Fantastic Four #129

Issue Details

Synopsis

THE FRIGHTFUL FOUR -- PLUS ONE! Returning to the Baxter Building from their last mission, both Reed and Ben have collapsed from exhaustion. As they recover from their battle with the Mole Man, the Thing resigns to the fact that Alicia will remain blind for the time being. Johnny decides to take this as an opportunity that he intends to leave the Fantastic Four and go to the Great Refuge of the Inhumans so that he can be with his girlfriend Crystal. When Reed asks Johnny to think this idea through, he refuses to listen and flames on, almost burning Reed. Johnny then rushes to the Pogo-Plane with Reed and Ben in tow. As Johnny begins to blast off, Ben grabs the ship to try and keep it in place, but Sue steps in and turns his arms invisible. This distracts Ben long enough for Johnny to blast off and fly away. When Reed asks why Sue helped her brother escape, she explains that Johnny is an adult now and he is going after the woman he loves. When Reed questions her further, she comments on how Reed is blind to things than Alicia, leaving Ben to believe that Sue's days as the shrieking violet of the team are long over, and he begins to wonder if the Fantastic Four can endure without the Torch on the team.   Meanwhile, Johnny arrives over the Great Refuge of the Inhumans in the Himalayan mountains. When he passes in for a landing he has to pull away as there is a dome erected around the hidden city. Suddenly his ship is destroyed by a trio of flying Inhumans. Flaming on, Johnny fights back, thinking that Maximus must have taken over the Inhumans again. The Torch's battle with the three Inhumans proves short-lived as they snuff out his flame but manage to catch him before he fatally hits the ground. Taken into the Hidden Land, Johnny is shocked to find that it's not Maximus in charge of the Inhumans after all, but Black Bolt their rightful ruler.   Back at the Baxter Building, the remaining members of the Fantastic Four are brooding in silence when suddenly they receive a mystic summons from Agatha Harkness, asking Reed and Sue to pick up their son Franklin. She explains that they need to take him back because she has important business to conduct. When Reed tells Sue that she will have to pick up Franklin alone as he has work to do in his lab. Sue reacts poorly to this, and storms out, angry that Reed is once again dictating the positions they share in their marriage. This latest explosion bothers the Thing deeply and he decides to go take a walk and see what Alicia can shed on the subject.   While walking past a construction site the Thing hears a woman scream and doffs his disguise to go and investigate. This turns out to be a trap as he is ambushed by three of the original members of the Frightful Four: the Sandman, Trapster, and the Wizard. Although they have the element of surprise, they are suddenly ambushed themselves by their former teammate, Medusa of the Inhumans. As the fight rages on, the Wizard tags Ben with one of his anti-gravity discs, but Medusa pulls him back down to safety. When Ben throws a construction vehicle at his foes, it is deflected by the Frightful Four's newest member, the super-strong Amazon calling herself Thundra. Thundra has paired up with the Frightful Four because they have promised to bring her to the strongest man on Earth so that she can defeat him in combat.   Because the Thing is reluctant to fight a woman, Thundra gets the upper hand in a one-on-one battle until Medusa comes to his rescue. Thundra then flings Medusa away, but she is saved from a nasty impact by the Thing. As the Frightful Four close in, Ben is knocked out by the combined blows of both the Sandman and Thundra, while Medusa is incapacitated by the Trapsters paste gun. Thundra and Sandman almost come to blows with each other over his interference in her fight with the Thing, but the Wizard breaks it up. He reminds them that with the Thing and Medusa defeated, they will have less opposition to their grander plan of defeating the Fantastic Four.