“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!” Fantastic Four No. 204

18 Sunday Jan 2026

Posted by percivalhenry in The World's Greatest Comic Magazine

Tags

1978, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four 204, marv wolfman, Marvel comics, Skrulls

Fantastic Four 204
“The Andromeda Attack!”
Published December 1978
Writer: Marv Wolfman
Pencils: Keith Pollard
Inks: Joe Sinnott
Letters: Jim Novak
Colors: Françoise Mouly
Editor: Wolfman
Cover: Al Milgrom and Sinnott

Synopsis

Mr Fantastic, investigating lingering damage caused by Quasimodo, discovers a ray leading from Earth to the Andromeda Galaxy. It delivers an alien woman, who is quickly followed by a Skrull. The FF subdue the Skull and learn the woman’s home planet is being attacked. When the team prepares to journey to space to save it, Johnny says he wants to remain on Earth and enroll in a new college, which unbeknownst to him is a trap set by The Monocle.

What’s going on here?

Despite it being a bit of a jumble, I liked this comic. It’s very much a setting-the-stage issue, putting into motion two plots but still leaving plenty of room for the character work that Wolfman excels at. There is an overly-long flashback that goes into great length about the history of the alien race, but it’s sort of fun and feels like a story from the golden age of science fiction. It’s also good to see the Skrulls again; a successful comic rotates stories between new menaces and old, familiar villains and it had been a while since we heard from the Skrulls.

Keith Pollard and Joe Sinnott are again solid on the art. The cover is by Al Milgrom, with inks by Sinnott.

What I liked

Johnny is really the star of this issue, and Wolfman returns to his feelings of loneliness and lack of independence. There is a cutting sequence where he tries to impress a girl and ends up doing the opposite:

(We later discover she may be a plant from The Monocle to undermine his confidence).

Johnny also runs into Franke Ray again, with similar results.

Johnny’s frustrations are revealed at this family conference, a reminder of how the FF is different from other teams:

I also liked this action sequence with Reed, Ben and the Skrull:

What I didn’t like

Comics often play fast-and-loose with science, and lord knows I’m no physicist, but everything about the ray from outer space makes no sense (and in fact seems borrows from the zeta-beam Adam Strange uses to jaunt around the galaxy). Since when do rays contain minerals?

There is an extended scene of Johnny moping around the city looking for a friend, which begins to feel a little maudlin. If I was a cynic, I would suspect this was just a ploy to plug ASM 190.

Anything else?

Future Marvel writer Peter Sanderson writes another long letter from his Columbia dorm, this time about issue 200. His analysis of that story just happen to agree with mine.