The Four Horsemen

 

cover art by Rich Buckler

Giant-Size Fantastic Four #3 (1974) is far from the best FF story of that era, but I like it anyways. The story (co-plotted by Gerry Conway and Marv Wolfman, with script by Wolfman) has a few problems, but Rich Buckler's art is imaginative and fun, making this a worthwhile read. (The Grand Comics Database states that Buckler got an uncredited assist from George Perez.)

The Four Horseman, riding their horses through space, are returning to Earth after being kicked off millennia ago by a more powerful race. (That other race is never identified--the Eternals, perhaps?) They need Earth because our "pointless planet" is a nexus from which they can then conquer other worlds. We get no further details on how this works exactly, but we don't really need one. It's a sound example of Comic Book Science.

The Horsemen have the traditional names: Pestilence, War, Famine and Death. Pestilence lands in New York and is soon spreading disease, rats and mutant humanoid minions around the city. The FF confront him, which leads to an epic Ben Grimm scene. It's Ben who finishes off Pestilence, refusing to give up even as he is quite literally disintegrating. 

By the way, there was a tendency in Marvel Comics at the time to reference current TV shows, movies and other bits of current pop culture. In the bottom left corner above, Ben makes one of the more obscure references I've ever run across. He mentions Ozzie's Girls, a revival of the old Ozzie and Harriet sitcom (1952-1966) in which the titular couple's sons had grown up and moved out, so they take in a couple of college girls as borders. It ran for one season in 1973/74.

Since it was still on the air when this issue was released in August 1974, perhaps its only obscure in retrospect. But I doubt many people would get the reference today. Anyway, if you are curious, you can watch the pilot episode HERE.

{One notable part is when the black girl calls about the room being rented, then the white girl shows up at the home first and Ozzie thinks she's the one who called and rents the room to her. When the black girl shows up (right after the 10 minute mark), her "I see" when told the room is rented is clearly because she assumes they don't want to rent to a black person. The confusion is soon worked out and the two girls become roommates, but for a relatively light-weight, escapist entertainment show, it's interesting to run across a subtle acknowledgement of real-world wrongs.}

But we haven't time for that now, since the FF is still working to save the world. The team splits up. Johnny and Medusa go after War, who has started an actual war between two nations in Africa.

There's a cool fight scene and some annoyingly heavy-handed narration about the evils of war (which is kind of hypocritical while the heroes are using violence as the only method available to save innocent lives) before War is taken out.

Reed and Ben go after Famine, who is causing a famine in Cambodia by preventing people from seeing the food all around them. This time, the cool fight scene doesn't have to work around awkward moralizing in the narrative and Famine is defeated.

The four rejoin to battle Death atop Mount Everest. The heroes have to fight death images of themselves, but win handily by switching opponents so no one has to face his or her own death.

This leads to an anti-climactic ending as Death vanishes. Apparently, the powerful aliens that originally chased the Horseman off Earth has set up protection devices to zap them away again if they returned.

So the story has a problem with its awkward moralizing and its ending, but I still like it. (Please note that I don't object to moral lessons in a story--its just that the section on War handles this badly.) The Horsemen are visually striking villains and Buckler's strong, imaginative art makes everything look cool. And Ben's scene in which he fights on even while disintegrating is both epic in of itself and a perfect representation of Ben's innate heroism. I know there are some fans of classic Marvel who consider this one of their favorite issues. Though I have some criticisms of it, I completely get that. The cool parts are definitely way cool.

Next week--well, I don't think we've visited Turok in awhile, so let's do that.