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Appearing in "Earth 33⅓"

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  • Morbius (Mentioned)

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Synopsis for "Earth 33⅓"

  • Synopsis not yet written

Appearing in "If the Stars Be Made of Stone!"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Thor #258

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Synopsis for "If the Stars Be Made of Stone!"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Thor #258
The Grey Gargoyle's pirate ship has come across the Asgardians. The Asgardians begin to quickly go through the pirates, until the Grey Gargoyle enters the fray. He quickly turns everyone but Thor to stone, and before Thor can move, the Grey Gargoyle grabs the petrified Sif, and threatens to smash her unless Thor surrenders. Back in Asgard, the council of war is planning their moves when Karnilla calls Balder to the gate. Just then, the Enchantress and the Executioner break down the door. Back in space, the Asgardians wake from the Grey Gargoyle's spell to find themselves in slave collars. They are sent to the furnace room, to stoke the flames of the ship. The Asgardians toil at their labors since the slave collars allow little else. Once back in their pens, the Recorder reveals that he has discovered that he knows how to remove their collars after spending several hours scanning them. He gets them off and just then the Grey Gargoyle comes in.

Appearing in "A Moment's Peace"

Reprint of the 2nd story from
Doctor Strange (Vol. 2) #46

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Synopsis for "A Moment's Peace"

Reprint of the 2nd story from
Doctor Strange (Vol. 2) #46
Staying in a villa just south of Rome, Clea attempts to get Stephen to enjoy a moonlit dip in the ocean, however, Stephen declines. Reflecting on his past as a disciple of the Ancient One, Strange decides to test Clea's abilities. After she succeeds in deflecting a mystic attack, Stephen takes her hand and tells her that it's time to once again resume their training.

Appearing in "The Brain Parasites!"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Fantastic Four #227

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Synopsis for "The Brain Parasites!"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Fantastic Four #227
Reed is contacted by scientific colleague Gideon Carruthers to help investigate a meteor impact at Lost Lake mountain resort in Pennsylvania. Reed accepts, and the Fantastic Four and Franklin prepare for a family holiday unaware that the meteor, hidden at the bottom of the lake itself, is causing some kind of selective evolutionary regression in the local wildlife.

As the FF approach in the Fantasti-Car, they come under attack from a hawk devolved into a Pteranodon. While Sue protects Franklin, the other three members do their best to repel the attack but the Pteranodon does serious damage to the craft. When a mighty blow from Ben knocks the creature unconscious and plummeting straight for the Fantasti-Car, the creature mysteriously explodes: the only physical remains being a small organism resembling a prehistoric trilobite.

While the rest of the team settle into their cabin quarters, Reed and Carruthers set about examining the trilobite, but are interrupted by a small boy whose dog has disappeared. Promising to do their best to find the boy's pet, they tune in to a radio scanner in time to hear a police report about an attack at a nearby gas station. Fearing the attack is related to the trilobite incident, Ben, Reed and Johnny rush to investigate and find a police trooper lying inured beside his vehicle, a victim of a savage monster that attacked his car. The three investigate inside the gas station and discover a number of cans of motor oil ripped open on the floor, and a huge wolf-like creature lapping at the spilled oil. The beast is cornered but escapes, knocking Ben out of the way with an energy blast and destroying the gas pump heads, but Reed acts quickly and on a hunch he removes the living trilobite creature from the back of the wolf's neck, and the wolf reverts to its original form. Within an hour the trilobite is dead, and Reed and Carruthers determine that the creature is a true symbiote and that it uses its host to procure oil for sustenance, hence the attack on the Fantasti-Car and the gas station. The team determine to search for the meteor the following day and, as Reed and Sue look in on a sleeping Franklin, Sue worries that they are exposing their son to needless danger in just being at Lost Lake. She complains that it is still difficult for her to accept a life outside of the ordinary patterns of family life, but resolves to stand with her husband as both wife and member of the team.

The next day Ben dives from the FF's rented launch to the bottom of the lake and retrieves an alien egg from the meteor, but is attacked by a huge sea serpent that Johnny surmises is devolved from a common eel. As the team tackle the serpent and Sue pilots the launch, the integrity of the egg is breached and a trilobite makes its way up Sue's back, unnoticed by the Invisible Girl in the heat of the moment. Carruthers and Franklin watch from the shoreline as the FF take on the monster, and before Reed can remove the alien from the serpent it mysteriously explodes, just like the pteranodon. An investigation of the now-vacated alien egg reveals five empty chambers, meaning, as far as Reed knows at least, two parasites are unaccounted for. Sue, meanwhile, is acting very strangely, and shuns Reed's attempts at physical contact. Later, as Ben and Carruthers scour the woods for one of the missing parasites the scientist falls prey to an alien and is devolved into some from of early hominid. As the creature attacks the heating oil of a nearby cabin, Johnny intervenes and causes an explosion that knocks Carruthers out long enough for Ben to remove the parasite and restore him to human form. As the team regroups, Sue's absence is noted and she is eventually discovered behind the Fantasti-Car, still largely in control of her faculties but struggling to maintain her humanity, which Reed ascribes to her cosmic-ray-altered blood chemistry.

Reed and Johnny deduce that it was Franklin who was responsible for making the two parasites self-destruct and, as the youngster struggles against the same impulse with regard to his own mother, Reed buys enough time to remove the parasite from Sue's neck, enabling Franklin destroys the parasite as it rests in Reed's hand. Restored to humanity, Sue is at a loss to explain the parasite's motive in sheltering by the Fantasti-Car, but suggests that the parasite's instincts may have been reproductive. As the craft takes to the air its engines incinerate another alien egg that had been deposited beneath it, with all but one of its larvae burned to a crisp, and the remaining parasite hovering precariously between life and death.

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