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Monday, May 16, 2016

FANTASTIC FOUR #265

"THE HOUSE THAT REED BUILT" | "HOME ARE THE HEROES"
John Byrne, Everything Except...
Lettering by Mike Higgins | Coloring by : Glynis Wein
Editing: Bob Budiansky | Building: Jim Shooter

The Plot: (Story 1) The Trapster breaks into the Baxter Building with plans to kill the Fantastic Four, but is thwarted by the building’s automated defenses.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: Franklin’s robotic baby-sitter is named as HUBERT in this story's narration, despite my belief that Byrne never called it by name during his run. Perhaps I was simply remembering that none of the characters seem to refer to the robot by name.

My Thoughts: This is a nifty little eleven-pager narrated partly by Trapster and illustrated from his perspective, through his eyes, and partly narrated by the Baxter Building itself and viewed through its built-in cameras. The story isn’t especially action-packed or funny (aside from the inherent humor of Trapster being defeated by a building), but its creativity makes up for that.

The Plot: (Story 2) A week has passed since Mister Fantastic, the Thing, and the Human Torch vanished, along with several of New York’s other heroes. Sue, Alicia, and Franklin have been staying at Avengers Mansion to be near the heroes’ point of disappearance. As the trio goes out on a walk through Central Park, they witness the heroes’ return. But the happy reunion is cut short when Sue suffers a radiation-induced attack. The FF rush her to the hospital.


Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: Sue recaps the heroes’ disappearance.


Since last we saw her, Alicia’s hair has been shorn off. I believe this was a result of her hospital stay following her beatings as a prisoner of Annihilus in issues 251 – 256, an event mentioned by Sue here.


Reed and Johnny return from the Secret Wars with She-Hulk in a Fantastic Four uniform. Ben is nowhere to be found and Johnny is cut off before he can explain to Alicia what happened to him. Also, bizarrely, we’re told that SECRET WARS #1 is on sale next month — so the FF returned from the event before its first issue had even been published.

Is It Clobberin' Time? I knew this day would come. There’s no Clobberin’ Time this issue and, with the Thing off the FF for pretty much the remainder of Byrne’s run, I’m must sadly retire this category, with only occasional upcoming exceptions for Thing guest-spots. It was a good run, Is It Clobberin’ Time?. You'll be missed.

My Thoughts: Not a lot to say about this particular story. It simply fills in a couple blanks as to the disappearance of Reed, Johnny, and Ben in THE THING #10, and teases She-Hulk as a new member of the team without revealing the wherefores of her joining.

Part of the idea behind SECRET WARS was for every title to be changed in some way. Some of these changes were major, and resonated for years: Colossus breaking up with Kitty Pryde and Spider-Man’s black costume, for example. Other changes barely lasted an issue or two before being discarded: e.g. Iron Man’s souped-up armor.

Byrne, at least, gives us a long-lasting change. The Thing had had his own series for close to a year at this point, but, per Byrne, any good Thing story is, by definition, a good Fantastic Four story. So, in his mind, Byrne had to get the Thing away from his teammates in order to justify his series’ existence. Thus, as all the superheroes return from “Battleworld”, where they fought in a week-long secret war against their villainous counterparts, the Thing — having discovered that on Battleworld he can change back and forth between his human and rocky selves at will — chooses to remain behind for a serialized adventure called “Rocky Grimm, Space Ranger” (which sounds way, way more awesome than it actually is, thanks to a ton of fill-in writers over the serial’s span).


So She-Hulk arrives to fill in for Ben as the Fantastic Four’s muscle. I’ll quickly reiterate my thoughts on She-Hulk from my look at AVENGERS 235 during my Roger Stern Spider-Man reviews:
I've been a fan of the character for years. In general I think that, from Orion slave girls to Gamora and beyond, green chicks are hot. But She-Hulk is my favorite character in that specific category. I knew little about her when I was younger, and I think my first exposure was the (in?)famous Joe Jusko "muscle beach" poster (probably NSFW unless you're on a construction site circa the 1980s), which was prominently positioned on the wall of my local comic shop.

While She-Hulk started out "savage", she was always brainier than her cousin. But I prefer the "sensational" version popularized by John Byrne's run on the character in the early nineties -- though that characterization would begin here, in the pages of Stern's AVENGERS. Stern is the one who would change She-Hulk from a brooding, temperamental amazon into a fun-loving party girl -- which, to me, is a more appealing characterization. There are plenty of characters out there with She-Hulk's original grumpy disposition. It's nice to see a character who transforms into a supposed "monster" but who prefers that form over her weak, mousy alter ego.
So while I’ll miss the thing, there’s no one I’d rather see Byrne use in his place than “Shulkie”. Bring on the next thirty issues!

7 comments:

  1. " Also, bizarrely, we’re told that SECRET WARS #1 is on sale next month — so the FF returned from the event before its first issue had even been published."

    Yeah, I thought this was common knowledge but all the books were like that. It was Shooter's idea to drive sales of Secret Wars by not explaining what had happened to the characters in their own book. That way readers would have to read the mini to find out how all the changes took place.

    It also led to one of my favorite Marvel stories. I don't know if this is 100% true but it makes sense against the facts. Apparently Shooter and Mattel came up with the idea of a new costume for Spider-man (which Shooter had wanted to change ever since he purchased the design from a fan a couple years earlier). But when Marvel corporate found out they went nuts. Keep in mind this was Marvel's most recognizable character. A character whose cartoon was still being run using the old costume (new episodes stopped in 1983 but episodes aired for years after in syndication). Shooter was ordered to change it back but he didn't want to ditch the black costume before it appeared in Secret Wars. So Spidey had the black costume for exactly 7 issues (252-258) which corresponded to issues 1-7 of Secret Wars. The black costume then debuted in Secret Wars #8 while Spidey returned to the red and blues that same month in Amazing 259.

    Ironically the fans really took to the costume and it returned 4 issues later in a cloth version. But to placate the corporate people Spidey would switch between costumes.

    I don't remember when that ended and the black costume became the only suit. The switching started in 263 and went to at least 280. But by 285 it was definitely only Black because that came out the same month as Spider-Man vs Wolverine and Spidey was all black at that point (part of the joke was he had to go back to the red and blue suit because he bought one from a costume shop).

    Then McFarlane effectively killed it as a costume for Spidey in #300

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    1. Interesting. I obviously knew SECRET WARS ran well after everyone came home, but I didn't realize the departures and returns all occurred before the first issue went on sale! I figured it would've gone heroes leave, SW #1 released, heroes return, SW#2 released, etc. I guess I've just never checked the timelines.

      (Though when I was really young, I was totally confused by SW. I actually assumed for a few years that Marvel must have simply stopped publishing all their comics for a year while SW took place!)

      I'd heard that story about the black costume running in ASM exactly up to when it debuted in SW. Clever on Shooter's part.

      While I will always prefer the classic Ditko outfit for Spider-Man, I really liked that period where he alternated costumes depending on mood, day/night, or probably whichever happened to be clean at the time. I wish that had lasted longer. I do love the black Spider-Man costume, but I would never want it to totally supplant the original.

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    2. Unknown: new costume for Spider-man (which Shooter had wanted to change ever since he purchased the design from a fan a couple years earlier

      Huh? There's on-panel addressing by Spider-Man himself in SECRET WARS that his new costume reminds the one of Spider-Woman's (Julia Carpenter), who I now understand first appeared in SECRET WARS... did they create the whole Julia Carpenter character only to have an excuse for how Spider-Man got the design (and of course to retain the trademark for Spider-Woman's name after Jessica Drew had lost her powers), and was there an attempt for the "Spider-family" to have a unified look?

      As for the black costume of Spider-Man itself, my first ever Marvel issue was one of our Spidey book that printed ASM #253-254 I got from a cousin. I had absolutely no intel whatsoever what Spider-Man was about EXCEPT that he has a cool red-blue costume I had seen on the back cover of our Superman book. Both Marvel and DC stuff was published for us by Semic, and for them it made sense to have the characters pose back-to-back on the promo pic on that back cover. Next to the boy scout-y Superman, Spider-Man looked intriguing in his full mask and somewhat detailed costume.

      So I was massively disappointed that when I finally was going to get some answers, he was wearing that black boring thing instead... for about three or four pages. Rick Leonardi's drawn scene where Peter's assumed civvy outfit turns into the alien costume really sold me both the costume and Rick Leonardi. The issue left me with enough interest to want to get another issue, which was to be the awesome Puma fight (#256-257). And then Mary Jane walks in and tells she knows Peter is Spider-Man and THEN Peter and everyone learns the costume's an alien symbiote AND THEN he finally dons for the first time ever for me his classic red n' blues in an appropriate scene for it. And then the next issue started running the SECRET WARS as the 2nd story.

      And on the X-MEN book I also got encouraged by ads on the Spidey one they fight the Freedom Force in D.C. and Magneto goes to trial and on the black and white summer special I also went to get Dr. Doom steals the cosmic powers from the Silver Surfer and all in all I think it was an okay introduction into Marvel for me.

      Like, just to say, in case someone was wanting to make a case that the Spidey's new costume would put the potential new readers off.

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  2. They never really had much of a plan for Julia Carpenter, at all, based on how much use she got coming out of Secret Wars. It wasn't until Roy Thomas took over on West Coast Avengers that she got used on a regular basis, even.

    Shooter's rationale was that he wanted there to be a government-sanctioned super-character, and I'm guessing he just decided to renew a trademark in creating one.

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  3. Huh? There's on-panel addressing by Spider-Man himself in SECRET WARS that his new costume reminds the one of Spider-Woman's (Julia Carpenter), who I now understand first appeared in SECRET WARS... did they create the whole Julia Carpenter character only to have an excuse for how Spider-Man got the design (and of course to retain the trademark for Spider-Woman's name after Jessica Drew had lost her powers), and was there an attempt for the "Spider-family" to have a unified look?

    That's a good point that I never thought of. I don't know the answer (and couldn't find anything on Google). I do know the creator never actually drew the costume, just described it. You can find sketches of the original costume design out there (which was by Rick Leonardi and was originally red and black). I also know the original plan was to make the change in 1982 and have the creator write the story introducing it.

    That and the story of Shooter purchasing it in August 1982 are pretty well documented. Comics Should Be Good actually had the designer write a piece on its creation where he includes Shooter's letter - http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2007/05/16/randy-schuellers-brush-with-comic-history/

    So maybe there was a process where they decided to use it for Julia Carpenter and then came full circle and decided to put it on Spidey as well? I don't know...

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    1. Now to think of it, Spider-Man wore it first, as he returned from the SW with the black costume before the publishing of the SW books started. So readers had already seen him wearing it when Spider-Woman premiered on SW wearing a costume very similar to in. Maybe it was just to add a bit of extra buzz for a month or so among the readers who were (supposed to be) hungrily waiting for the details how he got the symbiote costume.

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    2. There's actually a photo of a page featuring Leonardi's original design on my very own review of the extras from the Roger Stern Spider-Man Omnibus!

      (Certainly there are better actual scans out there; I'm just plugging myself here.)

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