Last issue ended with Reed about to pull the switch to cure Thing, and this issue starts with him doing it. And it works. And he can control his changes! Notice how nice the art is in the above two panels. It’s John Buscema.
Thing starts to go a little nuts–a side effect–but not before a side trip into the Negative Zone. A friend of Reed’s from the past named Janus shows up and breaks into the Negative Zone using Reed’s portal. He returns as “Nega Man.”
As Nega Man, Janus is immensely powerful and breaks a lot of stuff. And of course someone follows him out of the Negative Zone.
I’m not going to go through all the back-and-forths of the story, which extends for almost the entire year of comics. But in the course of events, to keep Janus and Annihilus from destroying the world and instead imprisoned in the Negative Zone, Reed has to stay in the Negative Zone with them.
Until Agatha uses her magic to help him get out.
She does so by creating fake duplicate Reeds to confuse Annihilus and enable Reed to jump through the portal and close it quickly while the villain is distracted.
Interestingly enough, we see the roots of Jonathan Hickman’s “death of Johnny Storm,” where Torch had to stay behind in order to save his teammates and the world, and contain the Negative Zone.
Issue #108 has art credits for Jack Kirby, John Buscema and John Romita. The rest are just Buscema.