Fantastic Four #17: Flamin' 'Eck 24

Fantastic Four #17, page 19, panels 6-7  

Story: Stan Lee

Art: Jack Kirby

Inking: Dick Ayers

Lettering: Art Simek

After a couple of weeks break from the show and the blog, I'm back, ready to pick up where I left off. Sadly, it looks like I get to pick up with one of the most ridiculous uses of Johnny's flame powers ever seen.

Flame duplicates, sadly, are not a new thing at this point. They've been used before, sometimes as mirages, sometimes as homing devices, sometimes as seemingly sentient duplicates. But here they get completely out of control: Johnny reveals that when Doctor Doom thought he had obliterated the male members of the team with his power spheres, he had in fact only destroyed three flame replicas. Who moved individually, didn't show any sign of being comprised of fire, and most of all, who managed to fool Doctor Doom.

I'm not buying this at all, and it's a damn good thing that Johnny's flame duplicates are soon going to flicker away into the darkness, (almost) never to return.

Check out our coverage of Fantastic Four #17 on our fifteenth episode: Whence Came The Man of Asbestos

[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/ffcast/Episode_15.mp3]