“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” Fantastic Four No. 13

27 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by percivalhenry in World's Greatest Comic Magazine

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1963, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four 13, jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko

Fantastic Four 13
“The Red Ghost and his Indescribable Super Apes”
Published: Jan. 1963
Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Script: Lee
Pencils: Kirby
Inks: Steve Ditko
Letters: Art Simek
Cover: Jack Kirby and Don Heck

Synopsis

In his lab, Mr. Fantastic unveils his latest discovery to the rest of the team: A substance retrieved from a meteor crater in Arizona that provides “limitless energy.” He tells the team he intends to use to travel to the Moon, as he believes the “the reds” have found a similar substance in Siberia, and he wants to win the space race. The rest of the team persuades him to bring them along.

Meanwhile, “behind the Iron Curtain,” Ivan Kragoff launches his own rocket to the moon crewed by a team of trained apes. He leaves his ship unshielded to deliberately expose himself and the apes to the same cosmic rays that transformed the Fantastic Four. His plan works and the four gain powers.

Both ships land on the Blue Area of the Moon, which contains an oxygen atmosphere and the ruins of an ancient civilization. As the Thing confronts Kragoff, now called the Red Ghost, and his apes, the Watcher appears. An ancient alien tasked with observing the Earth, he instructs the Ghost and the FF to “fight it out” for control of the moon. The Ghost captures the Invisible Girl, but as a hostage, she manages to free the apes and foil the Ghost’s plan to use a disintegrator ray on the Human Torch. The Ghost tries to escape, but is bewildered in the Watcher’s house, and is captured by a paralysis ray invented by Reed. He escapes again, only to be pursued by his apes as the FF return to Earth.

What’s going on here?

Fantastic Four 13 marks the first appearance of the Red Ghost (and his Super Apes), a recurring villain who never quite rises to the ranks of the A-list, but appears in plenty of comics over the years.

More notably, it’s the first appearance of the Blue Area of the Moon and its most famous denizen, the Watcher. Both appear prominently over the years and across Marvel’s entire line of comics. The Watcher often serves as a Greek chorus, introducing particularly big stories—among them Uncanny X-Men 137 and the death of Phoenix—and “hosted” the What If? comic, where he would introduce stories from alternative timelines. Uatu was killed in 2014’s Original Sin crossover event (he less said about that the better) before being resurrected in last year’s Empyre crossover.

As originally drawn by Kirby in FF 13, the Watcher (not yet named Uatu) has spindly limbs and an enormous head, giving him a distinctly alien appearance.

A few years later, in FF 48, Kirby made him significantly beefier.

By the time What If? 1 comes out in 1977, he’s pretty much unrecognizable.

It’s not until John Byrne takes the reins of the FF does he revert back to his original proportions.

FF 13 also introduced the Blue Area of the Moon, another fixture of the Marvel universe. Created by the Skrulls, it became the home of the Inhuman’s city of Attilan, and featured prominently in X-Men 137, as a battleground between the X-Men and the Shi”ar Imperial guard. Byrne, then the X-Men’s penciler, drew heavily on FF 13 for his images of the Blue Area.

Both the FF and the X-Men arrive at the same location, for example:

Later, both the FF and the X-Men pass the same alien machinery

The homage extends to a sequence when the Ghost invades the Watcher’s home, which Byrne duplicates with Wolverine.

Fantastic Four 13 is also notable as the only regular issue of the comic inked by Steve Ditko (he also inked stories in a pair of annuals). Ditko, better know as the penciler of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, is a good choice here, given the story has few Kirby-esque brawls, but is more about the spooky landscapes Ditko excels at. Despite that, I think his influence is most noticeable in close ups of the FF, and particularly Reed.

Red Menace

The Cold War and space race features prominently in the comic. Reed is determined to beat “the reds” to the Moon, while Kragoff wants to the extend the “communist empire.” Stan is notably averse to mentioning the Soviet Union by name even if Kragoff’s ship features a hammer and sickle.

They’re fighting again

This time it seems more playful.

Dig That Kirby Krackle

This is a fun sequence.

And so is this panel.

Oops

It seems like Stan is trying to explain why Jack drew this thing.

The sexist sixties

More cringing from Sue

For sale

A mint (9.8) edition of FF 13 will cost you about $68,000

Next issue: The Puppet-Master and the Sub-Mariner team up!

“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” Fantastic Four No. 12

21 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by percivalhenry in The World's Greatest Comic Magazine

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1962, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four 12, Hulk, jack Kirby, Stan Lee

Fantastic Four 12
“The Incredible Hulk”
Published Dec. 1962
Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Script: Lee
Pencils: Kirby
Inks: Dick Ayers
Cover: Kirby and Ayers

Synopsis

Ben Grimm and Alicia Masters are leaving the symphony when a company of soldiers mistake Ben for the Hulk and try to capture him. Later, at the (still unnamed) Baxter Building, General Thunderbolt Ross tells the Fantastic Four the Army is searching for the Hulk, who it believes is destroying military hardware. The team discusses how they would capture the Hulk.

The FF and Ross fly to the southwest in a newly remodeled Fantasticar, where the meet Bruce Banner (secretly the Hulk, of course), his sidekick Rick Jones, and his new assistant Karl Kort. Banner and Jones try to persuade Ross and the FF that the Wrecker, not the Hulk, is not responsible for the damage but the FF persist in investigating. While leaving, Kort drops his wallet and when Jones finds it, he discovers Kort is a communist. Kort—in a Scoobey-Doo-esque plot twist that should surprise no one—is revealed to be the Wrecker, and takes Jones prisoner. He then blackmails the Hulk to drive the FF out of the area.

The FF searches for the Hulk in the tunnels beneath the military installation, and he finally confronts them. After a battle, the Hulk is knocked out by a ray from a giant robot wielded by the Wrecker. The Thing and the Invisible Girl apprehend Kort while the Hulk escapes.

What’s going on here?

It takes an extremely convoluted story to do it, but after 12 issues, the Fantastic Four finally cross over with another headliner in the Marvel Universe. This same month, the FF will also make a brief appearance in Amazing Spider-Man 1. These stories firmly plant the FF in the same interconnected world as other Marvel characters, and helps establish the pattern of cross overs and tie-ins that knit together the Marvel universe. That shared universe is big part of the secret sauce that makes comics, and later Marvel’s movies, so addictive to fans. It’s both the fear of missing out on a vital chapter, and the rewards that come from knowing the full story. Marvel would of course learn to cynically exploit this later with massive crossover events, but for fans who first encountered it here in its embryonic stage, it much have been thrilling.

The story also features a fight between the Hulk and the Thing, the first of dozens of times they tangled. It takes 17 pages to get there, and Stan violates the first rule of writing by telling us, instead of showing us, what a big deal it is with a caption describing it as “one of the most dramatic moments in the history of adventure-fantasy.”

Given their roles as Marvel’s two biggest, baddest bruisers, it’s perhaps inevitable they would fight frequently. The Hulk—stronger and more ferocious—usually comes out on top, although the Thing occasionally scores a moral victory, often by displaying more “heart.”

While there are far too many of these fights to recount here, (although blogger John Cimino valiantly tries to do so in his Hero Envy blog here) here’s a taste of them fighting in the 1970s …

FF 166 (1975, art by George Perez and Vince Coletta)

… in the 1980s …

FF 320 (1988, art by Keith Pollard and Joe Sinnott). FYI, both the Thing and Hulk were mutated away from their classic forms during this stretch.

… in the 1990s …

Rampaging Hulk 5 (1998, art by Rick Leonardi and Dan Green)

… and this century.

FF 13, vol. 6 (2019, art by Sean Izaakse)

New wheels

The issue debuts the new, more space-age Fantasticar. The older “flying bathtub” version will still make occasional appearences.

They’re fighting again

This time everyone joins in.

The sixties are sexist

After last issue’s defense of Sue’s contributions to the team, we sink to new lows with more painful stereotyping.

Kirby Krackle

Check out this cool sequence of Ben fighting the soldiers.

The red menace

Not only does Rick Jones feel entitled to go through Kort’s wallet, but he is horrified by what he discovers.

It’s an honor

The FF is treated to a rare military parade, according to Stan. At least Reed and Ben are veterans.

For Sale

Thanks to the appearance by the Hulk, FF 12 will set you back about $200,000

Next issue: The Red Ghost and his Super Apes!

“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” Fantastic Four No. 11

14 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by percivalhenry in The World's Greatest Comic Magazine

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1963, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four 11, Impossible Man, jack Kirby, Stan Lee

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Fantastic Four 11
“A Visit with the Fantastic Four” and “The Impossible Man”
Published: Feb. 1963
Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Script: Lee
Pencils: Kirby
Inks: Dick Ayers
Cover: Kirby

Synopsis

This is an unusual issue in that there are two short stories instead of one, full-length story. The first is devoted to character building and revealing more of the Fantastic Four’s back story, allegedly in response to readers’ requests. The plot, if you can call it that, begins with the FF showing off in front of their fans, then reading fan mail after Ben is (again) temporarily turned human again by a concotion of Reed’s. They recount the team’s origins, filling in some important details about Reed and Ben’s time together in college and in the military, before they have a surprise birthday party for Sue.

The second story introduces the Impossible Man, a recurring character—slash—blight from the planet Poppup who reappears over the years. In this story, the FF are summoned to capture the Impossible Man, who can change his form into any object or substance. After futilely chasing him around New York, Reed decides it’s best to ignore him and the Impossible Man grows bored and eventually returns home.

What’s going on here

Both stories are significant, although for very different reasons. For better or worse (and it’s mostly been worse), the Impossible Man is an established part of the Marvel Universe, showing up over the decades in stories that tend to be full of gags and fourth-wall breaking. Your mileage may vary, but I tend to loathe these stories, which often feel self-indulgent and pointlessly silly. He’s very much a character of the Silver Age, and a reminder that these publications are called “comic books” for a reason. The Impossible Man owes a lot to Plastic Man, a Golden Age character with similar powers and tone, but his role as antagonist to the FF is most reminiscent of that of DC’s Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite, who would make life miserable for Superman and Batman (and their readers), respectively.

In the first story, Stan and Jack eschew the normal conventions of the genre, dispensing with a villain and fight, and instead spend 10 pages developing the characters and filling in some of the blanks of their story. We learn that Reed and Ben were roommates in college, where Ben was a football star “from the wrong side of the tracks” while Reed was a pipe-smoking “millionaire’s son.” We also discover the served in World War II—Ben as a pilot in the Pacific theater, Reed as an OSS operative—placing their ages around 40 in 1961. That eventually gets retconned as another, unnamed conflict as Marvel’s sliding time scale means they are too young to be WWII veterans.

We also learn how Reed and Sue met, when Reed describes them as “kids together living next door to each other.” Sue continues to be ambivalent about Reed in this issue, which he attributes to her interest in the Sub-Mariner.

Growing up as kids would suggest they were roughly the same age, but later stories establish Reed as significantly older than Sue. In Fantastic Four 291, from 1986, John Byrne describes Sue as a 12-year old (who looks like a six-year-old, complete with doll) with a crush on the college-aged Reed.

Later creators realized the creepiness of that scenario, and in 2013, writer Matt Fraction retconned Byrne’s retcon, making Sue more age appropriate.

The editors were upfront about the need to address the age issue (thanks to Brian Cronin in CBR.com for detailing this history).

They’re (not) fighting again

Fantastic Four 11 contains a nice moment where Johnny, concerned about the implications of Ben reverting back to human, reveals his actual feelings about his frequent sparring partner. (A TR-4 is apparently a sports car made by Triumph).

Meet the Yancy Street Gang …

FF 11 also marks the first time Bn is pranked by the Yancy Street Gang, a group from his old neighborhood on the Lower East Side. The Yancy Street Gang becomes another recurring feature of the FF, and Yancy Street (a riff on the real-life Delancy Street) grows in importance as a touchstone for Ben over the decades. The FF’s current headquarters is located there.

… and Willie Lumpkin

We’re also introduced to Willie Lumpkin (referred to here as Mr. Lumpkin, or Lumpy), the FF’s elderly letter carrier with the “power” to wiggle his ears.

In a fun bit of casting, Stan Lee played Willie in the 2005 Fantastic Four movie.

The sexist sixties

In a strange sequence, Sue recoils at the letters that point out that she’s not pulling her weight on the team (probably an accurate reflection of the real-life letters Marvel was getting).

Before noting the times Sue has rescued the rest of the team, against the Skrulls and Dr. Doom, Reed makes a bizarre analogy to Abraham Lincoln’s reverence for his mother as evidence of Sue’s value (and of course the FF has a bust of Honest Abe in their home. Who doesn’t?).

Ben later suggests if readers want to watch women fight, they should “go see lady wrestlers.”

Let’s talk about us

The issue opens with a knockout Kirby splash page with the FF, dressed like they’re in the 1940s, lining up to buy the latest edition of the Fantastic Four comic.

For sale

A mint (9.8) issue of FF 11 is worth about $49,000.

Pin up

The Sub-Mariner gets his own pin-up

Next issue: The FF meet the Incredible Hulk!

“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” Fantastic Four No. 10

06 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by percivalhenry in The World's Greatest Comic Magazine

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1962, Dr. Doom, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four 10, jack Kirby, Stan Lee

Fantastic Four 10
“The Return of Doctor Doom”
Published: October 1962
Plot: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Script: Lee
Pencils: Kirby
Inks: Dick Ayers
Cover: Kirby and Ayers

Synopsis

A meandering start to the comic is revealed to be a case of writer’s block from creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who are plotting the issue only to be interrupted by Dr. Doom. Doom, last seen lost in space, was rescued by an the Ovoids, an alien race that taught him to the ability of transferring his mind into another body. They returned him to earth, and Doom demands Lee summon Reed Richards so that Doom can capture him and switch minds.

As planned, the rest of the FF arrive to rescue Reed, who unbeknowst to them is in the body of Doom. Doom, in the body of Reed, emprisons Reed and convinces the rest of the team to undergo a shrinking process he says will make them more powerful, but will actually reduce them to nothingness. Reed escapes and before the team undergoes the shrinking process, Johnny uses his powers to create a mirage of dynamite. While Reed (as Doom) tries to prevent it from exploding, Doom (as Reed) flees, each revealing their true nature. Confronted, a distracted Doom lets his mental power slip and he and Reed switch bodies again, returning to their true selves. As Doom tries to escape, he accidentally triggers the shrinking ray, which renders him microscopic.

What’s going on here?

Aside from the return of Doom, this convoluted story is notable for the extremely meta insertion of the creators of the comic into the comic itself. Prior to this issue, members of the FF referred to comics, and Johnny read an issue of the Hulk, but this is the first indication that there is an in-universe Fantastic Four comic that recounts their adventures. We also learn the team is actively involved in telling their own stories to Stan and Jack, who appear in the comic (and on the cover!) but without ever revealing their faces

The conceit returns on occasion, often as a comedic device but occasionally in more serious stories, such as Fantastic Four 261, where author John Byrne is summoned into space to witness the trial of Reed Richards. The likelihood of a comic creator inserting him or herself into a story seems directly correlated to the size of the creator’s ego. (This device is similar but different from the fourth-wall breaking of comics like She-Hulk, Deadpool, and Animal Man, where the characters understand they are in a comic, and address the reader or creator directly).

The old switcheroo

The story also is the first instance of Doom switching bodies with someone else, a power he manifests over the decades, although I don’t recall the Ovoids being mentioned again. He switches bodies with Reed at least one more time I’m aware of, in an arc written by Chris Claremont around the year 2000. In that story, the switch is performed by a Celestial, not Doom himself.

FF 27, vol. 3. Art by Salvador Larroca and Art Thibert

Back in issue 10, Doom (as Reed) talks more like a 30s gangster than the monarch of an Eastern European country.

Trapped!

In one of the story’s odder moments, Reed, Sue, and Johnny are stuck in Reed’s lab because the “nuclear lock mechanism” is jammed. It’s yet another reminder of how atomic power is sprinkled liberally across these stories. And while the trio spend a page being trapped, it doesn’t advance the story in any way, save to show that Stan and Jack are spinning their wheels.

Weird science

Doom, as Reed, comes up with a pseudo-scientific explanation of why the rest of the team should subject themselves to his shrinking ray (he later concedes it’s bullshit and that Reed would never have fallen for it).

Later, Johnny uses his powers to create a mirage of a stick of dynamite so real both Reed and Doom fall for it.

We get a demonstration of unstable molecules at work in Reed’s suit and hat.

And Doom invokes nuclear power again as he fires the “sub-miniature transistor powered atomic blast gun” housed in the index finger of his armor (this weapon reappears, but never with such an awesome name).