Four No More!

With the fabulous Fantastic Four having gone through their share of breakups, it can be difficult to sift through them and find one story that stands out from the others, a task usually complicated by the fact that any story featuring the FF breaking up is always hard to swallow. But a Len Wein story from early 1978 takes a little more care with the concept, and genuinely attempts to give the impression that this time the FF have every intention of parting company for good.

It's an issue that differs from others where, for instance, a team member has left in anger or frustration, or special circumstances have forced the decision. This time, the decision has been mutually accepted, if grudgingly, following the discovery that the team's leader, Mr. Fantastic, had lost his stretching power and that he couldn't continue to function in the field without being a liability to the others. And with Reed's departure, his wife, Sue, has also made the decision to leave with her husband, so that would seem to be that. Yet it all feels a bit rushed. Why take the extreme step of disbanding the FF? Sue is only leaving because Reed is--but does Reed have to leave the Baxter Building? He's not going to cease being an inventor, is he? Why leave the state-of-the-art R&D facility he's already built for himself? And while Reed is irreplaceable in the eyes of the others, no one even takes five or ten minutes to give any serious thought to a new team member.

We've already seen the Thing giving us his own account of the FF's tumultuous history, as a prelude to this issue--and now, with everyone on this former team resolved to going their separate ways, there's only the matter of packing up and saying goodbye.

So perhaps this really is

(Well, by now it's turned into the shocker we never thought we'd see so often.)

This issue would be Wein's swan song on Fantastic Four, though the next three issues would coast on his plot until Marv Wolfman took the reins. Reed would regain his powers and reunite with his team in Latveria just before the book's 200th issue--but for now, Wein writes an excellent handoff issue that would set up the individual FF members for post-FF life (i.e., solo adventures) in order to keep everyone occupied until that time. It's a story that has satisfactory doses of family, friendship, memories, as well as some nice touches of nostalgia, while successfully giving the reader a feeling that they really are seeing the ending of something special in Marvel lore--perhaps because Wein does such a good job of having the team believe it.

A S.H.I.E.L.D. task force has already arrived to take possession of Reed's equipment (and what an inventory headache that must have been)--while elsewhere, fond farewells are being exchanged between family as well as with trusted friends.

One goodbye, however, is neither fond nor in any way heartfelt--more on the order of good riddance, sentiments no doubt expressed by the FF's landlord, Mr. Collins, whose history with his famous tenants has been combative and less than cordial. Today, however, Collins overplays his hand--thanks to his vulture-like instincts and a lousy sense of timing.

A final, dire threat from the Thing sends Collins scurrying back to his foxhole; yet Ben's mood doesn't last, because he has one more stop to make before he and his team depart their home. In just three panels, Wein and artist George Perez sum up the relationship between Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm as their longtime readers understand it: two partners who have often been on each other's nerves and even had heated arguments, but who would risk their life for the other without hesitation.

And finally, the painful departure.

At this point in time, the Baxter Building's doorman, O'Houlihan, had made only one prior appearance in the book (around the time Reed had finally developed a cure for the Thing's condition), yet a memorable one that made clear what good terms he was on with the members of the FF. His appearances would be equally sparse from here on--but having him show up even on rare occasion is always a nice way for a contemporary writer and artist to tie the FF with their classic and quite successful past.

As Reed indicated, Sue, Miss Harkness, and Franklin are off to their hotel, while Ben is off to visit his girlfriend, Alicia Masters, leaving Johnny to head to Greenwich Village to patch things up with his girlfriend, Frankie Raye. That leaves Reed, riding shotgun on SHIELD Agent Parnival and his team, who have things well in hand--or so they keep assuring Reed. If you get the feeling that Agent Parnival isn't quite on the level here--and that his name sounds a little familiar to you--you're a little more quick on the uptake than Reed, who at present is annoyed by the man but not suspicious of him. But that changes when Parnival's men finally trip up, and literally so.

And though Reed has been dealt with by the Plunderer, his gambit pays off, as his departed teammates spot his emergency signal and respond as if they're still on the job as the Fantastic Four.

And before you can say "It's clobberin' time!" ...

Yet the Plunderer is true to his word--armed with Reed's advanced weaponry, his men have the FF in their sights and are well prepared to take them on. So while it may be a moment primed for the FF to trash their opponents and chalk up one last victory to send them on their way on a high note, their overconfidence instead leads to their getting creamed like rash amateurs.

But teamwork is the name of this game--and fortunately, the one FF member least likely to pull their fat out of the fire gives his team the fighting chance it needs to turn the tables on the Plunderer and his crew.

"...if I can manage to spit flame across the room before anybody notices..." Even if I had Willie Lumpkin's vision, I can practically guarantee that I would notice flames being spit across a room.

As the dust settles, Ben takes this incident as a sign that Reed has reneged and changed his mind about the FF breaking up--but once Sue sadly sets him straight, it paves the way for a splendid end to this kind of story, the solemn yet dignified departure of characters who were the building blocks for all that came after them in Marvel's line of comics.

It's the kind of ending that would have served the team and the book well when Marvel later shelved the Fantastic Four concept indefinitely in 2015, the same year when it became clear that the team would fail to catch cinematic fire. (Though backed by former FF writer Jonathan Hickman's comments, Fox's continued ownership of film rights to the team was at the heart of the matter.) It's been announced that the book will return in August of this year--apparently because the right creative team finally became available for the project, if you believe Marvel EIC C.B. Cebulski's words on the subject. It's fair to wonder if the expressions of the FF in our final scene above were a portent of the kind of treatment in store for them in the 21st century.

Fantastic Four #191 Script: Len Wein Pencils: George Perez Inks: Joe Sinnott Letterer: John Costanza