Fantastic Four (1961 series) #18

The Fantastic Four see a TV news report about last issue's battle with Dr Doom. Then Reed Richards and Sue Storm don astronaut suits to fly to Hawaii for a beach date in their new passenger ICBM. And Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm take their sections of the Fantasti-Car out for a spin, Ben to take his girlfriend Alicia fishing.

Meanwhile on the home planet of the Skrulls in the 5th quadrant of the Andromeda Galaxy the Emperor is eager to see the fruit of the scientific effort to gain revenge on the FF for foiling their invasion of the Earth (in #2). The result is the Super-Skrull. As well as the normal Skrull's shape-changing ability he can stretch much further than Mr Fantastic, fly rings round the Human Torch plus shoot ant-matter fireballs, be many times stronger than the Thing and turn invisible like the Invisible Girl plus 1 extra power.

1 week later our friends are in a department store. Ben can't find a bowling ball with big enough holes for his fingers. Then he has to rescue the others from a mob of fans. But then they have to escape when they hear news of an alien space ship in Times Square.

It's Super-Skrull and he claims this planet for the Skrull Empire. (He has to burn a hole in the pavement with his flame to plant the Imperial flag.) The Emperor watches remotely from the other galaxy as the Human Torch arrives and Torch and Skrull have an aerial flame battle until the alien burns the air around the youth to carbon. HT escapes and throws a heat bomb which SS dodges and generates a large war club of flame with which he knocks his foe out of the sky. Mr Fantastic's elastic body catches his falling teammate and he leaves Sue to tend to her injured brother while he attacks the Skrull.

Thing is still besieged by fans in the store until he smashes escalator steps smooth and slides down them to escape. Meanwhile on a rooftop Mr Fantastic wraps the alien in his elastic body. But Super-Skrull expands his own body so much that our hero breaks under the strain. Then MrF forms 1 hand into a giant sledgehammer, but SS instantly stretches an arm to the Palisades to pick up a man-sized rock and bring it back to take the hammer blow, damaging the human's hand.

He's about to brain Reed with the rock when Thing gets there at last and punches through it to hit the Skrull's face. The alien hits back and then forms his head into a battering ram (literally) and shoots out his neck to knock Thing off the roof and flying up into the air where he has to grab onto the spire of the Chrylser Building to save himself.

The SS attacks MrF with a large scythe of flame which Richards evade by turning his body into a glider. The foe follows but is blinded by a sunburst generated by the recovered Torch. Reed tells him and Sue that they need a plan, but impetuous Johnny flies into the air to take on the foe alone. But this time the Skrull turns invisible and then wraps the hero in a high intensity fire chain. But Mr Fantastic's elastic arm pulls him down out of the chains before they tighten, at the cost of burning his hand.

Meanwhile Thing has been rescued from the spire by a police helicopter with a rope ladder and he joins the others as their leader orders a retreat to the Baxter Building to decide on a plan. Still-invisible Super-Skrull fires a flame arrow at them from a flame bow. But he decides to let them go because the world now knows that they are beaten.

Reed Richards of course uses the time to invent something to solve the problem. He knew the Super-Skrull couldn't be *that* powerful so he scanned the sky and located an ultra-sonic power beam aimed at Earth from the 5th quadrant. And now he invents a sub-miniaturised jammer to cut the villain off from his power source. And now the 3 men will distract him while Invisible Girl sneaks up and plants it on him.

They send out a public address speaker on what we would now call a drone and they challenge SS to meet them for a fight to the finish on a particular deserted island in mid-ocean. He accepts. They travel there by Pogo Plane and land next to the Skrull ship. The remote-watching Emperor orders the power dial turned up to 11, and the battle begins. Torch and Thing attack while MrF forms a barrier to keep them corralled, but really so Sue can turn invisible and run round to the gap between his hands. The Skrull unleashes his undescribed extra power - blinding hypnotism that leaves Thing sightless and paralysed. Then he turns it on Torch too, and then on Mr Fantastic. But Invisible Girl leaps on the bad guy and slaps the jammer on his neck.

The not-so-Super-Skrull loses all his powers, and the Emperor can't understand what's gone wrong. SS chases Sue for revenge and follows her into a crater. But Reed sends his elastic arm to rescue her as the Skrull falls to the bottom. Then Torch seals the top of the crater to trap him. (They expect the villain to dig his way out eventually.)