The dramatic debut of Air Walker!
Actually, Air Walker is a very minor, unimportant part of these four issues. It’s really an arc about Galactus. Now, Galactus stories are usually pretty good. But Galactus stories written by Stan Lee are the best. Because Stan really knows how to hyperbolize, and a giant in a purple helmet is about as larger-than-life as comics can get.
But it’s not clearly a Galactus story at first. At first, it’s Agatha summoning the team to face a mysterious threat who turns out to be some dude named Air Walker, but he’s not the real problem….
I already told you. It’s Galactus. And to fight him, Human Torch tries out a brand new power: Creating dupes of himself.
Why that confuses, or even annoys, a dude who can consume entire planets is beyond me.
What makes this a pretty decent Galactus story, though, is how Reed outsmarts G-man. He sneaks aboard Galactus’ ship and reprograms it. Sends him to the Negative Zone.
Reed and Galactus are kinda like Superman and Mxypltlk. The little guy is always tricking the being with far superior power, and the powerful being is kind of a dummy.
Also, Nixon.
And Thing eats a gun.
Anyway, I thought this was a pretty good story.
It was also Stan Lee’s second-to-last. He should have made it his swansong, because the next story, his final F4 story of his long and nearly unbroken run of 125 issues, kind of sucked.
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