Fantastic Four 125
“The Monster’s Secret!”
Published: May 1972
Writer: Stan Lee
Pencils John Buscema
Inks: Joe Sinnott
Letters: John Costanza
Cover: Buscema and and Sinnott

Synopsis

The rest of the Fantastic Four attempts to rescue Sue from the underwater creature before it’s revealed it was never actually a threat.

What’s going on here

This is Stan Lee’s last issue as a regular writer of the Fantastic Four and it’s an unfortunately lackluster note to end on. The story feels thin and padded with unnecessary digressions, while the central question about the creature’s intentions for with Sue doesn’t have much tension since we know from the creature’s previous appearance that it’s a harmless alien. As a result, the twist at the end—the creature returned to cure its mate of a virus acquired on earth—felt sort of predictable. The final note, with the FF urging us to respect our differences, may be heartfelt but feels hokey. It’s the sort of earnest closing message Stan used early in the FF and by now feels sort of tired.

It’s probably worth pausing a moment to appreciate Stan’s amazing run as writer of the Fantastic Four. Between issue 1 and 125, he wrote, co-wrote or scripted (by my count) 119 regular issues and six annuals. That’s an impressive run for anyone, much less someone also writing a half dozen other comics and serving as editor and pitch-man for the entire line.

Trying to apportion credit for the Fantastic Four’s greatness between Stan and Jack Kirby feels like a fool’s errand. The (deserved) push to properly recognize Jack for his work at Marvel has unfortunately created a backlash diminishing Stan’s contributions (and it doesn’t help that Stan was part of the management of a company that cheated Jack of his due). According to some revisionist histories, Stan merely rubber stamped Jack’s stories. But I think it’s inarguable that for all of Jack’s genius, there would be no Fantastic Four as he know it without Stan as well.

From my perspective, it was a true partnership, where the sum of their contributions was greater than the whole. The Fantastic Four did tail off in the years after Jack left, but it was uneven during his last years on the book as well. And in many of the comics Stan wrote on his own or with John Buscema—particularly the recently concluded Air-Walker/ Galactus saga— there’s enough of the old FF energy to indicate it wasn’t Jack alone. And Jack’s work at DC is proof that he benefitted enormously from Stan’s scripting.

Today, Stan’s legacy is so tied up in his identity as the public face of Marvel, his cameos in the movies, and the ugly fights over copyrights, it’s easy to lose sight that, at his core, he was a damn good comic creator.

What I liked

Big John turns in his usual excellent work. I particularly liked this sequence:

And wet Johnny:

What I didn’t like

As mentioned above, the comic felt padded with a lot of filler. Reed escaping his doctors took up two pages. Ben finding transportation took another two pages. The story probably could have been told in one issue without losing much story and gaining some pace.

Overall

A muted milestone