Fantastic Four #213 December 1979. In Final Battle!

The Fantastic Four #213

December 1979

In Final Battle!

Script: Marv Wolfman

Illustrations: John Byrne & Joe Sinnott
Letters: J Costanza
Colours: Ben Sean
In the last post (Thor #290) I mentioned that the ongoing story in Thor at the time had started life in Jack Kirby's Eternals series, and was moved over to Thor when that book was cancelled.

Something similar was happening at the same time with the Fantastic Four picking up on a story from Nova, which ended its original twenty five issue run in mid 1979.

While Nova himself had left the stage by this point, we join the Four here at the climax of a battle between Nova's arch-nemesis The Sphinx and the planet-devouring all powerful being Galactus himself.


The Four have been aged by Skrull technology, or at least three of them have. The Human Torch is still very much his old, or young, self. And also in the mix is Terrax, who at this point is the Herald of Galactus.

Both Terrax and the Sphinx would later play important parts in the lives of  Nova's team, the New Warriors, but that was still a decade away at this point. If this blog ever gets as far as the New Warriors' debut in Thor #412, I will probably feel as old as Reed Richards looks here!

Much of the issue revolves around the fight between Galactus and The Sphinx. I can't say that I'm wild about it. Galactus, as originally conceived, was basically as powerful as God. He could do absolutely anything. His physical form was merely something that the human mind conceived as a way to perceive a being that was conceptually beyond our understanding. Kirby gave him a sense of scale and majesty that has been eroded and undermined over and over again. As the biggest and most powerful character from the early Marvel Universe, he has often been reduced to being a punching bag to prove that a new villain is even more big and powerful. All this really does is traduce a wonderful original creation, and I hope that someone at Marvel decides enough is enough sooner rather than later.

The example here is particularly silly, although at least it goes the right way in the end, with Galactus engaging in fisticuffs with The Sphinx, grappling in a purely physical display of strength before finally unleashing his own might and easily overpowering the Egyptian. The punishment he finally metes out, trapping his immortal opponent in a loop, destined to repeat the same frustrations of several thousand years over and over again, saves this storyline and feels worthy of the power and wrath of Galactus.

Meanwhile Johnny battles Terrax. Bear in mind Terrax is the herald of Galactus. Like the Silver Surfer, he is fuelled by the Power Cosmic, while Johnny is a human being who can set himself on fire. But with Ben enfeebled by old age and Reed trying to come up with a way to stop Galactus, it falls to young Mr Storm to take on Terrax.

I love it when a Fantastic Four story really lets one or more of the four shine. Reed usually ends up saving the day in the end, but the other three are such great characters to play with, and often end up as bit-part players in their own book. Susan is sidelined for the entire issue here, and Ben is in a bad way, but this is a great fight, and win, for Johnny. I also like that he does not rely on sheer power here, but instead uses his brains to come up with a solution. Johnny can be funny, lighthearted, even reckless, but he should not be stupid. His plan to heat the room so that the cooling systems go into overdrive and then dump liquid oxygen onto Terrax is the kind of thing Spider-Man comes up with, and people think Spidey is a super-genius because of it.

The ultimate showdown is a twist on Reed's original gambit against Galactus, using the Ultimate Nullifier to threaten the space giant into leaving Earth alone. That is how you beat Galactus. He may be all-powerful, but he is not all that clever. The added assist from The Watcher is beautifully handled, too. The Watcher's insistence that he is not interfering (he totally is) sets up a much later Quasar storyline where the Watchers are struck by an existential crisis when they realise that their observations affect what they observe. Luckily Uatu has never been the strictest on himself when it comes to this particular rule.

I have not said much yet about the art. It is John Byrne's Fantastic Four. (The art is not credited with a pencil/inker combination, but "John Byrne and Joe Sinnott illustrations", make of that what you will, and I'm sure there are Sinnott spotters out there who will be able to flag his contribution, but it looks a lot like a Byrne joint, so I'm calling it that way.)

What else is there to be said that has not been said before? For many, Byrne is the definitive FF artist. His work on X-Men is, of course, legendary, but the Fantastic Four often gave him more scope to create strange worlds and creatures, machines and devices. That said, this particular issue is largely action-based. We only get glimpses of the interior of Galactus' ship, lots of intriguing machinery lining every corridor.

And this is why I feel it is not one of his stronger issues. Byrne was arguably the most successful artist at taking the Fantastic Four out of the shadow of Kirby, certainly at this point. Yet here, he is restricted to a character and setting that Kirby had brought to life with such power. We don't get any of those huge establishing shots of the ship interior (I have not checked, but I would expect a few of them in the previous issue) just a few walls. The setup scene between the two villains falls a little flat. The Sphinx's "floating pyramids" look, frankly, half arsed.

The characters are, as you would expect, individual and life-like. Galactus himself seems to have an actual face, rather than the usual expressionless mask. Byrne seems to have had some fun with the old age Mr Fantastic angle, too. The Thing's ageing is shown more in his posture, but then he is hardly going to get grey and wrinkly, is he?

No sooner has Galactus gone back off into space than we are hit by the final cliff-hanger. Reed collapses in Johnny's arms, a mess of limp elastic. Has Mister Fantastic died of old age? Will he make it into the 1980s at all?

We'll get there, be sure to come back when we do, true believers!

Text ©2019 Andrew Ness
All art, characters, etc  © Marvel Characters Inc.