History of the Fantastic Four, 1965

The following is a history of the Fantastic Four for the year of 1965, in which Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl were married in front of the world's greatest heroes—and some of its most vicious villains. Over the course of the year, the Fantastic Four faced several new threats, including Dragon Man, the Inhumans, and the Frightful Four. At the end of the year, they saved the planet from destruction by the virtually all-powerful being Galactus, heralded by the mysterious Silver Surfer.

Biography

Gregory Gideon's greedy gamble

One day at the Baxter Building, the Fantastic Four were thrown into utter turmoil by the clandestine plans of the billionaire Gregory Gideon, who spent millions of dollars with the aim to destroy the Fantastic Four once and for all. He arranged one of Mr. Fantastic's transport ships for the police to find, carrying instructions for impersonating Mr. Fantastic, suggesting that the Reed Richards walking around the Baxter Building was actually a Skrull. The Thing jumped to conclusions and attacked Reed, and the two fought out into the streets. Meanwhile, at the Storm household in Glenville, Invisible Girl read a message planted by Gideon that was ostensibly written by the Human Torch, warning that a robot likeness of himself constructed by Doctor Doom was roaming free. Upon seeing her brother, Invisible Girl fled into the city; her strange behavior made Torch believe that she was under the thrall of the Puppet Master. The four heroes came together in New York, and their mutual confusion and animosity continued to heighten. They fought all the way back to the Baxter Building, where Gideon laid a trap: a time machine that would send them into the distant past, removing them from the present permanently. A child—Gregory's son, Thomas Gideon—chased the heroes inside, and he and the Thing got caught up in the machine. The quick-witted Richards managed to shut the machine off in time, and nearly losing his son was enough to make the greedy Gideon completely turn over a new leaf. As Mrs. Gideon explained to the heroes what her husband had done, Gregory vowed to renounce his fortune and live peacefully with his wife and son.

Diablo and the Dragon Man

The Four made a trip to the campus of Reed and Ben's alma mater, State University, to make a special appearance and for Reed to give a lecture to the student body. There they met Dr. Gregson Gilbert, a biologist specializing in superpowered beings. Gilbert showed them a model he had created of a creature he called Dragon Man, which he believed would theoretically be more powerful than the Four themselves. The creature was much larger than a human, bearing wings and a humanoid, reptilian construction. He assured them that the model was strictly for research purposes. During Reed's lecture, Thing wandered through campus back to Dr. Gilbert's laboratory, where he saw Gilbert and the wicked Diablo using one of the latter's potions to bring the Dragon Man to life. On Diablo's order, and to Gilbert's dismay, Dragon Man attacked Thing, easily tossing him through the window with his tail. Against Gilbert's repeated protests, Diablo ordered Dragon Man to attack the Fantastic Four. Dragon Man flew over the assembly at Reed's lecture, and Mr. Fantastic instantly knew that Diablo had to be responsible.

The team managed to ground Dragon Man, in part thanks to his limited intelligence, and by getting close to him Invisible Girl discovered that he responded well to her gentleness. However, Diablo threw a potion on the team that temporarily incapacitated them, allowing him and Dragon Man to escape. With help from bystanders, the heroes tracked the two and Dr. Gilbert to a nearby lake. The team fought against Diablo's array of potions until eventually Dragon Man attacked Diablo and tackled him into the lake. With help from Mr. Fantastic, Thing investigated the lake and found that it had a series of strong currents leading into various underground caves, so there was no telling where the two might have ended up. Ashamed of what he had wrought, Dr. Gilbert vowed to remain on vigilant watch for Dragon Man and destroy him at the first opportunity. As the team prepared to leave, Reed took Sue to a campus landmark, the Sweetheart Tree down Memory Lane. He told her that "according to tradition, any couple who hold hands and kiss while standing before [the tree] will marry within a year." Sue was overjoyed and accepted Reed's roundabout marriage proposal as the two kissed by the heart-shaped tree.

A frightful engagement

Following their romantic moment at State University, Reed and Sue officially announced their engagement, resulting in more press attention at the Baxter Building than ever before. Even the X-Men and Avengers arrived to express their well wishes. It was a pleasant, joyful day for the team, until a napping Thing was attacked in his room by an invading band of villains. The team called themselves the Frightful Four, led by the Wizard, boasting a sleep spray and an anti-gravity costume that granted him flight. Wizard led the Sandman, Paste-Pot Pete, and Medusa, a woman with powerful prehensile hair. The Frightful Four disabled Thing with paste restraints and a dose of sleep spray, and soon enacted much the same fate upon the newly engaged Reed and Sue as they came to investigate.

Elsewhere in the building, Alicia Masters could tell something was wrong, and managed to grab a flare gun from Invisible Girl's unconscious body. She fired it out the window, catching the attention of the Human Torch a few blocks away mere moments before being captured by the Frightful Four herself. Wizard attached anti-grav discs to Alicia and the three heroes, and released them from the roof to allow them to float up into the atmosphere to their deaths. Human Torch arrived in time to chase the Wizard into the latter's airship and force him to pilot it up to Reed and the others. As his friends came to consciousness and realized the peril of their situation, Torch managed to pull them into the ship via Reed's elongated arm. The ship was soon trailed by the Fantastic Four's own pogo plane, commandeered by the rest of the Frightful Four. Invisible Girl used a forcefield to compel the pogo plane to the ground safely in a wooded clearing, and Wizard landed his own ship nearby under duress. The two teams had another brief skirmish, but the Frightful Four escaped by detonating their ship, creating a bright blast and allowing them to flee undetected.

Revenge for Franklin Storm

As Reed and Sue prepared for their wedding, Sue couldn't help being distraught over her father Franklin Storm's death, and felt a need to avenge his murder at the hands of the Skrulls. Reed cashed in on a favor from NASA to borrow a rocket ship, which he installed with a powerful drive of his own creation to allow it to warp through space. The Fantastic Four used the ship to warp to the Skrull home planet in the Andromeda Galaxy, and were quickly attacked by defending Skrull forces. The heroes were shocked to find that their powers suddenly failed to work, and the Skrulls soon captured and imprisoned them. Richards speculated that something in the planet's atmosphere had dampened their abilities. Skrull warlord Morrat approached them in their cell, apparently to execute them, but Reed offered him great power in exchange for their lives. He showed Morrat a "power-ray" he had constructed, retrieved from the Fantastic Four's rocket ship. He claimed that it was a powerful weapon, and fired it upon his allies to demonstrate. Though any effects were not immediately apparent, the other heroes seemed genuinely upset that Reed had turned on them. The deceptive Morrat took the weapon and fired it on Reed, exactly as Mr. Fantastic had planned: the ray in fact restored the heroes' powers, and the full-fledged Fantastic Four fought Morrat and his soldiers.

Morrat's forces were quickly overwhelmed until more soldiers arrived, led by the Skrull king. Morrat had kept his capture of the Fantastic Four secret from the king as part of his ongoing acts of treason. The king ordered the soldiers to execute Morrat—Morrat's lover, Princess Anelle, jumped in front of their fire, but Invisible Girl shielded her from harm in a forcefield. As Morrat lay dead on the ground, the king thanked the Fantastic Four for protecting his daughter and offered them anything in return. Reed asked for reprisal against the Skrull responsible for killing Franklin Storm, and the king told them that Morrat had been responsible for the Skrulls' attacks on Earth for the last several years. Sue found herself disappointed and disheartened now that her revenge was unwittingly satisfied. The heroes returned home in time for Reed and Sue's wedding rehearsal that night.

Defeated by the Frightful Four

One day, while Sue was looking over some designs in a fashion house in New York, she was ambushed by Medusa in disguise, who bound her with her powerful hair. The Trapster (a rebranded Paste-Pot Pete) arrived and further ensnared Invisible Girl. The Wizard then showed himself and used his gravitational technology to whisk the four of them away. Their escape was visible enough that news soon spread of Sue's kidnapping, and upon learning the news, her allies set out to figuring out where the Frightful Four had taken her. The Frightful Four took Invisible Girl to an underground base in a Pacific atoll, where they knocked her out with sleeping gas and left her there tied up. Some time later, Mr. Fantastic detected the villains' anti-grav ship on his sensors, and Human Torch attacked it. Sandman neutralized him inside the ship with his sand, and Trapster bound him with asbestos tape. Mr. Fantastic and Thing chased them in the pogo plane to an atoll far off in the Pacific Ocean, where Trapster used a high-powered projectile blade to destroy the plane. Both teams disembarked, Reed freed Johnny from Trapster's trap, and the two teams fought, with the villains enjoying a numbers advantage. Meanwhile, Sue came to and used her forcefield powers to undo her bonds. She began to yell for her teammates—Ben heard her, and discovered a trap door in the ground by smashing his way through. The Frightful Four fled via their anti-grav ship, and the desperate heroes went underground to find Sue. They found that a massively powerful "Q-bomb" was set to detonate there in minutes, with no apparent way to stop its countdown. With no way to safely leave the atoll in time, the Fantastic Four found themselves trapped as the bomb exploded. The groggy Invisible Girl managed to create a forcefield around the Four in time as the explosion went off, protecting them but knocking them out amid the obliterated atoll.

Doctor Doom's opportune return

The Four drifted on the open sea until they were located and rescued by an American submarine. In the process, Thing returned to his "human," fleshy Ben Grimm form. In fact, as the team recovered with food and sleep aboard the submarine, they realized that all of them had lost their powers. When they returned home to the Baxter Building, Reed Richards began working on a solution to their problem. He created a number of inventions designed to replicate their powers, but none of them were satisfactory. Ben remotely operated a robot designed to look like the Thing, while the others wore enhanced suits to palely imitate their usual powers. The team summoned their lawyer, Matt Murdock, to an abandoned warehouse to discuss what should happen to their research in the event that something should happen to them. Mr. Fantastic apparently thought that because of Murdock's blindness, he wouldn't be able to tell that the Four had lost their powers, but in fact, Murdock's empowered senses allowed him to detect immediately that something was wrong. The meeting was cut short by an attack from an unknown source, for which the Four were largely unprepared. Murdock secretly changed into his Daredevil costume and led the Four outside, where they saw the culprit: a flying ship atop the Baxter Building in the distance. Reed knew that the ship could only belong to aliens or Doctor Doom.

Indeed, Doom had recently recovered from Reed's hypnosis months ago due to a chance performance by a hypnotist and flown to New York seeking revenge for being made a fool of. A visual, threatening message from the ship confirmed that the attacker was Doom. As the Four and Daredevil hurriedly wondered what to do, the Fantasti-car, on Doom's remote operation, came flying at the team, and they narrowly got out of the way. Mr. Fantastic confessed to Daredevil that the team had lost their powers, and he agreed to help them reclaim the Baxter from Doom. The five of them made their way to Doom's new stronghold, evading a near-constant onslaught of their own weapons that Doom had commandeered. With their powers stripped away, the Fantastic Four had to rely on their wits, courage, and their new ally to continue on.

Unfortunately for the heroes, Doom soon figured out that the Four had lost their powers, and this knowledge emboldened his attacks. Daredevil split from the group to draw his attacks, and the Four regrouped at the entrance to the Baxter Building, where police were awaiting their intervention by orders of the Pentagon. Ben had lagged behind somewhat after trying in vain to find his Thing robot, and he was annoyed that the rest of the team hadn't waited for him. Meanwhile, Daredevil acrobatically made his way to the top of the building and confronted Doom head-on. Doom held back the capable hero, but Daredevil managed to distract him well enough to allow the Four safe passage to the 35th floor. The unpowered heroes confronted Doom, and the overconfident Ben was quickly knocked out by the armored villain. Reed made haste for the power stimulator beam he had used on the Skrull homeworld, and quickly restored the team's abilities, save the unconscious Ben. Soon realizing he was outmatched, Doom retreated to another part of the building. As Ben and Daredevil recovered, Reed explained that the power-intensive stimulator ray had only just finished recharging, having still needed a few days of charge when the team first returned home, otherwise he would have simply used it then. Reed prepared to fire the ray on Ben, but Ben resisted, wondering if he really wanted to become the Thing again after all. Reed coldly ignored his protests and fired the ray, restoring Ben's rocky exterior and superhuman strength. He believed that Doom was a dangerous enough threat to humanity to necessitate the Thing's power in that moment. While the rest of the team stayed behind to treat Daredevil's wounds, Thing attacked Doctor Doom in a room where Doom was hastily preparing a bomb that would obliterate a significant portion of the city, including his immediate foes. Though Doom's array of technological defenses proved more than formidable, the enraged Thing was able to overpower him with raw strength and destroy his mechanical suit. The rest of the team arrived in time to stop him from killing Doom, leaving the ego-stricken villain to slink away in defeat. Ben was angered by Reed's lack of consideration for his feelings, and by the fact that he had returned to this monstrous form after flirting with normalcy. With that, he stormed off, apparently leaving the team.

The Thing defects

Reed, Sue, and Johnny stayed behind to clean up the mess left during the fight with Doom. Alicia Masters soon arrived to check on Ben, but was saddened to find that he wasn't there. Thing, meanwhile, had wandered depressed through the streets of New York, and collapsed in the back of a large pickup truck. It eventually dropped him off in the evening in rural New Jersey: by pure chance, near the rustic hideout of the Frightful Four. Trapster secured Thing's sleeping body while Wizard hooked him up to his "id machine," a device designed to stimulate primitive desires to essentially brainwash Thing into a mindless beast. The transformation was a success, as Thing awoke prepared to do Wizard's bidding. The rest of the Fantastic Four got a tip that Thing had been seen in a truck in New Jersey, and spent much of the day searching houses in the area to make sure that he was okay. The heroes finally arrived at the home of the Frightful Four, and a battle ensued. The heroes were taken completely off guard by the brainwashed Thing, and this advantage allowed the Frightful Four to easily defeat and restrain their nemeses.

The Frightful Four decided to dispose of the heroes using Thing's seemingly limitless might, starting with Mr. Fantastic. Reed woke up in time to fend off Thing's attack however, and Sue and Johnny soon followed suit, taking the fight to perhaps their greatest foes. Amidst the fray, Invisible Girl found the id machine and tampered with it to make it utterly ineffective. In the end, Thing knocked out Mr. Fantastic and stuffed him in a jar, and knocked out the Human Torch as well. Invisible Girl managed to escape with Reed's jar to regroup, and the Wizard used his id machine on the Torch: Johnny played along, letting Wizard think he had brainwashed him as well. After catching their breath, Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl returned to the house and found a supply of tear gas in a storehouse nearby. Reed deployed it in the main house's chimney to force out the Frightful Four and their pair of converts, then used a series of Wizard's anti-grav discs to send them all floating helplessly into the sky. Wizard's suit resisted the disc's effects and Torch dodged the one meant for him, but the rest were taken care of for the time being while Reed grabbed hold of the floating and disoriented Thing, intending to return him to the Baxter Building in hopes of reversing his brainwashing.

Wizard and Torch gave chase while Reed and Sue tried to lose them in the woods nearby. Johnny played at clumsiness while in fact blazing a path for his allies to escape. Torch's subterfuge was successful, and Sue and Reed returned home with a protesting Thing in tow. Reed stored him in a chamber and gassed him unconscious while he contemplated what to do. Wizard and Torch recovered the rest of the Frightful Four from a tree and removed the anti-grav devices from their chests. Wizard soon discovered that his id machine had been tampered with, and realized that Torch was faking his allegiance. The Frightful Four attacked him, and their combined might allowed them to overwhelm him. Meanwhile, Reed hooked up Thing to a brain alteration device, a machine that required more delicacy than Wizard's id machine. Thing resisted however, destroying the machine and suffering a severe reaction of electricity and cosmic rays. As Ben was knocked unconscious, Reed's brain scanner showed a fundamental change in his "basic id pattern." Just then, the Frightful Four entered the room, having infiltrated the building's compromised alarm system following the reaction earlier. Reed was ready to fight, but Wizard demonstrated that he had the Torch attached to a body-sized, remote-controlled anti-grav disc that he could send into the upper atmosphere using the control on his chest. He demanded that Reed and Sue submit to brainwashing or Johnny would die. The two refused and fought back just as Thing briefly awoke and crushed Wizard's chest control, demonstrating his true allegiance before falling back unconscious. Torch escaped the disc and helped his team fight back their foes. Medusa soon fled in Wizard's aerial transport, and Torch gave chase, but, for reasons he couldn't quite decipher, hesitated at the critical moment and allowed her to escape. Johnny was frustrated with himself, but nonetheless, the team restrained the rest of the Frightful Four and brought them into custody. Thing soon fully recovered, and apologized for what he had done: the team was at last back together, in time for Reed and Sue's fast-approaching wedding.

Wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm

Full article: Wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm

The day of Reed and Sue's wedding, perhaps unsurprisingly, turned out to be much more harrowing than planned. Doctor Doom, still in Latveria, used his "emotion machine" to influence and coerce villains from around the world to converge on the Baxter Building and attack the Fantastic Four. Some of the team's most frequent foes, including Mole Man, Super-Skrull, and Puppet Master, arrived and tried to spoil the wedding. Fortunately, a number of great heroes were on hand to help defend the Baxter Building, including the X-Men, Avengers, Daredevil, and others. Both sides of this conflict were extremely formidable, and Reed determined that it was simply too even for the heroes to win. Uatu the Watcher appeared through a portal and granted Richards access to his home planet T-37X, where he pointed out a particular device and allowed Reed to take it. Returning to New York, Reed activated the device, which sent all of the villains (including Doctor Doom in Latveria) into the recent past, with no memory of what had transpired. Reed and Sue were thus successfully and peacefully married.

Sometime thereafter, the Fantastic Four learned of reports that Doctor Doom had taken the Avengers captive in Latveria. The Four wanted to go to Latveria to help them, but representatives from Washington told them that to do so would spark a "diplomatic crisis" with the otherwise friendly nation of Latveria. The Four were stuck, with no recourse but to hope. Luckily, the Avengers were able to fight out on their own, fending off Doctor Doom and escaping Latveria.

Emergence of the Inhumans

The hunt for Medusa

One day, Johnny walked out from the Baxter Building to his car, where he was held at gunpoint (a "vacuum gun," designed to prevent his flaming on) by Medusa. She forced him to drive her away, fleeing someone named Gorgon. Moments later, Gorgon, a large, bipedal, hoofed, humanoid being climbed the side of the Baxter Building, causing large shockwaves throughout it and catching the attention of the rest of the Fantastic Four. That being reached the roof and stole the Four's helicopter. Meanwhile, Torch and Medusa reached a rural area outside the city, near the campus of State University. Johnny tried to ask Medusa exactly what was going on, but Medusa objected, and the two briefly fought, but Medusa knocked him out by detonating an oxygen-draining pellet around him. As he passed out, the ground erupted and Dragon Man emerged, awoken from his slumber in the caverns below by the fight above. He began to attack Medusa, but he was taken by her beauty—reminded of Invisible Girl's soft gentleness. Gorgon arrived in the Fantastic Four's helicopter and went after Medusa, but he was attacked by the firebreathing Dragon Man. The two fought, and Medusa took the opportunity to escape via Johnny's car. Dragon Man pursued her, grabbing the car and flying through the air as Gorgon followed in the helicopter. Johnny recovered, absorbing Dragon Man's fire to keep it from spreading, and began to search for Medusa.

Meanwhile, the others in the Fantastic Four discovered that Gorgon had also damaged their other aircraft, preventing them from easily pursuing him. Instead, Reed stretched out of the window to examine the horizon while Thing held on to him. Dragon Man carrying Medusa in Johnny's car flew by and grabbed Reed, and Sue grabbed Ben as all of them got carried through the sky. Dragon Man landed with everyone on a roof nearby, and Gorgon arrived moments later. Medusa pleaded with the Four to protect her as he attacked. The simpleminded Dragon Man focused on protecting Medusa and Invisible Girl, knocking back anyone who got close to them for any reason. Gorgon used his powerful hooves to stomp a hole in the roof, sending Dragon Man plummeting several floors down into the derelict building. Gorgon explained that Medusa belonged to his race and that she had defied their people's customs by mingling with humans. Thing was inclined to smash him, but Mr. Fantastic encouraged him to entertain the diplomatic option. Torch soon arrived and had to be similarly talked down. Gorgon demonstrated his power by destroying a block of abandoned buildings with a single stomp and continued to demand that Medusa be handed over to him. Medusa tried to escape, but Dragon Man stormed back to the roof and flew off with Sue. Gorgon grabbed Medusa and stomped again, causing the building beneath them all to begin to crumble.

Inhumans in hiding

Reed, Johnny, and Ben used their combined skills to escape the wrecked building safely. Johnny chased Dragon Man through the sky, but Sue told him to hang back while she tried to reason with Dragon Man. She succeeded in getting through to the creature and convinced him that the Fantastic Four wouldn't harm him. The two and Johnny flew back to the Baxter Building, and the Four made peace with Dragon Man. Gorgon and Medusa were lost in the shuffle, and the heroes had no clear way of tracking them down. Johnny took some down time, and found himself feeling lonelier than usual now that he was living with a married couple. He called Doris Evans, but she was strangely busy. He took a walk outside and wandered into a rundown part of town, where a beautiful, clearly out-of-place woman was sitting on a pile of rubble. As he approached, she warned him to stay back, and a large cyclone of wind suddenly appeared, knocking Johnny over. When the dust cleared, the woman was gone. Johnny was instantly smitten with this woman, but wasn't even entirely sure it was real. He returned to the Baxter, where Reed was devising an enclosure for Dragon Man to live in. Johnny found the woman again later, and she continued trying to avoid him until he demonstrated his powers. His superpower made her think he was "one of us," and she introduced herself as Crystal. A huge bulldog with antennae that Crystal called Lockjaw also appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and Crystal made an offhand reference to Lockjaw's master, Black Bolt. Lockjaw's antennae opened a secret door in the rubble, and Crystal led Johnny down into a hidden area as Lockjaw teleported away.

Crystal explained that Black Bolt had built this sanctuary to hide from humans. She introduced Johnny to Karnak, a potent martial artist who could identify any object's weak point. Suddenly, Gorgon and Medusa arrived along with a stoic, scaly man in a hood called Triton. Johnny finally figured out that all of these people were part of some secret race. Medusa implored Johnny to leave quickly, but Gorgon kicked him into a trap room. Triton began spouting water into the room, manifesting it much like Johnny could fire, but Torch managed to flame on and fly out through the ceiling. He created a signal flare, and his teammates soon arrived on a new air vehicle that Reed had just completed. Johnny filled them in on what he had seen, referring to this strange race as Inhumans, and the Four cautiously made their way to the sanctuary. Karnak and Gorgon showed themselves and attacked, and suddenly, an imposing man—Black Bolt—appeared amidst the rubble.

Quest of the Seeker

Black Bolt attacked the Thing, and the two fought while Reed had the others stay back to see what Black Bolt was capable of. As the two squared off, Thing noticed that Bolt wasn't speaking, and indeed he remained silent for the entire encounter. The two proved to be fairly evenly matched, as Bolt demonstrated his remarkable strength and agility. Reed noticed an antenna on the head of Black Bolt's costume, and surmised that it absorbed energy from the air around him and converted it into extra physical power. Triton attacked the others and mentioned along the way that the Inhumans were in hiding from someone known as the Seeker. As they fought, Mr. Fantastic figured out that Triton's hooded robe was essentially a bag of water. He ripped it off moments before remorsefully realizing that the fish-like Triton needed it to survive. Triton dashed toward the docks, desperately diving into the bay. Under Karnak's encouragement, Black Bolt used his "master blow," stunning Thing and causing Bolt's antennae to expend much of their energy. Karnak seemed to think that this would destroy Thing altogether, but he held his ground. Black Bolt was exhausted from expending the energy, and Karnak carried him away. The rest of the Fantastic Four and Inhumans continued to fight. Crystal searched for Triton in the water, but found him to be missing. The Inhumans immediately suspected that the mysterious Seeker was responsible for his disappearance, and they decided to flee before he found them. Crystal wished to stay and be with Johnny, and even Medusa wanted to give her the chance to "live like a human," but Gorgon and Karnak pulled them through a portal created by Lockjaw. Gorgon insisted that any separation among them weakened them as a whole.

With the Inhumans gone, the Fantastic Four were left to wonder who the Seeker was and how he related to them. They returned to the Baxter Building to find that Dragon Man was gone, and there was a giant hole in the wall. Security footage showed that a man—the Seeker—had commanded a group of underlings to take the tranquilized Dragon Man away, carrying him out in a large aircraft. Seeker had apparently mistaken Dragon Man for an Inhuman. Reed's equipment in the room had also isolated the Seeker's "heat particle trail," allowing the Four to follow said trail to find him. They did so and arrived at a small, conspicuous red building with a glass roof, where they were trapped and sucked in to the Seeker's headquarters, guarded by a number of armed men. Seeker was there and immediately knew that the Four had come for Dragon Man. He explained that he had come "to return escaped Inhumans to the Great Refuge." He explained that the Inhuman race was of Earth origin, having established a civilized and advanced society long before humans did. They mastered the science of genetics and granted themselves remarkable powers. Eventually, humans evolved and quickly multiplied, soon outnumbering the Inhumans and forcing them into hiding. Black Bolt and the others belonged to a particular family of Inhumans, one of their oldest. Reed asked where this Great Refuge was, but the Seeker refused to tell him. He was perfectly willing to part with Dragon Man, having since figured out that he wasn't an Inhuman after all, but at that moment Dragon Man woke up elsewhere in the facility and went on a rampage. He escaped and flew out of the building, and the Four knew that he was unlikely to trust them again. Meanwhile, the battle had also destroyed a spherical glass aquarium containing Triton, who lay suffocating on the floor.

The Great Refuge

The Four knew that they had to stop Dragon Man, but Invisible Girl refused to leave Triton to die. Reed decided to send Johnny and Ben after Dragon Man while he and Sue helped Triton. Sue encased Triton in a force field, which Reed filled with water using a nearby hose, allowing him to regain consciousness. The Seeker commended the heroes, but reminded them that Triton was his prisoner. He was to be returned to the Great Refuge per orders he had been given by one named Maximus. He eventually explained that Maximus was the ruler of the Inhumans, and that Triton was to answer for crimes against their race. Reed was essentially satisfied with this explanation, but remained wary of the threat Inhumans might pose. Seeker transferred Triton from Sue's forcefield to a more stable container and took him away in his ship. Reed planted a tracking device on it, allowing him to theoretically zero in on the Great Refuge. Sue tried to convince him that doing so wasn't necessary, but he remained resolute.

Torch and Thing caught up to Dragon Man, who crashed into Alicia's apartment as Thing pounded him. Ben convinced Alicia to run and get to safety, though she was hesitant to leave him in danger. Dragon Man's artificial exterior was impervious to Torch's fire, but Johnny was able to harm him with intense ultraviolet rays, knocking him out with rapid onset heat stroke. The Fantastic Four reassembled and handed over Dragon Man to the authorities, who said that they would remove him to "a desert isle sanctuary for examination." They took a plane to follow the Seeker's signal, which led to the Himalaya mountain range in Asia. They found the Great Refuge, a city nestled in the mountains and beneath opaque cloud cover, and landed the plane there. They eventually found the family of Inhumans, who had recently deposed Maximus and returned the king's crown to its rightful owner, his brother Black Bolt. Johnny and Crystal were overjoyed to see each other again, but the others remained hostile. Medusa spoke on behalf of the silent Black Bolt and told the Four that they would be spared if they left now and did not tell anyone of what they had seen. Instead, Reed proposed that the Inhumans cease living in isolation and talk with them as representatives of the outside world. Before Black Bolt could respond, Maximus activated an immensely powerful weapon called the atmo-gun, which began to trigger global atmospheric vibrations. These tremors would vibrate at such a frequency as to theoretically wipe out the human race while leaving other species unharmed.

It soon became clear that, though the vibrations were strong enough to knock everyone in the world briefly off balance, Maximus had miscalculated his plan. He had believed that humans were farther away genetically from Inhumans, and thereby unwittingly fired the atmo-gun at a non-fatal frequency. Enraged at his failure, Maximus reversed the charge on the atmo-gun and used it to create a thick "negative zone" around the city, perfectly preventing passage in either direction. Invisible Girl hastily made a force field and the Four escaped through the negative zone's dense antimatter before it solidified. Crystal and Johnny nearly stayed with each other, but were each pulled back by their respective factions. The two were desperate to stay together, but Reed knew that there was no way known to man to get through a negative zone. Inside the city, Gorgon killed the Seeker, and Maximus suffered severe psychological damage before being imprisoned.

Galactus and the Ultimate Nullifier

The Silver Surfer

The Fantastic Four returned to New York, where they found that there appeared to be a second Sun in the sky. Even more alarmingly, it began to grow in size as if hurtling toward Earth, and soon the entire sky was filled with fire. Citizens naturally panicked, but the bizarre phenomenon righted itself before long. Later, Uatu the Watcher came to Reed's lab and explained that he had caused the event using his "matter mobilizer." Despite his pledge not to interfere with cosmic events, Uatu deemed what was to come to warrant his attention: Earth was in danger, and he wished to see it preserved. The Silver Surfer, a powerful and mysterious cosmic being, was on his way to Earth's star system, but he himself was not the true threat. The Surfer was a herald of Galactus, a nigh-omnipotent being who feeds on the energy of planets, leaving them essentially dead and inert. Uatu had surrounded the planet with fire in hopes of obscuring its presence to the Silver Surfer as he traveled through space. He now filled the skies with "inorganic space debris" instead of fire to set the humans' minds relatively at ease.

However, Uatu knew that this diversion would be a limited one. Indeed, the Silver Surfer deftly rode through the planet's debris field and landed in Manhattan: a silvery humanoid riding what appeared to be a flying surfboard. Torch and Thing tried to head him off, but Surfer utterly ignored them and sent a silent energy signal into space. Thing punched him, knocking him off of a rooftop and to another apartment building below. Soon afterward, a spherical spaceship arrived in the atmosphere, and some larger craft emerged from it to test Earth's "elemental composition," per Uatu's explanation. They soon became one, and the ship landed on top of the Baxter Building. A large humanoid wearing elaborate, warlike gear—Galactus—emerged and declared his intention to siphon the Earth into destruction.

Uatu's gambit

Uatu confronted Galactus and demanded that he spare the intelligent lives of Earth, but Galactus was apathetic to their "puny," "brief" lives. Torch and Thing attacked him, but he crushed and humiliated them with effortless counterattacks. As the Four realized that they were like bugs to Galactus, he began to set up various equipment from his ship atop the Baxter Building. Reed understood that the machinery was to be used to convert Earth's energy into consumable matter for Galactus. The Four saw no options other than futilely attacking Galactus, but Uatu stopped them and offered up his own strategy. He confirmed Reed's understanding of Galactus's machine, explaining that he would soon siphon the world into a "lifeless, empty husk" before departing for his next quarry. Uatu informed Reed of a machine, the Ultimate Nullifier, which could stop Galactus: but as Uatu was forbidden from actively participating, only the Human Torch could reach it.

While the team did what they could to prevent Galactus from constructing his device, Uatu used a handheld time-space device to send Johnny to a point in time and space for which "your language holds no words [to] describe." Uatu accompanied Johnny mentally and led him to the Worldship, a space station the size of a star system wherein lay the Ultimate Nullifier. Meanwhile, Galactus summoned a cyborg creature known as the Punisher, the size of a stout humanoid, to fend off the rest of the team. Determined to prove his strength after being embarrassed by Galactus, the Thing tried to take the Punisher down, but the strange being proved to be exceptionally strong. Sue was forced to protect herself and her allies with a forcefield. Galactus dismissed the Punisher, and the team were left with nothing to do but helplessly observe as Galactus continued assembling his machine. Meanwhile, after being knocked off of the rooftop earlier, the Silver Surfer fell through the skylight of Alicia Masters. They became acquainted and spoke of the Surfer's purpose and his belief that Galactus's sustenance was paramount. Masters pleaded with the Surfer to recognize the beauty of all lives on Earth, small though they may be next to Galactus. Against all odds, the Surfer recognized the compassion in Alicia's voice, and she convinced him to help defend Earth from Galactus.

A cosmic bargain

The Silver Surfer confronted Galactus and used the extent of his powers to restrain him, but couldn't bring himself to do any harm. Galactus retaliated, himself not wishing to harm his herald, but seeking to put him in line nonetheless. The Surfer tried to talk Galactus down from consuming the Earth to no avail. Meanwhile, Uatu successfully led Johnny to the Nullifier and back through a portal in space-time to return him to the scene of the battle. Johnny was in shock at the sheer scale of what he had witnessed, and Reed took the Nullifier from him: a small, handheld device. Uatu warned him that mishandling the Nullifier "could erase the entire solar system in one microsecond." Galactus finally conceded to destroying the Silver Surfer, but Mr. Fantastic effectively held Galactus at gunpoint, demanding that he leave Earth in peace.

Recognizing the Ultimate Nullifier, Galactus backed down. Reed and Uatu negotiated with Galactus to seek out planets with no intelligent life, and he agreed in exchange for the Nullifier itself. Uatu assured Reed with certainty that Galactus's word was "living truth itself." Reed surrendered the Nullifier in an act of diplomacy and confidence. Galactus blasted the Silver Surfer with a bolt of energy, stripping him of his ability to travel through space in light of his resignation as herald. As he left in a burst of atomic energy, Galactus encouraged humanity to "be ever worthy" of the glory which he now perceived among them. A moment later, Uatu, Galactus, and all of his equipment were gone. Alicia arrived to compliment the Surfer on his compassion. Ben grew jealous, threatened by the Surfer's gentle, intellectual way of speaking, and sulked off on his own. Saddened by his newly earthbound nature, Surfer decided to take to the skies and explore his new home.

Aftermath

Over the coming days, the Thing wandered the streets, fully and wrongly believing that Alicia had lost interest in him. With the relative status quo restored at the Baxter Building, Reed and Sue began their struggles to balance Reed's scientific work with their marriage. Johnny's seemingly hopeless infatuation with Crystal became increasingly difficult to bear, and he took the large step of applying to college to take his mind off of her. He enrolled in Metro College, just outside Manhattan, and he went there one day to visit the dean. He ran into a tall, strong young man named Wyatt Wingfoot, and the two had a meeting with Dean Asher. The two freshmen hit it off and decided to room together on his recommendation, though Johnny wondered if he was making the right decision after all.

See also

• History of the Fantastic Four, 1964
• History of the Fantastic Four, 1966
• Biography of the Human Torch, 1965
• Biography of the Thing, 1964-1965