Fantastic Four (1961 series) #15

Mr Fantastic fires the Fantastic Four flare gun from the Baxter Building. It interrupts Johnny Storm's date with a girl Peggy in his sports car because he has to fly off as Human Torch. She's left complaining that this always happens. Sue Storm is having a new hair-do but has to rush out in curlers, turning into Invisible Girl to hide her embarrassment. Ben Grimm has gone to Yancy Street to complain about the insulting drawing the YS Gang sent him. When Thing leaves to answer the flare they claim he's scared of them. When they all get home Reed Richards claims that *he* was interrupted in a DNA experiment that had allowed him to briefly create a living cell. He tells them that he got an urgent call from the Chief Of Police to alert them about Mob bosses converging on New York. (But the FF don't actually do anything about it.)

Those mobsters have been called together by the Thinker who wants to become King Of Crime. His large assemblage of computing power will allow him to create foolproof plans to outwit the police. He intends to declare the City an independent nation, and the mob bosses will be his ambassadors to other cities. They respond by saying that the FF won't let that happen. But he claims to have a plan for that, and he reminds them of his successful crime career where predicted-by-him small events have intervened to enable him to remain totally unknown to the cops. Blackie Skaar doesn't believe him and decides to leave even after Thinker predicts he'll regret it in 18 seconds. And outside he gets arrested by the Feds.

Now he tells them that his machines have provided a solution for each of the FF to get them out of the way, and we see those plans in action. Johnny gets a visit from his extremely tall cousin Bones and his very small pal Shorty to tell him that their circus is in trouble in the South. He agrees to become their headline act to draw in the crowds. The board of General Electronics Ltd need someone to head their research division in New England. When a janitor leaves an issue of the FF comic lying around they realise that Richards is their man. A promoter tries to interest Thing in becoming a wrestler in the Midwest but he's not interested until he learns that his opponent will be Fatal Finnegan, the Yancy Street Gang's favourite. Sue has been entertaining children at an orphanage when she's approached to star in a film in Hollywood. The 4 get together and decide they all need a change, and they can always rush back if the mobster trouble flares up.

When they've gone the Thinker reveals the next stage of his plan. He's detected a meteor which as his computers predicted lands in Lower NY Bay. The impact causes earth tremors which frighten the populace and knock out all electricity in the City. In the confusion Think and the mob bosses invade the Baxter Building while it's defences are all down. Thinker gloats over all of Reed's secrets he has access to, particularly the ability to create life.

Johnny is enjoying showing off in the Bone 'n Bailey Circus but he eventually gets fed up doing the same act every day. Sue's movie role is 'the 1st female in space lost on an unknown planet'. She's currently being filmed carried along by a huge mechanical clawed foot which keeps malfunctioning requiring reshoots. It's not as much fun as she imagined. Reed's employers are unnerved by his use of his unconventional abilities during experiments, and he chafes at the restrictions because he's used to doing what he wants how he wants. Thing is also unhappy about having to pretend that Finnegan is a worthy opponent. But when Fatal spots Ben's girlfriend Alicia in the audience and makes a comment about her he loses it and easily defeats him and walks away with her.

The 4 (coincidentally) arrive home together but are amazed to find that the Baxter Building has been turned into glittering crystal. It resists their every attempt to get in and they are confused that passersby don't seem to notice anything strange. Then Thinker's face appears in a wall to tell them that a hypno-ray field is causing that, and he opens a way in for them to enter.

But 1st Torch tosses a fireball in which triggers an explosive device. They go in and face the mobsters with vibra-guns that Reed invented, but Thing wraps them up in a metal wall. Thinker appears on a screen to claim that he predicted they'd get past the 1st test, but now they've got to get to their 35th floor base. The elevators are disabled but Torch flies up the shaft, Thing climbs it and Mr Fantastic stretches up with Invisible Girl clinging to him. Partway up the foe releases a gas which its inventor Richards recognises as a hallucinogen, but he gets Ben to wind him up like a spring and then he rapidly unwinds dispersing the gas.

When they reach the top they are faced with Thinker's creation using Reed's DNA experiment - a large artificial lifeform, an android. Torch leaps to the attack but the droid blows his flame out with a tremendous breath. When it's Thing's turn the foe replicates his rocky (but grey) form and beats him due to size. Mr Fantastic and Invisible Girl attack as a team. While MrF wraps the android up he tells IG to press an 'off-switch' under its right arm. And it works (because Thinker obviously followed plans that Reed had drawn up for the being he intended to create when he'd got past the simple cell stage).

They confront the master planner who as usual claims that this is exactly what he predicted would happen at this time, 1 minute to 4. But now he has 4 of Richards' anti-matter shells to fire at them at the stroke of 4 ... but they don't work and he's easily overpowered. Reed explains that he had a failsafe system set up with a button in the lobby that switched off all his devices. And he'd arranged for their postman Willie Lumpkin to press it at 4 o'clock (luckily!). As the police take him away Thinker curses that he hadn't planned for the X-factor, the human element, but he'll include that *next* time.