Back to the Reed Richards-Sue Storm separation in the 1970's

[Marvel Forever]

If you could go back in time and be the FF writer, what would you have do when Sue walks out on Reed and the Fantastic Four team at the end of issue #130?

A. Let her return to Reed and the team, as she eventually did

B. Let Reed and Sue divorce and replace Sue permanently with Crystal. Have Crystal marry Johnny Storm, instead of Quicksilver.

C. Let Reed and Sue divorce and replace Sue permanently with Medusa. Have Medusa and Reed become a couple.

D. Let Reed and Sue divorce and replace Sue with some other Marvel heroine.

[idisestablish]

On the subject... I think Jack Kirby was the champion of Crystal, and I base that off the fact that they pretty much wrote her out of Fantastic Four as soon as he left. Kirby's last issue on the book was #102, and she left the team in #105. Roy Thomas said he wrote the whole thing with Quicksilver because he wanted to "shake things up," which effectively was just a means of tying up the loose end from her departure by ending her relationship with Johnny. Of course, all of this opened the door to Steve Englehart's TRAVESTY of a story with Crystal in Vision and the Scarlet Witch Vol 2 and then continued into her return to the Fantastic Four... And THEN, to add insult to injury, he mysteriously just wrote her out again in Fantastic Four Annual #21 where they inexplicably also have a pinup for Crystal that reads "It's great to be back with the Fantastic Four. I'll never leave again!" And they keep her floating head on the cover in the corner for like a year or so after that and basically just have 3 members of the Fantastic Four... Why did he bring her back just to send her off again? Fortunately, all of this mess is undone in her appearances in X-Factor and Avengers, and it led to bigger and better things for her, but the point still stands.

But to the question at hand, of the options given, I would probably have picked Crystal (had I been around at that time), but ideally, I would want Sue to stay as well. I really like Sue, but I will admit she was pretty terrible back then.

[gurkle]

I would have gone with having them divorce and then eventually having Sue rejoin the team, working with the ex, as it were. Marvel in the '70s responded to all the news stories about women leaving their husbands to "find themselves" in a post-feminist world, so Sue left Reed, and Pepper left Happy - but they didn't dare have a married couple break up for good. It could have been interesting if only because the idea of Reed without Sue is almost like imagining how he would have developed in an alternate universe. Though I'm sure Reed has already seen and blown up that alternate universe himself.