Fantastic Four Annual #6 - Part One

After my last blogpost I decided to take a break from being mean about classic Marvel comics to prepare for the birth of my daughter, who joined us on a Tuesday in June (therefore not interrupting my Monday comic reading on Marvel Unlimited). So it seems appropriate that I mark my return to this endeavour with the comic that introduced Marvel's first baby: the Fantastic Four Annual #6.

The cover shows the Fantastic Fo- wait... Three... laying insensible on some floating rocks while Annihilus pulls an uncomfortably fappy face at them. Susan Storm by this time is pretty much ready to drop so is naturally excused any universe saving duties for a bit (though probably not too long because I hear they have shitty maternity leave in the US). The cover blurb is surprisingly understated for 60s Marvel, but I suspect that's only because of all the floaty rocks getting in the way of where they'd normally tell us how this comic is the best fucking comic in the history of comics.

LET THERE BE... LIFE!

Never ones to shy away from repetition, or let poor grammar get in the way of anything the cover blurb is presented slightly differently on the splash page, with a grim-faced Mr. Fantastic peering into some arcane looking device instead of, you know, being at the fucking hospital with his wife. Despite the protestations of the even Grimmer-faced Thing and the slightly vapid looking Human Torch, Fantastic insists that he knows what he's doing...

And apparently he does, because it turns out that Sue has Cosmic Radiation in her blood (a fact he apparently didn't share with anyone at a time that might have been a bit more convenient), which may prove fatal to both her and the sprog, but luckily they can cure this by using an element composed of anti-matter that can only be found in... The Negative Zone!*

Fantastic, determined to be Noble As Fuck wants to go alone, but neither of his companions are having any of that shit, with Johnny pointing out that Sue's his sister and Grimm being determined to not have to go get a real job (and I bet he doesn't have health insurance either). Reed reluctantly agrees to let them come along and hands each of them a device that he'll explain later, allowing the writers to get to the next bit of action while also setting things up for a bit of mild peril (and maybe a spot of deus ex machina) later.

NEGATIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE

In a series of action-packed panels Annihilus wipes out the population of an entire world JUST BECAUSE HE CAN. Emerging from his ship he declares his triumph, which given the ease with which he slaughtered the baby-faced aliens is kind of like an grown man celebrating that he beat some toddlers at football; leaving is with no doubt whatsoever that Annihilus is a bit of a twat.

Meanwhile the Fantastic Three have passed thru an unspecified number of barriers to reach a chamber that contains the entrance to the Negative Zone, because you never know when you might need to march into certain death. Amid sarcastic quips from The Thing, Richards activates the gateway and the intrepid trio step thru into... um... the Initial Distortion Area (I think they did a Peel session in '92)

Our heroes find themselves drifting  through a landscape that shifts from Ditko-goes-cubist to black-and-white collages that, frankly, look a bit shit. Ben, a bit late if he'd wanted to do anything about it, notices that Johnny isn't wearing one of the devices Reed gave them but luckily it turns out he's immune to anti-matter when he gets his flame on (because fuck physics).

No sooner have Ben and Johnny provided a bit of exposition about what happened last time they were in the Negative Zone, then Reed is grabbed by a flying green thing and dragged off to a rocky planetoid while his companions flitter about uselessly. A strange device bursts from the ground and Reed is hurled onto it before being dragged back down the tunnel it emerged from, and he lies helpless as tentacles and armoured claws reach down towards him...

BRAVE MUM AND TINY TOT IN HOSPITAL DRAMA

Our attention is shifted, via a somewhat Shatner-esque continuity box, to the hospital where Sue Storm is waiting to give birth. Crystal, sporting the kind of dye-job that won't become fashionable for another 40 years, is determined to know what's happening to Sue so bursts into a laboratory where an unnamed doctor in full scrubs peers into a microscope (which I guess is the medical equivalent of a physicist wearing a lab coat). As we already knew Sue's blood has a load of cosmic stuff in it, cosmic stuff that the doctor says he doesn't understand (except enough to explain to Crystal exactly what it is, and that it will kill Sue and Sproglet). And as we go back to our bold adventurers with nary a mention of this being deemed fixable we can surmise that while Reed might have told the hospital about the cosmic radiation he sure as fuck didn't bother telling them he was going off to solve it.

With Johnny having identified the plant Reed and his captor landed on, Ben sets about tearing the ground up because apparently a cursory glance at the area they landed is enough to determine Reed's not on the surface.  Having admonished his rocky companion for taking the brute force approach, Johnny attempts to think his way out of the situation (bless), but we're saved from what promised to be a somewhat painful deductive process by a glass sphere closing over them and dragging them underground.

In his lair Annihilus congratulates his 'loyal scavenger' (who is probably also his only friend) and exposits mightily about how he's going to WIN AT FUCKING EVERYTHING by destroying everyone else and thus keeping hold of the Cosmic Control Rod (not a euphemism) that keeps him immortal. And so, his little rant done, he flies over to where Reed and a bunch of aliens are being held for study (because, obviously, the way to study the strengths and weaknesses of a creature is to keep it in a small room with loads of other unrelated creatures).

Reed, standing at the back of a motley crew that includes Sock Face, Goofy Lion and Sad Sentinel, stretches his arm out to punch Annihilus in the face and then leaps forward declaring that he won't be stopped from completing his mission. Annihilus, now basically just showing off, uses the CCR to hurl Reed backwards, leaving our hero in a stretchy mess as he realises that Annihilus' device is just the thing he's looking for to save Suzie and their fortunate son!

Looming over Reed like a bad moon rising, Annihilus uses his rod to destroy the rest of his prisoners, before using its power to hurl Reed to where the rest of his travellin' band are being kept (okay, I'll stop now).

ARENA OF EXECUTION

Sounding far more like an early 90s Death Metal album than its appearance suggests, the intended use of the space Annihilus holds our heroes in is fairly obvious. As Reed brings the rest of the gang up to speed on the need to get a hold of Annihilus' device the arena walls open revealing a mad scientist's engineer's wet dream with their captor at the controls.

http://cowbirdsinlove.com

Reed, showing that very intelligent people can also be very stupid, tells Ben and Johnny that they've got to grab hold of Annihilus' cylinder with Annihilus less than ten feet away and sitting at a contraption that is designed solely for the purpose of Fucking Your Shit Up. Using his prodigious stretching capabilities (insert obvious joke about that being why Sue married him here), Reed blocks Annihilus' line of sight while Ben clobbers the wall and Johnny shoots fire at it, all to no avail. Cleverly (not cleverly) they have all just demonstrated their powers in front of the bad guy who really wants to study their powers.

Suddenly a giant metal boot descends from the ceiling onto Ben, as a "gyro-saw" erupts from the wall at Reed and Johnny is chased by an "all-engulfing sonic sponge" (because apparently Reed is able to identify these things while being chased by a big saw). All is not lost, however, because it turns out that either Annihilus is just doing an initial test in order to assess their capabilities, or (which is probably more likely) his bluster hides the fact he's actually a bit shit... but let's be honest here, Annihilus crushing the heroes on page 19 of a bumper sized comic would make the rest of it rather less exciting and a lot darker, as it would just end up with us watching Sue worry about whether a cure for her condition would be found until, like one of the episodes of House where the script writers pretend the character isn't magic, she and her baby die in agony as the cosmic radiation rips their cells apart.

Aaaanyway, Johnny uses his flame powers to burn the sponge and the saw, and as him and Reed close in on the giant boot Ben exerts his strength and destroys it before declaring that it is indeed Clobberin' Time and using the remains to smash Annihilus in the face.

ESCAPE FROM ANNIHILTRAZ

It turns out that for all his preparation, Annihilus had never banked on being hit in the face by a giant metal boot and is knocked unconscious amid the wreckage of his machine. Clambering over the scrap metal Reed grabs Annihilus rod, being gentle so as not to excite damage the "cosmic circuits" (because, obviously, circuitry that fragile would have survived being hit by a giant metal boot) and notes that he's going to need to reverse engineer the thing, but can do so later because what with it being Susan's due date he's got oodles of time.

Conveniently Annihilus' "rail plane"** is parked nearby and our heroes clamber aboard, only to discover it has but one seat and no control panel. "How does he manage drive it?" asks Johnny, having only moments before assumed it was automated, and Reed - never wasting an opportunity to show off how fucking clever he is, answers the question by hypothesising that it's all about the control rod turning "thought waves" into "raw power" (yep, totally how physics works).

As the rail plane, which doesn't look like some kind of advanced sex toy AT ALL***, speeds off Annihilus awakes and curses his foolishness in not just straight up murdering the Fantastic Three, and soon realises in a fine display of Kirby's erratic hand drawing that his cosmic control rod is gone and he will never be immortal. Then, just to add insult to injury, he discovers that our heroes stole his car to boot, but he won't yet admit defeat and he resolves to trap the trio FOREVER by unleashing the "supremely bestial BORERS!"

Will our heroes escape back to Earth? Will the Borers regale them with facts about trains? Will Susan and the baby be saved from a fate worse than death? Tune in next week (unless something more interesting is happe... oh, who am I kidding, I'm a parent now; my life basically revolves around putting milk in one end of a baby and avoiding what comes out of the other) as I return to Fantastic Four Annual #6 and cast my eye over its thrilling conclusion...

*Fourth wall break!
**Shoulda gone with hovercraft. Hovercrafts are way more sci-fi.
***I'm really starting to suspect that a lot of Annihilus' issues would be solved if he just had a damn good wank.