Of all the artists featured in this book so far, Jim Mahfood is by far the most radical choice. A fixture of the indie world at the time, doing comics a lot closer to the “underground comix” world of days past, Mahfood’s work often got called “hip hop comics.” With a rough, angular cartooning style, he is about as far from the Marvel aesthetic as you could get, and here he is. It’s pretty wild that Marvel signed off on this. This one’s colored by Transparency Digital rather than ol’ reliable JC.
Peter’s day is off to a stressful start!
As you can tell, we’re having fun here. The robot is HERBIE, who replaced the Human Torch in an old FF cartoon, allegedly due to producers worrying he would inspire kids to set themselves on fire, a rumor that I think has been largely debunked. But people have loved throwing HERBIE into FF stories as a gag over the years. Some might say too much! But this is a pretty early example.
Sue also being a scientist would later get retconned into the main continuity by Matt Fraction in… like 2012 or something, I can’t quite remember. It felt like a pretty wild swing to suddenly say she had always been a scientist the whole time, but whatever, it’s nice that she finally got to be more than a super-housewife. Don’t get too attached to anything about this FF, tho. Anyway, Patsy, who, yes, will continue to show up in videos like this, goes on to say they all got their powers, they split their time as “World Peace officers” and scientists in the Baxter Building, and they have a special deal with Uncle Sam. Peter is warned not to go to the 3rd floor, as that’s where the Negative Zone portal is, and then is let into the floor the FF are on. They’re in the middle of typical Jack Kirby giant super science experiment, complete with the Thing holding some giant piece of machinery for no obvious reason, but this is a comedy issue, so it’s Reed trying to make “an ultimate coffee maker.” They go about their business for a 2-page spread of wackiness before noticing Peter has arrived.
It’s all gags this month.
Peter’s grumbling is interrupted by the FF’s security system, since he’s gone off the path. He has, in fact, stumbled into the Negative Zone portal area he was specifically told not to go to, and in the ensuing fracas, that portal is accidentally opened, spilling out an army of Skulls carrying laser weapons, regular weapons, comics, a boombox and a burrito as their leader yells for them to bring him the head of Reed Richards. They run by Peter without noticing him as they blow a hole in the wall and begin the chaos.
It’s fun how cool Spider-Man looks in Mahfood’s style. Bendis loves Howard Stern, or at least he did at this point, I don’t know, maybe he doesn’t now. The next page begins a pretty funny sequence with a joke that feels RADICALLY different now than it did when published:
I mean, that’s way funnier now. Perhaps worth nothing that, out of all the names Mahfood crammed in the background there, Richard Donner eventually did write a little Superman, indie cartoonist Scott Morse did end up doing some Marvel stuff, and the Wachowskis actually wrote some stuff for a Marvel-produced line of Clive Barker comics, where they worked with Steve Skroce, which eventually led to him working on the Matrix, but I probably babbled about that elsewhere. Mahfood was likely the only person who’d name check Iceberg Slim in a Marvel comic at this period. Maybe the only one who knew who that was. Things only get wackier and more filled with background jokes…
Marvel’s breakout character of 2001, a satisfying falafel wrap. The chaos and jokes continues until the FF show up, with a gadget that can zap all the Skrulls back to the Negative Zone, but not before they can quote Superman the Movie and then Reed can make fun of Bendis for putting that in the book.
That silent issue thing was not a joke. But we’ll get there, too. This issue would eventually be declared non-canon, a bold and pretty rare move in Marvel history. In 2004, as Bendis had had continued success on USM, as Mark Millar had had acclaim on UXM and the Ultimates, they team up to launch Ultimate Fantastic Four. And they will make the baffling, terrible decision to make all of them teenagers who get their powers from experiments involving other dimensions. They will make it as impossible as possible for all the FF references in the Ultimate U to date to have happened. For some reason. To this day, I can’t imagine why they did that. Anyone can tell you FF is about family. If they’re all teens, that goes right out the window. It was the farthest any Ultimate property had yet strayed from its inspiration by a mile, and was not well received. It was the line’s first big mistake. Bendis and Millar launched the book with Adam Kubert, then turned it over to Warren Ellis after their first arc, with Kubert staying on. This seemed like a good thing to me, as Ellis is much more of a hard scifi guy, and I figured he’d be able to whip the book into shape. Instead, he created just about the worst Dr. Doom you could come up with and left after 2 arcs. Then Millar came back and, in one of his beloved shock twists, made it seem like the Ultimate FF was going to meet the real FF, only for them to wind up in an alternate reality that introduced the Marvel Zombies, a pretty dumb thing based entirely on a pun that has had shocking legs over the years. And so on. Millar hung in there into the early 30s with famous tracer Greg Land, ensuring I wouldn’t buy the book, and then Mike Carey and a variety of artists did their best as they rode the series to its cancellation in 2008, the first Ultimate title to sputter out. And I think that has a lot to do with how poor the foundation was. But, at any rate, it also renders everything that happened in this issue null. An “imaginary story,” as DC used to call things set outside continuity. And, you know, there may have been some change of heart after everyone took a breath and realized this was how they introduced the FF. It’s a fun and funny issue, but… maybe not the intro they deserve.