Fantastic Four 124
“The Return of the Monster!”
Published April 1972
Story: Stan Lee
Pencils: John Buscema
Inks: Joe Sinnott
Letters: John Constanza
Cover: Buscema and Sinnott

Synopsis

Mr. Fantastic, exhausted from the travails of the last few issues, takes ill and is rushed to a hospital, where a monster lurks and abducts the Invisible Girl.

What’s going on here?

This is a busy, and slightly peculiar issue. It opens in the middle of the action—mise en scene, if you’re fancy—with the Fantasti-Car about to crash because Reed has passed out. Simply landing the car takes up about four pages, and much of the rest of the issue takes place in or around the hospital. The villain is of course the creature first introduced in issue 97, and while that was a fun, one-and-done story, there was nothing so compelling about the creature—really, a misunderstood alien modeled on the Creature from the Black Lagoon—that demanded it be brought back. The easiest explanation is that Stan, near the end of his active writing career, was bereft of ideas, and so reached back to an older story for one.

Still, despite feeling like a retread, there’s some interesting things going on in FF 124. Reed is virtually absent, since he’s unconscious in a hospital bed, so the other members are asked to propel the story in ways normally performed by Reed. There’s a fun sequence, for example, where Johnny plays detective and tries to identify the hostile monster using the FF’s equivalent of the Bat-Computer. It’s also a nice reminder that, after a decade of comics, the FF has it’s own rich history and rogue’s gallery.

Oddly, despite much of the comic devoted to the FF unraveling the riddle of the monster, the readers knows all along who it is from the cover and title.

What I liked

As mentioned, each of the non-Reed characters gets a a chance to shine in this issue. Sue, particularly, uses her powers in some new and interesting ways, such as repairing the crashing Fantasti-Car on the fly:

Or breaking out of her bindings:

There’s an interesting sequence where Johnny is humbled by a doctor after terrifying patients by flying around the hospital with his flame on:

It looks like Buscema is trying something new as he draws Johnny, giving him a more distinctly human appearance when he’s in his flaming form.

I also like the classic cliff-hanger ending, with Sue caught in a flooding cave:

And this Kirby-esque panel of Reed in the hospital.

What I didn’t like

When I first began this blog, I started tracking how many times Sue was taken hostage. I stopped counting after Fantastic Four 38, when the count had reached 10. It’s one of Stan’s oldest and most tiresome cliches, and unfortunately he revives it again here.

Also, I’m not a fan of plots that depend on the most unlikely of coincidences. The hospital were Reed is taken just happens to be haunted by a creature the FF once confronted on a tropical island?


Anything else?

A bunch of ads that seemed pitched at an older reader. The Vietnam-themed game seems strange, given the war was still raging in 1972.

Overall

Generally a fine issue, marred by the sexist treatment of Sue.