Issue(s): Fantastic Four #261, Fantastic Four #262
Cover Date: Dec 83 - Jan 84
Title: "The search for Reed Richards" / "The trial of Reed Richards"
Credits:
John Byrne - Writer
John Byrne - Penciler
John Byrne - Inker
Michael Higgins - Assistant Editor
Bob Budianksy - Editor

Review/plot:
This arc starts off with the Sub-Mariner giving the Invisible Girl a passionate kiss...

"A reminder, Susan. A reminder of something which never truly was, but might have been in another world. Another time." Namor is dropping Sue off at the Baxter Building on his way back to Atlantis with Marrina.

Sue discovers that Reed still has not returned home from Avengers Mansion. When she calls, she hears that a mysterious beam breached the Mansion and all of the Avengers have gone to a SHIELD space station to try and track it. Luckily for Sue, the Silver Surfer is still in the Baxter Building, and he helps Sue track the beam (it's actually what brought him to New York in the previous arc). They head to the Avengers Mansion and discover that the Scarlet Witch actually didn't leave with the others; she stayed behind to look after her still-inert husband.

Prior to getting on the Surfer's board, Sue puts her hair in a pony tail to prevent it from getting in her eyes.

She winds up leaving it that way throughout this arc. Byrne previously experimented with having Sue cut her hair short, but the fan reaction wasn't too positive. So i guess this is another way to try to give her a hair style that's practical when super-heroing. Sue also asserts herself as the leader of the FF when Reed isn't available, which is a nice continuation of her maturation under Byrne.

The Surfer determines that Reed has been taken into outer space, where he can't follow thanks to Galactus' barrier. The FF heads to the Watcher's home.

Yes, the Watcher will be doing more than Watching once again, but this time he's got permission from his homeworld.

He takes them to a congregation of spaceships from across the galaxy, all survivors of worlds that were devoured by Galactus. There they find that the aliens are attempting to execute Mr. Fantastic.

To do so, they've got him hooked up to a crazy contraption.

It's got Reed all stretched out on a cylinder connected to a huge machine with steaming wires. Makes you wonder what it would actually take to kill Reed; these aliens sure had to go to pretty extreme measures to attempt to kill him, and even this isn't happening very quickly.

The Watcher convinces the aliens that Galactus has a purpose in the universe and that Reed was right to save his life. But then Lilandra of the Shi'ar shows up to ruin everything.

Issue #262 is part of the Assistant Editors event. Most comics did something a little zany for this month. John Byrne participates by drawing himself into the comic as an observer at Reed's trial.

Marvel creators have appeared in the FF comic before, going back to Fantastic Four #10, so it's not too out of place, although it is a little annoying to have something silly like that going on at the same time of this momentous trial. I used to have the Trial of Galactus trade that reprinted these issues before i replaced it with the originals, and there was a text insert before this issue sheepishly explaining why John Byrne was appearing in the comic. It's worth noting that books that really didn't want to participate in Assistant Editors' Month got around it by having a silly back-up feature in addition to the main story.

I'm really making too much of this. There's just a cute bit in the beginning of the issue with John Byrne talking to Mike Higgins and then getting transported by the Watcher to observe the trial. And then a bit at the end explaining that no one will really remember the details of what happened because it was a such a cosmic event. For the rest of the issue, Byrne's presence is entirely unobtrusive.

Behind the scenes, this trial, and Lilandra's warning to the FF in Uncanny X-Men #167. were part of a back and forth 'debate' between Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Claremont, still sore over Jim Shooter's edict that Phoenix had to die because she destroyed a planet, didn't like that Byrne had Reed Richards save the life of Galactus. Surely the rule that applied to Phoenix applied tenfold to Galactus. This trial addresses that, saying that Galactus has a natural place in the universe (whereas the Phoenix was a malevolent entity).

The method of the trial seems a little stupid. It's called the M'Ndavian Procedures, and there's a bunch of gems that monitor the emotions and judgments of all present. If all the gems turn white, then the verdict is not guilty. Sounds like a system that one could manipulate by playing to people's emotions, and doesn't really seem to take any kind of "law" into account. Oh well.

The Watcher calls Odin as a witness in this trial.

When i first read this many years ago, i thought this was very odd. Why would a group of intergalactic species care what an ancient Earth god thought about anything. But i've since realized two things. First, that Odin had Thor do a lot of research on Galactus, so he may be considered an expert on the subject. Second, especially in the Silver Age, Odin was depicted as more than just one of many gods running around the Marvel Universe. He was almost depicted as God. At the very least, he's an extremely powerful being, and Lilandra is suitably impressed by his appearance.

However, after recounting the origin of Galactus, his declaration that the trial should end immediately, doesn't convince all of the M'Ndavian crystals.

The next witness is Galactus himself. And he just eats everyone at the trial, thus ending it.

Nah, kidding. Actually, he and the Watcher summon Eternity.

Eternity places a Cosmic Truth in the heads of everyone at the trial, which convinces everyone that Galactus does indeed serve a purpose in the universe. The details of that Truth fade from everyone's memory quickly, but it's still agrees that Reed can be let go.

During Galactus' appearance it is shown that every alien species sees him as something different, as "each mind that views him struggles as best it can to perceive that unguessable force as an image it can comprehend".

Nonsense, of course. Why would everyone on Earth perceive Galactus as a dude in bermuda shorts and an awesome fork-hat unless that's what he really looked like?

So that's Byrne's response to Claremont: appeal to a made-up authority. Galactus doesn't deserve to die but Phoenix does because Eternity says so.

Snark aside, these issues were awesome and i know it.

Also during this trial is the failure of Xxan Xxar, a victim of Galactus who fails to muster up the courage to try to avenge his planet's people.

Quality Rating: A

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - trial of Galactus

Chronological Placement Considerations: Issue #261 begins "a few hours" after Alpha Flight #4. Lilandra's appearance here is a little problematic; she's living on Earth with Professor X at this point, but she shows up here with Gladiator and a Skrull, but without Xavier. Maybe Charles was too embarrassed to get in the middle of a fight between his girlfriend and his colleague Reed? More importantly, in Uncanny X-Men #174, Lilandra will receive word that Deathbird has seized control of her throne, so it makes more sense for her appearance here to take place before that happens.

References:

• As the FF head out into space to find Reed, there's an extended retelling of the team's origin from Fantastic Four #1.
  
• Being on an ancient ship reminds Johnny of one of the adventures they had recently in the Negative Zone in Fantastic Four #252.
  
• Reed Richards saved the life of Galactus in Fantastic Four #244.
  
• Lilandra warned the FF in Uncanny X-Men #167 that they would be held responsible for any crimes Galactus committed since they saved his life.
  
• Odin learned Galactus' orign in Thor #162 and Thor #168-169.

Crossover: Assistant Editors' Month

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

In the killing Reed department,it's worth noting that in issue 249, Gladiator says that he will stretch Reed a thousand miles and Sue says that will kill him.

Kyle Baker did a good twist on the "pull the stretchy guy to death" idea in his Plastic Man series. (Naturally he escaped, so we never found out if it actually would've worked.)

The reflexive stuff Byrne did with himself here was good lighthearted fun. In an interview, btw, Byrne said that his idea was that Galactus would later fight the guilt-ridden "Rogue Watcher" (not the one on the Moon) who might have destroyed him in the early days of the Marvel Universe. The Big G would finally prevail after a super-long struggle (hmm, don't think a Watcher would give him that hard a time) as the Universe went into heat death mode, and G would discover that his destiny, with all the energy he has acquired from eating planets, is to become a new Big Bang that would create a new Universe. Cool idea, no doubt owing something to Asimov's classic "The Last Question" story, and a fair bit grander than what Byrne seems to have had in mind even here (at least judging by what "our" Watcher says at the end).

Instantiation - Don't discount the watchers' power levels. In an issue of Quasar in the 90's, a rogue watcher gave Quasar a run for his money in the power department. They may seem harmless, but that's because of their oath of non-interference. When they need to interfere, they have plenty of abilities to draw from.

Thanks for the comment, Clyde. I know the Watchers are very powerful, but my feeling is that, when done right, the Big G (who survived the Big Bang, after all!) should be pretty much in a class of his own and certainly way above Quasar. Also, if you go back to the original "Coming of Galactus" story (FF 48-50), you definitely get the sense that G is far more powerful than Earth's Watcher, who seems very much in awe of him. But character power levels, as we all know, really depend quite a bit on who the writer is and how the plot ends up going. Cheers.

Btw, in "What If?" #41 ("What If the Avengers Had Fought Galactus?"), Galactus was shown to defeat and even kill Uatu (Earth's Watcher) very easily.

Two issues that may well be my most-loathed Marvels of all time. Basically a giant ass-pull by Byrne to cover for his past casual genocides (and his ongoing racism) and (as you note) win a pissing contest with Claremont/Shooter. Defies every bit of Marvel continuity to that point, and ruined Reed Richards, who had been my favorite character up until then.

But hey, I forgot that Byrne's self-insertion was part of Assistant Editors' Month, so I can't put it all on him, I guess. Although the idea that "planetary slaughter is a test from God, and besides, they were only Skrulls anyway" is supposed to be FUNNY just makes me even sicker.

And I'd completely forgotten the Xxan Xxar "weak people deserve to die" pro-fascism bit, too. Gee, I can't wait for JB to move on to ruining West Coast Avengers and Wanda/Vision because he thinks racial intermarriage is gross.

There is ONE letter on a subsequent letters page (265? I don't know, and I didn't keep these issues when my brother and I split the collection) amongst all the hosannas that calls Byrne out on his garbage here, so props to whomever it was that had the courage/decency to print that. But hardly enough to wipe the taste from my mouth.

Oh and I don't know what the hell is up with that opening page (which I'd also forgotten) but I hope Reed filed for divorce when he got home, given that Sue just lets Namor slip her the tongue like that. That's just ridiculous. Didn't she just lose their second child? (Or is that still to come?) In any event, the idea that Namor's masher act gets absolutely zero resistance or condemnation from Sue is pretty damn obscene. Where's the force-column knocking him back 30 feet, for pete's sake?

(And Marinna is just standing there and giggling? Is she enamored of Namor yet? Maybe they do things differently in her part of the ocean, but Lady Dorma sure as hell wouldn't have stood for that!)

Dan, this takes place before Sue loses her child. That still doesn't justify Sue accepting the kiss. Namor on the other hand, never let Sue's marriage interfere with his attraction to her. As far as Marinna, IMO, she doesn't know enough about earth customs to see anything wrong with that.

Why wouldn't Marinna know about "earth customs"? She was raised from birth by a human family on Earth. You'd think "don't slip the tongue to people who are married to someone else" would've come up at some point.

Dan, Byrne was definitely grinding axes on West Coast Avengers, but they were about previous creators and his own personal obsessions about how robots should be portrayed in fiction, not interracial marriage. Byrne's abrasive personality and tendency let personal views color his work make people tag him with any number of faults, some of which are real, some of which are not. I can't agree that racism is one of the real ones. Despite all his quirks, Byrne has always been on the right side of history with that issue.
If anything, Byrne was probably just so focused on proving that the Vision is "just a toaster" (his words) that he might have thought using the Vision and the Scarlet Witch's relationship as a metaphor for interracial couples trivialized and degraded the real issue.
He was absolutely trying to prove some points on WCA, but "interracial marriage is wrong" was not one of them.

Dan---

Get help.

BTW Dan...the person to give "props" for the decency or courage to print an anti-Bryne letter is Byrne himself as he was the person who selected what letters to print during his run on the FF.

Please avoid ad hominem attacks. It's of course ok to robustly disagree with someone's opinion, but i'd like conversations on this site to be civil and not get personal.

fnord12, This scene from Crimson Tide reminds me of you of you having to occasionally referee on this site. Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n3xoii9ZAw

One of my all-time favorite splash pages. To suggest that Reed should divorce Sue over that kiss, when Namor kissed her is, I would say, a fairly weak argument.

I think the presence of Galactus as a being we are incapable of grasping is a perfect way to treat him in the Marvel Universe. One of the very few later Marvel ideas (in an alternate future, at that) that I do like is the idea that Galactus eats planets that the Celestials have planted eggs in and that provides a reason for him.

Rather brilliantly handled. I especially like Sue's ponytail.

I thought Assistant Editor's Month was a nice one-time thing and several of the issues that month (Avengers on Letterman, the kids in Iron Man) were very different and entertaining - not great, but definitely something different and interesting.

One thing that always bugged me was Reed quoting Einstein in his defense: "God does not play at dice." Setting aside the fact that his alien audience would have no knowledge of or reverence for Einstein, the quote is from Einstein's ongoing argument with Heisenberg over his Uncertainty Principle, and the consensus in the scientific community then and now is that in this case Einstein was wrong.

The major problem that I have with John Byrne stating that Galactus tests a planet's worthiness to exist (i.e. survival of the fittest) is that, going by the events of the original Lee & Kirby story from issues #48-50, Earth deserved to be destroyed. The Fantastic Four and the rest of humanity were completely incapable of stopping Galactus. The only reason why humanity was wiped out and the Earth wasn't eaten was because the Watcher violated his oath of non-interference and basically gave the FF the Ultimate Nullifier. So Earth's survival had nothing to do with humanity surviving any sort of grand cosmic test and everything to do with the Watcher interfering.

Oh, yeah... the M'Ndavian Procedures are ridiculous, at least by human standards. Yes, I realize these are aliens, but the idea of appealing to emotions is ridiculous. Juries are supposed to set aside emotion and dispassionately examine the evidence presented during the trial before rendering a verdict. fnord observes that this "sounds like a system that one could manipulate by playing to peoples emotions" and he is correct. As I recall, a little over a decade later Kurt Busiek showed someone doing precisely that in the prologue to "Maximum Security" when he had the Kree manipulate the exact same alien tribunal into quarantining Earth from the rest of the universe.

We know the globes monitor the emotions and judgments of all present, but we don't know if the globes solely make their decision on that. In other words, the globes may not simply be letting "everyone" there decide the outcome. It could be using an advanced form of Google analytics to determine the outcome - deciding whether to exclude any juror from its decision because of obvious biases, lack of restraint, poor decision making ability, etc.; and according a higher weight to those people who do use reason, facts, etc.

Two things mark out the M'Ndavian Procedure. 1) it's supposed to be the "most perfect legal system" (this is what I remember, let me know if I am wrong), and 2) when all globes are white, the person is determined to be innocent. It doesn't say all globes are white when when everyone comes to the same conclusion. "All are judge and jury" may mean everyone has an equal vote, but not necessarily.

It's entirely possible the M'Ndavian Procedure was created as a kind of ad hoc intergalactic higher court for the various alien races, kind of like the International Court of Justice at the Hague. Since every alien race would have its own legal system, theory of jurisprudence, sense of justice, etc., it was probably very hard to agree to any one set of standards for cases to arbitrate or decide key legal matters. The M'Ndavian Procedure - which keeps everyone involved equally important - could have been invented as a way to allow the various alien races agree.

Since it is the "most perfect legal system", we should trust the text and assume there is much more to it than what it appears.

Our own legal system can basically be described as "each person selects a champion (lawyer) to battle it out, and the one who wins is correct", then we shouldn't take the shorthand account as the absolute best description. The alien races there probably view humanity as ignorant barbarians and aren't going to take the time to describe how the M'Ndavian Procedure actually works. I believe Reed selected it himself, so he probably had a reason to believe it was the best.

Byrne -- link -- says that it was assistant editor Michael Higgins who suggested that Byrne himself appear in the story.

Well, I hadn't been monitoring this conversation since 2014, but wow. Some of Byrne's "champions" are as kindly as the man itself, it seems.

And sorry, but a man with a history of depicting non-humans as perfectly good Galactus snacks but the 95% (at this time)-white Marvel-Earth as "worthy" because they beat Galactus so easily it's a cliche by now seems pretty racist. Especially when the longtime aliens that G nearly devours aren't the cute bird-chicks that Claremont has hooked Prof X up with, but those icky green ugly Skrulls, who cares if they die, right?

To quote myself from elsewhere: "Byrne pulls this nonsense trial that's like 'well, entropy has to exist, Galactus is a test, too bad if you failed it, nanny-nanny-boo-boo.' Yeah, well, entropy doesn't have to be personified in Galactus, per se, though. You could let the big killer die, and eventually there would be another personification of entropy in the cosmos, but in the meantime billions and billions of innocent lives would be saved. But, y'know, the Skrulls are green and ugly, so who cares how many of them die?"

The idea that surviving Galactus is some cosmic meritocracy is silly since, as Ben Herman notes, Earth only survived the first time through outside help, but the other races we know that "passed the test" include Zenn-La, seen as a bunch of worthless layabouts bar Norrin Radd, and the Dire Wraiths, who fought off the Entropic Hand of Fate, but were ultimately expunged by…Rom. JFC.

Again, quoting myself:

"So Galactus, whose crimes Byrne excuses by claiming 'it's just a test of entropy, don't blame me!' is actually beatable by pudgy lamprey-tongued uglies who ultimately got wiped out of the Marvel Universe by fucking Rom. Gee, I guess beating Galactus isn't actually an impartial test of a race's cosmic fitness to survive, huh, JB? Maybe he's just a big mass-murderering bastard, and if you get a chance to let him die, you let him fucking die. But John 'Genocide is really cool as long as no white people get hurt' Byrne disagrees, and pretty much ruined the character of Reed Richards, once my favorite hero, by making him his apologist for slaughter."

As for his denial of the Vision's humanity (he's Simon Williams in a full-body prosthesis! What part of "Love is for souls, not bodies" doesn't JB get, exactly?), it too seems pretty racist, given the attitude displayed in these issues. Plastic red guy gets no credit from writer who slaughters green alien creeps? Doesn't look so good, from my pov.

And if Byrne really was responsible for that One Lone Dissenting LOC seeing print (among two pages of gushing praise), that makes him even sketchier, to my mind. Who knows what the real ratio was, then? Maybe the mail ran 50/50 and JB rigged the columns? Blech.

(Nah, most mail is positive, even for utter crap. But i'd still trust an editor's picks over the author's, for obvious reasons.)

" To suggest that Reed should divorce Sue over that kiss, when Namor kissed her is, I would say, a fairly weak argument"

Well, I was mostly joking, to be fair. Still, I wouldn't say that a wife (or a husband) engaging in passionate snogs with an ex-beau who has tried to repeatedly break up the marriage is a GOOD thing, exactly. Nor do I suspect that Reed would (or should) take the kiss with much equanimity, were he there to see it. Which makes Sue all the more dubious for allowing it, behind Reed's back. But JMO.

Much as I have real issues with Byrne on a lot of things -=- West Coast Avengers springs readily to mind -- I'm marginally more sympathetic to the cop-out he pulls here than some commenters.

Galactus was, in lot of ways, a fundamentally untenable character: Kirby and Lee had established in his very first appearances that he was "above good and evil," beyond mere mortal judgment. The dialogue in the original Galactus trilogy is very much about the idea that Galactus treats "us" the way "we" treat, say, cattle or poultry. He's part of the3 cosmic food chain, a sapience and a lifeform one step over us.

But at the same time, by definition, he exterminates sentient races in order to feed, and, comics being the products of mere mortals, Galactus doesn't really *seem* like he's that different than the living beings he wipes out. So it's easy to miss this idea, for it to fall flat on the page. And, of course, Galactus is quite popular as an antagonist; he keeps being brought back because readers want to read stories of heroes fending him off.

So Byrne is left here trying to square the circle: he does a story that's about the "heroes don't kill" ethic, another well-established chestnut by this point (if a little inaccurate to the earliest days of the Marvel Universe of the 1960s), and then he does another that's meant to show us the uncomfortable fallout of that story. FF #257 is about Galactus nearly letting hismelf die, only to be told by Death herself that this isn't an option.

And it's the story of Frankie Raye, having left humanity and human morality behind, becoming the kind of being who can write off a species and who dares to dream of loving Galactus, himself a creature meant to be far beyond "mere mortals." What Byrne does there, and here in FF #261-262, is an abandonment of sorts of the humanist morality of the usual FF stories, one that decides the universe is *bigger* than anyone.

It's not just the alien survivor who chickens out who can't handle Galactus, it's the whole courtroom, every alien there, even Byrne himself. Galactus's true purpose is known and felt, but too *big* for mortal minds. Byrne writes himself in as someone who can't wrap his head around it either.

A big part of Byrne's problem as a writer has always been that he doens't think of the fantastica;l stuff ashaving much "real-world" applicability. And so he doesn't think through its applicability. Instead,m he tries to stay true to his received notions of the "core concepts" of various characters.

With the Skrulls, he picks up on some dialogue from the old FF comics -- especially the "Skrulls of Krall" series -- that already said outright that Skrulls were inherently wicked. This isn't a million miles away from Roy Thomas and Steve Engelhart declaring them evolutionary dead ends and spent, ancient cultures over in the Avengers comics. Because Byrne read that Skrulls are always bad in a 60s Marvel comic, that is what Skrulls are; that is [part of their concept, never to be diverged from. And his Galactus is in a similar boat.

But staying true to those concepts means that if they are read as metaphors, if they are interpreted, something very nasty comes through at base. But I see this less as Byrne harboring racist attitudes -- and I say this as someone who thinks his work*is* pretty explicitly sexist in many ways, especially by 2016 standards -- and more as Byrne being limited as a writer because he seems to dwell entirely within the genre conventions and inherited concepts rather than working on and interpreting them further.

(Sorry for the multiple posts; for a while, I kept hitting some kind of word count limit in the text boxes.)

Also it should be noted that the idea that an alien race is *inherently* evil is still used even in modern times- Mark Waid had Neron remark that the souls of the Khundians aren't as sweet as those of humans because the Khundians are predisposed to evil.

Reread this for the first time in a long time. There's a lot going on here.

Honestly, I like having Sue cheat with Namor -- Byrne is in the middle of his long term effort to modernize her while keeping her true to essence, and I think part of that essence is her being unsatisfied with Reed's coldness. And I think having her kiss Namor, and making it clear that it's not really offensive to her is a way of giving her agency she didn't have in the Silver Age (agency to perhaps make mistakes), while keeping the details the same. Now, we don't see what happened between AF4 and here, but I think the art depicts her here as a willing participant. And that's a great improvement over what I always felt was sort of blaming it on Namor having a quasi-power of rapey animal magnetism.

HOWEVER -- when Odin shows up Sue gets a bubble that reads an awful lot like she's fallen in love with him at first sight, in the same way that she did with Namor back in FF4. The line is something like, "He's so.. so IMPOSING..." I might write it off as just exposition, but the Byrne is so careful with his references to the Lee/Kirby days that it doesn't seem like it could be a coincidence. So maybe we should dock that point. Or maybe he was hinting about her having a dark side. Did he have Malice planned this far out? An interesting thing to do in a story that's already what we would call a subtweet directed at The Dark Phoenix saga.

I also like using the Assistant Editor month gag to do the callback to FF10. I think everyone's experience with reading the Lee/Kirby days is that FF10 sticks with you because it's just so weird compared to the story up to that point. I think it's neat that Byrne fits that in here.

The story, considered on it's own, is cool in a Fantastic Four way, and it allows Byrne to really do some awesome cosmic art (I just love his eternity, and his Odin). But that's where my praise ends and my problems start. Before I thought about it, I thought it was kinda cool that Galactus is seen differently by every species, but when you reflect on it, it's just weird that that's the case if he's still appearing before every species as a giant menacing alien, just a different one.

Now, it /would/ be cool -- and more coherent with Byrne's idea of Galactus-as-entropy -- if he appeared not as an alien invader to every world but as the extinction that every world feared most, but I don't think that's what's being said here, and, at that point, Galactus is just Death, it seems to me.

And, yeah, it sucks that this entire story is just JB calling in Eternity to tell Claremont that he's wrong. For, what it's worth, the idea that Lilandra is going behind Xavier's back with her covert plan to punish the Fantastic Four is compatible with that issue of Uncanny X-Men, as he's still growing is new, non-Brood body back when she threatens Sue and Reed in bed. But he's Prof X.