Time Travel and Misplaced Vibranium

cover art by Jack Kirby

I imagine that writer Roy Thomas and artist John Buscema has several reasons for coming up with the story they used in 1976's Fantastic Four Annual #11.

First, they wanted to tell an entertaining story. Any creative person in the comics industry will need to be conscious of marketing, sales and cross-promotion. Thomas was editor of the FF as well as writer at the time, so these issues would have been of particular concern to him. But I think he is also an excellent storyteller who was always concerned about his craft on a creative level as well.

But I have no doubt that this annual, in which the FF travel back to 1942 and team-up with the Invaders, was also intended to generate interest in the Invaders' own ongoing series. And, as long as the story is a good one and it's not a multi-part crossover that forces you to buy other titles, this is perfectly legitimate.

Also, Thomas is known for loving Golden Age characters and for appreciating a strong continuity within the Marvel Universe. As we'll see, this story finally gives us the specific details of an incident from Captain America's war-time career that had been hinted at but never fleshed out. I think Thomas would have jumped at the chance to do something like that.

Anyway, on to the story, which begins with the FF in a training session, giving us some strong action to start things off and allows the character dialogue to give us a little exposition. Most important here is the remainder that Ben Grimm has reverted to human form--perhaps permanently--and is using a Thing exoskelton to remain a part of the team.

After the training session ends, the action continues when a hoarde of Nazi soldiers are found to be infesting the Baxter Building. Don't you hate it when that happens?

The soldiers are quickly subdued and the story slows down a little for a massive information dump to set up the main plot. It's my only criticism of an otherwise excellent story--it takes Roy Thomas a good half-dozen pages (and an appearance by the Watcher) to get a lot of addtional exposition out of the way before Reed figures out that some Vibranium fell into the FF's time machine during a fight a few issues back and now the Nazis have won World War II. To be fair, though, Buscema's art and some frightening images from the past of the Nazis conquering the world do liven things up a little.

That means the team has to go back to 1942 and recover the Vibranium. (I'm assuming that very few people who read my blog don't know what Vibranium is, but check HERE if you need to. Pretend the entry is being spoken to you in a snooty, know-it-all, nerd voice.)

As is apparently required by law in any Comic Book Universe, when the FF meet the Invaders in 1942, there is a misunderstanding and a brief fight before they realize they're all on the same side. Soon, the two teams are working together, infiltrating a Nazi castle where the French Underground is reporting some weird stuff is going on.

I really like the structure of the story from this point on. Once inside the castle, the heroes break up into three teams, each one a mix of FF and Invaders, giving each team a nice dynamic. Reed wonders about time paradoxes (why didn't Namor remember them when he met the FF in the 1960s?) while Namor muses that Sue is really hot and it's too bad she's married. Johnny agonizes over the fact that Bucky will be dead in a few years and he can't do anything about that and Ben simply enjoys the opportunity to smack down Nazis.

Reed's team trashes a lab full of superweapons, while Captain America encounters Baron Zemo, who is in charge of the castle.

This is the continuity detail I mentioned earlier. It had been established in Zemo's first appearance, in Avengers #4 (1963), that Cap was responsible for Zemo's mask being permanently affixed to his face. Now we get to see the actual mission in which this happened. It isn't something that affects the main plotline as well, but I'll be that Roy Thomas enjoyed filling in that minor gap in Marvel history.

Ben and the WWII Torches find some huge V2 rockets about to launch. They manage to quickly trash all but one. That one, though, launches with Ben hanging on to it, so he simply reprograms it to turn back around and blow up the castle. Ben doesn't expect to survive when the rocket hits, but that Ben would exhibit self-sacrifcing heroism to save the world from the Nazis is not at all surprising.

Reed, though, has found the Vibranium and the heroes have all escaped the castle. So just before the rocket hits, an automatic recall on the time machine sends the FF home, saving Ben's life.

But half the Vibranium is missing. Reed assumes that this was used up when the Nazis were experimenting with it, but a visit from the Watcher convinces Ben that another trip back to the War is needed. This leads into yet another time travel story featured in Marvel Two-in-One Annual #1.

I suppose that technically this means the story does indeed cross over into another title, which is a pet peeve of mine. But the FF story here is significantly independent of the Two-in-One story to the point where it doesn't bother me this time. You can read either tale by itself without missing out on any important plot points.

So I think this story is still an example of cross-promotion the way it should be done. It's a well-told, entertaining tale that features characters from another book, but doesn't force you to buy that book against your will to get the full story. It simply reminds you that those other characters exist in the hopes that you will freely choose to buy their book. That's fair. Capitalism at its best, by golly.

The story does leave a couple of minor questions outstanding. In the end, Reed figures out that Namor and Cap won't remember them because their adventure took place in an alternate universe. So does that mean we really aren't getting the full story on how the whole Zemo/mask thing happened in their home dimension?

Also, everyone seems to have forgotten that there are a bunch of bruised Nazi soldiers locked in a closet in the Baxter Building. Gee whiz. What ever happened to those guys?

I think we will look at Ben's further time travel shenanigans. We'll do that in a couple of weeks. Next week, we'll visit again with Tarzan as he again visits with dinosaurs. Because mixing Tarzan with dinosaurs is always--ALWAYS--a wonderful thing. It's an eternal truth of the universe.