ARKON AND XEMU VS THE FANTASTIC FOUR AND THE INHUMANS

This weekend’s escapist, light-hearted superhero post here at Balladeer’s Blog will look at 6 issues in a row from a memorable Fantastic 4 run.

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #158 (May 1975)

Title: Invasion from the Fifth Dimension

Villain: Xemu

Synopsis: Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards) and his wife Invisible Woman (Susan Storm-Richards) are debating the pluses and minuses of her rejoining the team full-time. Medusa from the Inhumans has been substituting for Sue during her and Reed’s son Franklin’s problems with his mutant powers. With Franklin now cured, Invisible Woman wants to come back.

The former Avenger Quicksilver, now a member of the Inhuman Royal Family through his marriage to Crystal (who had replaced Invisible Woman during her pregnancy with Franklin), uses his speed powers to break into the Baxter Building headquarters of the Fantastic Four. The Human Torch (Johnny Storm), annoyed after striking out at a singles bar, arrives home and, encountering Quicksilver, attacks him. 

The pair fight it out, fueled largely by their former romantic rivalry for Crystal. The Thing (Ben Grimm) and his girlfriend – the blind sculptress Alicia Masters – arrive back from a night at the Metropolitan Opera and the Thing joins the Human Torch in attacking Quicksilver. Mr. Fantastic calls a halt to the fighting and asks Quicksilver why he invaded the Baxter Building.   

Pietro (Quicksilver) explains to the Fantastic Four, including Medusa and Invisible Woman (which makes 5) why he came. The Human Torch’s old foe Xemu, the ruler of the Fifth Dimension, led an interdimensional army in an invasion of Attilan, the Inhumans’ high-tech hidden city in the Himalayas.

Xemu’s technology countered the Kree technology of the Inhumans and soon the villain controlled Attilan. Xemu addressed the captive Royal Family (except for Triton, who escaped) and demanded that Black Bolt use his hugely destructive voice to speak into Xemu’s Thunder Horn, a device which magnified sound waves.   

With Black Bolt’s already city-destroying voice amplified many times over, Xemu’s Thunder Horn would let him overcome all of Earth’s superheroes and rule our world, too. The villain speaks of wanting to rule interdimensional “worlds beyond worlds” (NOTE: This foreshadows developments a few issues ahead.)

When Black Bolt resisted torture meant to force him to speak into the Thunder Horn, Xemu decided to instead torture Black Bolt’s Royal Consort – Medusa. By threatening to kill Quicksilver’s wife Crystal if he refused, the villain ordered the former Avenger to go to the Baxter Building and bring Medusa back with him to the Great Refuge.

Xemu teleported Pietro via the New Jersey swamplands portal that linked the Fifth Dimension to the Earth. From there, Quicksilver sped to the Baxter Building, where our story began. The Fantastic Four decide to go with Quicksilver and Medusa to Attilan to help defeat Xemu and his army. Invisible Woman wants to go, too, but Reed asks her to stay with their son Franklin.

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #159 (Jun 1975)

Title: Havoc in the Hidden Land

Villain: Xemu

Synopsis: Mr. Fantastic, the Thing, the Human Torch, Medusa and Quicksilver board the FF’s intercontinental rocket and take off for Attilan. The Thing jokes with Reed that he just made Sue stay behind because he doesn’t want to change the “4” on the Fantastic Four’s costumes to a “5.”

Reed jokes back about the trouble it would put him to since their corporation is licensed as “Fantastic 4, Inc.” (This, too, foreshadows a near future development.) 

Our heroes all arrive in Attilan and attack, but Xemu and his troops combine their Fifth Dimension tech with the Kree technology of Attilan and the FF plus Quicksilver are defeated. Xemu has them imprisoned and threatens to torture Medusa in front of the bound Black Bolt if he doesn’t agree to use his destructive voice to power the Thunder Horn.

Back with the imprisoned heroes, the escaped Triton shows up to free them and they all attack Xemu and his troops again. Quicksilver carries Medusa away from Xemu just in time to stop him from forcing Black Bolt to power the Thunder Horn in a targeted attack on New York City, thus killing many of the world’s superbeings in one quick strike.

At length all of the Fifth Dimension invaders are defeated but Xemu teleports back to that dimension to try escaping. The Human Torch and Quicksilver pursue him there. Meanwhile, Chinese Air Force jets arrive in the sky near Attilan, investigating Xemu’s test-blasts with the Thunder Horn.

It seems Attilan’s secret location will be revealed and likely attacked by China, but Invisible Woman emerges from hiding and reveals she stowed away on the FF’s rocket, having Alicia watch Franklin. She uses the Thunder Horn to increase her powers enough so that she can make the entire sprawling city of Attilan invisible to the Chinese fighter pilots overhead. The ploy works and the jets report nothing to be found in the area.

Meanwhile, in the Fifth Dimension, the Human Torch and Pietro have caught up with Xemu. They defeat his few loyalist troops that he did not take to Attilan with him AND free Johnny’s old allies – the Fifth Dimension scientist named Phineas and his daughter Valeria. (They helped the Human Torch against Xemu when Johnny fought him back in Strange Tales #103 (Sept 1962). 

Xemu is taken into custody and the Human Torch & Valeria renew their romantic feelings for each other to the point of sharing a long, passionate kiss. Valeria encourages Johnny to come back soon for another visit and Pietro’s thoughts reveal that he is glad to see Johnny may finally get over losing Crystal and move on to this romance with Valeria. 

Epilogue: The Torch and Quicksilver return to Attilan and send the defeated troops back to a Fifth Dimension now ruled by Valeria and her father Phineas. Mr. Fantastic officially welcomes Sue back to the team, and Medusa takes advantage of this to quit the FF and resume her place at Black Bolt’s side as his Royal Consort. The Fantastic Four fly back home.

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #160 (Jul 1975)

Title: In One World and Out the Other

Villain: Arkon

Synopsis: The Thing’s blind sculptress girlfriend Alicia Masters is making her way toward the Baxter Building when she comes across what sounds like a fiercely destructive battle between her man the Thing and the Avengers’ recurring foe Arkon.

NOTE: Arkon is the ruler of an alternate Earth called Polemechus, where a twisted blend of sword & sorcery evolved alongside futuristic technology. That war-shattered world has suffered from dwindling energy resources for years and Arkon has twice battled the Avengers while trying to sacrifice our Earth in order to provide his world with ample energy. He lost both times. 

Back to the story, Alicia cries out to what she thinks is Ben Grimm but she can tell by the expansive vocabulary with which this “Thing” replies that she is mistaken. Instead, this Thing is from an alternate Earth that Ben Grimm once visited (FF #118 January 1972). An Earth on which it was Reed Richards who was turned into the Thing instead of Ben.

Arkon, a being capable of taking on entire teams of Avengers, throws one of his energy bolts at the Reed Richards Thing and teleports the two of them back to Arkon’s World. (His bolts can be either power blasts or teleportation bursts.)

Alicia goes to the Baxter Building and anxiously discusses with the Fantastic Four how the Reed Richards Thing was somehow on our Earth and was abducted by the supervillain Arkon. She had torn off a piece of the Reed Thing’s clothing when she ran to him and the Ben Grimm Thing gets an idea.

He uses the team’s video communication screen to explain to the Inhumans in Attilan that he needs to borrow Crystal’s car-sized dog Lockjaw, whose main power is interdimensional teleportation. Black Bolt okays it and the huge dog appears in the Baxter Building. Ben Grimm has Lockjaw sniff the piece of the Reed Thing’s clothing and demands to be taken to him.

As Ben and Lockjaw teleport away to help the Reed Thing, our world’s Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) exasperatedly has Sue and Johnny join him in a business meeting with the just-arrived Albert DeVoor. (Like Reed would just ignore Arkon, a global threat, and not simply tell DeVoor they need to reschedule.)

Reed explains to Sue and Johnny that, as hinted at last issue, Fantastic Four, Inc. is having a cash flow problem. As majority shareholder (because his inventions provide most of their income, with merchandising secondary) Mr. Fantastic has arranged to sell many of his patents to DeVoor’s company, Interlocking Technologies Unlimited.

Invisible Woman and the Human Torch are shocked and object but Reed outvotes them. Many of Fantastic Four, Inc.’s patents now belong to Interlocking Technologies Unlimited.

Meanwhile, on the Earth inhabited by the Reed Richards Thing, Lockjaw and the Ben Thing are still searching for him. At last they near that Reed’s castle, where he reclusively works on the kind of inventions that the Reed of our Earth works on. Ben defeats a giant Frankenstein android that the Reed Thing has guarding the castle.

Ben and Lockjaw encounter this Earth’s Ben Grimm and Sue Storm-Grimm. Ben had gained flame, invisibility and stretching powers while Reed became the Thing when the pair went up alone in the spaceship to beat the Soviet Union to the moon (as in the origin story of our Fantastic Four).

Reed had long ago “cured” Ben of his flame, invisibility and stretching powers but nothing he could invent cured him of being this world’s Thing. Over the years, Johnny Storm got killed in the Vietnam War, while Ben and Sue grew close and married. The Ben Thing tells them that the Reed Thing has been abducted by a menace named Arkon.

That Earth’s Ben and Sue are worried to hear that and state that something funny has been going on with Reed ever since he sold his patents to a man named Albert DeVoor and his company called Interrelated Technocracies, Inc.

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #161 (Aug 1975)

Title: All the Worlds War at Once

Villain: Arkon

Synopsis: Mr. Fantastic works out in the team’s new high-tech challenge room patterned after the X-Men’s Danger Room. When he is done, he and Invisible Woman talk about their worries over the Thing and Lockjaw plus their concern for the Human Torch, who stormed out hours ago in anger over Reed’s deal with Albert DeVoor. 

Meanwhile, still walking the streets of New York City, Johnny decides to pay another visit to Valeria. He flames on and flies to the New Jersey swampland portal to the Fifth Dimension. Arriving in the Central Plaza of the capital city of that realm he finds himself under attack by suspicious denizens of the Fifth Dimension.

Phineas and Valeria arrive to calm the mob down, then explain to the Human Torch that all of a sudden their dimension has been under attack by a Reed Richards from an alternate Earth. Phineas and Valeria show Johnny videos of what they mean – it is the Reed Richards Thing.

The next moment a squad of gold-colored androids called Andrones materialize in the Fifth Dimension and begin blasting everything in sight with their high-tech built-in weaponry. Johnny flames on and attacks the small army of Andrones.

After defeating all of the detachment with his flame powers, the Human Torch is shown the plating on the Andrones which identifies them as products of “Reed Richards Robotics, a subsidiary of Interrelated Technocracies, Inc.” Johnny feels there must be a connection between the Reed Thing’s world and his own world’s similar sounding Interlocking Technologies Unlimited.

The Torch assures Valeria and her father that he will help them against these repeated raids by Andrones and get to the bottom of the alternate Earth’s Reed Richards and Interrelated Technocracies, Inc.   

Meanwhile, on that alternate Earth, the Ben Grimm Thing and that Earth’s Ben Grimm and Sue Storm-Grimm have entered New York City to investigate the company that their Reed Richards recently sold out to – Interrelated Technocracies, Inc. That alternate New York City is under attack by dinosaurs and other menaces from different time periods.

The Ben Thing helps the army defeat all of the time menaces, following which a televised address from that Earth’s American president – Nelson Rockefeller – tells the public that the world is under attack by an alternate Earth. The weapons being used are the dinosaurs, etc. Rockefeller further states that the man behind it is the alternate Earth’s Reed Richards via a time machine. 

The Ben Thing is shocked, saying it can’t be Reed using his replica of Dr. Doom’s time machine to unleash the dinosaurs and other menaces across dimensions. NOTE: To avoid confusion, I’ll explain that Albert DeVoor on our Earth used the patents Mr. Fantastic sold him to create his own replica of Doom’s time machine. 

The alternate, human Ben Grimm takes advantage of the Ben Thing’s confusion to gas him with a high-tech gas strong enough to take down their world’s Reed Richards Thing. This lets the army take him into custody while Ben and Sue Storm-Grimm feel guilty about betraying the Ben Thing.

The next day, back on our Earth, Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman are still worried about the missing Thing and annoyed that the Torch is not answering his summons. A news broadcast interrupts them and announces that a new Ice Age is suddenly gripping the Earth and is spreading rapidly. Scientists are certain it is being caused by thermodynamic energies from a Fifth Dimension. 

That makes Reed adjust his Negative Zone monitor to instead monitor the actual Fifth Dimension. In the capital city he sees Johnny standing with Valeria and Phineas at the head of an entire army as they discuss their need to attack and defeat “Reed Richards.”

Reed and Sue think that means the Human Torch is about to lead that army in an attack on the Baxter Building. In their alarm they miss the fact that the plating on the Fifth Dimension’s tanks and weaponry identifies them as products of a company called Inter-Politan Thermo-Dynamics Unlimited, obviously another parallel world version of the corporations that Arkon is pulling the strings of. 

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #162 (Sep 1975)

Title: The Shape of THINGS to Come

Villain: Arkon

Synopsis: This issue begins on the Earth where Reed Richards became the Thing. The Reed Thing breaks free of the high-tech cell where Arkon has had him imprisoned. The Reed Thing easily fights his way through Arkon’s warriors from his Earth (Polemechus) but when he faces Arkon himself the villain again easily defeats him.

Arkon has the unconscious Reed Thing put into high-tech chains this time as we readers see that the villain is using that Reed Richards’s own castle as a headquarters. Arkon and Greybeard, his Grand Vizier, go on to discuss their plan’s progress in the form of expository dialogue for us readers. 

Because Arkon’s two previous attempts at destroying our Earth to revitalize his own Earth via the resulting energy burst were defeated in open battle he decided to try a stealthier approach this time. He recruited Albert DeVoor to form three companies – Interlocking Technologies Unlimited on our Earth, Interrelated Technocracies, Inc. on the Reed Thing’s Earth, and Inter-Politan Thermo-Dynamics Unlimited in the Fifth Dimension.

Arkon’s Grand Vizier even gave DeVoor blue skin for his Fifth Dimension activities so he could pose as a native inhabitant of that dimension. Arkon and his Grand Vizier then manipulated the current wars-in-the-making by using Fantastic Four tech to attack the Reed Thing’s Earth with time-plucked menaces, using the Reed Thing’s Andrones to attack the Fifth Dimension and the Fifth Dimension’s thermo-dynamic weaponry to cause a new Ice Age on our Earth.   

Left unspoken for now, as Arkon and Greybeard return to their Earth, is how all of this will accomplish Arkon’s goal of re-energizing his Earth at the cost of three other worlds. Meanwhile, back on our Earth, more time has gone by. Mr. Fantastic has been hired by multiple governments to devise a way of halting the rapid spread of this new Ice Age. He is working at it while Invisible Woman keeps an eye on the military preparations in the Fifth Dimension, where the Human Torch is war-gaming maneuvers with their army.   

Arkon, to keep Reed from coming up with a way of stopping the Ice Age has Albert DeVoor use time travel tech from Fantastic Four patents to attack Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman rather than the Reed Thing’s Earth this time. Reed and Sue defeat the primitive barbarians that DeVoor unleashes on them. 

Suddenly, Mr. Fantastic is reached by the Reed Thing, who devised a way of contacting his alternate Earth counterpart despite being Arkon’s prisoner. The two Reeds clue each other in to the actions of Arkon’s agent DeVoor’s separate companies that they were previously unaware of.

The pair, still communicating from each of their respective Earths, brainstorm and come up with a way that the Reed Thing can break free of Arkon’s high-tech chains so he can try to find the Ben Grimm Thing and Lockjaw. As the communication link fades away, Reed and Sue decide to confront Albert DeVoor.

Back with the Reed Richards Thing, he goes to the military facility on his Earth where the news said the Ben Thing had been taken. He frees the Ben Thing and updates him on what is going on. The General “Thunderbolt” Ross of the Reed Thing’s Earth shows up because he is mounting a campaign to invade our Earth to stop what they think is Mr. Fantastic’s use of time menaces against their alternate Earth.

While the Reed Thing, who knows Ross, tries to convince Ross to hold off on the invasion, a portal opens and through it flies the Human Torch leading the army from the Fifth Dimension. The Ben Thing quickly defeats Johnny, compares notes with him and gets him to send the Fifth Dimension troops back through the portal to wait until called for.

General Ross decides to strike before that army can come back and orders his men to take down the Human Torch and the two Things. Johnny uses his flame powers to hold them at bay with a big ring of flame. Suddenly, Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman contact the three heroes from our Earth.

Reed and Sue are calling from an interdimensional visi-screen in Albert DeVoor’s office. They have beaten all of his men and roughed up DeVoor to force him to confess what little our heroes did not yet know.

It turns out Arkon – even back when he was fighting the Avengers – always planned to have the world-destroying energies from our Earth funneled through to his Earth/ Polemachus through a small interdimensional Nexus. This time around the catastrophic energies unleashed via the war among three worlds are also meant to be channeled through that Nexus. 

Arkon already has a guardian protecting the Nexus but DeVoor doesn’t know anything about his powers. Only two living beings can exist in the space near the Nexus. Reed chooses the Ben Thing for the vital job of destroying the Nexus with a weapon provided by DeVoor. If the Nexus is destroyed, Arkon will never again have the option to sacrifice other worlds to save his own.

As for the Human Torch and the Reed Thing, he gives them weapons and sends them to defeat Arkon personally just in case the attempt to destroy the Nexus fails.

Our heroes go into action, with Ben getting used to the rocket skates DeVoor provided for his use. 

As the Ben Thing approaches the Nexus, the sentinel Arkon assigned to it shows himself. He calls himself Gaard (but I don’t know how he conveys the two “a”s verbally) and his costume and powers are built around a literal hockey goal-tender theme. That’s this issue’s cliffhanger.

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #163 (Oct 1975)

Title: Finale

Villains: Arkon and Gaard

Synopsis: The Ben Thing and Gaard fight it out. Gaard is as strong as the Thing and can shoot energy beams from his golden hockey stick “power staff” and is successfully preventing Ben from using his weapon to destroy the Nexus. 

Back on our Earth, Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman and their captive Albert DeVoor watch the Gaard vs Thing battle on their viewscreen. They both want to go to Ben’s aid but they fail and DeVoor mocks them with a reminder that Arkon engineered the space around the Nexus so that at most only two living beings can exist there at once.

(Presumably he would have made it so that none can exist there at all if it was scientifically or mystically possible.) Reed and Sue must settle for communicating encouragement to the outmatched Ben Thing.

On another screen, Reed and Sue see that the Human Torch and the Reed Thing have materialized on Arkon’s Earth via the tech provided by DeVoor. The two fight their way through Arkon’s troops and confront him in his throne room.

Johnny and the Reed Thing battle Arkon, who is overconfident since he has beaten the Reed Thing twice already. Teamwork between the Human Torch and the Reed Thing enables them to defeat Arkon. Now everything depends on the Ben Thing.

Reed and Sue can tell that Ben is on the verge of defeat, so Reed improvises with some more of DeVoor’s tech from Arkon’s World. He projects an image of the Reed Thing as if he has arrived to fight alongside the Ben Thing.

Startled and distracted by what he thinks is an extra being who should not be able to exist near the Nexus, Gaard inadvertently lets the Ben Thing use his weapon to destroy the Nexus. Our Earth, the Reed Thing’s Earth and the Fifth Dimension are saved and the new Ice Age retreats.

The Ben Thing is wary, lest Gaard continue their fight, but he was fighting under Arkon’s command. With the Nexus gone for good, he has no further purpose. We learn Gaard is really the Johnny Storm from the Reed Thing’s Earth, who was believed dead in the Vietnam War (see above).

In truth, he was spirited away by Arkon, who had his world’s tech and magic save Johnny’s life and transform him into the cosmically powered Gaard to keep the Nexus safe. On his Earth, his sister Sue has already come to terms with his death, so nothing will be changed as he flies off into space to explore and seek out adventures. 

EPILOGUE: The Reed Thing is sent back to his Earth to tell General Ross and President Rockefeller that the imminent war has been averted. The Human Torch informs the Fifth Dimension, and he, Lockjaw and the Ben Thing return to their own Earth.

Back at the Baxter Building, Alicia is still waiting with little Franklin and asks our returning heroes if it is the “real” Thing talking to her this time. The Ben Thing replies by scooping her up in his arms for a kiss.

NOTE: I’ll explain the Gaard in-joke. When artist Jack Kirby worked for Marvel Comics he was the artist who created the Silver Surfer, the notorious figure who flies through space and through the air on a literal surfboard.

        After Kirby went to work at DC Comics he created the Black Racer, a figure who flew through space and through the air on SKIS! Yes, complete with ski-poles through which he could shoot energy beams. The Black Racer was obviously Jack’s Silver Surfer pastiche/ in-joke. 

        So, carrying through from a cosmic surfer to a cosmic skier, this Fantastic Four story introduced Gaard, a figurative “cosmic ice skater/ hockey player.” His role trying to stop the Ben Thing from slipping his puck-shaped weapon past him and into the Nexus added to the tongue-in-cheek goal-tender motif.   

        Completing the in-joke was the fact that we’re told that Gaard was really Vietnam War soldier Johnny Storm of alternate Earth. At DC Comics, the Black Racer had been paralyzed Vietnam War soldier William Walker until he was transformed into his superpowered form. 

*** I know that’s a long way to go for such a small joke, but it was kind of clever. I wish Marvel had done more with Gaard over the years, like use him on their Exiles team featuring superheroes from throughout Marvel’s Multiverse. Instead, they used him as a villain for a two-part story in Fantastic Force in 1995 and haven’t brought him back since.

THE FIRST SEVERAL FANTASTIC FOUR STORIES FROM THE 1960s HERE.

THE WEDDING OF MR. FANTASTIC AND INVISIBLE WOMAN HERE.

THE FANTASTIC FOUR VS THE INHUMANS, SILVER SURFER AND GALACTUS HERE.

THE FANTASTIC FOUR VS THUNDRA, THE FRIGHTFUL FOUR, SUB-MARINER, MAHKIZMO, THE BRUTE AND MORE HERE.