“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!” Fantastic Four No. 85

24 Saturday Dec 2022

Posted by percivalhenry in The World's Greatest Comic Magazine

Tags

Dr. Doom, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four 85, Latveria

Fantastic Four 85
“Within This Tortured Land”
Published January 1969
Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Script: Lee
Pencils: Kirby
Inks: Joe Sinnott
Letters: Artie Simek

Synopsis

Fantastic Four 85 pick up where the last issue left off, with a de-powered FF stuck in Latveria, where Dr. Doom demands they fall in line like the rest of his subjects. The team is rendered unconscious after eating a meal laced with tranquilizers, then subjected to further hypnotic treatment.

Meanwhile, back in the US, the Invisible Girl is house hunting, and is taken to see an unusual, subterranean home with a mysterious provenance.

Back in Latveria, Doom proceeds to test an army of new, seemingly invulnerable robots on a pair of Latverians who attempt to escape. Doom then plans to unleash his new army on an entire Latverian village, where the rest of the FF are trapped.

What’s going on here?

This is an interesting and well-constructed issue. Unlike almost every FF comic that came before it, the Fantastic Four aren’t engaged in battle, not even with each other (the Thing is knocked out in one panel). The only real action sequences come when Doom’s prisoner attempt to flee and they battle his robots. The FF members in Latveria are almost inert, as they are hypnotized and powerless. Much of the comic devoted to Doom and his machinations.

The issue falls in the middle of longer arc, and from a story-telling perspective it make sense to establish the FF’s helpless predicament and set up the following two issues. But it’s definitely unusual for a comic from this era not to show its heroes in action, and I think it speaks to both Stan and Jack’s maturity as storytellers, and their faith that Marvel’s readers could handle a more deliberately paced story.

Speaking of Doom

As with last issue, this arc expands our understanding of Doom and his kingdom of Latveria. It’s very clear this story inspired Fantastic Four 258, a classic comic from 1983 written and drawn by John Byrne that focuses entirely on Doom (the FF never appear in their own comic).

Take, for example, this sequence where Doom is offended by his lackey, Hauptmann:

And compare it to these panels from FF 258:

As for Hauptmann, he makes his final appearance in FF 258:

In FF 85 we also see Doom out of his armor, a very rare occurrence, in an amazing Kirby splash. Doom’s new-found confidence about his appearance did not last long.

The sexist sixties

While the rest of the team is in Latveria, Sue is stuck back in the U.S., looking for a new house where she and Reed can raise their (still unnamed) new son. She looks impossibly glamorous while doing so.

She’s quickly surrounded by a group of kids who look a whole lot like the Newsboy Legion, characters Kirby co-created in the 1940s with Joe Simon, and would reintroduce in a few years in Jimmy Olsen when he left Marvel for DC.