Dead or Alive

Thanks to King Solomon’s Frogs, the Fantastic Four — Black Panther (T’Challa), Storm (Ororo Monroe), Human Torch (Johnny Storm), and the Thing (Ben Grimm) — found themselves trapped in a nightmare alternate reality where Earth’s heroes were turned into flesh eating zombies. When the zombies used their Power Cosmic to eat the entire planet, they were forced to use the frogs again to try and escape.[1]

T’Challa wakes up and finds himself in what appears to be heaven, leaving him to wonder if they made it out alive. Pushing open the pearly gates, the Panther follows a golden rode into a utopian city in the distance. There, he spots his wife — Storm — flying by overhead. He follows her into a nearby forest where he is attacked by vines. Slashing his way through he gets to a clearing and is shocked to discover Ororo is engaging in some kind of orgy with her fellow X-Men (including Wolverine, Jubilee, Colossus, Shadowcat, Rogue, and Gambit). T’Challa is shocked that his wife would do this, but the other X-Men tell him to join in. That’s when Emma Frost approaches him from behind in her White Queen bondage gear, making the Panther believe she is responsible for making the others act this way.[2] Emma starts kissing T’Challa, despite the fact that he doesn’t want to, and suddenly the two begin merging together.

This is interrupted by a massive roar, stopping everyone dead in their tracks. This was the sound of the Panther God, who finds this display an outrage. Storm then takes to the air to fight Bast, but the god quickly swallows her hole. Breaking free from Emma Frost, T’Challa pushes past Cyclops to try and get to his wife, somehow accidentally snapping his neck in the process. This angers the other X-Men who then start attacking him as well. As Bast demands T’Challa to slay the mutants before facing judgement, the Panther realizes that this is not real. He closes his eyes and focuses and suddenly the forest and all the other disappear. The Black Panther finds himself back on the golden road he came in on wondering what is actually real.

It is indeed all an illusion as the Fantastic Four are prisoners of the Psycho-Man, a mad man from the Microverse who uses psychology to torture his victims. However, Storm proves resistant to his techniques, likely due to mental protections she has placed to safeguard her mind thanks to her association with the X-Men. The Psycho-Man then decides to perform surgery on Ororo in order to figure out how this is possible. However, he is interrupted when the Black Panther appears and tries to attack. Psycho-Man. Surprisingly, he is joined by other Black Panthers, including his dead father T’Chaka.[3] As the female Panther frees Storm, the Black Panther of the 14th Century impales Psycho-Man on his spear. When Ororo gets loose, she discovers that her mutant powers are still nullified. With his dying breath, Psycho-Man tells her that his final gift to her was making Storm human. With the battle over, Storm begins to panic over the loss of her powers. That’s when the Panthers begin closing in on her bombarding her with offers to become a new Black Panther. Storm eventually can’t take it anymore and freaks out. Suddenly, everything goes white with the sudden blast of lightning.[4]

As it turns out, she was actually in one of the Psycho-Man’s illusions and managed to subconsciously access her powers. The resulting lightning incapacitated the Psycho-Man and shorted out his equipment, freeing the rest of the Fantastic Four. In the aftermath of their ordeal, both Ororo and T’Challa tell each other how the Psycho-Man used the anxieties they had about their marriage against them.[5] Having fight back against these doubts, the two reaffirm their love for one another and embrace. The Thing, interrupts this tender moment to point out that the Human Torch is still knocked out. After a quick check, T’Challa determines that Johnny is fine and he soon wakes up on his own.

They then go looking for the objects that brought them here, King Solomon’s Frogs. They find it in one of the labs. Once again, the Fantastic Four can’t help but wonder if the mystical artifacts are alive or not. Needing to get home, they agree that Johnny should try literally lighting a fire under its ass to get them back home. Suddenly, they are teleported back to what appears to be New York City. However, something about it seems off but they are not sure why. The answer comes quickly when they notice a blimp flying near the Empire State Building. That’s when they are suddenly surrounded by mobsters who appear to have stepped right out of the early 20th Century. Suddenly, the Thing recognizes where they are. Ben is recognized as well and when the mobsters open fire with their tommy guns, the weapons fire energy blasts instead of bullets. With the Fantastic Four stunned into unconsciousness, the leader of the mobsters orders his men to take them to the arena![6]

Recurring Characters

Fantastic Four (Black Panther, Storm, Human Torch, Thing), Psycho-Man, Skrulls

Continuity Notes

1. Per Marvel Zombies: The Book of Angels, Demons & Various Monstrosities #1, this is Reality-2149. As seen in Ultimate Fantastic Four #21-23, this is a world where a contagion turned Earths superheroes into zombies. In Marvel Zombies #1-5, the surviving zombies consumed Galactus when he arrived on Earth and then went into space to literally eat the entire universe. The FF were stranded there between Black Panther (vol. 4) #27-30.

2. Emma Frost was originally a member of the evil Hellfire Club, as first seen in X-Men #129. She had begun reforming in recent years, starting in Uncanny X-Men #316. She has been part of the X-Men proper since New X-Men #116. Despite turning over a new leaf she is routinely suspected due to her shady way of dealing with things. Here, T’Challa states that Storm never trusted Emma and for good reason. At one point during her Hellfire Club career, Frost used a device to body swap with Storm, as seen in Uncanny X-Men #151-152.

3. T’Chaka was infamously murdered by Ulysses Klaw, a tale that was originally told in Fantastic Four #53. The male Panther is the one from the 14th Century that we saw in Black Panther (vol. 4) #1. As of this writing (February, 2024), he has yet to be unidentified. The female Panther is also unidentified. Known female Panthers include Turkana the Peacemaker (Shuri #10) and Nehanda the Wise (Mighty Thor (vol. 3) #6).

4. Storm gets upset that the Panthers are closing in on her is because she suffers from claustrophobia, something that has affected her since she was a child and she was buried alive. See X-Men #102 and 122 for details.

5. At the time of this story, T’Challa and Storm had just recently got married back in Black Panther (vol. 4) #18.

6. As will be confirmed next issue, the FF are on the Skrull planet known as Kral IV. It is home to a civilization of Skrulls who were enamored with the lifestyle of American mobster Machine Gun Martin and adopted a romanticized version of 1930s America. See Fantastic Four #91-93 for the full dope on that.