So, what the
hell is going on?
Well, the nu52 version of the
Frightful Four had just gotten their butts handed to them by the
Fantastic Four, when two new members of the Frightfuls turned up and sucker punched the good guys:
Dragon Man, and
Aron the Rogue Watcher!!
Who?Aron was this young Watcher who was interning with
Uatu, but decided he liked interfering better. He had been hanging around for awhile under the
Englehart Harekness run, surreptitiously collecting cell samples of the Fantastic Four, with Dragon Man as his minion. Please don't ask why.
So
why is he helping the evil Frightful Four?
OK, but I still say that if you want to prove that your intellect and your team is superior, bringing in a Watcher is
pure cheating, as it proves nothing. As we shall see, when Aron declares that he's got what he needs, and he's leaving:
And when they try to fight him:
And he leaves.
Still, it's a
good day for the Frightful Four. They've got the FF captive, and they can finally kill them, right.
Right?!?
And you're going to
kill them,
right?!?
Sweet merciful heavens!! This is what, the
4th time you've had the Fantastic Four beaten, and completely at your mercy, but you let them live for torture or ransom or whatever?? And
every single other time, they've escaped and beaten you, right??
So really, why does your superior intellect think the result would be different this time??
Oh, but it will be different--it will be
extra humiliating. For you see, the currently not-
Thingified Ben Grimm has found you, and...
Oooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....
Yes, plain ol' human Ben Grimm,
all by his lonesome, just took out three of the Frightful Four. That's pretty pathetic for an evil supergroup. And when he let's his pals loose...
Well, it doesn't take long...
Oh, Frightful Four...will you
ever learn?!?
Oh, and then began the
single worst five-issue stretch of the Fantastic Four
ever, as Aron the Rogue Watcher clones an
evil version of the FF, and sends them out to relive the FF's old adventures, while he locks the
real FF in stasis and
watches their dreams. For five issues.
Yes, dreams,
which Englehart has said were the plotlines that he
would have run had
Marvel not said no. Which means he would have had
Doom and
Kristoff blow up the world. And he would have revealed that
Franklin had made
Johnny and
Alicia fall in love--which is even worse than the
Skrull thing--and Franklin would then undo it so Ben and Alicia get back together, as do Johnny and
Crystal.
Yes, we watched bad re-runs of old FF stories and dreams of hypothetical retcon storylines
FOR FIVE ISSUES.
Sigh...
Anyway, aside from a brief reappearance in
FF #333, and a cameo one panel time travel cameo bit in
#400, this was the last we'd see of the Frightful Four until
1994...Maybe by then the Wizard would figure out the proper line-up (spoiler alert--he wouldn't).
From Fantastic Four #328 (1989)