Marvel Monday: Character Development Without Character

With the story of Henry Pym being just a one-off, March of 1962 saw only the Fantastic Four published in the Marvelverse. Issue #3 saw the introduction of a lot of Fantastic Four paraphernalia, and also saw the tensions between team members come to a head. If only they had done a single story that made me care about any of them. As always, you can get a non-critical synopsis of the issue over at the Marvel Wiki.

Sue made the uniforms, because woman's work and all that. After seeing them, Reed
suggests she could work for Dior. Lying to Sue keeps her from realizing she's a tool.

When last we left our intrepid heroes terrorists, they had been pardoned by the New York Police Department, who apparently can override the military in Marvel's mixed up topsy turvy universe. So, having escaped the consequences of their horrifically destructive actions, the Fantastic Four decide to spend their downtime taking in a stage magician's show.

Not Miracle Man

But this is no ordinary magician! This is Miracle Man, one of the New Gods who is married to Big Barda, and...

... oh, no? That's Mister Miracle, a DC character? Well who the hell is Miracle Man?

Apparently Miracle Man is a stage magician, who is so astounding that everyone is convinced he can actually work miracles. Apparently this was a benefit show for the Creation Museum or John Edward's studio audience or something like that, because that's the only way to explain their gullibility. It's a magic show, people! You may not understand how the trick works, but that doesn't mean you start screaming that the performer is actually a sorcerer.

Anyway, having recognized the Fantastic Four in the audience, Miracle Man teases them with a little stage patter, showing how his powers are superior to those of New York's finest terrorists. Naturally, this causes Thing to go into a blood rage and charge the stage, intent upon murder.

Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen!

The magician challenges Thing to a series of contests of strength, and bests him easily each time through his "magic". This rattles the Fantastic Four, and on the way home Reed Richards, scientist, intellectual, and presumably rational man, muses that if Miracle Man were to turn to evil he would be the one foe the Fantastic Four could not defeat!

She can do whatever she wants. Yowzah.

Never does Reed consider that maybe, just maybe, a stage magician might have rigged the stage the way stage magicians do all around the world. What, in the Marvel universe are there just traveling sorcerers wandering around, performing stage shows? I mean, I know Zatanna does that in DCs universe, but we forgive her because she's in fishnets.

But enough about plot, the Fantastic Four have a new base, and a new set of wheels! And by wheels, I mean hoverpads or something, because it flies. It's a flying washtub called the Fantasti-car, and it can split into four podium-sized sections that also fly, because this is a comic book and the laws of physics are Reed Richards' bitch.

"Superheroes". Right. Like anyone besides the NYPD believes that.

The comic kindly provides us with a cutaway picture of the new Fantastic Four base inside the Baxter Building, a New York City skyscraper. Apparently only the top floors belong to the Fantastic Four, with people living in the lower floors. Which I suppose is convenient when the Fantastic Four want to take hostages.

And they have a long-range missile. Oh god, they have a long range missile! Sure, it's supposedly a passenger missile... but that makes no damn sense. Clearly as soon as they get their hands on a nuclear warhead, we're all doomed. And the NYPD allow this to go on, without any special permits or suspicion, right in their city.

To be fair, this is decades before Giuliani. Maybe a nuclear capable group of terrorists were no big deal before the city was cleaned up.

Anyway, just as Reed predicted, Miracle Man does turn evil, and he causes a movie monster prop to come to life and terrorize the town. Mister Fantastic tries to stop it, but he gets knocked out with a well-aimed brick.

Again, just to emphasize: The one weakness of Mister
Fantastic is... a brick to the head.

I just want to repeat that. The guy whose body is completely bendable and flexible is knocked out by a brick. How does that even work?

Anyway, Human Torch burns down the prop, but before Thing can defeat Miracle Man, the stage magician uses his "magic" to cause Thing to sink into the earth. That means it's up to Invisible Girl to invisibly tail Miracle Man back to his hideout, alone.

Finally, Invisible Girl gets to do something useful. This is her time to save the day! This is her time to be the heroine! This is her time to finally restore some sexual balance to this...

Somewhere, R.A. Salvatore has a boner
and has no idea why.

... yeah, predictably she immediately gets captured, even invisible, and hypnotized into serving Miracle Man. Because Sue is the living embodiment of every blond joke ever.

Miracle Man uses Sue to lure the Fantastic Four into a trap, and then apparently forgets to set the trap because he just squares off against them with no advantage. Mister Fantastic bounces around, and becomes the spare tire of a car for an automobile chase (yes, that is a thing that happens), and they finally corner Miracle Man.

And then the twist ending is revealed! Miracle Man never had any magic! He was just a skilled hypnotist! He hypnotized everyone into believing he was performing magic!

Wait. What?

Okay, the impossibility of hypnotizing everyone with just a glance aside, the monster he "animated" crushed cars, stalked across town, and then was burnt to a cinder by the Human Torch. The police fired all sorts of weapons at it, and two of them are shown carrying bazookas. Did these just blow up New York City skyscrapers or something?

Were the jewels fake too? Or the damage?
How did a fake monster steal real jewels or...
I'M SO CONFUSED!

There's a trick to twist endings. They have to actually make sense. I will admit that the hypnosis angle was unexpected, but only because it is ridiculous, and explains nothing.

Anyway, the Human Torch causes his body to become a blinding flare right in front of Miracle Man, which dazzles him and... causes him to lose the power to hypnotize... somehow... I don't know. There are enough plotholes here to drive the Fantasti-car through.

But none of that is important. What's important is that Johnny Storm has been bickering with Thing the whole issue, and he finally gets fed up and quits the team! Are the Fantastic Four done for good? Will Johnny Storm turn evil and oppose them? And wouldn't opposing the Fantastic Four actually make him good, since they're still behaving badly and all?

And more importantly, whose bright idea was it to do this in the third issue? We have practically no character development for these characters, and three issues in you're already doing the obligatory temporary-breakup-before-they-get-back-together arc? Why should I care? The Fantastic Four still aren't heroic. Sure, they finally actually help the police take down a dangerous criminal in this issue, but the criminal more or less called them out beforehand, so it's not exactly altruistic. Thing just wanted to murder the guy, even before he was a criminal.

I'm supposed to care that a non-heroic, barely developed team is breaking up? This is something that should have been saved for their second or third year, not their third issue.

Oh well. The end of the issue promises that the Torch will "Strike Back", and another character will be introduced "whom you demanded we bring back!" So we'll see how that goes.

Hey, you be careful with that! Sue made that! She could
be working for Dior, you know!