Issue(s): Giant-Size Fantastic Four #2
Cover Date: Aug 74
Title: "Cataclysm! / George Washington almost slept here! / The great Grimmsby / Time enough for Death!"
Credits:
Gerry Conway - Writer
John Buscema - Penciler
Chic Stone - Inker

Review/plot:
The problem with annuals and these giant-size issues is that either something important happens in them which annoys people who only read the main series, or they are largely filler. This one falls into the filler category, as the FF chase Willie Lumpkin through time to prevent him from altering history.

Reed and Johnny go back to the Revolutionary War and hang out with General Washington.

Medusa and the Thing go back to the roaring 20's. The Thing is briefly reverted to his Ben Grimm form. The title of this chapter is "The Great Grimmsby".

Willie was under the control of an extra-dimensional being named Tempus, who wanted to uproot the tree of time, or something.

After their individual time-traveling adventures, the FF go to Limbo/Daliworld to face him.

The Watcher non-interferes by wiping Willie's memory.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - first Tempus

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Referring to the Watcher, Roy Thomas writes "Everyone here remembers Baldy from Fantastic Four #49,50,51, etc?". The Watcher did not appear in Fantastic Four #51.
  
• Johnny says, "Someone must have broken in [to the Baxter Building] -- just like the Frightful Four" in Fantastic Four #148.
  
• The Fantastic Four captured Doom's time machine in Fantastic Four #5 - "though Doc Doom's borrowed it once or twice since then" - which is a lazy way of justifying how the time machine has appeared all over the place since its first appearance. I prefer the explanation that the FF's time machine is a replica built by Gregory Gideon in Fantastic Four #34, myself.
  
• Willie Lumpkin has appeared in "Various issues of the FF's own mag". There really haven't been that many at this time: Fantastic Four #11, Fantastic Four #15, and Fantastic Four #135.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Marvel Selects: Fantastic Four #2, Marvel Selects: Fantastic Four #3, Marvel Selects: Fantastic Four #4, Marvel Selects: Fantastic Four #5 (reprinted as a back-up broken up over the four issues)

Tempus' reason for existence was sorta rewritten in Avengers Forever.

The third chapter's title refers to "The Great Gatsby", an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel people are forced to read in high school.

Not to mention the movie version of The Great Gatsby (starring Redford and Farrow), which had just been released earlier in 1974--after months and months of hype.

Chic Stone doesn't ink Buscema's art very well. Some of the character outlines are too thick, reminiscent of Hanna Barbera. As for the story, a D rating is well deserved.

Time Enough For Love was the Nebula-nominated "Best Novel" published by Robert A. Heinlein the year before, giving us Ch. 4's reference. The erudite name-dropping, like the occasional use of quotes of enduring writing (a point Morrison makes in Super Gods), doesn't elevate the plot by itself, yet, like any D grade comic reviewed, somebody probably cherished this issue. It's too bad you can get this professionally-made yet "meh" period of serial super-heroes, but really off-the-wall inventiveness like Fourth World and OMAC over at the Discombobulated Competition (or Jungle Action) couldn't catch traction. (I like that sentence, I think I'll leave it there.)

By 1974 Marvel had likely noticed that the aging of its characters was becoming an issue.

Since the 1961 the MU showed no evidence for a sliding timescale. For istance, after the breaking up with Crystal, Johnny Storm meets his ex-girlfriend who has visibly aged, Wyatt Wingfoot gets his degree in "normal time"..

Soooo...

One could speculate that the sliding timescale originates with this "death" of Tempus. Precisely because Tempus is not dead, but merely "sleeping" and occasionally waking (Reed says this in a panel of this story), the irregular floating timeline could be somehow explained.
End of crazy theory.

Nice nod by Buscema to Salvador Dali's "Persistence of Memory" in the scan of the Chapter 4 splash page.