Nov. '86 - Fantastic Four # 296

All of the Marvel comics had an identical cover theme this month of November 1986. It was the celebration of their 25th anniversary (marked by the publication of Fantastic Four # 1). All the covers included the outside frame of various characters and a head shot of a character in the center. DC would do something similar in the 90's with just a head shot on all of their covers.

This issue was giant-sized to celebrate the anniversary. The Thing had been away from the team since the first Secret War. Reed was feeling increasing gult; both because Thing had been away from the team for so long, and because of his condition in the first place. He decides to find the Thing to finally settle things with him and tracks him to Monster Island. There, Thing has joined with the Mole Man to live out his life there with others that humanity has shunned.

It ends up Mole Man was plotting to expand the size of his underground kingdom at the expense of some real estate on the surface world. He's stopped by the Fantastic Four and Thing leaves Mole Man to rejoin the FF.

The issue reads like something out of the 60's, dialogue-wise, which I guess is to be expected since Stan Lee was involved with the issue. There were some good parts to the story: Mole Man's imaginary life he had created where he was loved and respected by beautiful people (hologram creations) and the plight of the Thing was demonstrated well. He was tired of always being the monster and the raw deal life had given him. Losing his girlfriend to the Human Torch could not have been easy.

I had started to collect this series when John Byrne was the writer/artist and was a big fan of what he did. I was not impressed with what followed after his departure and stopped buying it shortly after he left. This issue was one of the reasons why. I thought Byrne had done a lot to develop the characters and this issue seemed really a step back. It could be they were going for the old-fashioned feel since it was a celebration of the anniversary but I don't think it came off well.