Fantastic Four #257-262

Fantastic Four #257-262

Originally released in 1983

Written by John Byrne

Art by John Byrne

It's been a while since I've read the Fantastic Four, but there was one storyline that I wanted to cover. The first page of the issue succinctly sums up the premise:

I haven't read many issues with John Byrne doing the artwork, but the page showing Galactus looking out at distant worlds as he elaborates on that statement was breathtaking. Between this and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, I really should read more stories that take place in space.

Thanks to his newly-developed conscience, Galactus refuses to consume any worlds with life on them, and as a result, he is slowly starving to death.  Only when he has no alternative does he follow his herald, Nova (Frankie Raye, not a member of the Nova Corps.), to a planet for him to devour - the Skrull throneworld.  Despite the Skrulls' best efforts, they might as well be ants next to Galactus, who consumes their world and all of the Skrulls who are on it.

Back on Earth, Reed and Sue have decided that the Baxter Building isn't the safest place to raise Franklin, especially when Sue has another baby on the way, so they'll be adopting secret identities and moving to the suburbs to live a normal life.  Despite Ben's concerns (he's heard similar things before), this isn't the end of the Fantastic Four, as Reed and Sue still plan to take part in the team. (obviously, the secret identity thing won't stick)

While checking on the Vision (who's unconscious; between that and finding out that Magneto is her father, the Scarlet Witch has been going through a lot lately), Reed disappears.  Issue 258 shifts focus in what's described as "the strangest issue of the Fantastic Four ever", which is likely because the Fantastic Four aren't in it.

Instead, the focus is on Doctor Doom. (one detail that comes up which surprises me is that Doctor Doom and Doctor Strange had never met by this point in Marvel's history - "Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment" came out in 1989, and that could have been the first time that they met)  Flashing back to a few months before the present day, Doom had recently regained control over Latveria after a period where he was removed from power.

We see a different side of Doom here with his paternal pride in Kristoff, his ward, along with a detail that came up when I was reading Claremont's X-Men run that was the start of a long back-and-forth where various writers tried to claim that Doom was or wasn't a Doombot when Arcade struck a match on his armour.

Doom is willing to teach Kristoff what it means to rule Latveria, though a well-meaning suggestion by the boy sets off Doom's rage to say the least.

I'm not sure how often Doctor Doom and Magneto have interacted before this point (maybe it's like Doctor Doom and Doctor Strange, where it's a weird oversight for the first twenty years or so of the characters' existences), but Doom doesn't take the idea of being compared to Magneto well at all.

Doom has created a way to give someone the Power Cosmic that he once stole from the Silver Surfer, but the problem is that no human can survive the process.  He needs a pawn who's powerful enough to withstand the vast energy while being easy to manipulate.

Enter the former herald of Galactus, formerly known as Terrax the Terrible.  He attacked Galactus and was stripped of his power, now being known as Tyros the Terrible.  Doom brings Terrax back to most of his former power (even Doom can't fully replicate the Power Cosmic) and sends him after the Fantastic Four, leaving out the detail that the process will kill Terrax in a manner of hours, allowing Doom to step in and deliver the coup de grace.

Doom captures Sue Storm, admitting that she's probably the most powerful (or at least dangerous) of the team, though it's ultimately a ploy to boost his own ego. He forces Sue to decide - stay and fight Doom, which she could possibly win, or go and help Ben and Johnny against Terrax, which (as Doom describes it) would be admitting that Doom's her better. Sue immediately jumps to Johnny and Ben's defense; her ego isn't so fragile that it makes a difference. (Also, I was surprised to see that she's still referred to as the Invisible Girl at this point)

Doom's scheme is going exactly as he planned it - Sue, Johnny, and Ben can't beat Terrax on their own, and Sue sends up a signal flare to call in Reed. Except the minutes tick by and Reed doesn't show up.  Wanting Reed to witness the death of his team and be unable to stop it, Doom steps in to try and force Terrax to stop.

Terrax freezes Doom to the spot with the Power Cosmic before the Silver Surfer arrives, having sensed the energy.  He fights Terrax for long enough that Terrax burns himself out, and Doom uses a rarely-used ability to swap his mind with someone else's - if he had been looking just a little bit to the left, he would have wound up in the body of Spider-Man's Aunt May.

The team investigates Reed's absence, and with the help of the Silver Surfer, they determine that Reed has been taken off-world. The Silver Surfer can't leave Earth, so they turn to the Watcher, who spoke with his people and determined that helping to find Reed wouldn't qualify as interfering.

As it turns out, Reed had already saved Galactus's life several issues before this (I thought Reed saved his life here), and as a result of the destruction of the Skrull throneworld, Reed was taken to be executed for this part in that.  The other members of the Fantastic Four and the Watcher refuse to sit by and let that happen, so Lilandra, the empress of the Shi'ar, agrees to have a trial to determine Reed's fate.

Back on Earth, John Byrne is running late with the latest Fantastic Four comic - in the Marvel universe, Marvel Comics publishes comic versions of the characters' exploits (with permission, though I'm guessing they don't/can't get that for Spider-Man, the Hulk, or the X-Men, if they even make comics for those people/groups at all), and they usually stick to actual events. (They can make things up, but the Thing in particular gets mad if they do that, so it's a last resort) The Watcher abducts Byrne to witness the trial.

Rather than having a jury system, Reed chooses an alien system where everyone who's present has to be convinced of Reed's guilt or innocence.  To start off the trial, Reed pleads that he's guilty. It's a bold strategy; let's see if it pays off.

Specifically, he pleads guilty to saving Galactus, as that's historical fact - he questions whether or not saving Galactus qualifies as a crime. The Watcher serves as the first witness, but the audience isn't convinced that Galactus is a necessary part of universal balance.

Even Odin isn't enough to convince the whole audience, so someone who's particularly relevant to this case has to testify - Galactus.  I wanted to read this story because of this page, where it's established that Galactus isn't just a giant human wearing a fancy hat, but rather, he's a cosmic force of nature whose appearance depends on who's witnessing him.

Galactus's presence does more harm than good, but combining his power with the Watcher's, Galactus is able to call forth one last surprise witness - Eternity, the embodiment of the universe. Eternity connects everyone with the universe itself, giving them a cosmic awareness that allows them to see Galactus's role in it (in admittedly vague terms), which finally convinces everyone of Reed's innocence.

It would later revealed in Al Ewing's run on The Ultimates that eventually, Galactus would become the Lifebringer, restoring life to dead worlds rather than devouring populated ones.  It was an interested development, and I was annoyed to see it get undone.

The issues were well-written and they went by quickly.  Byrne has a good handle on the voices of the Fantastic Four, Doom, and the cosmic side of the FF, even if I was surprised at how slowly some aspects of the Marvel universe had developed in roughly twenty years real-time. (I'm surprised that Sue Storm went by the Invisible Girl for at least two decades) The art did a good job at showcasing big moments and making the characters feel expressive, and I really liked the showcase of alien worlds and cultures. This isn't an era of the Fantastic Four that I'm overly familiar with (I've mainly read the Lee-Kirby run from the 60s prior to this blog, and even then, I mainly focused on the lead-up to 2015's Secret Wars), but even if I wish that there had been more development in the time since the 1960s, I enjoyed reading it.