The Fantastic Four Battle the Mad Thinker and His Awesome Android

After receiving a call from the mayor to deal with the recent surge of mob activity in the city, Reed Richards summons the other members of the Fantastic Four, even though it will interrupt his crucial DNA experiments to do so. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city, a super-genius known as the Mad Thinker revels over how he and his computing machines have been able to assist the local mobs into committing their crimes without being captured. The Thinker then decides to set higher goals and begins plotting to take over the world. When the mob warns him that the Fantastic Four will try and stop him the Thinker tells them that he has already come up with a means to eliminate the heroes and prevent them from interfering in his operations.

Sometime later, the Human Torch is visited by his cousin Bones who informs Johnny that his circus is starting to fail without an attraction to draw people in. Meanwhile, Reed Richards is offered a research position with the prestigious General Electronics Corporation. This also happens to coincide with the Thing being offered a wrestling career and Sue being scouted by a Hollywood agent. Returning to the Baxter Building, each member of the Fantastic Four express their desires to seek out these other opportunities and agree to disband for a short period to see if this is what they truly want.

As it turns out these events were orchestrated by the Mad Thinker, and after a meteor strikes the Earth disabling the Baxter Building's security systems, he and the mobsters take over the Fantastic Four's abandoned headquarters. Meanwhile, each member of the Fantastic Four find their new careers fulfilling compared to their lives as super-heroes. They all decide to return home and are shocked to find the Baxter Building surrounded by crystal. The Thinker then projects a hologram of himself daring the Fantastic Four to face him in their own headquarters. The foursome easily break through the crystal barrier and defeat the mobsters armed with Reed's own weapons. They next battled the so-called Awesome Android, an android created by the Mad Thinker based on Reed's own research. They are able to defeat the creature when Reed points out its single weakness.

The Mad Thinker then faced the Fantastic Four alone, but suddenly found none of the devices in Reed's lab worked any longer and was quickly subdued. Reed then revealed that the Mad Thinker was foiled thanks to a contingency plan that he could not have foretold: Before leaving the Baxter Building to take his job at General Electronics, Reed hired their mailman Willie Lumpkin to press a button outside their headquarters every day that would temporarily deactivate all the devices within. With the Mad Thinker's plot ruined, the Fantastic Four turn the criminal mastermind over to the authorities.

Recurring Characters

Fantastic Four (Mister Fantastic, Invisible Girl, Human Torch, Thing), Alicia Masters, Willie Lumpkin, Mad Thinker, Awesome Android, Yancy Street Gang

Continuity Notes

• Although appearing to be a one-off character, the wrestler known as Fatal Finnegan in this story is revealed to be a fan favourite of the Yancy Street Gang in Fantastic Four: First Family #3.