A week ago, we took a look at Avengers #127 (Sep., 1974), the first half of a two-part crossover story set to conclude in the comic book that’s the main subject of the present post. But while Fantastic Four #150 does in fact pick up immediately from the cliffhanger ending that closed out its predecessor, we’re going to be taking a somewhat circuitous route today to get to the splash page of “Ultron-7:He’ll Rule the World!”. Why? Well, as regular readers of this blog will surely recall, our Avengers #127 post promised that this follow-up would provide an explanation for that issue’s depiction of a happily reunited Reed and Sue Richards, who’d been very much on the outs the last time we’d encountered them in this space. So that’s where we’ll begin.
Sue Richards (aka the Invisible Girl) had walked out on her husband, Reed (aka Mister Fantastic), taking their young son Franklin with her, a whole twenty issues ago, at the end of FF #130 — though, naturally, the couple’s marital discord had been brewing for some time prior to that dramatic moment. As bad as that situation was, things had become even worse as of #141 (“The End of the Fantastic Four!”), in which Reed made the fateful 
decision to shoot Franklin with an experimental weapon that shut down his mind, so as to prevent his burgeoning, otherwise uncontrollable mental powers from unleashing a psychic blast that Reed believed could destroy life throughout the solar system. That story had ended not just with Sue walking out for a second time, but with the other original members of the superhero team — Sue’s brother Johnny Storm (aka the Human Torch) and Reed’s closest friend Ben Grimm (aka the Thing) departing as well, leaving only Sue’s temporary (?) replacement (as of #131), the Inhuman Medusa, to hold down the fort at the Baxter Building with Reed.
As it turned out, neither Johnny nor Ben stayed away for long — both were back with the team by the end of the next storyline, a three-parter featuring Dr. Doom. That meant that both the Torch and the Thing were on hand when Medusa was mysteriously called back to the Great Refuge by her monarch, Black Bolt, in regards to something referred to only as “Project Revival”. After a two-issue Himalayan adventure involving yetis (and with Project Revival still a complete mystery), all three heroes returned to New York, 
just in time to find (in the opening scene of issue #147) that their leader was as his lowest ebb yet, having just been served divorce papers by his estranged wife.
Did I say lowest ebb? Maybe I spoke too soon, because just a couple of pages later, the very concerned Thing and Torch were heading out to pay Sue a visit when they were suddenly attacked by the FF’s old frenemy, Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner. What was bugging the monarch of Atlantis this time around? To all appearances, he’d decided to rekindle his torch for Sue 
Richards — a bit that went all the way back to the character’s Silver Age revival in Fantastic Four #4 (May, 1962), but hadn’t received much (if any) play for a number of years. After a few pages of fighting, Namor delivered his message — a warning not to try to track Sue down, or else — and then flew away. Of course, Johnny and Ben did exactly the opposite, proceeding on to their original destination — the country home of Sue’s friends Bob and Carol Linders, where she (and Franklin) had been staying for most of the time since Sue’s exit in issue #130 — only to learn that she was gone, having evidently been abducted against her will by the Sub-Mariner.
Ben and Johnny raced back to the Baxter Building to deliver the shocking news to Reed and Medusa, and the previously morose Mister Fantastic was galvanized into action. Tracking Namor down to an undersea lair in the South Atlantic, the whole team took him on — only to be brought up short on the very last page by the “captive” Sue Richards herself:
The stunned FF (minus Sue, of course) returned home at the beginning of issue #148, only to immediately come under attack by the Frightful Four. This abrupt swerve in the storyline — which represented little more than a virtual rehash of issue #130 — seemed designed primarily to bring the formidable female bruiser named Thundra back into the team’s orbit, as evidenced by how she hung around after her former teammates had been dispatched, with the result that she was on hand for the double-page spread that concluded this issue (and set up the next one):
It must be said, Namor was bringing quite a bit less to the “war with the surface world” party than he usually did in these sorts of circumstances; given that almost all of his Atlantean subjects were comatose at this time, he had no fleet of (mer)manned warships on hand to support his big play. Still, he had giant sea creatures to do his bidding, as well as the mysterious masked figure a-pullin’ on the reins in the image above. And, of course, there was the Invisible Girl — though she only seemed to be on hand as a spectator, not using her powers in support of either side, or doing anything else to intervene… at least, not until we reached page 16 of issue #149…
While Sue wept, and Ben waited, the battle raged on. Thundra landed a couple of solid haymakers on Namor before Reed tagged in, declaring that fighting the Sub-Mariner was his responsibility — a responsibility he was prepared to meet, even if it killed him…
Sheesh, where to start with this? How about Medusa and the other Inhumans’ manipulation of their “friends” — which, thanks to that “Project Revival” line, we know had been in the works at least since FF #145? Or the willingness of Namor to encourage Sue Richards to believe she was in love with him, and vice versa? Yeah, sure, it was all in a “good cause”, but it was still pretty damn presumptuous — and potentially quite dangerous, physically as well as emotionally.
But, of course, none of that tops the reconciliation itself. Let’s remember, Sue originally left Reed back in issue #130 because she felt that he saw her as nothing but the mother of their child. Somewhat ironically, the breach between them widened in #141 when Sue blamed Reed for directly harming that same child. But now, in #149, it all seems to have been about Sue not being certain that Reed really and truly loved her. Women, right? Who can figure ’em? Going strictly (and perhaps unfairly) on the basis of this story — not Gerry Conway, at least not in 1974.
But, in any event, we’ve now covered the ground we needed to prior to jumping back into the middle of our story, which, as we’ve already noted (and as Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia’s cover for FF #150 has also pretty well telegraphed), starts exactly where writer Steve Englehart and artists Sal Buscema and Joe Station left things in the final panels of Avengers #127:
As the jagged-edge blurb on the opening splash page indicates, Fantastic Four #150 is a milestone issue — though the hyperbolic description of it as “the greatest one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary issue ever!” is, honestly, kind of silly. For one thing, this ain’t no “anniversary”, since FF hasn’t been around for a century and a half; for another, given that it’s the first comic book of “the Marvel Age of Comics” to reach 150 issues — at least with the same title (and lead feature) with which it had started out — it doesn’t exactly have a whole lot of competition for “greatest ever”, at least not in reference to Marvel’s output. (Some other Marvel comics whose numbering had reached and passed 150 as of June, 1974, such as Captain America, Hulk, and Thor, had begun their four-color lives as other titles, with different sorts of features, in the years and decades before the Marvel Age was deemed to have begun; in any event, their 150th issues had arrived and departed without fanfare.) But, hey, whatever. Let’s party!
…though as long as we’re already paused, we should also take this opportunity to note that this issue was written by Gerry Conway, who’d been the regular writer on the title since #133 (though his tenure was rapidly nearing its end), and pencilled by Rich Buckler, who had first come on board with #142 — and whose huge debt to Jack Kirby is evident in every panel of art he ever produced for the series. (For those interested in this topic, we’ll be going into more depth about Buckler’s “borrowings” from the King in a future post about his work on Thor, where he took the same basic approach). The inker was of course Joe Sinnott, whose polished style had been helping define the look of Fantastic Four since 1965.
Though knocked off his feet, the Thing is unhurt, and immediately ready to try to tackle Ultron again. But Triton, speaking on behalf of Black Bolt, asks him to refrain for the moment; after all, Crystal is still missing, and is presumably being held captive somewhere…
If you happen to recall the climax of Avengers #68 (Sep., 1968) — in which Ultron thoroughly self-destructed, leaving no visible trace behind but a smoking crater — you might find it a tad difficult to swallow the notion that there even was a “decapitated brain-box” for the mad Maximus to recover, let alone that the Avengers would have been careless enough to lose track of the damn thing. Yeah, sure, this is comics, and we’ve all seen plenty of supervillain resurrections even less plausible than this one. That doesn’t make this particular piece of writing less sloppy, though.
In Avengers #127, we saw a shadowy, human-sized figure with a metallic-looking hand conspiring with renegade Alpha Primitives, who had allied themselves with Maximus against Black Bolt (as shown at right). We have to presume that this figure was Ultron, who evidently needed for the body of Omega to absorb the “hate” energies generated by the Alphas rising up against the Inhumans and their allies to reach his full power. Nothing in Conway’s script for this issue contradicts that background; even so, given that the Alphas don’t get so much as a single mention in this issue, it’s hard not to feel that the writer has opted for a more generic and streamlined approach to Ultron’s master plan, rather than follow through on what Steve Englehart had teed up for him in the first part of this crossover. Indeed, it seems like Conway wants to resolve the central conflict as soon as he can, so that the remainder of his story’s allotted pages can be given over to something else entirely — which, as we’ll soon see, is pretty much exactly what happens in the second half of this comic.
Thanks to the deus ex machina resolution provided by little Franklin Richards, the action is over virtually as soon as it starts. Given that this is Ultron’s first outing in six years (and only his third overall), I have to say that his use here seems to have been a bit of a waste.
On the other hand, wrapping up the fightin’ by page ten (while simultaneously resolving the major hanging plot thread represented by Franklin’s coma, besides) means that Conway still has seven pages left for this milestone issue’s other main draw — which, as we’ve already noted, he seems to be somewhat more interested in than the Ultron/Omega stuff:
If nothing else, it’s a different approach to the “superhero wedding gets crashed by villain(s)” trope than we’ve seen before. So, hey, let’s give our storytellers a chance to show us if this was worth the perfunctory handling of Ultron/Omega…
Aww, that’s sweet. (Though Reed had better pay for those flowers off-panel, if he doesn’t want to be a boorish wedding guest.)
I realize that this issue is (among other things) a crossover with the Avengers, and that Thor and Iron Man are that team’s two big marquee names at present (their only peer, Captain America, having recently taken himself off the board). Still, wouldn’t it have made more sense for us to spend this time with the two Avengers who actually have a connection to the wedding as well as to the battle that preceded it — i.e., the Scarlet With and the Vision? I can see how Gerry Conway might have wanted to avoid stepping on Steve Englehart’s toes in regards to those two characters; still, considering everything that this 17-page story doesn’t give us, it feels a little “off” to devote over a whole page’s worth of panels to Goldilocks and Shellhead.
A (mostly) silent page? It is appropriate to the moment, I suppose. But does it strike anyone else as a little weird that neither Crystal nor Pietro speaks a single word of dialogue in “their” wedding issue?
I’m inclined to believe that Rich Buckler, rather than Gerry Conway, was responsible for the Whizzer’s last-page cameo in this story, given that he’d illustrated the recent story that established (if only temporarily) that this Golden Age hero was the natural father of Pietro and Wanda Maximoff.* (I could very well be wrong, however.)
And that is that. Fifty years on, I’d hardly call Fantastic Four #150 a bad comic book — but I’d hesitate to go much further than that in singing its praises, either. In the opinion of your humble blogger, the story’s action is simply too perfunctory, its sentiment too superficial, and its artwork too derivative to rate it better than “just OK”. If in fact this comic was, as claimed on its splash page, “the greatest one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary issue ever!”, it’s only because (as we’ve already suggested) in June of ’74, there wasn’t really a whole lot of competition for that distinction.
As mentioned earlier in this post, Gerry Conway’s time as the regular writer of Fantastic Four was very near its end when issue #150 was released. While he’d be around for the beginning of the “Origin of Thundra” story arc set to begin the next issue, he’d ultimately only be responsible for scripting the first two chapters, with Tony Isabella stepping in to wrap things up in #153. In a sense, then, #150 could arguably be taken for the “real” conclusion of his run, with those last two issues serving as something of a coda.
I think it’s fair to say that although Conway was responsible neither for the separation of Reed and Sue Richards, nor for the replacement of Sue by Medusa — both events had happened on previous writer Roy Thomas’ watch — those developments very much dominated his year-and-a-half tenure on the series. As evidence, we need only look to #141, the issue in which Reed zapped Franklin — an act that not only widened the existing breach between the Richards, but also effectively broke up the whole team (if only very briefly). This was a watershed event that the series would spend most of the rest of the writer’s run working its way back from.
By the time that run concluded, however, just about all the big changes that Conway had either inherited or instituted himself had been reverted (the one main exception being the presence of Medusa, who’d continue to hang around as a team member until #159, when she was finally written out by a returning Thomas). According to Conway himself, that was essentially by design. As he stated for a retrospective article on the Fantastic Four in the Bronze Age that was published in Back issue #74 (Aug., 2014):
It’s the illusion of change… You basically begin at Point A, and you start moving in this great circle that brings you back to Point A. Ideally, you want to feel that the characters have gone on a journey and that, at the end of that journey, they’ve arrived somewhere new — but ultimately, it’s the same place that they started out; hopefully refreshed, hopefully more interesting, with a little more depth to their characters, but ultimately the circle closes.
That’s a reasonable approach when you’re writing a series that’s intended to go on forever, I guess. My main quibble here would be whether any of the book’s main characters had acquired “a little more depth” upon the circle’s close. Despite all the later discussion regarding how Reed and Sue’s separation reflected the cultural zeitgeist of the early-to-mid-1970s (see our FF #141 post for lots more details), the happy-endings-all-around reunion of the Richards family chronicled in #149-150 doesn’t seem to include any major lessons learned; rather, Reed and Sue both just say “I’m sorry”, and things go back to the way they were prior to FF #130… or so at least it seems to me.
To my mind, Conway seems to have embraced the changes instituted by Thomas less as a response to the zeitgeist than as a reflection of his own belief that the dynamics of the team had been askew ever since 1965’s FF Annual #3. As he put it in the same Back Issue article quoted from earlier:
I think Fantastic Four took a tremendous wrong step when Stan married Reed and Sue. Because what he ended up doing was he threw off the balance of the group. You no longer had a quadrangle of relationships where everyone was sort of intentioned [sic — YHB] with everyone else. You had Reed and Sue who were the lovers who were not quite there yet — they were in love, but his preoccupations always kept him away from being able to commit to the relationship, and she was always angry and struggling with that. Then you had Sue and Johnny and their sibling rivalry — there’s a feeling of protectiveness that each of them has for the other, they’re orphans, they don’t have a parental figure. Then you have Johnny and Ben — the bickering brothers. And you have Reed and Ben who are good friends, and have a long history — but then experience this traumatic event and the associated guilt and anger that are a part of that.
And all of that is neatly balanced. It’s very nicely balanced in a very imperceptible sort of way. And it’s all thrown off-balance when Reed marries Sue, because, suddenly, you now have an alliance that is as important, is as weighty, as the alliance between Johnny and Sue. And the Johnny/Sue alliance is now distorted — because Sue now has divided loyalties with her husband. To my mind, the book just went off the rails on an emotional level with that big marriage issue…
When I took over the book, and I was writing it, I honestly couldn’t think of anything to do with that quadrangle relationship. Roy had wanted to put Medusa into it, so it felt like, “Okay, let’s give that a shot and see if we can create something.” I don’t think it ever really worked because I think the book was fundamentally damaged. And I think that’s why Fantastic Four has always had a problem regaining its stature in the Marvel Universe—because it just doesn’t work anymore, no matter what they do with it.
That, in a nutshell, is kind of why I did a lot of the things that I did in the book… it was all in my failed effort — because I do consider it a failed effort, I don’t think it was a successful run — but it was my failed effort to try to regain some of what I felt had been lost because of the marriage.
That’s an interesting analysis — though one I fundamentally disagree with, probably because I’ve always come at the Fantastic Four from a different perspective than Gerry Conway’s. After all, when I first discovered the team in the fall of 1967 (via the Saturday morning ABC animated series), Reed and Sue were already married; by the time I got around to buying my first issue of their comic the following summer, they were on the verge of welcoming their first child into the world. That familial setup felt right and natural to me; and when I eventually did read the adventures the team had had prior to FF Annual #3, whether in reprint or as back issues, the pre-wedding FF didn’t feel fundamentally different to me than the married-with-kid(s) version. Sure, the group dynamics were somewhat different; but that happens in a family, which is a living, growing thing (at least when it’s healthy).
All of which probably helps to explain why I’m not all that wild about Conway’s FF run… though perhaps I should refrain from ragging on him about it any further, since he himself is on record as calling it a failure. In any event, it’s all water well past the bridge, fifty years on.
And, of course, Fantastic Four would continue to be published post-Conway — just like it had post-Lee, post-Kirby, post-Buscema, and so on (though, thankfully, not post-Sinnott — at least, not for a while); and my younger self would continue to buy it. And so, I’ll continue to write about it on this blog, though I can’t say just how long it’ll be until the next time; hopefully, you’ll still be around to read about it when I do.
Additional creator credits, per the Grand Comics Database and Mike’s Amazing World of Comics:
- Fantastic Four #130 (Jan., 1973), panel: text by Roy Thomas; art by John Buscema and Joe Sinnott.
- Fantastic Four #141 (Dec., 1973). panel: text by Gerry Conway; art by John Buscema and Joe Sinnott.
- Fantastic Four #147 (Jun., 1974), panels: text by Gerry Conway; art by Rich Buckler and Joe Sinnott.
- Fantastic Four #148 (Jul., 1974), panels: text by Gerry Conway; art by Rich Buckler and Joe Sinnott.
- Fantastic Four #149 (Aug., 1974), panels: text by Gerry Conway; art by Rich Buckler and Joe Sinnott.
- Giant-Size Avengers #1 (Aug., 1974), cover: art by Rich Buckler and John Romita.
- Fantastic Four #151 (Oct., 1974), cover: art by Rich Buckler.
- Fantastic Four #152 (Nov., 1974), cover: art by Rich Buckler and John Romita.
*We opted not to post about Giant-Size Avengers #1 when its 50th anniversary arrived last month, so a bit of explanation may be in order here (especially for any readers who haven’t perused the comments section of our Justice League of America #113 post from a few weeks back). As chronicled therein by returning Avengers scripter Roy Thomas (with art by Buckler and inker Dan Adkins), the Scarlet Witch discovered that not only were she and her twin brother Quicksilver the offspring of the All-Winners’ Squad’s Whizzer and Miss America, but that they also had a previously unknown, long-lost brother, Nuklo. This set of relationships — which seems to have had little appeal to any of Marvel’s writers outside of Thomas — would be retconned away just a few years later, in 1982, when it was established that Wanda and Pietro were really the children of Magneto… a “fact” that remained canon until 2014, when it, too, fell to a retcon. And so it goes.
Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books 
https://tombrevoort.com/2019/06/23/bhoc-fantastic-four-150/
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Gerry Conway seemed to be the only one who used Bob (“Whizzer”) Frank) and Nuklo. He used him in Avengers Annual # 6 (1976) and a couple of other times during his brief period of being the Marvel EIC and writing The Avengers. Because of that, Conway might have influenced the Bob Frank appearance, too.
I was less charitable in my view of how Conway structured his work on Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Thor: my thought was he was consciously revisiting story arcs Lee/Kirby and Lee/Romita had done about a decade before.
I liked his work, but thought he re-visited too many things. I thought his real strength was in one and two issue stories, rather than long story arcs. The quote you use seems to imply he was trying to create a repetitive cycle intentionally.
I liked this issue and this cross-over back in the 1970s, but thought it lost something from the 1973 Avengers/Defenders Clash. I know wonder if the 1975 Defenders/Guardians of the Galaxy arc was not intended to be that year’s shot at a big Cross-over,
I would venture to say that the Reed-Sue stories might have had an autobiographical element, as Roy Thomas’s first marriage was ending at the time, which probably had something to due with his leaving the Marvel EIC job. Conway (who was writing the “Big Three” Marvel titles (inherited from Stan Lee) subsequentially left Marvel when he did not get the EIC job, rather than Len Wein (a friend with whom he had shared an apartment when starting out.
I liked Buckler’s art, but I think the cover to Avengers Annual # 6, is a nice metaphor for Rich Buckler’s role at Marvel. Kirby penciled a cover, featuring Nuklo, that was inked by Dan Atkins (who inked Buckler on Giant-Sized Avengers #1) the issue that introduced Nuklo. Why do you need a Kirby Clone when the King returns? Ironically, just after this Buckler mostly worked for DC, where one of his first stories was a Secret Society of Super Villains story (in a Kirby Style) which wrapped up a Conway arc about Darkseid . . . .
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Bill Mantlo also used the Whizzer/Maximoffs relationship in his Vision and the Scarlet Witch mini.
I honestly can’t say I saw any resemblance between this and Avengers/Defenders.
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I see it more as the “Search for the big crossover to please Roy (or Len) . . . .
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Having no knowledge of Ultron, as I said in the Avengers post, this didn’t pack much punch for me. The emotional/wedding stuff worked a lot better — I like that scene of Iron Man and Thor talking about their love lives. And Johnny working through his reactions. Though yeah, we don’t get much perspective on the wedding couple.
You have a point about the implausiblity of Ultron’s resurrection. I didn’t pick up on that back then either.
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I can’t really remember my thoughts on this mag after reading it 50 years ago. It was the 2nd Marvel wedding story I’d read, the first being that of Reed & Sue in the reprint of FF Annual #3 published the year before. It’d be a few more years before I got a reprint featuring the wedding of Yellowjacket & the Wasp. Yeah, it has to be a tradition that nearly any wedding of superheroes or even of their supporting characters in the Marvel universe has to feature baddies interrupting the proceedings at some point, unless the couple happens to elope in relative privacy.
Anyhow, I concur with your outlook on this issue, Alan, as well as Tom’s. Various aspects of the set up and finale of the battle with Ultron/Omega don’t make a lot of sense. Essentially, just a lot of typical comics’ handwaving magic so that Ultron could be revived and his head made to fit Omega’s body, not to mention a mask of Omega’s head made to fit perfectly over Ultron’s robotic head. And then, comatose Franklin B. Richards just happens to come to and use his ill-explained powers to overload Ultron/Omega and make the baddie collapse with a massive headache! Yay!! And then Crystal and Pietro are seen but not heard from at all during their wedding, presided over by Black Bolt who can’t speak without causing trouble. And all a little over 100 issues after Crystal first showed up in the Fantastic Four and Pietro joined the Avengers. Hmm, and maybe it’s a sign of the social changes over the decades that the only prominent wedding of Marvel characters that has withstood the test of time has been that of Reed & Sue, and even that seemed rather iffy over the most of the previous 20 issues of the FF, but now everything seems hunky dory again.
The first issue I ever got of the Avengers was 104, which also happened to be the last in which Pietro was a regular member but also happened to have been drawn by Rich Buckler when he was emulating Neal Adams’ style rather than Kirby’s. At that time, I had no idea who Neal Adams, but really liked Buckler’s art in that story. But this issue? Somehow, when Buckler switched from Adams mode to Kirby mode, something went awry. Many of the faces and figures in Buckler’s Kirby-style look awkward or just plain weird. Kirby could get away with such awkwardness because, well, he was Kirby! And it’s acceptable in a sort of story purposely meant to be a pastiche of a Kirby comic. But IMO it doesn’t come off well with this effort by Buckler to mimic Kirby with touches of his own style (or maybe trying to mimic John Buscema) also coming through. I’m not sure if Buckler himself decided he had to draw the FF as close as possible in Kirby-style or if Thomas suggested or outright directed him to do so. Buckler was certainly capable of very good artwork, and wasn’t all bad in this issue. But the awkwardness of much of this issue in particular is rather glaring to me. And I do vaguely recall thinking that even 50 years ago.
Ah, but for one issue, two happy endings, however transitory one happened to be.
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Something I came across on Twitter/X around the time Rich Buckler died was that Jim Steranko thought Buckler’s art on Giant Sized Fantastic Four # 3 was one of the most dynamic comics he ever saw.
Steranko was one of the most dynamic and innovative artists in comics. On the other hand, his Kirby and Wally Wood influences ran deep.
It is possible that he could see the merit in Buckler’s work beyond the influences.
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I think Buckler’s work on Black Panther and Deathlok was excellent and I didn’t get the sense he was trying to ape anyone’s else’s style in those mags.
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You are probably right about Deathlok.
I always thought there was an Adams influence on Buckler’s The Panther’s Rage work, especially in Jungle Action #8. Some of it could be Klaus Janson’s inking . . . .
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Could be, but either way, IMO, Buckler’s artistry looked better when he was influenced by Adams’ style than when he was aping Kirby’s. Barry Smith’s Kirby-style art in the late ’60s struck me as very odd looking and I much preferred his art once he developed his own unique style. Kirby himself was the best Kirby-style artist!
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love that. as Keith Moon said, he was “the best Keith Moon style drummer”!
Buckler was all over the place but it’s hard to fault him since he was simultaneously working on at least three tracks: company hack on FF, dedicated collaborator on Panther and auteur on Deathlok. all on deadlines for not that much $.
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Both Smith & Steranko had a major Kirby influence early on. (Learn from the best, I say!)
I think you bring up an excellent point: Buckler’s work sold and he got more of it.
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Smith’s Kirby clone work has aged better than his later, overly ornate stuff. 17 year old me disagrees!
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66-year-old me disagrees as well (although I am fond of BWS’ early work, too)! But to each their own. 😉
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I think Conway’s real contribution at Marvel was his work on Thor. He really seemed to shine there, during all sorts of epic quests and keeping Thor away from earth for the most part. This tale here is well, sorry, just not very good. I swear if one more villain does the “might as well tell you before you die” explanation bit I’ll jump offa bridge! I do like Conway’s copping to the idea of “illusion of change” concept, which I believe Lee preached, correctly, to all his writers. You change things, make a big splash, jolt the readers and it’s great…for one issue. But then what? My favorite example of this was in Legion of Super Heroes where the villain blew up the earth. Wow! No earth! Drama! But then the next two years writers are left to create all these joined together chunks of cities and all sorts of ridiculous work arounds.
Buckler’s art to me suffers from not enough depth to it. Everything just seems to be in the foreground, no shading, no sense of weight. Of course, an oldster like me who’d been there for all the Kirby brilliance was never going to be satisfied whoever took over the FF.
There were a few good points to the whole ordeal though. I liked the poor underlings trying to dress Ben Grimm, to predictable result. I liked Johnny finally being able to smile at the end, a window on the resilience of the human spirit.
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Thanks Alan, for another interesting and very insightful review. I agree with all of your comments. I recall that my first reaction after reading this story in June 1974 was disappointment. Ultron was a great villain and his menace was resolved so quickly! You usually point out something that I didn’t originally notice when I was reading one of these stories. I did not remember at all that Crystal and Quicksilver did not have a single line of dialogue in this issue devoted to their wedding (and I see Tom Brevoort pointed that out as well). That’s pretty wild! This issue felt very generic as I look at it today and while I have generally thought of Conway as a competent writer, this issue really accentuates the difference between Conway and a writer like Steve Englehart. Englehart found opportunity to have the Avengers, the FF and the Inhumans speak and provide character bits. Did Conway believe having Thor and Iron Man speak would cover the Avengers? None of the other Avengers is given any characterization in FF 150 and Ultron is shown talking with Reed Richards who has never even met Ultron and not the Vision or any of his other arch-foes in the Avengers. I guess since this is the FF’s book he had to have Reed and Ben and the rest of the FF take the spotlight but I really found this annoying. And as you noted, the way Ultron is taken out, it could have been any menace…Ultron is built up so well in AV 127 and then acts like an idiot here…very disappointing. Unfortunately this would become a Conway trope in later years in that he would get rid of a very major villain in just a panel or two….Yes it’s true..many years later at DC he would write a one issue Mordru story for Legion of SuperHeroes where he got rid of the villain in one panel…and in 1980 resurrected Darkseid (yes, Darkseid) and got rid of him in one panel (JLA 185).
Regarding the head of Ultron..it’s possible that Gerry was thinking of the end of Avengers 57 where the head of Ultron survived destruction and possibly thought it also survived destruction from Avengers 68..but that’s just a guess on my part since nothing was ever said. Interesting to note that after this issue Ultron would not appear again for another 3 years but Shooter and Perez would handle Ultron correctly and treat us to some excellent stories with Ultron in Avengers 161-162 and 171.
Other annoying points regarding FF 150….the Thing’s being told he is in the wedding party. Why in the world would the Thing be in the wedding party? It’s not Johnny that’s getting married! And I still don’t understand why Johnny went to this wedding! So wait..after sulking now he’s happy at the end? Hmmm. Why? Because Medusa tells him to get happy? Sigh. It also seems like Conway never quite figured out what to do with Medusa, having her seeming to get close to Johnny and in earlier issues to Reed but of course since she was the not quite engaged paramour of Black Bolt nothing would ever happen with anyone else. I remember thinking that when Roy had Medusa join the FF that might be interesting but I don’t think that ever really panned out and it seems like she was less of an active member than Sue ever was.
Regarding Gerry’s comments about the FF in that interview above, I also don’t agree with him. I started buying the FF a few months before you, Alan in early 1968. I remember getting and reading FF Annual 6 (the birth of Franklin) and that really cemented the idea (at least to me) of the FF as a family and that’s what I, quite frankly, loved about the FF as well as the great work by Stan, Jack and Joe. While I understand that Roy was looking for a way to shake up the book by (at least temporarily) splitting up Sue and Reed, I personally didn’t care for that storyline at all although I did continue to buy the FF during Conway’s run. But Gerry had Reed acting very uncharacteristically during his run (for example: Agatha Harkness disappears and her house is completely destroyed in FF 134 and Reed makes no attempt to investigate or do anything about it…why? he’s depressed about Sue being gone…..OK). Regarding FF 147-149, at the time I know that I (and many readers) were just glad that Reed and Sue were back together at the end, but when I had a chance to think about it years later, that storyline does not make one bit of sense. Sue claims at the end of FF 147 that she is in love with Namor and in one of the panels that you reproduced says she wants to go “back to Namor.” Folks she was never with Namor! I only know this from reading reprints…but here it is: Namor had fallen in love with Sue when they met in FF 4. It was revealed in FF 6 that perhaps Sue had a crush on Namor and they saw each other again in FF 9 but nothing happened there. The Puppet Master sent Namor after the FF in FF 14 and he kidnapped Sue and she admitted she didn’t know what her feelings were. Again in FF Annual 1 Namor made very clear that he was in love with Sue but she did not reciprocate those feelings. In FF 27 Namor kidnapped Sue to make her come to a decision…and she did telling him she was not interested in him Was she just trying to make Reed jealous the whole time? Don’t know but it’s interesting to consider. When we saw Namor again in FF 33 the FF didn’t even actually interact with Namor and Sue is thinking about how Dorma should be his queen. Then in FF 35 Reed finally proposes to Sue and she says “I’ve been waiting for you to take my hand.” Of course Sue was always love in with Reed! I think Stan just wanted to complicate things and draw them out a bit. If it was up to some folks Reed and Sue would not be married and Peter Parker would still be in high school. Wasn’t that the DC way in the 60s (nothing changes). Namor would not be seen in the pages of FF until 102-104 and I don’t believe Namor interacted at all with Sue in those issues. Getting back to FF 147-149, Namor acts completely uncharacteristically, when compared to his current series at the time where he is obsessed with helping his people, and in 149 probably causes millions of dollars in damages for some sort of fake battle in New York…but at least Sue and Reed are together. And yes the comments from Sue at the end of FF 149 don’t make much sense since Sue had a right to be upset with Reed for many reasons. Also, as much as I have always liked Rich Buckler’s art even I noticed his Kirby swipes (and I was pretty dense about swiping at the time) in FF 147-150. For example check out the cover of FF 148 and how similar the layout is to the cover FF 42 (which was even reprinted with the same color scheme as 148 In Marvel’s Greatest Comics).
Gerry Conway left the FF very abruptly, FF 152 was his last issue, although his plot was used for FF 153. I believe he had moved over to Marvel Team-Up. Sorry to say it, but I was relieved to see him go. I did not care for 151-152 and Mahkizmo (one of the worst conceived villains ever). Interestingly the idea for Thundra’s origin came from Roy Thomas although not sure that was credited although I know Roy has mentioned that was his idea (to tie her into the Femizons from Savage Tales 1) in several interviews. I was becoming somewhat disappointed with Conway’s work elsewhere. Although it seemed very dramatic at the time. I did not like the idea of Harry Osborn becoming the second Green Goblin and I know many agreed (including professionals like Roger Stern). And in Thor he was writing stories such as having Galactus beg Thor for help (yes, you can see it on the cover of Thor 226, just check the Grand Comics database…it’s very sad).
So in conclusion, at the time I found FF 150 disappointing but now I think..it’s too bad Crystal couldn’t read Avengers 127..If she had read the dialogue and the way Quicksilver talked to her, she might not have married him in the first place! And oh yes, the observations that the Alpha Primitives didn’t even appear in this issue and it was never revealed where Crystal was hidden is quite interesting as well. Thanks Alan!
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I can buy Ben being in the wedding party — Crystal might have grown fond of him when she was with the FF a few years earlier — but why not the rest of the FF? Why Alicia when Crystal was constantly hanging with Sue? It’s an annoying cliche of superhero weddings where everyone in the wedding party is an established character, as if they have no other friends.
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Regarding Conway’s assertion that Reed & Sue’s marriage was a massive “mistake”, that hardly seems to make much sense outside of the lament for any change to early status quo. Lee, Kirby, Ditko, et al, built up Marvel’s early reputation by regularly upending the status quo in their mags. Not just Reed & Sue getting married and becoming parents, but Peter Parker graduating from high school, starting college and moving out of his childhood home; the dramatic line-up change of the Avengers in issue 16 and having 3 reformed criminals replace the remaining original members of the team and as a “permanent” change rather than just a one-off bizarro issue; Thor’s break-up with Jane Foster and finding out that he was not really a human transformed into a god but had been a god all along until his father magically transformed him into a human with no memory of his past as punishment for his arrogant misbehavior; just to name a few from the Silver Age. Admittedly, by the time I started reading the FF regularly, both in the current series and in the MGC reprints, Reed & Sue were already married so that was the “status quo” for me. And upon much later reading most of those pre-marriage issues, I didn’t find any great sense of story magic that was dramatically changed in the post-marriage stories. Sure, certain aspects changed, but there had been changes going on all along — 1st with the tension involving Ben Grimm’s jealousy, wanting Susan for himself in the earliest issues, then complicated when Namor entered the picture and he and Susan shared a mutual affection for a period and then Alicia Masters was introduced and became romantically involved with Ben. But eventually, Susan reaffirmed her true feelings were for Reed rather than Namor. In the meantime, Johnny didn’t always side with his sister but several times behaved like an obnoxious jerk towards her, as often happens between siblings, whether they are of the same sex or not — which I know not only from personal experience with my brothers, but also having heard stories of friends, men & women, and their experiences with their siblings in childhood and adulthood.
That for a time, Reed & Sue became estranged from one another for a multitude of reasons, actually made sense given aspects of their personalities that existed from the beginning, with Reed both overprotective and routinely distracted by his research and other work and Sue becoming increasingly assertive of her own sense of self and demanding of greater respect as an individual rather than just his wife and mother of his child. Their reconciliation and curing of Franklin, while certainly welcome, seemed more another instance of comicbook handwaving magic rather than something that felt genuine but was subsequently made to be so as all the tension that Lee, Thomas and Conway had written into their relationship over the previous 4 years pretty much dissipated in later stories. Maybe, Reed & Sue experienced some psychological growth over the period of their separation that could allow their relationship to be stronger after they got back together, although that wasn’t really explored in those later issues. A sort of status quo back to the late Kirby era was reset, except that now Crystal was “permanently” lost to Johnny.
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Conway was way younger than Stan and Jack when they married Sue and Reed off. He may have seen it differently (though yes, wrongly).
I also wonder how much of the X Getting Married Ruined The Book arguments I’ve seen over the years is because marriage eliminates lots of the standard dating plotlines and those are what writers are more used to.
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I agree, not a great issue, Gerry Conway was trying to do too much in too little space. It’s unfortunate that Marvel didn’t do double-sized issues at this time, because extra space was really needed to properly deal with everything that is occurring… or supposed to occur, since as you say Conway drops several story & character threads that Steve Englehart set up in the first chapter.
I also disagree with Conway about the FF being broken by Reed & Sue being married. If anything, their marriage, and them having a child, enhances the fact that the FF is a family. Perhaps given his feelings about the team Conway was not the best person to write the series. I also feel that Conway may not have had the maturity to successfully pull off the interpersonal drama he was attempting to chronicle with Reed & Sue over the course of his run. Perhaps if he had been several years older and a more experienced writer.
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Well, maybe this could have been better served by being an Issue of Giant-Sixed FF as Englehart did in Giant Sized Avengers with the Wand/Vision and Mantis/Swordsman nuptials?.
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After Reed blasted the mind of Franklin, that was too much for me, I stopped reading FF until 1976. Interesting, the movie ice Storm made parallels with FF#141. The director would later make Hulk movie. Anyway, i missed all this. Thanks for catching me up to FF#150.
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Regarding the family dynamic, I just reread the FF Annual where Reed goes into the Negative Zone seeking a cure to stop Sue and her baby from dying in childbirth. He tells Ben and Johnny it’s a suicide mission so he’s going alone, they tell him to cut the crap they’re coming too and Johnny reminds him he has just as much at stake in Sue’s fate.
Kirby and Lee could make the relationships work.
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There’s a great send-up of Supervillains Crash the Wedding when Titania and Absorbing Man get married: the Avengers notice a huge flock of supervillains, burst in to stop the villainy, get embarrassed and leave quietly. Forgot what book it was in
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That was in Avengers Unplugged #4 published in 1996.
GCD :: Issue :: Avengers Unplugged #4 [Direct Edition] (comics.org)
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I have been trying to get out of the habit of writing long posts. This may be a remission.
I remember hearing people; writers and artists, as well as fans, complain about comic book marriages robbing the couples of all their drama. TV writers have done the same thing for years, bitching and moaning when Sam and Diane in Cheers, David and Maddie in Moonlighting, etc. got together and “ruined” their shows. Those stories weren’t ruined because the main characters got together or got married, they were ruined because the writer(s) didn’t know how to write for a married couple! If you write a marriage correctly, even if it’s a happy one like Superman and Lois, there’s plenty of room for conflict and drama…a different KIND of conflict and drama, but conflict and drama, nonetheless (I would have killed to see Tom King write for a married Bruce and Selina). Stan and Jack understood this. Gerry Conway did not.
Reed and Sue had legitmate problems in their marriage. Reed was an obsessive workaholic character-type, who ignored his wife and family and then stood around scratching his head in consternation once he realized everyone was mad at him. And once he did realize why everyone was mad, there was about a 50-50 shot that he’d try to blame his mistakes on someone else. Sure, he was capable of the typical “Grand Gesture.” You could always count on him to save Sue’s or Franklin’s life, but once that life was saved, Reed’s formidable intellect started finding other things to be obsessed by. He didn’t realize (or, more accurately, the writers didn’t) that building a successful marriage was just as worthy a goal for an intelligent man as building a gate to an anti-matter universe or saving the world for the umpteen-dozenth time. A lot of this is because comics were primarily written by guys–nerdy guys at that–and most guys don’t like romance stories. I didn’t read a lot of romance comics in my day, so this is an opinion based on a very small sampling, but even most of the guys who got stuck writing romance comics didn’t write them well, tossing subtlety and tenderness out the window in favor on endless jealousy and romantic triangles. Even when they accidentally created dramatic relationship drama, they often dropped the ball on how to handle it. Reed lobotomized Franklin, for chrissake! He should have been a pariah amongst his family and friends! But the primary reaction was to have Sue leave and go stay with friends, because that way Reed could ignore the true horror of what he’d done and battle super-villains, rather than fight to save his son or his marriage. Sue had every right to be pissed and every right to leave Reed and demand a divorce, but again, once these dramatic beats hit, Johnny and Ben pulled Reed up out of his chair and insisted he take his mind off his troubles in yet another Comic Book Authority-approved brouhaha that did nothing to solve his problems with Sue or save his son. The introduction of Namor into the story as a way to get Sue and Reed back together is typical comic book problem-solving and totally ignores all the many many things Reed did to FF-up his marriage (you see what I did there?) in the first place, and implies that their friends and frenemies had any business butting in. Reed and Sue would never have lasted in the real world and the reasons for the divorce would not be “irreparable differences,” but “inexcusable writing.”
I swear, I’m almost finished with this. As for the way the wedding was written, treating Crystal and Pietro as background characters at their own wedding, this is typical Gerry Conway “writing around the story problem he doesn’t want to deal with” rather than writing through it. In a more real-world approach, the only member of the FF invited to this thing would have been Sue, quite possibly as Matron-of-Honor, since she and Crystal became quite close in her days in the FF. Reed, Ben and Johnny–especially Johnny–should have been nowhere near the place. And as for Gorgon getting all pissy on finding out that Quicksilver didn’t allow the invitations to be sent out to people he didn’t want to invite, he was well within his rights to do that. It was his wedding day! The only person who has veto power over what he wants is Crystal! And Pietro would be well within his rights to go to his bride and ask not to invite her old boyfriend and his partners. That just makes sense. Conway could have found another, more creative way to get Johnny, Reed and Ben to the wedding, but for some reason Gerry was incredibly lazy with his writing for this story and it shows in every plot point.
Ok, I’m through talking about the wedding. I think. Buckler is a good, solid artist who’s work here looks to me more like John Buscema or Romita than Kirby, but maybe that’s more of an “apples and oranges” kind of thing. Rich was capable of doing excellent work when he concentrated on his own style and stopped trying to copy other people. The probem here was the story.
If this truly was Conway’s swan song with the FF, he certainly failed to stick the landing, didn’t he? While I liked the short conversation between Thor and Iron Man about their respective love lives, where was the rest of it? Why didn’t Quicksilver and Crystal join the fight against Ultron? Why didn’t we at least see a conversation between the two lovebirds about their big day and what they meant to one another? Why didn’t we see Crystal with her bridesmaids? Conway was decent at the “big swings” of comic writing, but the small intimate moments between characters and they ways he dealt with relationship issues between characters (looking at you, Gwen Stacy), were not his strong suit. In a story like this one, that should have been filled with small intimate moments, the cracks in his story become readily apparent.
Sorry to go on so long, folks. Thanks for a great write-up, Alan. I enjoyed Tom Brevoort’s as well.
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Odd comment (aren’t all of mine?), there is a general rule here (try to write realistic relationship)s. But there is also a fantasy/Science Fiction aspect here: try to create interesting & plausible non-human relationships (or, here, Inhuman) relationships as well.
Namor, for example is half Scots-American and half human magically modified by Poseidon, Olympian God of the Sea, to be able to breath both water and Air (less effectively) and live in the Ocean. His initial upbringing was within his mom’s culture.
So, his doing what he did in the previous story arc is not inexplicable, given that context.
The Inhumans are s culture derived from Kree and Genetically Modified Human (probably with some Deviant/Eternal DNA), who have a predilection for further genetic tinkering. Who knows what their religious and cultural wedding customs are?
Namor and the Inhumans thinking they should take action to force Reed and Sue back together. in light of their respective cultures, might be absolutely culturally appropriate
Blackbolt looks to be the Officiant at his cousin Crystal’s wedding and the Chief of State of her society. (The Inhumans seem to have a bit of a bit caesaropapist going on)
You wonder if Quicksilver had to convert to their faith, I assume he had a Jewish or Eastern Orthodox Christian upbringing among the Eastern European Rom, but giving his years among Magneto’s movement, he might be either not religious or just unobservant,
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Regarding Johnny, and the rest of the FF, being invited to Crystal’s wedding, I didn’t find anything incredibly strange about that as I’ve certainly known of ex-signficant others being invited attendees at their ex’s weddings — George Harrison (along with Ringo & Paul) being invited attendees at the wedding of Eric Clapton & Patti Boyd (George’s ex) being one famous example among celebrities. And for Crystal, the FF had been a sort of surrogate family for her for several years (at least in real world time). As to the Avengers, seems Black Bolt felt it was appropriate that they attend, as the sort of surrogate family for Pietro, including his actual sister. But it seems Pietro played the pouty silent game, apparently agreeing to formally invite them but then purposely failing to do so, but not making a big stink about it when they showed up upon Gorgon winding up making the invitation instead. On his half of the story, Englehart made clear reference to Pietro’s utter disgust with Wanda’s relationship with Vision but apparent resignation to their attending his wedding with the other Avengers, and maybe that was at Crystal’s unshown urging. On the other half, Conway opted to not make any reference to that bit of unpleasantness, maybe purposely deciding not to add any potentially sour notes to the wedding story, and also making no reference to the thorny romantic quadrangle issues of Vizh & Wanda & Swordsman & Mantis, instead devoting a page to the past romantic foibles of Thor & Iron Man.
BTW, I know there were several other crossover events at Marvel prior to this, meaning stories begun in one series and finished in another, but the earlier ones I’m aware of were written by the same author — Lee on the previous FF/Avengers crossover of Avengers 3 & 4 & FF 25 & 26; and the Daredevil/FF crossover; and Englehart on the multi-issue crossover of the Avengers & Defenders, but this is the first one I’m aware of involving two different writers. Well, there was that previous Halloween semi-crossover, by Englehart & Conway (and, unofficially, Len Wein) involving the Beast, Thor and the JLA, if that even qualifies as none of the heroes made guest appearances in the other titles, but characters representing the writers appeared in each!
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I’m aware of at least one other earlier Marvel crossover that involved multiple writers, and that’s the Mad Thinker/Egghead/Puppet Master storyline that ran through various issues of Avengers, Captain Marvel, and Sub-Mariner in early ’69. Roy Thomas wrote the lion’s share of episodes and very likely coordinated the whole thing, but Arnold Drake and Gary Friedrich were the scripters for the Captain Marvel installments. More details here: https://50yearoldcomics.com/2019/03/17/avengers-64-may-1969/
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Ah, I’d forgotten about that one, but then I’d only ever read the reprinted Avengers’ portion of that crossover although I had read yours and other descriptions of the whole shebang.
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Am I the only comic book reader who was slightly disappointed that my own wedding didn’t get crashed by at least a single villian?
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Spider, I had to content myself with the fact that all the women I married BECAME villains, each more nefarious than the last. Bwahaha. I wish this were funny, but this is life, not a funny book. I probably had a few villainous tendencies myself…
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Other earlier cross-overs were the Kline storyline by Conway that ran through DD, Iron Man. Subby and Cap, the Secret Empire cross-overs between Shield, Cap, Subby and the Hulk by Lee, Kirby and Colan; Dr Doom changes identity with DD, that ran in DD and the FF by Lee, Colan and Kirby. Iron Man and Subby crossed over in a memorable battle drawn by Kirby. The Avengers crossed over with the X-Men at some point to battle Magneto by Thomas, and with the Hulk when Jarella was introduced, again by Thomas. More recently there were the x-overs between the Werewolf and Dracula by Wolfman, the Rutland Halloween adventure with Thor and the Beast ( and the JLA!) and of course the Thanos saga crossing into Avengers #125. I am sure there have been some lighter touch x-overs, such as when DD and Black Widow went to the aid of the Avengers against Magneto around #111, and an early Capt Marvel/Subby battle where Subby’s situation then carried on into his own comic. There was a sort of non x-over where Thor appeared in Dr Strange’s strip, and then Dr Strange was featured in the Thor strip. When the Avengers went in search of the Hulk, they sort of crossed with what was happenning in Tales to Astonish at the time. Apart from The Avengers- Defenders x-over, I really didn’t care for any of the above, but loved it when Kirby would draw the Avengers in FF (FF#31 comes readily to mind), the X-men or in Cap.
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“….when DD and Black Widow went to the aid of the Avengers against Magneto around #111…”
Right there is an example of a crossover involving multiple writers that frednotfaith2 and I both missed. 🙂 Steve Englehart scripted Avengers #110 & #111, but Steve Gerber handled Daredevil #99.
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Since everybody has said everything worth saying, can I just say that it either puzzles or annoys me that in comic book weddings, the blushing bride is wrapped up in some lush wedding dress befitting the occasion, while the man wears….his work clothes.
(Admittedly, I’m basing this on the few comic book weddings that I’ve read – I could have this completely wrong)
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