File:Fantastic Four Vol 1 220 001.jpg

Description
As Ben and Alicia take a cab to the airport to escape the harsh New York winter for a break in the sun, their cab driver worries about the implications for his insurance should a super-villain decide to mount an attack. Suddenly the cab is caught in gridlock as a city-wide blackout brings chaos to the streets. From the cab Ben sees the boom of a crane on a nearby construction site falling and threatening passers-by. Hurriedly ripping the door off the cab he rushes to catch the boom before it can cause any damage. Across town at approximately the same time Sue and Franklin have just finished a shopping expedition when the blackout occurs, and Sue quickly sees that a couple of window cleaners are about to fall to their deaths. Reacting quickly she saves the men by creating a force field cushion. On Long Island, Johnny is tuning a hot rod with a friend of his when the blackout strikes. Hearing the sound of a light aircraft engine cutting out Johnny blazes through the roof of the garage and creates an updraft that keeps the plane aloft long enough until the power is restored. At the Baxter Building, Reed is busy trying to find the cause of the power blackout in his lab. As Sue, Ben, Alicia and Franklin enter and relate their experiences to him the leader of the Fantastic Four realizes that the blackout wasn't just confined to his lab, and a call from Avengers' Mansion confirms even worse news: the blackout was world-wide! As Johnny enters, Reed surmises that a global electromagnetic failure would seem to indicate disruption at the Earth's magnetic poles. Leaving Franklin in Alicia's care, the four decide to investigate. Soon the FF are traveling high above Canada in their ICBM en route to the North Pole. Reed soon realizes that something is altering the magnetic fields of the Earth, but another power outage soon sends the ICBM plummeting towards the ground. The ship's emergency wings deploy automatically and Ben is able to bring it under control and execute a crash landing. The FF investigate the source of the EM disruption, tracking it to beyond an ice ridge in the distance. There they find a mile-wide hole in the polar ice around which machines of an alien design are gathered, operated by dark alien creatures. Suddenly a tremendous vibration nearly knocks the FF off their feet as a mile-high crystal tower rises up menacingly from the ice.