FANTASTIC FOUR #42-44 (471-473) (2001)

The foursome face their worst enemy of all time…A corporation!

fantastic four 43

While three of the Fantastic Four are trapped in the Negative Zone, Namor is attacking Gideon Trust operations (mining oil from the Negative Zone) that corrupt the oceans and then moves on to New York City.

Human Torch and She-Hulk try to subdue Sub-Mariner–and Ant-Man actually defeats him by going inside his ear and stinging him. Turns out, Namor’s brain had been hijacked by (you guessed it) the Gideon Trust.

Yeah. This corporation sure is turning out to be villainous.

The new Fantastic Four (Johnny, Shulk, Namorita, and Ant-Man) take on the Trust on Earth. They fight their way through the Trust’s base, including its security guard Awesome Android, until they can rescue the rest of the team from the Negative Zone.

Oh, and there’s an army of HERBIEs.

A second adventure runs in parallel: The Fantastic Three in the Negative Zone end up meeting up with Maximus the Mad, freeing Annihilus from being tortured by Trapster and his Gideon Trust soldiers. Their adventure is coming to head when they are rescued–and it appears that Noah Baxter dies in the process. Annihilus seems to die as well, but at the end of the story we see an egg hatching in his old body.

And so it seems that the Gideon Trust is finally defeated.


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