I: Feature Story: "Prisoners of the Pharoah!"

Pages: 22

Script: Stan Lee
Pencils: Jack Kirby
Inks: Dick Ayers
Letters: Sam Rosen

First Appearance: Rama-Tut

Villain: Rama-Tut

Guest Appearance: Alicia Masters

Origin: Rama-Tut

Flashback Cameo: Puppet Master, Mole Man, Skrull, Doctor Doom

Gadgets & Technology: Ultra-Diode Ray

Synopsis: The team is in the Fantasti-car looking for the Thing. They land on Alicia’s apartment but no one is home. Johnny catches them walking along Central Park, and after lighting Ben's Corona cigar with his flame, he tells them Reed wants to see them both right away.

Ben is perturbed that Reed would bust up his date with Alicia, and wonders why Reed would demandto see Alicia anyway. Reed explains that while touring an exhibit on ancient Egypt, he found a hieroglyphic which demonstrated a vial that can restore sight may have been available back in ancient times. The mysteryof this is that the source of the cure is radioactive herbs, which shouldn't have been in existence back then, as well as the fact that this occurence happened during a time in Egypt's history in which nothingwas recorded otherwies. Reed proposes that if they use Dr. Doom’s time machine, they can go back and perhaps find a cure for Alicia’s blindness!

After finding the time machine in Doom's castle, they train Alicia to man the controls in orderto bring them back to the future when they are done. The FF travel back and land near the sphinx. They are immediately attacked by a battalion of soldiers on chariots. The Human Torch melts their spears while Thing wraps them up in their own armor. Reed snags their chariots and Sue turns invisible, avoiding capture. But suddenly, one-by-one their powers fail them and they faint.

The Fantastic Four are now captives, and taken before Rama-Tut, the pharoah who already knows who they are! He reveals the weapon which took their powers- his Ultra-Diode Ray- and claims it was designed in the year 3000. Rama-Tut tells them that he was born in that era, a time of peace and prosperity...and he hated it! He spent his time watching televised adventures in world history, from westerns to the heroism of the Fantastic Four. Designing a time machine in the form of the sphinx, he crashed in ancient Egypt. Unfortunately, he lost his sight in the crash, but in defending himself from mobs of Egyptians, he fired his advanced weaponry blindly into the crowd. Doing this, he frightened the Egyptians into servitude. They gave him an herb to restore his sight and made him Pharoah- and he has ruledever since.

Reed tries to snatch the weapon away from Rama-Tut but he hits them with more powerful rays that subjugate them. He presses them into duty doing menial tasks: Thing is sent to row their great ships while Reed is sent out to be a lookout for the military. The Human Torch becomes a court jester and Sue is coerced into becoming Rama-Tut’s bride. The teamcannot do anything to resist their lot.

Thing is rowing when the hot Egyptian sun changes him back to Ben Grimm. His manacles now too large, he escapes, and now free of the ray's influence, he races back to Rama-Tut’s palace. He steals the Ultra-Diode Ray gun and frees Sue as the sun’s rays wear off and he changes back into the Thing. Sue frees the Torch and he pelts Rama-Tut with fireballs. Rama-Tut escapes through a trap door.

The palace guards attack but Thing rips out a pillar and rolls it at them. The team frees Reed and he rolls away from the army in the shape of a wheel. Returning to the palace they find the hidden tunnel into the sphinx. Rama-Tut floods the room but the Torch boils off the rushing water. They scour the inside of the sphinx for Rama-Tut until they find a sealed capsule which blasts off. The capsule was the real time machine and Rama-Tut is inside. The team wonder who he really was...Reed theorizes that he could have even perhaps been a prior incarnation of Dr. Doom?

Sue finds the optic nerve restorative just as a self-destruct mechanism goes off inside the sphinx. They escape just in time for Doom’s time machine to reclaim them. Unfortunately, the optic nerve restorative was radioactive and could not travel forward in time with them. They have failed to restore Alicia’s sight.

--synopsis by Jonathan Clarke, aka doesitmatter, with Gormuu

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