doom na doom

oi! this is shaping up to be month with the fewest posts ever. wow. well, between my football mishap (a finger ironically, for a game that has 'foot' in it) and a day job that led to me being put on maintenance dosage of meds for insanity and hypertension, its quite impossible to be blogging like i used to, although this whole exercise is a much calming endeavor and i should be doing more of it. right? riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!!!

doesn't mean i have been idle and ignoring my lovely color books, both old and new. still aim to finish that Daredevil rumination (even if just for one precious reader from Spain), and there's like a thousand things i'd like to put in, given the time. case in point, like this one ...

back when i was a runt in my beloved third world home, comics were hard to come by due to availability and cost. i can hardly afford to subscribe, much less keep track of my favorite spandex heroes' adventures. so i invariably end up with an issue here and there which is either the 2nd half of a great story or a cliffhanger which i never found out the conclusion to.

until the digital age.

thanks to the feisty denizens of this global village, i can finally read the full stories i missed, or complete the circle for others. just like Fantastic Four #259.

back during the height of John Byrne's powers, he churned out his best Marvel work on X-Men and Fantastic Four. this is of course in retrospect, and i had no idea that the issue i held in my hands back then was part of a historic run for Marvel's first family.

the story opens with Sue house-hunting in Connecticut, in an attempt to move the Richards family away from the Big Apple and all the supervillains they attract to the city (and the Baxter building). it is sort of a quiet scene, one i wasn't used to then, because i was used to fistfights, fisticuffs, brawls, donnybrooks and more fistfights. i still hadn't grasped the concept of characterization.

one member of the team also ponders the question of being attacked at any time, given that he just stepped out of LaGuardia airport amidst frightened co-passengers on his commercial flight. well, Ben proves them wrong halfway, because he gets attacked after he leaves the airport.

this is what they mean by "splitting a cab"

so who wants to split a cab with big ol' Benjamin? why, its their old buddy Tyros The Terrible (a.k.a. Terrax The Tamer, a.k.a. Terrence the Testosteroned One).

the Thing, as is his wont, tries to find the best opportunities to yell his patented battlecry.

this is what you get when you stiff a cabbie with the tip

the obvious effect is of course, getting creamed in return and wrecking a Shop-Rite (yeah those things need to be wrecked - kidding!).

i guess the grocery bill's gonna go overbudget

how do we know its a Shop Rite? it says so 3 panels ago.

meanwhile, who is the insidious mastermind who resurrected and sicced ol' Tyros on our heroes? why, there's actually no suspense because Dr. Doom was on the cover. duh. and when said mastermind reveals himself by nabbing Sue who was flying home in their vaunted Fantasticar (or one of its modules), he gets the comeuppance he deserves when she slaps the pregnant Invisible Woman around.

if that's not 'in your face', i don't know what is

Sue notes that she already thought Doom was 'above simple brutality', because she didn't know yet she was fighting a Doom-bot. when she comes face to face (so to speak) with Doom himself, projected on a floating globe, she asks why is he afraid to face any of them, and Doom counters that she should know by now that he does not like to engage in fisticuffs. of course, she may just be baiting him, but she already knows why. duh.

quick interlude: why is the Submariner's eyebrows look like the Golden Arches, only slightly separated? does he moonlight as Ronald McDonald?

back to our scheduled fight, Chris Eva- i mean, the Human Torch had already joined the fray (before Sue even did) with no better results, and Ben still insists on yelling Tyros to submission.

i mean, was there ever an issue that Ben never says it? seriously? there is? there are?

so, okay, Doom doesn't want to sully his immaculate hands dealing with the Fantastic Four, so he resurrects this former herald of Galactus to kick their asses. but as is with great villains, they have their own unique flaws - Doom's ego is way too much for any to bear. Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards) is out there somewhere demonstrating his stretching abilities to a young thing doing research and has not joined the fray so far. so this galls the plastic surgeon from that hit F/X TV show.

here's a thought, Doom. if you're able to keep tabs on Sue and Ben, then how in freakin' hell did you not check where the hell Reed is? (finding Johnny is easy - he's always where the girls are).

thus, a pissed Doom emerges into the open and tells Tyros to fall back and do this thing another day. which of course the herald resents, because he's winning. then Doom does what Doom does to the hired help when they talk back at him.

payback is a bitch as Tyros turns against his current employer and fuses his suit. oh, the humiliation.

but help arrives in the form of the Silver Surfer (most noble and powerful of all of Galactus' stooges), who immediately demonstrates to Tyros that having a nice beard is not all its cracked up to be.

Doom, doubly pissed now that he's been left in a frozen stance that resembles either a crane style kung fu stance or some loser surrendering to the cops, tries a gambit that we never knew he was capable of. hint: mental projection. or something.

even MacGyver can't get out this; Doom can!

as always, the conclusion to a big ass fight between two cosmic-powered beings (wait! shouldn't that apply to the trio too, because they are) is a big explosion (we never actually see if the Shop Rite was wiped off the map - pity). Tyros seems to have been atomized (yeah right), and all that remains of Doom is his mask.

we never see Reed at all in this story, but we see another of Sue's lovers (is that accurate?) twice (but that's a mystery for another issue). i'm just glad i was finally able to finish the story 24 years later. damn!

here's a question: if we wiped off the dialogue from above panel, what would you substitute? knowing the past of these two, i'd say this scene is a little creepy.

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Fantastic Four #259-260