One Night in Rutland: 1976

I WANT YOU! declares Uncle Sam, TO READ THIS FAIRLY UNEXCEPTIONAL COMIC BOOK!


Splash panel from Freedom Fighters #6 (January-February 1977), script by Bob Rozakis, pencils by Ramona Fradon, inks by Bob Smith, colors by Liz Berube, letters by Ben Oda

Well, it is a 1976 bicentennial tie-in to the Rutland Halloween Parade, but it's basically the end of the grand, issue-spanning Rutland crossover events that reached their height with 1972's Amazing Adventures, Thor and Justice League. It is, in fact, FF #6! No, not this one, which guest-stars Dr. Doom and the Sub-Mariner and is one of the awesomest comics of its age...


Cover of Fantastic Four v.1 #6 (September 1962), pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Dick Ayers, colors by Stan Goldberg, letters by Artie Simek

...but rather this one, which features another FF, but they're four completely different characters!


Cover of Freedom Fighters #6 (January-February 1977), pencils by Rich Buckler, inks by Vince Colletta

The Freedom Fighters, trapped in a world they never made, sworn to protect a world that fears and hates them, were sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. They promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the...secret publicist of the Freedom Fighters, journalist Julia Martha Roberts!



Why, you're right, Girl with the Big Ditko-Style Eyes! The FF need to load up the truck and moved to Vermont! (Rutland, that is.) A town whose chief import is inflatable models of superheroes and Ziggy.



Mysterious explosions! That's a rare occurrence in Rutland on Halloween night, right? Also appearing: the elderly Tom Fagan, who seems to have aged forty years since his last appearance in '73's Avengers #119. I'd guess this is a paradox brought about by the destruction of Earth-3 in Crisis on Infinite Earths...but that would just be plain insane.



AIEEEEEEEE SHE'S HAVING A STROKE IN THAT LAST PANEL oh no wait she's just winking, Clark Kent-style, at the reader. Ms. Reynolds, please, for the safety and comfort of all comic book readers...NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.

One fun thing I'll supposedly do again is revisit Rutland in '76, flying in with a certain Thunder God to check up on what happened to his brother! Be here or be shaped rectangular, cats and kittens!