“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” Fantastic Four No. 7

14 Sunday Feb 2021

Posted by percivalhenry in The World's Greatest Comic Magazine

Tags

1962, Fantastic Four, fantastic Four 7, jack Kirby, Stan Lee

Fantastic Four 7
“Prisoners of Kurrgo, Master of Planet X”
Published: July 1962
Plot: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Script: Lee
Pencils: Kirby
Inks: Dick Ayers (uncredited)
Cover: Kirby

Synopsis

On Planet X, Kurrgo sends a spaceship piloted by a robot to capture the Fantastic Four to help him prevent the destruction of his people from a collision with a runaway asteroid, Meanwhile, on Earth, the Fantastic Four are feted at a dinner held by Congress when Kurrgo’s robot, now on Earth, unleashes an energy ray that turns the people against them. After escaping the police and military, the FF accept the ultimatum offered by the robot: perish at the hands of your countrymen or come to Planet X. Once on Planet X, Reed invents a gas that shrinks the planet’s population to tiny size, enabling them to fit on its spaceship. Kurrgo, however, plots to keep the enlarging gas for himself, planning to rule his countrymen as a giant, but encumbered by the gas canister he fails to reach the ship before it takes off. As the FF return to earth, Reed reveals there never was an enlarging gas, but he made it up so the citizens of Planet X would accept shrinking.

This is the first issue to appear on its new monthly schedule, a mark of the comic’s growing popularity.

What’s going on here?

After encounters with the Sub-Mariner and Dr. Doom in the last three issues, the FF return to the Silver Age, in this silly science fiction-flavored story. It’s part of a series of comics where the FF are forced do a villain’s bidding (as they did in FF 5 with Doom), although in this case Reed admits they didn’t really need to go to Planet X, but he was curious and wanted to check it out.

The story is pretty unremarkable. Kirby gets to draw some cool outer-space stuff, we get some character building moments as the FF fret about attending a fussy dinner, and once again Reed’s genius saves the day (although he was kind of a dick about it). Kurrgo makes one more appearance, in 1973’s Marvel Feature 11, but he’s as forgettable a villain as the FF ever fight. The Marvel wikipedia identifies Planet X as Xanth, and extrapolates some details about Xanthians, but they too only appear once more.

Really, the only event of significance is it marks the first time the Human Torch goes “super nova,” a manifestation of his powers where he can “attain the greatest heat in the universe.”

Johnny’s nova power becomes part of his arsenal of tricks and is used repeatedly over the years, although perhap never with as much spectacular impact as in Fantastic Four 600, where he uses it to incinerate Annihilus’s army as it prepares to invade Earth from the Negative Zone.

The Sexist Sixties

The FF’s invitation to a dinner in their honor gives Stan and Jack ample opportunity to trot out some stereotypes:

Talk to my decorator

At the dinner in their honor, Reed is presented with an odd trophy from an official in a bolo tie. Apparently the FF don’t yet merit medals of honor.