[NOTE: this entry involves the last two panels of Fantastic Four #18, the 2026 series, which came out just last week as I write this.]
So when we last left our intrepid team, they were about to be face-to-merged-faces with this alien warlord fella, an amalgam of two powerful and warring alien brothers who somehow combined as a result of one of Reed’s devices.
And most of the first half of #298 was dedicated to that confrontation, as the being reaches Earth and immediately falls into conflict with the FF, including this fiery battle with the Human Torch:
Now, this aside doesn’t really tie into the point of today’s entry, really, but it felt like for a time we were always seeing Johnny’s Nova Flame power, his one shot all-powerful burst that uses up all his available energy. Seemed like that was a last resort option that got used in a whole lotta “last resorts,” and it felt a little diminished every time. But hey, that’s just me.
Anyway, it’s about this time, after the Thing enters the fray and gets some licks in, that the team sees what’s going on, as the two alien brothers each attempt to assert themselves in their shared body:
There’s more punchy-punchy, including a real pasting by Aunt Petunia’s favorite nephew that takes them out:
…and so subdued, Reed offers to separate them. An offer that meets some skepticism:
In the lab, as the separation process begins, the brothers can’t help but resume the war:
The Human Torch flies in, intending to break up the fight:
…but finds out very quickly what Reed was trying to warn him about:
Ben looks on briefly:
…before moving into action:
With Johnny out of the way, the brothers’ conflict continues, to fatal results:
Yup, they done blew themselves up real good, leaving our heroes to ponder the meaning of it all:
And…curtain.
Okay, I realize that’s a lot of “plot summary” there, but I felt like I had to give you at lease the basic rundown of what was happening first, for some context.
First off, I remember thinking at the time that maybe this was an attempt by the creative team (Roger Stern, John Buscema, and Sal Buscema, since I hadn’t brought it up here yet) to expand the Fantastic Four rogues gallery a bit beyond the usual recycling of Doctor Doom, Galactus, Annihilus, the Wizard, etc. etc. I remember this being a minor interest of John Byrne’s (there’s that name again), particularly in his creation of the world scavenger Terminus (essentially “Galactus but with an attitude problem”).
I don’t know if that was in fact an ongoing concern with the folks in charge of the FF books, given that the Puppet Master turns up during this creative team’s run. But the idea had been stuck in my mind, regardless, and I remained acutely aware of when new antagonists showed up in this series. (Hold on for one showing up during Steve Englehart’s run shortly that, um, does not go so well.)
In this particular case, it would not be unreasonable to assume that, given their explosive demise, Umbra and Jaagar were one-shot villains. However, given it’s superhero comics, and Marvel Comics specifically, straight-up on-panel death is not necessarily the final word, as super-characters come back from the dead all the time. For example, right now, as I write this, Doctor Doom is dead, and we have seen him in Marvel Hell fighting Marvel’s Satan, Mephisto. Y’all know he’ll be back to life and up to his old tricks sooner rather than later, right? So it would seem safe to assume that Umbra and Jaagar could make their way back into the land of the living without any trouble.
On the other hand, it’s been 40 years, and we’ve not seen either of them. That’s pretty much as dead as dead can get in the Marvel Universe, until some future writer decides to dig deep and bring ’em back. They’re only an editorial decision away from revival!
The other point about this story is this. I’ve been talking a lot about how, in the wake of Byrne’s run, the Thing’s alienation from the team, and the world as a whole, has been a recurring motif. In a panel earlier in this issue, which I didn’t scan and post because I’m already this close to just pasting all 20-something pages up on the site here, Ben overhears Johnny’s proposal to Alicia, the Thing’s former and Johnny’s current girlfriend. Would you be surprised to know that this only adds to Ben’s feelings of depression and loneliness?
Which brings us to the Current State of Things (so to speak) as of 1986. As we saw in the panels above, with everything that had been going on, at least on a personal level, Ben has been at best ambivalent in regards to the other members of the team, especially Reed and Johnny. It’s even to the point where he momentarily pauses before rushing in to save Johnny.
The last couple panels lay on the theme pretty thick, Yoda-in-the-middle-of-Last-Jedi style, asking the question “what can make brothers hate each other so much?” It’s not really a one-to-one with Ben and Johnny’s situation, since Johnny isn’t mad at Ben. But you can tell from the look on Ben’s face in the story’s final panel that he’s been thinking about their comparative situations. And that his concluding words, about not letting hate “get the best of them,” may show a slight change in tack in regards to working out his feelings.
This seems to me an effectively subtle bit of characterization for the Thing. Not the “I’m a monster in a world of men,” not “I’m the blue-eyed idol of millions,” but something a little more real and relatable. Yes, this is Melodrama in the Mighty Marvel Manner, which thrives on broad strokes and vivid dialogue. But there’s room for more delicate shifts of awareness, the understanding that “maybe lashing out at my friends isn’t the best way to cope,” without necessarily spelling it out explicitly.
Which isn’t to say we won’t have a punch-out or two and some shouting coming in the next few issues as this storyline works its way out. It is appreciated, however, that they make an effort at this level of character development at all.
As an addendum, I thought it was interesting how the “brothers” theme in this issue dovetails almost perfectly into the conclusion of the most recent issue of Fantastic Four, #18 (legacy numbering, #744), by Ryan North and Vincenzo Carratu. We had a two-issue story with Ben and Johnny, without their memories, still bonding together, and at the end, with everyone back home and back to (relative) normal, we had this exchange between them:
Maybe a bit of a spoiler for how stuff turns out for you readers back in 1986.