"A STRETCH IN TIME..."
Writer/Editor: Marv Wolfman | Artist: Ernie Chan
Letterer: Joe Rosen | Colorist: Michele Wolfman
Writer/Editor: Marv Wolfman | Artist: Ernie Chan
Letterer: Joe Rosen | Colorist: Michele Wolfman
Mister Fantastic greets the group on the Cape's airfield and joins them in their fight against the Jaguar Priest's dinosaurs. The Priest's pterodactyl grabs Ann, but the Thing commandeers another dino and follows. While Mister Fantastic and Skull fight the pterodons on the ground, the Thing rescues Ann. The Jaguar Priest is taken away by the police, and Mister Fantastic suggests sending the pterodons to the Savage Land. Skull prepares to turn himself in to the police as well, to stand trial for the death of his brother.
Continuity Notes: There are three footnotes in this story; one to the last issue when Skull notices the Jaguar Priest, and one to SKULL THE SLAYER #1 when Corey mentions that Skull is still wanted for his brother's death. The third is a lengthy affair in which Marv Wolfman tries to explain how Mister Fantastic appears in this story with his powers intact (albeit weakening), when he had apparently lost them in contemporaneous FANTASTIC FOUR installments.
There's another reference to the cobalt bomb the Thing was searching for last issue; in fact it is the instruments aboard his craft, designed to find the bomb, which help him fly out of the Bermuda Triangle. I have no idea if this plot was ever resolved anywhere else.
Randomly, on the final page, Wolfman has Corey and Skull shake hands as Corey apologizes to Skull for constantly antagonizing him. Which would be a fine ending to their mutual arc if A) Bill Mantlo hadn't done it already, in a develpment Wolfman completely ignored over these two issues, and B) Wolfman had done anything in this issue to show why Corey might suddenly change his mind about Skull. But he did no such thing. Corey goes from sniping at Skull early in the issue to not interacting with Skull at all in the second half, to apologizing to Skull out of the blue on the last page.
So I guess that's it. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I came into SKULL. I knew it was a very short-lived series, so I figured it was probably not commercially viable in the seventies. And I knew it had three writers over the course of eight issues (or ten issues counting this MTiO coda), so I expected it to be a bit of a creative roller coaster. But it seemed sort of "pulp" influenced, and for that reason I wanted to check it out.
There were things I liked about SKULL to be sure, but I can't say those things overcame the series' deficiencies. Like I said, I can see why it was cancelled, and I can see why it was never revived. At its core, after the Tower of Time was destroyed, SKULL was essentially a Ka-Zar knockoff. And Marvel has enough trouble keeping KA-ZAR comics in print, so I'm not sure why anybody would want to read about his inferior copy!
Oh yeah, the period where Reed was slowly losing his powers-which in my memory was a slow burn-then lost them for about a two year stretch before regaining them just in time for FF #200 and a supposed "final" battle with Doctor Doom. There's an adventure in there, let me tell you.
ReplyDeleteSee, the biggest thing that came out of that was that the Brute, the Reed Richards of Counter-Earth (look, just roll with that, don't ask why an artificial earth had alternate versions of some Marvel characters) was able to toss a depowered Reed into the Negative Zone and take his place for several issues. A thing I did not think about as a kid was that meant he was posing as the Invisible Woman's husband which gets REALLY damn creepy if you think about the implications. And given how much Marvel let slide in the 1970s, I wouldn't be shocked if that was on purpose.
Anyway, tying this back into older comments I have made, there was a point where Reed was sitting on a rock in the Negative Zone where he mused about having "more medals in World War II than Audie Murphy" and using that to motivate himself. Which, as I said in an old Invaders comment, was the last time I recall Reed being connected to World War II!
Wow, managed to stick the landing on that!
And there goes Skull the Slayer. I, in fact, did not read both parts of this story, because I definitely would have remembered the explanation for Mr. Fantastic's fading powers. A peculiar book to get a trade paperback for, to say the least, but I still like the approach of the 70s that got us books like this. Throw it at the wall and see what sticks!
I feel like I've read this stuff with the Brute... I did have a trade paperback called THE OVERTHROW OF DOOM, with some of that build-up to FF 200. It had to have been in there.
DeleteSpeaking of, it fascinates me that Marv Wolfman created Prince Zorba as this charismatic, benevolent leader for Latveria, and then when John Byrne revisited him a few dozen issues later, he completely changed the character into a megalomaniacal tyrant.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the Fireside and Pocket Books reprints of early Lee/Kirby material but didn’t care much for contemporary Fantastic Four until Byrne came along.
Still, I got the occasional issue as a kid if there was nothing more enticing on the spinner rack or a grown-up was picking it out. And of those few one had a memorable cover of Counter-Earth’s Johnny Storm as Gaard the cosmic goalie — just a chef’s kiss of straight-faced, melodramatic inanity. More often but still not very, I would select a Marvel Two-in-One if the co-stars intrigued me; the annual with the Liberty Legion is how I discovered Ben Grimm had lost his powers and was using a mechanized Thing suit. I have far more gaps in my knowledge of Marvel than DC continuity to this day, and I only discovered Counter-Earth’s Reed Richards’ identity as the Brute much later, while I can’t say whether I even knew about the regular one having lost his powers until now.
Is Reed losing his powers a different storyline than the one where Ben lost his and got the robot suit? Or did the various members of the FF all lose their powers at random throughout the 70s?? (This is more a hypothetical question than anything else, though I am somewhat curious.)
DeleteI admit to not having read much 1970s FF, but from what I've read about it, it sounds like the series kind of stagnated. I mean, that would be expected immediately after Kirby left -- but unlike, say, AVENGERS and SPIDER-MAN, which I both think stayed relatively strong throughout the 70s, FF feels like no one knew what to do with it without Stan and Jack at the helm.
You had to know I'd be able to answer this, right?
DeleteThey actually blended together. Ben stopped being the Thing for a while and had to wear a robot suit to help out, and eventually became the Thing again in the aftermath of the Galactus/Counter-Earth storyline. During that story, hints were dropped that Reed was having trouble stretching (I think he admitted to Ben at one point that he could no longer stretch one of his arms) and once everyone got back home, Reed lost his powers.
To me, it was a sign of the sheer chaos, fun as it was at times, at Marvel editorially. I'm pretty sure Roy Thomas was the writer/editor of the book at the time, so there really wasn't anyone to TELL him that he was repeating storylines. Say what you will about Shooter, but if someone had come to him and said "okay, so now Reed's gonna lose his powers", Shooter would have said "You just did that, don't do it again."
Looking back from the vantage point of adulthood-despite it being my favorite comic of the mid to late 1980s, FF wasn't very good. It was a series of creators trying to be Lee and Kirby, but not understanding what Lee and Kirby did to make the book special. The main reason Byrne's run was so beloved at the time was it was a return to first principles, or, failing that, it SURE felt like it was.