Captives of the Deadly Duo!
We begin this issue with the Human Torch flying around, and people are excited about it, which is the opposite of the first time he did it. Someone’s like, “We can’t be certain… not from this distance! It may just be some natural phenomenon!” I’d like to shit on him for saying that about a giant streak of flame weaving around buildings, but I mean…. this city has seen its fair share of weird shit. Then Sue Storm decides that if we’re gonna do some throw-backs to the first issue that she’ll remind everyone that while Johnny may no longer be a menace, she absolutely is. Some guys are just standing there, talking, and she decides, in her invisible form, to just shove those guys straight to the ground. Again, it’s for absolutely no reason, other than she’s a huge bitch. She then turns back to visible to make sure people know that it was her that is a complete asshole.
Sue then asserts dominance on the mailman, of all people, by showing off her fancy belt buckle that opens the door to a private elevator. She gets upstairs for Johnny to tell her he still doesn’t know where Doom is. Then Mr. Fantastic peeps on a boy in the hospital to tell him that his uniform stretches due to unstable molecules. We then see that the Yancy Street Gang sent a challenging letter to Thing, telling him they’ll “knock that chip off his shoulder and make him like it!” Ben says he’s “heard from those mealy-mouthed braggarts before!” Well, I doubt they’ll become any kind of recurring theme. What a silly name for a gang. Thing says he’s going to mail them a present and then swoons over the days of fighting Doctor Doom and Namor. Sue then takes up the swooning for Namor. Johnny says they’re both little bitches. Good for you, Johnny.
Lo and behold, speaking of Namor makes him appear. We see him swimming with dolphins. It would appear as though he’s preparing them for some sort of circus show. But little does he know, high above him is Doctor Doom! He’s in a plane, watching Namor from his television scanner! Namor shows off, doing some really neat circus tricks (without his dolphins for some reason) and landing on Doom’s plane! He tells Namor that he wants to kill the Fantastic Four and – much like Sue Storm – wants him to join him. The whole thing is pretty strange.
Doom pulls his plane’s wings in and turns it into a submarine to follow Namor down to his pad, which is nearby. You’d think he’d be out looking for his family, since he was so distraught about them being gone, but, alas, he chose to stick around and train dolphins. Never let the pain of your missing family stand in the way of you and your dreams. Back in Namor’s pad, the two discuss how Namor has been spending his off time. Doom goads him into joining his plot by calling him a pussy-whipped bitch and mocking him about his family having to leave because of atomic weapons. After all is said and done, Namor refuses to “harm the girl!” but agrees to help him defeat the other Fantastic Three.
Remember how Doom is supposed to be a genius scientist? As we’ve seen so far, “genius scientist” is kind of the thing everyone is doing in the early 60’s, so we can’t really be sure just how genius he is. Right up until he introduces his ground-breaking new invention to Namor, that is! You see, this is brilliant. He has a remote-controlled magnet! That’s it. That’s his amazing invention. A magnet that flies around and then sticks to things, but then it also just like… doesn’t let go until he tells it to. So it’s a really strong magnet. That sticks to things that are not made of metal, I think? Here’s how it works:
So yeah… there’s the most verbose way of possibly saying “remote-controlled magnets.” Anyway . . . Namor puts the grabber in his pants, and the Deadly Duo begin their nefarious plot. It begins with Namor fucking around with some pilots before flying into the city where he decides he should walk down the street in his underwear.
Then we’re taken to Johnny who finds Namor’s headshot hidden behind some books. Sue is aghast that Johnny found the photo in such a super-secret spot. I’m assuming someone with the power of invisibility has forgotten how to fucking hide anything appropriately. Johnny says he’s going to rip the picture into a thousand pieces, but he forgets his sister’s amazing super power! She turns invisible, and for some reason that means Johnny is now so startled by her disappearance that he can’t follow through with ripping up the picture. It’s a good thing he doesn’t have some kind of super power that would allow him to destroy the picture instantaneously! Just then, Sue tries to take the picture, but Johnny remembers he has a super power that allows him to destroy the picture instantaneously! While he’s doing that, Reed and Ben come in, and Johnny straight up snitches on his sister, and she’s super pissed that her glossy Namor photo is toast.
Ben, of course, has to make the situation about himself, lamenting the fact that women are interested in attractive men. Reed says Sue owes them an explanation, but I mean… the situation kind of speaks for itself: Sue sucks at hiding things and probably finger bangs in the library. Right then, Namor fucking arrives, because people were talking about him, and that’s his real super power. Ben wants to beat him up, but Reed decides to hug the shit out of him instead. He thinks they should let Namor speak his piece. Namor. The guy that just leveled a bunch of buildings and most likely killed a bunch of people. The guy that punched Johnny in the face with his dick. Yeah, him. Reed says don’t try to kick his ass and to let him talk. Johnny’s not hearing it though and flames on! Namor will rue the day he messed with the Human Torch! Because he flies over to Namor and sets the ground on fire! Which does nothing, of course, because Namor can fly. He literally just told them he could fly like 2 seconds before this happened though, so Johnny isn’t the best planner of things. But then his flame runs out, because… I don’t know… he spent up all of his energy just making a little flame circle. He really must have put his all into burning up Namor’s picture. Like… he used the heat of a thousand suns to burn that thing up.
Namor then tells everyone that he just wants to be friends. Nobody believes him except for Sue. I wonder why? Reed and Johnny race to check the cameras to see if Namor set any traps. Reed says, “We’ve scanned every corner of our base without finding one booby trap!” So it’s pretty set in stone that he hasn’t laid any traps. Because Reed scanned every corner. EVERY. CORNER. There can be no possible way there are any traps anywhere. Reed tells Namor he doesn’t believe him, and Namor says, “Like I give a fuck?! By the way, I’m gonna take Sue out on a date.” But suddenly there’s a loud CRACK sound! The entire Baxter Building is lifted from the ground! Reed says, “This is your doing, Submariner! You can stop this!” and Namor says, “I can’t, you fools! I planted the trap… but it’s been triggered by Doctor Doom!”
Wait… wait a God damned minute. What does he mean he planted a trap!? Reed scanned every fucking corner! I don’t even know what to believe any more.
The building is floating up into the sky, and things are getting seriously dire. If only there was someone that has shown his prowess of super strength and flying that could maybe grab everyone in the building and just fly back down to earth. But since that doesn’t seem to be an option, instead, Namor and Reed use their very-limited amount of time to have a conversation about how it’s possible that the building is flying. Once Namor explains, Reed, the smartest man in the world, realizes that the only hope of survival is to seize control of the plane. Of course, if that’s the only option, then having someone who could fly would really come in handy. But since that doesn’t seem to be an option, they run to the hangar to find their only means of escape – their orbit plane – to be wrecked! Their luck is the literal worst.
Due to their running around the building and not doing things that involve flying, Doom has pulled them into outer space. They all put on space suits where Johnny suddenly remembers he has the power to fly! Except, you know… they’re in outer space now, so when he pops open the window and jumps out, his fire just fizzles, because there’s no oxygen. Reed stretches his arm out to catch ole Johnny to make sure he doesn’t float through space for all eternity. He then tries to stretch his body up the space ship, but he can’t stretch that far, which is weird, because he could previously. Then again, he does mention that space weakens his powers, which is pretty weird, considering that’s where he got his powers. But it doesn’t matter, because Doctor Doom hits the afterburners and lights his ass up. Luckily, the heat from a space ship’s exhaust doesn’t seem to really harm Mr. Fantastic that much. They put casts on his arms, which means he can’t hug Ben, which means Ben can finally try and kick Namor’s ass again. They begin their tussle, but Doom interrupts.
He tells them that he’s going to send them into the sun, but Namor goes and dives into the toilet or something and then jumps out of the building, only to land on the spaceship/airplane/submarine that Doom is flying. But Doom’s no fool! He turns on the grabber in Namor’s pants! Not the one that he used before, I guess. The other one that he didn’t know about. Yeah. He had one in there he didn’t know about. Yeah. Doom put a grabber in Namor’s pants. So Namor just punches a hole in the roof, which doesn’t effect the ship whatsoever, and jumps inside and tries to open a door, but he gets hit with a bunch of electricity instead.
Doom assumes he’s killed Namor, so he continues on with his day, but when he touches the control panel, HE gets shocked! What a twist! You see, Namor has the power of all underwater creatures and was able to utilize the electric eel’s power of absorbing electricity! Granted, he must have learned this trick from a currently-unknown species of eel, because all the species we currently know about do not have this power, and can actually kill themselves with their own electricity. Anyway… Doom could simply not touch things in order to stop getting electrocuted, but he instead chooses to just fucking leave the spaceship. He grabs a passing meteor, throws up deuces, and heads out into the expanses of space. Probably to never be seen again. Because how could anyone survive that?
Namor then puts the Baxter Building back on the ground on earth, and Ben finds himself in an existential crisis, because he can’t fathom the idea of thanking a villain. Luckily, Sue is there to talk about all the great qualities of the mass murdering dick puncher. At that moment, Johnny shows up with the grabber, and Reed has the brilliant idea of removing it. Wow, Reed. You really are the smartest man in the world.
Lastly, I leave you with Doctor Doom caressing sad Namor:
