The Frightful Four!

Reed Richards and Sue Storm publicly announce their engagement to the press. As they are making their announcement a package is delivered from the Yancy Street Gang. The Thing opens it fearing it's the worse and discovers that it's bomb of some kind. However instead of a harmful explosion the bomb was a gag filled with flowers.

Elsewhere Paste Pot Pete meets with the Sandman and the Wizard to form a new group to go after their mutual foe the Human Torch. Peter and Sandman recount how they broke out of prison, stole a plane, and saved the Wizard from floating out in space following his last battle with the Human Torch. The Wizard then tells them that he has heard a potential fourth member to their group, a strange woman who can control her hair that lives on an island out in the Mediterranean Sea who has no memory of her past.

Meanwhile, the Fantastic Four are busy preparing for the wedding. As arrangements are being made the Frightful Four meet for the first time and begin plotting the doom of their good counterparts. Back at the Baxter Building an engagement party is underway with the Avengers and the X-Men in attendance. The Frightful Four make their attack after the party goers leave, ambushing and incapacitating the Thing, the Invisible Girl, and Mister Fantastic. They are unaware that Alicia Masters is also on the premises and while the Frightful Four are placing anti-gravity discs on their foes, she takes the Signal Flare from Sue's belt and fires it off.

It is seen by the Human Torch who is over at his friend's garage working on a car and he races to the Baxter Building. However, Alicia is caught by Medusa and she too is taken prisoner. The four prisoners are then left to drift into the sky on the Wizard's anti-gravity discs. The Torch rushes on the scene and using his flame powers forces the Wizard to fly his anti-gravity ship up into the sky and rescue his friends. After the Fantastic Four and Alicia are rescued, the ship is attacked by the Frightful Four who followed after them in the Fantastic Four's Pogo Plane. Forced to land the two groups battle it out until things start going in the Fantastic Four's favor. Seeking to escape, the Wizard detonates his ship, allowing the Frightful Four to flee the scene in all the confusion.

Recurring Characters

Fantastic Four (Mister Fantastic, Invisible Girl, Human Torch, Thing), Alicia Masters, Frightful Four (The Wizard, Paste-Pot Pete, Sandman, Medusa), Avengers (Captain America, Thor, Giant-Man, Wasp, Iron Man), Rick Jones, X-Men (Professor X, Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman, Angel), Spider-Man, Yancy Street Gang

Continuity Notes

• Reed and Sue's engagement announcement in this story was revisited from the perspective of the press in Marvels #2.

• The Yancy Street Gang antagonizes the Thing because he used to be a member and his leaving the group years ago was seen as a betrayal as seen in Thing #1.

• Paste-Pot Pete, the Sandman and the Wizard were all previously defeated at the hands of the Human Torch in Strange Tales #124, Strange Tales #115 and Strange Tales #118 respectively. In the case of the Wizard he was left floating in the air due to a malfunctioning anti-gravity disc at the end of Strange Tales #118.

• As revealed in Fantastic Four #44 Medusa is a member of the Inhumans. She was stricken with amnesia during a battle against the Trikon a few years earlier as depicted in Inhumans Special #1. It was later revealed in X-Men First Class (vol. 2) #15 that the Wizard kept Medusa complaint and her memories jumbled with a device that he planted on the base of her neck. (If you consider that series part of continuity, like I do.)

• The X-Men pretend to not know their leader Charles Xavier at the engagement party as at the time the X-Men's identities and Xavier's connection to them were a secret. Xavier did not reveal his connection to the X-Men to the world at large until New X-Men #122. The Fantastic Four don't became aware of Xavier's connection to the X-Men until X-Men First Class (vol. 2) #1.

• Rick Jones wishes that Bruce Banner could be there at the engagement party. At the time it was suspected that he was a traitor to his country and simultaneously trying to protect Gamma Base from the Leader as the Hulk, as seen in Tales to Astonish #62 through 70.