FANTASTIC FOUR #251

"INTO THE NEGATIVE ZONE!"
Story & Art: John Byrne | Lettering: Jim Novak | Colorist: Glynis Wein
Editing: Tom DeFalco | Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter

The Plot: Reed shows Ben his new portal to the Negative Zone, then departs with Sue to host a meeting of the Baxter Building’s tenants. Meanwhile, Johnny visits Julie Angel at acting class, while Ben goes to pick up Alicia Masters from her apartment.

Later, at the Baxter Building, the Fantastic Four leave young Franklin in Alicia’s care and climb aboard Reed’s new Negative Zone Exploratory Module, Mark I. The team heads into the Negative Zone to explore, but less than two hours after their departure, Negative Zone warlord Annihilus emerges from the portal and assaults Alicia.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: Reed and Ben recap the villains of the Negative Zone, as well some of of its recent history.

Reed laments that perhaps buying the Baxter Building wasn’t such a great idea after all, as he now needs to deal with frustrated tenants. He makes plans to have his lawyers put together a service to attend to tenant issues. (Do Nelson & Murdock still represent the FF at this point in time?)

Johnny meets Julie’s new roommate, Sharon Selleck, and finds himself the unknowing participant in a love quadrangle with the two girls and their acting classmate, Grey Landers (who looks suspiciously like Christopher Reeve).

Sue considers that the Baxter Building may not be the best place for a child to grow up, especially now that Franklin has lost his powers. Later, she also notes that she’s never been to the Negative Zone before.

Is It Clobberin' Time? Nope, it’s a “quiet issue” so there’s no one around to be clobbered.

My Thoughts: Surprisingly, John Byrne tries his hand at a full-fledged “quiet issue” here. I’ve noted before that he was not a fan of this sort of installment, believing that since “every issue is someone’s first,” a person who picked up such an issue as their introduction to a super-group might be turned off from returning due to the lack of action. But there’s no action to be found here, though Byrne does find time to demonstrate all of our heroes’ powers in more pedestrian ways, and he ends things on a pretty menacing cliffhanger.

So an all sub-plot issue, this isn’t bad. I like seeing Reed forced to acclimate to life as a landlord, and the soapiness of Johnny’s relationship (or lack thereof) with Julie is like something out of a Spider-Man comic. Unfortunately, Byrne will pretty quickly drop both these sub-plots (in fact I don't think the landlord business ever comes up again during his run), which makes these scenes feel a bit pointless in retrospect.

Beyond that, this is probably one of Byrne’s artistically stronger installments in a while. There are backgrounds aplenty and he gives us some nice Kirby-style technology shots as well. If, as has been claimed, his work is due to suffer with the addition of ALPHA FLIGHT to his monthly duties, the problems don't seem to have started yet other than a few missing backgrounds mentioned last time.