Fantastic Four #17 continues the story from the last issue. Dr. Doom is now loose in America and our heroes have a lot to contend with. This is the first continuing story in Fantastic Four and it really starts to feel like a connected universe is starting.

The first page juxtaposes a happy Fantastic Four saying farewell to Ant-Man who helped them last issue with an ominous title. In big red letters it says “Defeated by Doctor Doom!” We’ll see about that. We see Ant-Man catapulting away and he will not return this issue. But we’ll catch up with him again soon.

Reed Richards puts away the little launcher he built for Ant-Man and Johnny Storm muses about adding him to the team. The Thing responds it would be an improvement over Johnny. Their bickering is a running theme. But something interesting here is that The Thing is reading an Ant-Man comic as he speaks.

I love it when we get in universe little gags like that. But then in typical early Marvel 616 fashion, they do a flashback of what happened in the previous issue. I’m not going to rehash it here but if you didn’t read my last post, that issue was wild.

Reed then pulls out a complicated contraption as he often does. This is a radar set, “…extra sensitive to human flesh covered by steel!” I hope no one is using steel to cosplay as a knight at the moment. But it should track Doom.

While Reed listens to his signal, the rest of the group split up to scour the city and see if they can find the bad guy. None of them find Doom but The Thing does find a guy in a green cape dressed in armor advertising a movie. There was someone cosplaying as a knight! But it wasn’t Doom.

Johnny has no luck. Sue Storm disrupts what she thinks is an arms deal but turns out to be a toy demonstration. The group meets up to compare notes but no one found anything. When they try to leave the building there is a huge crowd of fans.

A helpful janitor leads the group to a freight elevator. He only asks to shake their hands in return. I bet you know where this is going don’t you? If you thought the janitor was Dr. Doom and he placed a tiny, tissue-thin plastic disc to each of their hands, you were right!

Doom goes back to his headquarters and releases balloon like robots that follow each member of the FF. These things interrupt Johnny’s date, distract The Thing from his date, puts a halt to a photo shoot for Sue Storm, and disrupt an award ceremony for Reed Richards. No matter what the team does, they can’t destroy these things. And they won’t stop following either.

Reed has a gadget that discovers the discs on their hands. They figure out Doom must be monitoring them but the flying robots go away. But this was only the first phase of the bad doctor’s plan.

Doom decides the weak spot in the team is Thing’s girlfriend Alicia who is blind. Doom has a pretty sad moment where he admits he has never fully understood other human beings. And he says, “Even now I cannot comprehend how one as lovely as Alicia can feel affection for the grotesque Thing!!”

He’s bummed someone loves The Thing but not him. Doom has a scarred and damaged face under the mask, although we don’t see it here. Pretty sure it’s not your face, it’s your personality and, you know, obsession with being a horrible person that is the problem, Doom.

Regardless, Doom wants to take revenge. He uses a “grappler ray” to lift Alicia into the air and fly him to his headquarters. His headquarters is a flying base hidden by a cloud.

The Human Torch shows The Thing a newspaper with a picture of Alicia flying in the air. For a smart guy, I really don’t think Doom thought how angry this would make The Thing. Needless to say, he’s big mad.

Doom contacts the team and tells them different ways he plans to terrorize the city. And warns them not to oppose him or Alicia is in trouble. Reed is not afraid. But The Thing is worried something will happen to Alicia.

Doom is not after money, he makes that clear in the next panel. But he sure would like some power. He sends a film reel to the white house threatening war. We even get a panel of JFK’s… forehead. It’s the first time a sitting president is depicted in Marvel 616 comics. And JFK isn’t backing down. He has to put his kid to bed!

With JFK not responding, Doom wreaks havoc by interfering with all electronic devices and firing off our missiles. These actions disrupt American industry. The Kremlin is thrilled until one of them points out that Doom will come for them next.

Someone from the joint chiefs of staff comes to ask the FF for help but Reed says he already has a plan. But he can’t share it with anyone because he thinks it would be safer just for his team to be in on it. I guess now it doesn’t matter that Doom could be listening?

Reed used his radar to discover Doom’s headquarters and this thing has disintegrator ray guns on it! And those rays will target the FF because the robots that followed them mapped their atomic structure. But Reed Richards is the smartest man alive, so he has a plan.

The Thing has sometimes turned from The Thing to plain old Benjamin Grimm. The plan is to have him take a formula turning him human and then change back to The Thing and go on the attack. It’s a close call but Ben is able to get onto the headquarters just before he turns back into The Thing. He tosses out the disintegrator ray gun and his pals can now come on up and help too.

They split up, looking for Doctor Doom. Doom traps The Human Torch in a spinning room that douses his flames. Reed finds himself trapped in a room that fills up with wet cement. But he can escape because he can make himself thin enough to “fit thru the pockets of porous cement.” The Thing falls down a hole with a greased pole that could drop him all the way back to the city. But he manages to claw his way back up.

The three team members meet up together but Doom launches power spheres at them. Not real clear what these do but it can’t be good. Somehow they are supposed to transfer the heroes to a different dimension.

But Doom had it all wrong. Those figures were flame images created by The Human Torch. The Thing demands Doom tell him where Alicia is. The Invisible Girl finds her first. And she hatches a plan. She trades places with Alicia. I think it would have been smarter to hide Alicia and turn invisible in the first place. Instead she turns invisible when Doom enters the room. There is a scuffle but Sue Storm wins because Doom should not, “…ever forget that I was taught Judo by one of the world’s greatest experts: Reed Richards!” This guy can do anything.

Just as Doom thinks he will overcome Sue, the rest of the team bursts in. And boy is Ben Grimm pissed. Doom jumps out of his flying headquarters. I’m sure that’s the end of him.

The issue ends with Doom gone and the team and Alicia reunited. Doom is an impending threat but he’s gone for the moment.

This issue was not as thrilling or wild as the last one. But it is a decent story with a few really fun moments. Doctor Doom proves to be a competent villain by escaping at the right time. And the world feels a little more real in the story with the involvement of the white house.

I’m sure we’ll return to Doctor Doom soon but for the moment we are leaving the Fantastic Four.

Net up on the reading list we check back in with the god of thunder himself, Thor, in the pages of Journey Into Mystery #95!