For a second time, interplanetary foes have attacked the Fantastic Four through the tactic of turning humanity against them.
In Fantastic Four 2 (Jan. 1962), the shape-shifting Skrulls had disguised themselves as the FF to wreak havoc and ruin their reputations. In Fantastic Four 7 (Oct. 1962), the alien dictator Kurrgo takes the more direct approach of using his Gort-like robot to bathe Earth in a “hostility ray” calculated to cause a worldwide irrational hatred of the superheroes.
In both cases, appropriately enough, the aliens’ go-to weapon turns out to be alienation.
There are only so many plot ideas, but talented writers and artists can reuse them without the audience catching on.
In their first six issues, the Fantastic Four had faced an invasion from beneath the Earth, an invasion from space that turned humanity against the FF, an invader from beneath the waves, an iconic criminal mastermind and a super-villain team that mirrored their own. And in the seventh issue, they faced another invasion from space that turned humanity against the FF.
Such plotlines underlined the unsettling idea that an admiring public could turn against its celebrated, admired heroes in a proverbial heartbeat — a notion that, while it might surprise children, was all too familiar to adults.
And unlike Spider-Man or Thor, the team members had no secret identities into which they could retreat when their reputations got rocky. So when Kurrgo offers them a chance to escape an angry planet in his flying saucer, they have little choice but to accept.
“(F)ar from the hokey Toad Men or Stone Men from Saturn, the issue holds up impressively well, reading instead like a pastiche of sci-fi classics,” noted comics historian Don Alsafi. “When the flying saucer lands on Earth and Kurrgo’s robot walks out, one can’t help be reminded of Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still. And Reed’s inspiration of shrinking down a populace to enable planet-wide evacuation has popped up variously over the years.”
The FF’s visit to Planet X includes a scene of the teammates falling gently though and exotic cityscape in a sort of open-air “gravity tower” — the same setup artist Jack Kirby had used in Challengers of the Unknown. It was too good a visual idea to be wasted in a single title.
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