Fantastic Four #7: When Falls Galactus!

Remember the origin of Dr. Doom from Fantastic Four Annual #2 (1964)?  Remember that part about Werner Von Doom taking little Victor out into the forest, on a mountainside, in the frigid and snowy winter, when the Baron’s troops were after Werner?  And remember how the Romani healer died of exposure protecting his young son, who would grow up to become Earth’s greatest villain?  Well, little Victor Von Doom never forgot, and that mountain where his father died protecting him is going to figure heavily into Dr. Doom’s latest ploy to get the rest of the world under his armored thumb and the Fantastic Four six feet under!

As Doom’s plot unfurls, Galactus is hungering for the artificial Power Cosmic with which Doom has charged his new enforcer, Victorious.  While Galactus is fixated on her, Doom directs the FF to carry out his plan to protect Latveria and Earth.  Reed goes along with it for pragmatic reasons, but is convinced that Doom has not accounted for all the variables in the situation.  Meanwhile, in an intriguing subplot back home, Franklin and Valeria are trying to build a teleporter (cobbled together partly from the parts of Uncle Jake’s truck!) to take them to Latveria to help the FF when Alicia and Wyatt catch them and send them to bed.  The kids strike me as being a bit too old now to be made to go to bed at a specific hour, but the scene sets up an intriguing subplot about something—or some things—lurking outside their window.  They may be things that our phenomenal Foursome has encountered before…

Back in Latveria, while Doom’s “Big Bang Cannons” are playing hob with Galactus’s elementary particles, the Torch rescues Victorious from the planet-slayer’s grasp.  The cosmically empowered woman protests that she didn’t need saving, but she herself saves Johnny from splattering himself at Galactus’s feet after letting loose with a super-nova blast.  As I observed last issue, Johnny and Victorious are a situation we’re going to have to watch.  Doom reveals to Reed that while Reed was away, something happened to Galactus.  The cosmic predator was changed into an entity that feeds life into planets instead of feeding on the worlds he visits.  The how and why of Galactus transforming back into what he was, in such a pathological condition, is not explained.  But the upshot of the whole plan is that while Reed distracts Galactus with a bogus “Ultimate Nullifier” (a ploy that he made once before, in FF #213), Victorious swoops in for a knockout blow that topples Galactus onto that mountainside where Doom’s father died (AH-HAH!), and Galactus phases physically into the mass of the mountain! 

This is where Doom’s plan reaches its payoff.  With Galactus somehow captured, the Monarch of Evil plans to cannibalize him as an unlimited energy source for Latveria and the rest of the world—on Dr. Doom’s terms, of course.  And with his mission accomplished, Doom delivers a zap that knocks the Fantastic Four out.  His edict as King of Latveria is that Earth’s greatest heroes are to be punished for their “invasion” of his sovereign country—with summary execution!  Doom now stands to get what he’s always wanted:  mankind at his knee and the Fantastic Four dead!