Fantastic Four 238
Published October 1981
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Cover: John Byrne and Terry Austin

First Story:
“The Lady is For Burning!”
Writer: Byrne
Pencils: Byrne
Inks: Byrne
Letters: Jim Novak
Colors: Bob Sharen

Second Story:
“The More Things Change …”
Writer: Byrne
Pencils: Byrne
Inks: Austin
Letters: Joe Rosen
Colors: Sharen


Synopsis

In the first story, a distraught Frankie Raye reveals to Johnny a mysterious costume that she (somehow) didn’t know she has been wearing for years. When Johnny pushes her to remember her past, she ignites in flame and remembers she is the step-daughter of Phineas Horton, creator of the original, WW II era-Human Torch. Johnny helps teach her to use her new powers and Reed examines here and proclaims she is healthy and invites her to join the Fantastic Four.

In the second story, Reed unveils a surprise for Ben: A device that will finally restore him to human. But the machine overheats, and Ben emerges from the explosion in an earlier, lumpy form of the Thing.

What’s going on here?

This is an odd issue, and an unsatisfying one. There are several strange decisions Byrne makes, which I suspect were related more to external pressures than creative choices. One is the decision to split the story in two, and eschew a normal narrative arc. It’s not like they need to be separate stories, and because Terry Austin inked the second, I suspect it was a deadline decsion.

The other peculiar choice is the cover. It feels like an inside joke, but it’s not obvious what’s supposed to be funny. Doom, of course, last appeared in FF 236, but prior to that, he appeared in a backup story in FF Annual 15 more than a year earlier. His last appearance as the FF’s antagonist was all the way back in FF 200. So we’ve hardly had a glut of Doom.

In an answer to a letter in issue 243, editor Jim Salicrup says the cover idea was his, and was riffing on the fact the issue had no villains. I’m not sure I buy this explanation. One, the cover still doesn’t make a lot of sense. Two, Byrne has a predilection for including himself in his comics and, given his fondness for the Lee / Kirby run, he may have intended it as an homage to FF 10, where Stan and Jack appear on the cover (albeit from the rear). And three, Byrne said on his website that he was responsible for the letters page, so it’s unclear why Salicrup would jump in to answer that letter. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any further explanation from Byrne. My guess is an earlier cover was rejected (probably by Jim Shooter) and this was substituted in. The next time I see Salicrup at a convention, I will try to pin him down on it.

Also of note is a one-page prelude of the next issue introducing a woman named Penny who will be revealed to be Ben’s Aunt Petunia.


What I liked

Watching Johnny teach Frankie about how to fly was fun, and revealed a side of Johnny we rarely see. And it makes sense that after 238-plus issues of super-heroing, he knows what he’s doing (as an aside, I can’t think of Frankie and Johnny without also thinking of the 1987 play, Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune.)

And this was a cute sequence:

As we shall see, Byrne is very interested in Ben’s psyche and how his self identity and appearance shape his relatiosnhip to Alicia. He teases out some of that here:

On his website discussing this issue, Byrne specifically referenced these panels from FF 8 as his departure point for this sequence (Alicia is dressed as Sue at this point):

Lastly, this is a pretty cool splash page:

What I didn’t like

Even for a comic book, Frankie’s origin story is ridiculous. Starting with the costume she can only sometimes see, but can’t feel and that may or may not allow her to use the toilet. Then there is her explanation of having no memory beyond waking up naked at age 14 with no parents and surviving only on envelopes of money that appeared weekly. Once she regains her memory, her story becomes even more absurd. She somehow acquired her powers when a vat of chemicals sloshed over her, which Reed has no problem accepting.

She has no memory of any of this because Horton hypnotized her to forget it, as well as to fear flame and wear the costume. Why Horton vanished is not explained. None of it makes much sense.

Byrne inherited Frankie from earlier writers and apparently saw her as a vehicle to tell this story which (spoiler alert) ends with her becoming a herald of Galactus. On his website, he said he had her arc in mind all along, so perhaps that’s why she feels like such a flimsy character; he knew she was never going to be around long.

The second story felt a bit pointless. There is a Lucy-with-the-football quality to Reed promising Ben he can restore him to human form, so there’s very little surprise when it doesn’t work. And while his earlier, lumpy form is intended to seem more grotesque than his rocky form, is it really? We’re just used to one. Ultimately, how much does it matter?


Anything else?

There’s a leggy pin-up of Sue in this issue, with an odd collection of books on the shelves. Among them is a collection of Ogden Nash poems, Dangerous Visions by Harlan Ellison, James Cagney’s autobiography and a popular history of Jerusalem. Go figure.

Overall

Not Byrne’s best