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Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Comics Magazine Vol 1 4

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This means it is up to each and every one of us to remind ourselves, and anyone who will listen, that all men and women are created equal.

—Captain America

Appearing in "The Merciless Menace Of MODOK!"

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Synopsis for "The Merciless Menace Of MODOK!"

Following their attempt to borrow some Sentinels from the X-Men for protection against their mystery enemy, the Fantastic Four bid farewell to their friends at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. As they leave, Professor X suspects that the Fantastic Four are about to face the greatest threat they have ever known.

Meanwhile in Harlem, the novice hero known as the Falcon stalks a trio of men who have been hired to stir up racial tensions in the neighborhood. Before the Falcon can act he is suddenly attacked by a group of A.I.M. soldiers. Meanwhile, back at Castle Doom in Upstate New York, Doctor Doom's technicians have completed reconstructing Doom's time machine after recovering it from Reed's lab. Seeking to recover the Cosmic Cube for his own use, Doctor Doom has one of his minions activate the device with the exact coordinates which he has preprogrammed into it and travels months into the past.

At the home of Agatha Harkness in Whisper Hill, the Invisible Girl is visiting with her son Franklin who is in the care of the old witch. While talking with Agatha about how Crystal had been teleported away during their flight to Whisper Hill, Sue is surprised to realize that the teddy bear she was holding is somehow now in Franklin's playpen, but Agatha claims not to have seen what happened. Sue considers contacting Reed to report the incident but decides to not do so because he's so consumed with finding out whoever has been making the recent attacks on them that she doesn't want to burden him with a new problem.

Soon afterwards, when Reed, Ben and Johnny return to the Baxter Building, they discover that Sue and Crystal have not returned from their trip. Reed sends Ben and Johnny out to Whisper Hill to make sure their safe, giving Reed time to work on his latest invention which he believes may be able to save them all.

Meanwhile back in Harlem, the Falcon is more than holding his own against the AIM agents but worries that he might be done when an agent brings in the Mechanoid to face him. However, before the robot can strike, the Falcon's partner Captain America arrives and the two of them make short work of the Mechanoid. As the fight continues, some of the AIM soldiers spot the Thing flying by on an airjet-cycle and, believing that the Fantastic Four are also coming to interfere, one of them blasts Ben's vehicle out from under him. However, the Thing easily survives the fall and, angered by the attack, he immediately starts clobbering the AIM soldiers. Irritated that his subordinates have forced him to become involved, MODOK fires a mental blast that knocks out Captain America and the Falcon and knocks down the Thing. Realizing that he only has one chance, the Thing is able to fire a Fantasti-Flare into the sky before MODOK incapacitates him as well.

Elsewhere, in the Hidden Land, Crystal arrives in her family's royal chamber, having been teleported there by Lockjaw, where the rest of the royal family are waiting for her. Medusa welcomes her sister and reveals that she she was called back to her homeland because Black Bolt fears that a darkness will set upon their land and that they will need every Inhuman to battle it back.

Back in New York, the Torch spots the Thing's flare and comes to his aid. Seeing the three unconscious heroes being loaded onto an AIM airship, the Torch attacks the AIM soldiers, giving the other heroes the chance to recover and join the fight.

Months in the past, Doctor Doom soars over the waters of the Caribbean Sea, searching for the Cosmic Cube in the vicinity of where the climatic battle between Captain America and the Red Skull was being fought when the Cube was lost.[1] After going beneath the surface, he soon spots a faint glow on the ocean's floor and retrieves the Cosmic Cube.

Back in the present, Ben, Johnny, Cap and Falcon continue their battle and are growing concerned that it might take all night, but instead iy is abruptly ended when Reed arrives with a stun blast weapon that incapacitates all of the AIM soldiers. However, MODOK was unaffected and manages to escape. As Cap and the Falcon head to Avengers Mansion to talk more about Falcon's idea of them working together, Ben is upset that they're leaving the FF trio to clean up the mess, but Reed assures him that he's already called S.H.I.E.L.D.

Later, back at the Baxter Building, Reed explains to Ben and Johnny that he's been making mistakes recently, important ones that have cost them dearly, and that Professor X had confirmed Reed's suspicion that he had been the victim of a series of mental inhibitors, microbiotic machines that had been implanted in his brain. When pressed for answers about how and who could do such a thing, Reed tells his two teammates that he hasn't figured out how, but he certainly knows who their attacker is.

Notes

  • For most of their appearances in this issue, the AIM agents are depicted wearing the white-and-purple version of the AIM "beekeeper" uniform that MODOK's minions were wearing at the time this story was set. However, on one page their uniforms are colored entirely yellow, and on the next two pages their uniforms are colored as being white and dark pink.

Continuity Notes[]

  • Chronologically, Franklin Richards was last seen in Fantastic Four #98 before his parents went on a mission to defend a manned mission to the moon. This story is the earliest chronological point in time that Franklin uses his growing mutant powers. His powers where hinted at in Fantastic Four #129–141 when Reed was forced to shut down Franklin's mind in order to prevent his powers from exploding out of control.
  • Both Agatha Harkness and her cat Ebony were last seen in Fantastic Four #94 when they were first hired by the Richards family to be the nanny for Franklin. Ebony is next seen in X-Men: The Hidden Years #9 during another one of Sue's many visits to drop Franklin off at Whisper Hill.
  • The Inhuman royal family was last seen in Fantastic Four #99 where they briefly fought the Human Torch who was upset that they abducted Crystal in Fantastic Four #95 without explanation. In that story, it was learned that Crystal was needed to assist in healing Black Bolt who was injured in an experiment at that time.
  • Doctor Doom travels back in time to recover the Cosmic Cube following its use by the Red Skull in Tales of Suspense #79–81. That tale ended with the Cosmic Cube being dropped into the ocean. The reason why Doom goes back in time to collect the Cosmic Cube is because it was believed to have been destroyed after the Red Skull's next failed attempt to use it in Captain America #119.
    • However, while in the past, Doom speaks aloud of how the trump card for all his plans lies "somewhere beneath these Mediterranean waters" and he soon passes the outcropping of rock that is "the site of the climatic battle between Captain America and the Red Skull." This is a continuity error because, although the location of the "Red Skull's Unidentified Island" was not established in those Tales of Suspense issues, the story in Avengers #40 did reveal that the Cosmic Cube had been "lost in the drink near a small Caribbean island," and the Sub-Mariner did find it on the sea bottom near the island of Puerto Nuevo. Namor later lost the Cube when it fell into a bottomless crevice on that island, one that immediately sealed itself up.
    • Also, while it would be on a Mediterranean island that the Red Skull would "someday soon" retrieve what he had lost that day, that would only occur after the Cosmic Cube had sunk beneath the Earth's surface where it was later found by the Mole Man who threw it away, believing it to be nothing but a useless bauble. Captain America #115 would reveal that the Cube had returned to the surface via a volcanic eruption on a Mediterranean island where a poor fisherman would find it on the shore, and news of the miracles that were happening there would reach the Red Skull.
  • Since the next issue will feature Doom sending "another time-snatched artifact" against the FF, it's possible that, between issues, he actually uses the time machine to retrieve the Cosmic Hulk robot from the sewers of New York City after it was depowered in Eternals #16. This is something that was seen in a flashback in Incredible Hulk #350. However, that would require Doom to somehow know about something that was going to happen almost two Marvel Years in the future, and that flashback contains no hint of any time travel being involved.
  • In this maxi-series, Doom reclaims the Time-Platform that Reed has had in his lab since sometime before Fantastic Four #23, when it was mentioned that the FF had transferred it there from Doom's American castle (where it had been when last used in Fantastic Four #19) for intensive study. However, as revealed in Fantastic Four Annual #11, Reed had been forced to return the time machine when Doom had made an official request for it, but had duplicated it before complying with the request. The story in Marvel Super-Heroes #20, published seven years earlier, had already established that Reed Richards himself had "restored" the time machine to Doom's American castle at some point before that story took place. In that story, Doom used that same device to banish Diablo in a distant post-apocalyptic future. It could be that Doom stealing back the time machine in Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Comics Magazine #1 was a matter of pride over any other need.

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