Nov 1979
Battle of the Titans!
by Marv Wolfman, John Byrne, Joe Sinnott, John Costanza, Carl Gafford
The Fantastic Four, HERBIE, Galactus, and Terrax arrive on Earth. Galactus’ new herald immediately starts to terrorize the population of New York City. Reed and Ben fight with Terrax until Galactus tells his new assistant to back off.
Sue feels the effects of the rapid aging to a greater degree than Reed or Ben and collapses. Reed does what he can for his wife and then starts to prepare to deal with Galactus. He knows that once Galactus has dealt with the Sphinx he will turn from Earth’s defender into its greatest menace.
The Skrull who was last seen Fantastic Four 204 returns. He is a construct. He explains how he repaired himself and makes preparations to help the Skrull Empire conquer Earth.
The Sphinx tells his origin story which goes back to biblical times. Terrax tries to take down the Sphinx on his own but when that fails he heads to the Baxter Building. The issue ends with Terrax threatening to destroy the Fantastic Four.
The first three pages of this issue are narrated by the Watcher. He sets the scene for the big showdown between Galactus and the Sphinx. He also recaps what happened over the past 8 issues. He leaves out the Human Torch’s antics at Security University but he summarizes everything else the team has done in that time span.
The cover to this issue was drawn by Walt Simonson. This is his first work on Fantastic Four, according to my research. His next work on Fantastic Four wasn’t until 1989 when he started his run on Fantastic Four which lasted about 18 months.
The art in this book is credited to Byrne and Sinnott but there are numerous pages that don’t looked like they were penciled by Byrne. The credits, to be fair, at the beginning of the book says “A Marv Wolfman / John Byrne / Joe Sinnott Production” which leaves it fairly vague as to how much of this issue was drawn by Byrne.
The Watcher on the opening page speaks the title of the issue. In my head it sounded like “let’s get ready to rumble” even though his demeanor was fairly calm. The title of this issue also makes me think of the movie Clash of the Titans which came out a couple years later.
Reed and Sue look considerably older than they did in the previous issue. The effects of the aging ray are really starting to show and affect their abilities.
HERBIE appears in two panels in this issue and speaks in one of them. Reed questions the initiative that HERBIE takes in the first of those panels. He is right to do that but there is no follow up on this question in this issue. I believe it will be addressed in a future one.
Good but fast read. This issue gets me interested in reading more but it is not by itself a satisfying story.
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