Fantastic Four (1961 series) #34

The story begins in the Baxter Building where Thing receives another 'present' from the Yancy Street Gang. Sue Storm dares to open it and finds a Beatles wig inside. This triggers off an exchange of insults between Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm which as usual escalates to a super-powered brawl between Thing and Human Torch. Mr Fantastic uses his stretching power to come between them and HT flies away. Reed Richards and Sue leave Ben with his (blind) girlfriend Alicia and he tries on the wig.

But the plot begins in the gigantic office of the richest man in the world, multi-billionaire Gregory Hungerford Gideon. He orders his minions out before he tele-contacts the 3 next-richest men Vanvroot in South Africa, Tamiroff in Cairo and Favorsham in London. They agree that he's on the way to gaining control of each of their financial empires but he claims it will take him 3 more years to reach that goal and he doesn't want to wait that long so he offers them a deal. They should set him an 'impossible' task and if he achieves it within a week they must sell their businesses to him immediately. If he fails then he will leave them alone. They ask him to defeat the Fantastic Four and he accepts the challenge.

Next morning Reed wakes to find workmen taking away the Fantasti-Car and their ICBM and Pogo Plane. They show him a document signed by Ben Grimm authorising them to remove his share of the FF's equipment. Angry Richards protests that those things belong to the team and he has no right to take them. Just then Thing arrives with the police to arrest 'Mr Fantastic' as a Skrull. Apparently a spaceship was found containing a plan to impersonate him, including his powers. They manage to subdue his stretchable body long enough to take his fingerprints which turn out to match those taken from the Skrull who impersonated him in #2. Reed argues that's because the Skrull was a perfect *duplicate* of him, but they don't believe him so MrF's forced to escape to figure out what's happening.

Meanwhile Sue Storm reaches the suburban Glenville home she shares with her brother Johnny. But she finds a shambles with a message scrawled on the wall telling her he's fighting Dr Doom and she should beware the robot. Then Johnny enters and she assumes *he*'s the robot and demands to know where her brother is. Johnny figures she's under the control of the puppet master and flames on to attack, but Invisible Girl protects herself with her force field and expels Human Torch from the house. Then she turns invisible to escape but he tracks her by her footprints in the grass and follows hoping to find the villain.

We learn that the man behind all this is of course Gregory Gideon. We also learn that he's hardly ever at home in his Westchester mansion with his wife Claire and young son Thomas who's a big fan of the FF.

Back in the Baxter Building Mr Fantastic escapes from Thing through a window and forms a parachute to float down from the skyscraper. Ben leaps after him and slows his own fall by ricocheting between buildings. Elsewhere Sue is fleeing from Torch in a taxi. When they near the BB she goes invisible (before paying her fare) and rushes over to the battling Ben and Reed. But she turns visible to use her forcefield to stop Thing hitting MrF with a large lump of pavement, so Johnny sees her and shoots flame to get her attention to ask why she thinks he's not really himself. She tells Reed he's 1 of Doom's robots, and the coincidence of Ben thinking he's a Skrull makes him realise that someone's setting them up. 1 of that someone's minions puts a concussion gun near them as Ben and Johnny team up against the 'Skrull'. MrF picks up the gun a fires a grenade between them, and the concussion knocks all 4 out.

This doesn't satisfy Gideon and he moves on to a plan to defeat them in their own HQ. But Thomas overhears this and rushes away to warn his heroes. Claire is worried by that but Gregory brushes her fears aside.

Reed is the 1st to recover and he carries Sue to the safety of the BB. Johnny tells Ben that his sister is under Puppet Master's control. But the explosion has weakened Torch so he can't flame on so Thing heads into the building alone.

It turns out that Gideon owns the building, and inside the FF's HQ on the top floors his men have installed a Time Displacer platform based on Dr Doom's time machine (from #4 and #19) and hidden it under flooring near the elevator. Whoever steps on it will be sent into the past. Back home Gregory tells Claire he'll use all his resources to find their son when he's finished with the FF. But their chauffeur is at this moment delivering Thomas to the Baxter Building. He tries to warn the FF not to go inside but they're too busy chasing and avoiding each other. For some reason 3 of them climb up the side of the building, and the recovered HT joins in. The desperate boy uses the elevator to beat the team to the top. Gideon's men hear his approach and switch the time machine on and of course it's Thomas who's the target. But luckily Thing smashes through a wall and grabs him ...

... Unluckily that just means they both vanish into the past. Mr Fantastic enters still carrying Sue. He immediately works out what the machine is and takes over its controls as Invisible Girl shields him with her forcefield. Human Torch enters as well and decides a judicious move is to melt any guns before sorting out what's going on. Gideon has seen what's happened via a remote camera and has rushed here (extremely quickly from Westchester - but as he frequently says with enough money you can do anything). He begs Richards to get his son back. (It also turns out that Gideon owns the electricity company which his how his men got past the security system by turning the power off.) But Reed has just turned the power off *again* and the time machine automatically brought its victims back to the present. Claire Gideon is here too and there's a tearful family reunion. Gregory now realises what really matters and swears to give his fortune to charity.

For a humorous ending Thing takes out his frustration at not getting to punch the villain by kicking a wall and spraining a toe. He makes the others promise not to tell anyone about it.