Fantastic Four #278-279Issue(s): Fantastic Four #278, Fantastic Four #279 Review/plot: Well, i get my wish here, because Dr. Doom launches the Baxter Building into space again. Well, it's not exactly Dr. Doom. With Doom presumed dead, his young ward Kristoff is brought to a secret area of Doom's castle... ...where we get some insight into the Doombots (it turns out that they are programmed to act and even believe that they are the real Doom, except in the presence of the actual Doom or another Doombot)... ...and then Kristoff gets his brain implanted with Dr. Doom's memories. This results in a detailed origin of Dr. Doom, more than we've seen before. One aspect of the origin that i find a little controversial is that we see Victor Von Doom's face after the accident at "State U" (The finest house of learning in the land, perhaps the world, apparently). Despite the relatively minor initial scarring, we see that Doom's face was without question further damaged during the creation of his first suit of armor. Gruesome and weird! I also like how Dr. Doom's origin parallels Dr. Strange's, except that Doom actually becomes the leader of this reclusive cult and they obey his orders without question. Do we ever see these guys again? "Against Dr. Doom's Wizard Cult" would make for a good storyline. In any event, Kristoff-Doom cuts off the memory transfer once they get to the time that Doom launched the Baxter Building into space. His downfall that time was partnering with the Sub-Mariner, so this time he's going to act on his own. And so... lift-off. But the Fantastic Four has grown since the original Baxter Launch. Most relevent is that fact that the Invisible Girl now has the ability to create forcefields, and she's able to hold the group and a supply of oxygen inside a force-bubble (note that the probe the FF are playing possum for is the same type that freed the Venom symbiote in Fantastic Four #274). But Mr. Fantastic and the Human Torch's power levels have increased as well, allowing them to help Sue safely pilot the bubble back into the Earth's atmosphere. She-Hulk is left out of the immediate action, but luckily Mr. Fantastic has Sue land the team in Latveria instead of back in New York, so the whole team gets to smash their way through Dr. Doom's regular robots... ...and his Doombots... ...before discovering what's been done to poor Kristoff. Wyatt Wingfoot gets Franklin to safety in the meantime. The FF have an easy time with the Doombots due to the fact that Kristoff has inherited so much of Dr. Doom's confidence that he can't even bring himself to believe that the team survived his initial attack, so he doesn't issue any orders. It's nice how stories like this and Fantastic Four #268 manage to keep the spirit of the Fantastic Four's #1 foe alive even while the character is officially dead. These issues could be considered something of a re-hash of the original Lee/Kirby story, but the point here is really to show how much the FF have developed since then. And regardless of the fact that the Fantastic Four survive, their home, including all their equipment, ships, and other possessions, have been destroyed. So it's a pretty significant event. In addition to the main plot, there's build-up for a Psycho-Man/Hate-Monger storyline. Issue #278 shows the Psycho-Man in a silhouette panel that might lead someone to think it's really Kristoff-Doom or a bot, or even possibly Annihilus. But in the same scene we see a poster defaced with a word that i'm a little shocked to see in a CCA approved comic book. A note in the lettcol says: You've probably already noticed that there is some fairly controversial subject matter being examined in the current Fantastic Four storyline. This issue and our next issue deal directly with some very real, very contemporary themes. It won't actually be until the next arc that we really get into that plot, but issue #279 does further the sub-plot. As usual with these stories, we see that we're not dealing just with anti-black racism, as the new Hate-Monger also manages to stir up trouble among the "Sons of Zion" and "Black Women's Defense League" as well. Not as bad as revealing that the Sons of the Serpent are secretly being led by a black guy, but i've never loved the "everybody does it" cop-out and i'm not sure how accurate it is to say that a hate-generating super-villain counts as a real, contemporary theme. But we'll look more at that in the next arc. Quality Rating: B+ Chronological Placement Considerations: A narration panel places "Three weeks" between Kristoff's initiation and the launching of the Baxter Building. Based on the footnote referencing Kristoff's probes, that actually means that the initial Kristoff scenes took place prior to Fantastic Four #274, although those scenes are not identified as a prologue. References:
Crossover: N/A Continuity Insert? N My Reprint: N/A Inbound References (27): show CommentsThe monks show up in Lobdell's Fantastic Four 3-5. Unfortunately, they're mostly killed by the Enclave just so that they can design the Crucible armor for them. Posted by: Michael | April 21, 2012 7:05 PM "Squeee!" is probably a reference to the Silver Age "Magnus--Robot Fighter" comic published by Gold Key; that was the sound the robots made when they got destroyed. Posted by: Mark Drummond | April 22, 2012 1:23 AM They left it ambiguous whether the potentially offensive real, contemporary thing was the racial slur or Johnny Storm's hideous new haircut. I think they received more letters about the latter. It was certainly an example of evil as it manifested in the world in the mid-1980s. Posted by: Todd | April 22, 2012 3:12 PM On a serious note re: the slur. Another source suggests its use here in a CCA book (as opposed to something like the X-MEN graphic novel, with Kitty's angry question to Stevie) was a Marvel first, but I'm not sure. It's been ages, but I also recall a CAPTAIN AMERICA in which Cap has a series of hallucinations or dreams, one of which is of Sam Wilson shining shoes, being knocked down by a white man, and referring to himself as the same word or close enough. It was pretty startling at the time (the story wasn't good, though). A keyword search ("Falcon shoe shine") suggests this may have been #264, Dec 1981, by DeMatteis. Posted by: Todd | April 25, 2012 4:05 AM I don't own a physical copy (and it doesn't seem like a priority) but i skimmed the PDF and for what's it worth, Sam's phrase is "Us niggruh's is gotta be what we's gotta be--" It's a weird issue. Update: i've since added this issue to the project. Posted by: fnord12 | April 25, 2012 7:52 PM A great two issues, not only with a great recap (and expansion) of Doom's origin, but such a massive status quo change for FF. Probably this issue is the impetus for all the "launching the Baxter building into space" jokes in Twisted Toyfare Theatre. I wonder if it even deserves more than 4 because for so long after this we have to suddenly start dealing with multiple Dooms (unless that is saved for the point where the Beyonder closes the loop and the original Doom returns to Earth). Posted by: Erik Beck | May 29, 2015 3:07 AM The monks also show up during the Tom DeFalco/Paul Ryan "Reed and doom are dead" storyline, and one of them is shown as a ;lifetime prisoner in Latyeria in Books of Doom. Posted by: Omar Karindu | October 13, 2015 3:21 PM Those monks also turn up in one of the Doctor Strange Infinity Gauntlet issues when Srange needs to take Doom back there to revive him. It seems like they've been busier than I thought! Posted by: Benway | February 25, 2016 12:11 PM In trying to have it both way's (Kirby's and Lee's) with the nature of Doom's facial scars Byrne has made Doom look like a complete doofus. Posted by: JP | February 25, 2016 1:02 PM Byrne has stated that his original plan was for Doom to return and be horrified at what his robots had done in his absence. There's something creepy and effectively about the idea that the Doombots' response to their master's death would be to essentially program a "human" Doombot so they could again take orders, but I'm not sure where Byrne was going with it. At a guess, he may have been planning to reconcile the more "honorable" Doom of more recent stories with the boldfaced lying villain seen in many of the Lee/Kirby stories, with Kristoff and his "old days Doom" standing in as the latter. Or maybe it was about tweaking the people who'd complained about all his "changes" to the book by suggesting that what they want is a return to simple, childish plots. In any case, the growth of the FF is emphasized by having their encounter with nostalgia-Doom turn out to be a battle with a literal child. Posted by: Omar Karindu | June 5, 2016 3:28 PM JP, that was a genuine LOL. In respect to the n-word, it may be hard to remember, but it wasn't always considered profanity. It wasn't a word used by polite people, at least in the north, but by itself it wasn't unutterable. The OJ trial that changed that. Posted by: Andrew | February 7, 2017 7:14 PM Andrew, I was in college when at the time of the OJ trial. Trust me, even before it, people knew not to say the n-word. In fact, there was an episode of "Gimme A Break" that aired in February 1982 that hinges on the daughter using the n-word and the father getting upset. Posted by: Michael | February 25, 2017 11:50 PM I guess I'm making a subtle argument. I'm reacting to fnord's comment that he's surprised to see that word in a CCA book. It's kind of like having drugs as subject manner, except in reverse. Once, you couldn't even mention drugs, then, you could as long as it was in the context of drugs being bad. For the n-word, it was once acceptable to use it in a story dealing with the evils of racism, now it's a word that can't be used at any time for any reason. Posted by: Andrew | February 26, 2017 1:43 PM Just want to say I was 8 years old and living in Brooklyn, NY when I got this comic (my first FF run) I was very shocked at the n-lover page. That was a banned word from all schoolchildren's vocabulary. I showed it to my mother and she could not believe it was in a comic book. It was not analogous to the drug PSA issues. I mean, even as I child I knew comics would make up nation and corporation names (Byrne had just made a Disney analogue previously), they said maggia instead of mafia, gangs were multiracial, etc Byrne using n-word was too realistic for Fantastic Four. It would have been more acceptable in an adult line post-1986 Watchmen. I guess this was Byrne and Shooter's attempt to push the envelope and spread awareness of racism without sugar coating it, but it probably led to a bunch of kids speaking that forbidden phrase aloud. Posted by: Oomaga | January 5, 2018 10:31 AM Comments are now closed. |
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