There must have been a water-cooler discussion after describing all the technical details of the FF headquarters that led to the story in Fantastic Four #9 (Sep 1962). Reed Richards, leader of the Fantastic Four, level 12 intellect, the smartest man on Earth, decided to invest all the profits from his inventions into the stock market, which went belly up and now the Fantastic Four are broke and need to sell off everything.
The Thing is his characteristic rough self, chastising Reed for his foolishness, and then abandons his family to go visit “his blind friend, Alicia”, introduced last issue.
While Ben drinks some tea with Alicia, the remaining Fantastic Three lament that superheroes in some comic books never seem to have any money issues. A cheeky, not-so-subtle way for Stan Lee to point out that his magazine is different. Stan the Man would later use this “superhero needs money” situation pretty heavily in Spider-Man stories, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves.
What’s up with Sue’s orange hair in this panel?
Anyway, Alicia makes Ben see reason and he returns to the group, just as the gang gets a telegram offer to star in a motion picture for $1M dollars from S.M. Studios. Talk about timing! Talk about driving the plot forward! Ok, they’re off on a cute hitchhiking road trip to Hollywood. But what does S.M. Studios stand for, I wonder?
It turns out the Sub-Mariner caught wind of the FF’s predicament, bought a motion picture studio from all the sea treasure he collected and he wants to pay his arch-foes to star in a new film. Careful, 12th level intellect!
The Sub-Mariner takes Mr. Fantastic first to “Hidden Isle” to fight a movie-prop cyclops and leaves him there to die. Turns out it’s a real cyclops and Reed is in trouble for a couple panels. A nice little fight that lets Reed show off the usefulness of his powers, for once.
Next, Namor takes Johnny Storm to another island where the natives have a potion of fire immunity and leaves him there to die. Johnny out-smarts the natives, re-ignites the island’s volcano destroying their village (the natives escape).
Finally, Namor takes The Thing to the Hollywood beach for their big fight scene. Which results in the Sub-Mariner pounding the snot out of the Thing, until the Thing realizes that the source of Namor’s power is the water. Dragging him up the beach, Ben is about to finish off the weakened Sub-Mariner when a lightning bolt strikes Ben, causing another un-Thing moment. The Sub-Mariner takes advantage of this and knocks out the de-powered, non-rocky, Ben Grimm.
What was it all for? Seems like Namor wants Sue Storm to be his bride. Yes, I’m sure this plan was going to work: lie through your teeth, attempt to kill the other members of the team (including her brother!), and yeah I’m sure the Invisible Girl will hop at a chance to be your bride… Sue reacts in her typical manner. That is, she turns invisible and tries to escape. Namor shows that he can use “the radar sense of cave fish” to see Sue when she’s invisible. Great, take her one cool ability and nullify it.
The other members of the FF burst in and threaten to snot-beat Namor, but Sue… defends him for some reason?!? The Sub-Mariner keeps his word, finishes the film and pays the FF the moneys.