “pets” – Englehart’s use of Mantis, etc. Perhaps Thundra was Conway’s pet character.

Doug: I thought the Sandman was done really well in this story. Conway did a pretty good job with the dialogue between ol’ Flint and the Thing. The Trapster and the Wizard, on the other hand – I just can never seem to take these two guys seriously. I just know that it is only a matter of time (and usually a short time) before they get their butts kicked!

Karen: Agreed – Wizard always came across to me as a third-rate Reed, and a whiner to boot. As for Trapster, I could never figure out how a guy with the apparent IQ of a honey dew melon could devise all those gadgets. The only time the Frightful Four seemed like a legitimate threat was when they brainwashed the Thing, which says a lot more about the Thing than it does about these villains.

Sharon: The inclusion of the Frightful Four just seemed like Marvel’s (Roy’s?) calculated way of evoking the “good old days”, back around FF #36: the intro of Frightful Four and Medusa…which led to the Inhumans, Silver Surfer, Black Panther, and so on…the timeframe which many feel were the glory days of the FF.

Doug: The ending 2-page splash with Namor was impressive, and I suppose more so because of the interlude. Maybe this was Conway’s method of allowing not only the team, but the readers, to recharge before the grand finale.

Karen: This issue doesn’t progress the Reed-Sue story at all; it’s basically one long fight scene. It’s a shame; I would have liked to have seen more introspection on the part of our fabulous foursome. Maybe some behind the scenes stuff with Sue and Namor too. All in all, this issue doesn’t have much to recommend it.

Karen: However, there is one thing, completely unrelated to our story, that I wanted to comment on. Near the back of the book is a full page about Marvel Value Stamps, those wonderful and horrible little treats whose removal ruined many a good comic (including so many of yours truly). The article says you could buy a Marvel Value Stampbook for 50 cents. If I can take a nostalgic moment here, I remember getting that stampbook, and the joy my little heart felt as I dutifully cut apart my comics and pasted the stamps in the book. I never did get all 100 though. If you were diligent enough to get all of them, you could get discounts on admission to the New York and San Diego comic conventions. I do recall seeing a photo of Roy Thomas with a group of stampbook completists at some con. Unfortunately though I think that was about all the rewards that were offered. I can’t help but wonder how many books were damaged by those of us seeking our golden ticket.

Doug: Marvel Value Stamps – the bane of many a Bronze-Agers existence! If you would like to further discourse on this and other ‘70’s defeats, I would be happy to engage you in that conversation, Karen! Sounds like a future topic!