Fantastic Four 216
“Where There Be Gods!”
Published December 1979
Plot: Marv Wolfman
Script: Bill Mantlo
Pencils: John Byrne
Inks: Pablo Marcos
Letters: Irving Watanabe and Michael Higgins
Colors: Carl Gafford
Editor: Mark Gruenwald
Cover: Rich Buckler and Al Milgrom


Synopsis

Now transformed into the evolutionarly advanced Futurist, Dr. Randolph James wanders the streets of Manhattan, dispatching would-be muggers and police officers. Blastaar, on the run in New York since last issue, makes him an ally by convincing him the Fantastic Four want to capture him and return him to his previous state. After battling Reed, Ben and Johnny, the two travel to the Baxter Building, where Blastaar wants James’s help destroying the passage to the Negative Zone. There, James subdues Sue, which triggers Franklin’s latent powers, and he expels Blastaar back to the Negative Zone. James, now aware of Blastaar’s deception, departs Earth to commune with the universe. In the last panel it is revealed the robot Herbie was responsible for opening the portal to the Negative Zone that allowed Blastaar into our world.

What’s going on here?

Another satisfying, well-told comic that nicely tied together the Blastaar and Futurist storylines and delivered a dramatic conclusion. This isn’t the first or last time Franklin’s latent powers are awakened to save the day (a phenomenon some call baby ex machina) and while it later becomes a crutch for lazy writers, I wasn’t troubled by it in this issue. Here, it suggests his powers are still developing and will eventually settle into some sort of predictable pattern. Little did readers of 1979 know that 500 issues and 47 years later, his powers are still being sorted out.

That this comic succeeds is a bit of a surprise, given that it’s very much a transitional issue, with one creative team leaving and another coming aboard. As a result, there are nine credits for this issue — 10 if you want to count temporary editor Mark Gruenwald, who managed to hold it all together. It makes sense Gruenwald kept everything aligned, because for years, before his untimely death in 1996 at age 43, that was his unofficial role at Marvel: The keeper of continuity and editor of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. (In recognition of his importance, Walt Simonson modeled the men who ran the Time Variance Authority, the organization charged with maintaining timelines, after Gruenwald).

As mentioned last time, this is Marv Wolfman’s final issue on the Fantastic Four after an uneven 21-issue run. There were definitely some enjoyable issues, but his run was dominated by the cumbersome Skrulls/Sphinx/Galactus arc, and his occasional sloppiness was a distraction. Bill Mantlo, Marvel’s utility infielder, stepped in to script this issue and write the next two, before he and John Byrne both give way to a new creative team of Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz.

Also filling in is inker Pablo Marcos, who did such a good job in the recent FF Annual. As in that issue, his work is more subtle than Joe Sinnott’s, and he lets Byrne’s pencils shine. Notably, Reed’s appearance changes quite a bit, depending on who is inking Byrne.

On the left are Sinnott’s inks from last issue, on the right is Marcos from this issue.

There are also two fill-in letterers on this issue, Irving Watanabe and Michael Higgins. Normally I don’t pay much attention to the letterer, and there are only a very few, like John Workman and Moebius, whose work I can recognize on sight. But here, it’s very obvious there are two letterers at work. I don’t know who did what, but there’s a big difference between the letters on the left and those on the right.

Lastly the cover is by Rich Buckler, his first FF work in five year, with Al Milgrom on inks.


What I liked

I don’t know if this Ben/Johnny banter is by Wolfman or Mantlo but it was fun. The Reed/Sue exchange is nice, revealing moment about their two characters as well.

Speaking of banter, this was well done, too.

Are the people in the crowd identifiable? I’m guessing that’s Byrne in the beard on the right, and maybe Wolfman behind him.

Byrne delivers his usual excellent work in this issue. I really liked this sequence:

What I didn’t like

Mantlo seems to struggle with the Torch’s voice. Here, he seems to need a reason to save Ben’s life:

And this is just odd (“hairless hyena?)”

The thugs in Marvel’s New York don’t look anything like the thugs I remember when I grew up there. There must have been a sale on purple pants at the thug store, because last issue’s hoods hade the same look.

Overall

A good comic book