Fantastic Four #38
Defeated by the Frightful Four!
Reed, Ben and Johnny are busy looking over enlarged photographs of the Skrull galaxy for research when suddenly they are interrupted by Sue who playfully reminds them that there are wedding plans to go over. Although she is invisible to the eye, they manage to grab her and make her give up with her pranking. With the merriment over, Johnny decides to head off to go on a date with his girlfriend Doris Evans. As he flies away from the Baxter Building he just misses the Wizard who is passing by. Their foe then goes to land at the secluded cabin where the Frightful Four are hiding out. There he is attacked by the Sandman, but is repelled by the Wizard's anti-gravity devices. Paste-Pot Pete -- having now renamed himself the Trapster -- lunges in to test out his new paste-based traps. After they succeed in subduing the Wizard, he shows his supremacy by throwing the Frightful Four around with his anti-gravity weapons.
Soon their launch their next plot against the Fantastic Four, it begins with Medusa confronting the Invisible Girl while she is out picking dress designs for her wedding. Caught off guard, Sue is easily captured and the news of her kidnapping quickly spreads. When the Thing learns what happened he rushes back to the Baxter Building to tell Reed and Johnny what he has learned only to find that Reed is already busy trying to track the Frightful Four down.
Meanwhile, the Frightful Four have landed their ship on a former nuclear testing site on an atoll in the South Pacific. There the Wizard shows his comrades and prisoner his greatest invention yet, the Q-Bomb, which he intends to use against the Fantastic Four. Back at the Baxter Building the FF are desperately trying to locate Sue when suddenly their radars pick up a ship flying their way. They attack it, but only succeed in getting Johnny captured by the Frightful Four as well. As their foes flee, Reed and Ben follow after them in the Pogo Plane.
The Fantastic Four are caught off guard when they land on the atoll and their enemies attack. Although they soon start getting the upper hand, the Frightful Four flee leaving the heroes to go and rescue Sue. However with the Pogo Plane having been destroyed in the fight, they have no way off the island. As the Frightful Four speed away, the Wizard sets the bomb to explode. Unknown to him the Fantastic Four are thrown clear from the atomic blast thanks to a force field put around them by Sue. Knocked unconscious by the blast the Four are lost at sea as the Thing slowly begins to revert back to human form.
Recurring Characters
Fantastic Four (Mister Fantastic, Invisible Girl, Human Torch, Thing), Frightful Four (The Wizard, Trapster, Sandman, Medusa)
Continuity Notes
As revealed in Fantastic Four #18 the Skrulls homeworld is located in the Andromeda Galaxy.
Reed and Sue are preparing to get married after Reed proposed to her in Fantastic Four #35, the wedding happens in Fantastic Four Annual #3.
Johnny has been dating Doris Evans since Strange Tales #113.
Paste-Pot Pete renames himself the Trapster in this issue, but he never lives down his old name and is repeatedly mocked for it hereafter.
As revealed in Fantastic Four #44 Medusa is a member of the Inhumans. She was stricken with amnesia during a battle against the Trikon a few years earlier as depicted in Inhumans Special #1. It was later revealed in X-Men First Class (vol. 2) #15 that the Wizard kept Medusa complaint and her memories jumbled with a device that he planted on the base of her neck. (If you consider that series part of continuity, like I do.)
After this story, the Frightful Four make a stop at the Baxter Building in Journey into Mystery #116 to make sure the Fantastic Four were killed in the blast, but are frightened off by the arrival of Balder the Brave on the rooftop of the building.
