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Comicsdad wrote:

Why is Green Goblin saying "I'm now ready to give the four of you your orders!" to the THREE Enforcers?!?

You say you have the Omnibus. In my Masterwork, it reads, "the three of you", and it does look like the word "three" has been relettered. Does this mean that when they made the Omni, they went back and restored earlier artwork than what was used for the Masterwork?

Is it my imagination or have the Sons of Storytime not commented on any Spider-Man yet? That would seem a natural series to read to them and I'm dying to hear their ASM comments. Storytime, I wish you would start reading them the Spider-Man series from the beginning and post their interviews on the "Books:Discussion/Review" board! Please? I would think they would love ASM for the plots and the comedy and the dialogue. It's better than most of the stuff you made them sit through so far!

"It is exactly twelve seconds to four! The Puppet Master should enter the doorway at this precise instant!"

Well, the crossovers continue in The Fantastic Four. This makes it 4 issues in a row! The X-Men get a considerable amount of pagetime here in their off-month. "We Have to Fight the X-Men!" reminds me of the Fantastic Four Vs. the X-Men miniseries which I love, but only because of some of the characters, not because there are many similarities between the stories (there obviously aren't). But it's fun to see the original historical genesis of what would flower into such a nice miniseries in the 1980's.

Nice to see the "letterer gag" making another appearance: Stan Lee (The Leader!)...Jack Kirby (The King!)...Chic Stone (The Master!)...Art Simek (The Letterer!) I can't help but wonder if this particular example was the seed that inspired Stan with the name of the Hulk's archenemy less than half a year later.

So this is Chic Stone's first FF issue. This issue doesn't show him off really well yet, but I'll take his faces over Roussos's any day (check Reed and Johnny at top of pg2), and I'm sure there will be better Stone FF issues to come. He's really getting a workout now, sort of becoming Kirby's personal inker. Stone is now inking FF, Thor, X-Men, and Avengers. Three monthly full-length features plus a monthly 18-pager. Whew!!! (As for Kirby himself, some nice machinery in the Thinker's lab on pgs 2-3. And I wonder if Kirby was looking at Ayers's work in Strange Tales 121. On pg2 he draws flames licking off of Johnny's human face just like Ayers did.)

I was pretty happy to see the return of the Thinker, mostly because of dialogue such as the line with which I opened this review. Unfortunately, I think that was the only such line in the entire story. I hope that when Stan brings the Thinker back for a third go-round, he sees fit to dream up many more of those trademark Thinker quotes. That's the only thing that distinguishes the Thinker for me, and those lines are so funny.

The Mad Thinker and the Puppet Master results in another..."supervillian team-up"!! Not that there have been many in the FF lately (and only a couple in the entire FF run so far), but they're starting to become a regular SA Marvel feature, especially in Journey into Mystery. In the "Torch Vs. Thing" issue of Strange Tales, we saw the Puppet Master escape, Doom-like, from FF 14's octopus. My question is: how did the Thinker get out of jail after only 13 issues??? (Does that equal 13 months of "story-time"? Hi, Storytime.) You would "think" he got more than a year's sentence, so if he has in fact escaped, I wish Stan had given us at minimum a couple lines of dialogue to explain. Also, how did the Thinker regain the Android from Reed??

We do at least learn that the Thinker has an "oversized brain", although to be honest, his head doesn't look a heck of a lot bigger than Reed's. The Android is an early Absorbing Man. The Puppet Master benefits from a couple new revealed tidbits: his clay is not only radioactive, but also "magic", and more powerful than "the most powerful mind on earth", as demonstrated when it subdues Prof. X. He doesn't even need to carve Xavier's actual face in order to control him; if you notice, the face is blank on the Xavier Puppet. Isn't that a change from the previous requirements? I thought PM had previously been seen to always have to carve a face identical to his victim's, rather than just leaving the face blank. This is becoming too easy for him now, I think he should have to work for it at least a little bit. Where's the charm in faceless magic clay puppets?? I guess I shouldn't have watched Gigglesnort Hotel back in the day.

As for our heroes' powers, it seems more than odd that the Prof's "most powerful mind on earth" is too weak to control five people simultaneously. In that scene, the Beast is revealed to have the strongest brain of the five X-Men, which is rather unexpected. I know he's the most intelligent of the five, but I would have thought Jean's brain was more powerful than Hank's. For her part, Jean still seems fairly weak, unable to suspend a stone statue. As for Cyke, he shows off a new "wide screen force beam".

Interestingly, there are only six pages of setup before the fighting starts, but there are some fascinating morsels to found here, several of which involve the newspaper which Reed and Sue are reading. Sue reads off a litany of X-Men villians from that title's first four issues. How on earth did this newspaper learn about "the Blob" and the codenames of half the roster of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants?? I say give those reporters a raise. Also, the paper claims "FIRST EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS" of the X-Men. Either the paper is lying about this, or the crowd at the start of X-Men #2 was seeing the X-Men for the first time in that scene, and it sure didn't seem that way as the crowd called out the X-Men's names on sight, rushing them one by one for autographs and kisses. As if this wasn't enough, the paper claims that the X-Men fought the Space Phantom!! Either this hints at an early untold X-Men tale, or take back those reporters' raises and demote them. I'm assuming that Stan confused the villians from the second issues of both of the other team titles (which you can understand, when the names are "Vanisher" and Space "Phantom").

But by far my favorite thing about that newspaper is how the front page headline miraculously changes mid-scene, while somehow managing to simultaneously take all the mystery out of it:





OK, laying that newspaper aside...

The narrator calls the Prof "one of the world's most famous mutants". Huh? Is that statement meant to be purely relative and ironic, or is Xavier actually famous?? If so, wouldn't it follow that he is known to be the leader of the X-Men?? Wouldn't the Average Man on the Street (Joe the Plumber, maybe) put two and two together and search for the School for Gifted Youngters? And if Xavier is a famous mutant, does that mean the X-Men's parents know?? I don't understand at all how Xavier can be a famous mutant and yet the X-Men's parents suspect nothing. Perhaps what is meant is that the leader of the X-Men is famous although his actual name and identity are unknown. And you know what that means...a secret identity!

Anyway, the FF and the X-Men meet as early as pg5. I was a little surprised that Johnny and Bobby didn't offer good character references for each other after having fought side-by-side in Strange Tales, especially after the Editor used a caption to remind us of that story. (We do see them catching up with each other as soon as the two groups meet.) Marvel Girl and the Invisible Girl meet and talk in this same panel, which is kind of a thrill if you like gorgeous superhero women, and who doesn't? This would be like Alba and Janssen in the same shot. Thing gets in a good line at Warren's expense: "What do they feed you - bird food??" Reed greets Cyclops personally, and how exactly does Reed know that Cyke is the X-Men's field leader? Maybe it was in that newspaper.

Another slight error here by Stan as Cyke says, "Good! [Reed's] answer is just what the Thinker predicted it would be!" At this point in the story, the X-Men don't know that Xavier is being controlled by the Thinker. Replace the word "Thinker" with "Professor".

Without much preamble, the fighting breaks out in the 4th panel of the meeting, since this is no misunderstanding but a planned attack. I find the 2nd panel of pg7 hilarious. Notice how Cyke's multiple power beams are all exactly parallel to each other, making it seems for all the world that he's frantically running around and firing off blasts from different positions, all in the space of a few seconds.



But as funny as that is, there's better to come. Ben and Jean, of all people, square off in a nice panel and Ben threatens to...spank her. Given the Thing's strength, I for one don't blame Jean at all for becoming slightly hysterical.



And two pages later, the terror only increases, as Ben gets her into position:



I think we were supposed to have forgotten about the spanking threat during the intervening page, but the attentive reader enjoys the full experience.

Speaking of Ben, we get a wonderful new bit of personal information about him. "You don't fool us, Ben! You hold a college degree or two yourself!" "Don't broadcast it, stringbean! I want the admirin' world to think I'm a self-made genius!" At the same time, we're treated to more of the Thing's usual endearing witticisms: "I better land a haymaker on someone pretty soon! I don't wanna grow up frustrated! (As in ASM, Stan loves to throw in a little popular psychology now and then.) "Now don't spoil everything by saying 'Ouch'! I got muscles I ain't even used yet!" And the ever-reliable "I wuz robbed!"

I guess Reed really does remember verbatim all those putdowns he receives from the Thing. He relishes getting the chance to dish one out for a change, using one of Ben's lines on the Beast, "You're so in love with the sound of your own voice". Hank's rejoinder is hilarious, coming as he's being thrown bodily across the room: "I stand corrected, sir!" Hank is so polite.

Later, when the X-Men lure the FF to a plateau booby-trapped by the Thinker, it's unclear to me just how the revolving reel device was able to suddenly appear without causing even a blemish in the ground underneath it. An impossible-looking event there at the end of pg14:



The Thinker's only mistake appears to have been underestimating Hank's brainpower (or overestimating Xavier's). His reward? Hank's hairy foot! Of which we're treated to a closeup. What a panel.



Another great illo is the huge one on pg18, a single panel which features every character in the story. That illustration provides visual evidence that the two superteams have been reconciled to each other.

And I'm always a sucker for yellow force lines on a white background:



An interesting mini-theme embedded in the story, which I'll call the "Few Good Men" theme. The X-Men trust Xavier to command them to attack the FF. They can be forgiven for doing so, since they have no way of knowing he's under mental control, and he had told them he "heard" the FF's thoughts planning world domination. As Warren tells Sue, "The one we take orders from knows what he's doing! Our job is merely to obey him!" Later, he admits, "We were merely following orders - we didn't dream the evil Puppet Master was behind those orders!" This is all well and good, even if it makes the X-Men a possible danger to innocents again sometime in the future. What can they really do except hope that Xavier doesn't get controlled again? One would hope they will learn to question him more thoroughly the next time before blindly following suspicious "orders". But given this theme, the kicker is Ben's otherwise-unprepossessing dialogue to Reed!

Reed: "I'll explain as we go!"

Ben: "Skip the explanations, pal! Just tell me who to clobber this time!"

I doubt even Stan realized the irony of that exchange given the story's plot, but it's there. We can only trust that Reed himself won't be taken over by someone...like Doc Doom, for instance. Oh, right, he was...

What happened to the Android after the Thinker abandoned it at the close of this story? I'm assuming Reed will again hold it in storage for him until he comes around to collect it, like last time. (??)

A glorious visually dramatic final panel to end the tale:



It's final panels like these that really let you hear the swell of the music. The record needle lifts and returns to rest.

This is apparently the debut of Marvel Girl's new headpiece? It can be seen in X-Men #6 as well, which has July cover date like FF #28. I like it better than the old one, and the new hairdo is an improvement as well.

Thanks for pointing that out, dad. I thought I noticed something different about her on the cover of X-Men 6, but I didn't compare to earlier issues to spot the new do and headpiece. I must not have noticed it much in FF 28. It looks better now, more like Scarlet Witch's. I wonder if that's coincidence or not. Maybe Jean thinks the female "evil" mutant is fashionable.

And this issue delivered on a superhero team-up battle scene that surpasses (for me again) the cover image or the FF-Avengers cover for issue #26

That's not saying much, though. The cover of FF 26 sucks. I like your visual comparison to FF 243.

Doctor Doom does not appear in this [review]! We just felt like [dropping] his [name]!

Now that I have some color Human Torch, I'm finally catching up on this one series I wasn't reading for the past half year of the Marathon.

It doesn't look like anyone commented on this story for this thread. I guess I'm not surprised. The story is probably the poorest of the first half of Human Torch MW V2 (and probably of the whole volume) and Roussos doesn't do much at all for Ayers. The last panel page 4 isn't too bad.

The Torch tells the reader to come out for FF 28 and the next issue of Strange Tales.

Pretty much the only thing memorable about this story is that Doom is definitely not going to retain these three henchmen.