Fantastic Four 63 “Blastaar, the Living Bomb-Burst!” Published: March 1963 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Sam Rosen Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Synopsis
Fantastic Four 63 picks up where the previous issue left off, after the Inhuman Triton rescued Mr. Fantastic from the Negative Zone, allowing Blastaar to enter their dimension. Blastaar, now allied with the Sandman, uses his power to create an explosion on the roof to the Baxter Building, leading Triton to confront him.
Blastaar defeats the Inhuman, and he and the Sandman then battle the Human Torch, who had been canoodling in a restaurant with his love interest Crystal, on the streets of Manhattan. The Thing soon joins the battle, but the Sandman traps him and dumps him into the river. Finally, Mr. Fantastic enters the fray with a helmet designed to negate Blastaar’s power. After further struggle, they eventually neutralize Blastaar while Ben disperses the Sandman in the river.
What’s going on here?
This is a fun, action-packed comic that’s pretty much one rollicking battle from the first page to the last. Unlike the last dozen or so issues, there’s no interludes updating us on the progress of the Inhumans or Johnny and Wyatt — those plot lines were effectively wrapped up last issue, and the team (plus Crystal) is intact. There are also no subplots or quiet moments, no family scenes in the Baxter Building or with Ben and Alicia, just a lot of fighting. The action is magnified with bigger-than-usual panels — many pages divided into just four panels, instead of the normal six. The FF would be a much-diminished comic if every issue was like this one, but every now and then it’s satisfying to seem them just cut loose for 22 pages.
Starting with this issue, and in virtually every subsequent appearance, Blastaar is called “the living bomb-burst.” I had assumed a “bomb-burst” would be a thing readers were familiar with, but I never knew quite what it meant, and searching the internet reveals it’s actually not a common phrase. There’s the “bombs bursting in air” lyric from the Star-Spangled Banner, of course, and there’s an aerobatic maneuver called a bomb-burst, but otherwise it seems to be something Stan just invented.
Perhaps intentionally, Blastaar is also highly bombastic, and rants and raves about his power in the best Marvel villain tradition. Maybe it has something to do with being from the Negative Zone, because Annihilus is also a very strong ranter-and-raver.
(Also, and there’s no delicate way to phrase this, it’s possible Blastaar is compensating for what appears to be his missing male genitalia. Or maybe his species just reproduces some other way).
Weird science
Naturally, the New York Police Department has a cement gun on hand.
And Reed has “healing balms” at his disposal (and I’m not hydrogenous means what Reed thinks it means).
Fist fighting
Apparently boxing isn’t a sport in the Negative Zone
Bang! Pow!
There are some excellent sound effects in this comic.
The sexist sixties
Sue does virtually nothing in this issue except whimper and cringe.
Clobberin’ Time
A very good set up and deliver from Mr. Grimm.
Dig that Kirby Krackle
This sequence with Triton fighting Blastaar is textbook Kirby (note the fist-fighting).
Fantastic Four 62 “And One Shall Save Him!” Published: Feb. 1967 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Sam Rosen Cover: Kirby and Frank Giacoia
Synopsis
Fantastic Four 62 picks up where the last issue left off, with Mr. Fantastic tumbling through the Negative Zone toward the “exploding area” while the rest of the team watches helplessly through a scanner in the Baxter Building. The Inhuman Crystal and her teleporting dog Lockjaw then appear—Crystal has been looking for the Human Torch for about a dozen issues now—and she offers to help.
We then cut to a Mediterranean island where the rest of the Inhumans repel an invasion by a hostile army. Crystal arrives and explains the situation, and Black Bolt dispatches Triton to save Reed.
Back in the Negative Zone, a space craft drops off a menacing package near where Reed flounders, soon revealed to be the villain Blastaar. Triton then appears and rescues Reed, and as they return to our dimension, Blastaar sneaks in behind them. He is then confronted by the Sandman, who has been on the roof of the Baxter Building since the last issue, and they form an alliance. The issue concludes with the happy reunions of Reed and Sue and Johnny and Crystal.
What’s going on here?
A bit of an unsatisfying issue. For one, despite the promise of the cover, Blastaar —a major villain making his first appearance—doesn’t fight the FF in this issue. He appears, but there’s no confrontation—they don’t even intersect with each other. More significantly, the rescue of Reed is incredibly anticlimactic. Instead of Reed figuring out some scientific whammy, or Ben plunging into the Negative Zone after him, he’s rescued by Triton in a development that comes out of left field. And Triton just … goes and gets him. It’s explained that Triton’s ability to navigate the ocean depths makes him uniquely suited for this mission, but the rescue seems pretty straightforward. There’s no real drama or unusual heroics required.
The arrival of Crystal does serve to reunite her and Johnny, resolving their soap opera separation that began in issue 48. We also get a lot of Inhumans action, seemingly setting them up for their own series.
They didn’t get their own book until 1970, however, and even that they had to share with the Black Widow. As I recall, the mistreatment of the Inhumans was another factor that led to Jack leaving Marvel for DC.
Negative Zone
FF 62 also marks the first time the Negative Zone is really understood to be an alien dimension, complete with its own races and civilizations. Blastaar is he first villain to appear, but eventually we’ll be introduced to Annihillus, a first-tier bad guy.
The Negative Zone becomes a major part of the FF’s mythos, and Reed and the FF are often either exploring it or using it place to store undesirables, such as when Reed created a prison there during the Civil War.
Civil War Front Line 5 (2006, Ramon Rachs and John Lucas)
Kirby Kollage
This is the first double-page splash in 62 issues of the Fantastic Four, and another amazing Kirby collage. Unfortunately I don’t have the tools to stitch the two pages together properly.
Welcome to a very belated round up of the 15 books I read in 2021 (honestly, I meant to do this in January). I fell way short of my goal of reading 24 books, or two a month, but as will be clear, I read some monstrously long books that put 24 out of reach. As I do every year, I try to mix up my reading, between fiction and non-fiction, sci-fi and literary fiction, classics and lesser known stuff. And as in years past, my reading was divided between books I have had on my list for years and books I chanced upon, many at our local library’s book sale. Over the last few years I have tried to be more deliberate about the diversity of the authors I read, with mixed success.
1, Money: The True Story of a Made Up Thing, by Jason Goldstein (2020)
This is a fun and fast tour through the history of money and finance by a guy I’ve know for years. Jake finds a lot of quirky details and anecdotes to enliven the subject, and goes deep into some corners of the financial world —the invention of money market funds, for example—that are often overlooked in discussions about the history of capitalism. Given the rise of crytocurrencies, Jake’s essential question—why do we believe in money?—seems extremely relevant
2, The Moth and the Mountain, by Ed Caesar (2020)
This was a Christmas present, and would appear to be just the sort of book I would go for, combining history, mountaineering and adventure. But the story, about Maurice Wilson, a World War I veteran fixated on flying to Nepal and climbing Everest, never is more than the sum of the parts. In part, it’s because Caesar struggles to pin down Wilson, an apparent flimflam man whose motivations always seem murky. And in part, because the most dramatic aspect of the story, the actual attempt to climb Everest, is basically undocumented, and so feels like a footnote to his story.
3, The Powerful and the Damned, by Lionel Barber (2020)
I realize now this is the third recent nonfiction release I read in a row, which is highly unusual for me. Usually there’s more variety in my choices, but I read this one for work, in preparation for an interview with Barber, which I wrote about for Quartz. It’s an engaging book, written by a professional name dropper who met and interviewed everyone from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin and is happy to share his personal and sometimes snarky views about them all. Barber ran the Financial Times during the financial crisis and Brexit, but for media insiders, his accounts of the newspaper’s sale to Japan’s Nikkei might be of the most interest.
4, The Stand, by Stephen King (1978)
Reason one I didn’t reach 24 books last year was this 1,300 page monster. I am a late convert to King, and since I am more of a sci-fi guy then a horror fan, this was always high on my list to read. It didn’t disappoint, although it did ramble at times, and the King heroic archetype—the underestimated working-class white guy—feels a bit cliched at this point. Still, the rich character development, and the ambition and size of it all, made it an engrossing read.
5, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, by Sean Howe (2013)
As a lifelong comic book collector, it was a only a matter of time before I read this. There weren’t a lot of surprises in it for me, but it did fill in a lot of gaps in my understanding. Interestingly, this book is a business history more than a cultural history, and the big takeaway is the consistent shortsightedness of Marvel’s management. Whatever were triumphs of its artists and writers, they were despite, not because, of their bosses.
6, Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishigiro (2006)
After the previous year’s disappointment reading Ishigiro’s The Buried Giant, I wasn’t quite ready to write him off. It was a good call, because this is a powerful, heartbreaking story. A slow burn, it begins as a deep dive into the lives of children at an English boarding school before revealing itself as a dystopian parable. It’s sad, thought-provoking and one of the best books I read last year.
7, Beyond the 100th Meridian, by Wallace Stegner (1953)
I bought this in Flagstaff on a family vacation to the Grand Canyon, in part because it’s about the Colorado river and the western landscape, and because I’ve never read anything about Stegner and always wanted to. It’s a biography of 19th century explore and scientist John Wesley Powell, and it’s really two books on one. The first half is about Powell’s expedition to float the length of the Colorado, which no one had done previously. The second is about his later career as a a government official with the US Geologic Survey, and the politics and policies that shaped the settling of the American west. The first part of the book was thrilling, the second was a bit wonky but deeply interesting as it explains a lot about why the US west looks the way it does today.
8, The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jeminson (2015)
“World building” is a bit of a science fiction cliché but there sure is a lot of it in this book. Jemison’s trilogy got a lot of attention, and most of it is deserved, as she describes a world where geologic events play a central role, and the mutants that can shape them are shunned and feared. There are some obvious metaphors about race, and a plot twist that wasn’t that hard to see coming, but in all a pretty satisfying read. I didn’t, however, feel compelled to read the rest of the trilogy. Maybe some day.
9, Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir (2021)
My teenage son and I listened to this as a book on tape (yes, I am counting audio books) during a long road trip across the midwest and it felt like a great choice. Like in Weir’s The Martian, there’s a lot of hard science, but it’s offered in such a palatable way that it’s never a struggle and instead makes the outlandish plot almost convincing. The story, about a scientist battling an alien menace, is told as a series of digressions, which seemed like an unnecessarily complicated structure but on the whole the book is fast-paced fun and by the time we reach the end, surprisingly moving.
10, Crazy Horse, by Larry McMurtry (1999)
I picked this up at Mt. Rushmore, near the Crazy Horse monument. Not a lot is known about Crazy Horse, the Sioux warrior and mystic, and McMurtry, author of massive books like Lonesome Dove, wisely doesn’t try to pad out the story. Instead, we have a slim, spare, well-told account of Crazy Horse’s life at the end of a Native culture and the beginning of a genocide.
11, The Path to Power, by Robert Caro (1982)
The other monster I read in 2021, and probably by proudest reading accomplishment of the year, was the first volume in Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson. At some point, maybe after reading excerpts of Caro’s most recent book in the New Yorker, I vowed to read his LBJ series, one a year, until I was done (I’m currently reading the second). This first volume, which takes us up to LBJ’s first senate campaign in 1941, when he was about 30, is an amazing achievement of reporting and writing. Caro not only carefully unfolds every detail of LBJ’s early years, but spends whole chapters explaining the geology, economy and history of the Texas Hill Country from whence he came. Calling it the Sistine Chapel of journalism doesn’t seem like an exaggeration. It can be hard to read at times, not out of any fault of Caro’s, but because LBJ is so vile, amoral and unlikeable.
12, The Magician’s Assistant, by Ann Patchett (1997)
Ann Patchett wrote an amazing essay in the New Yorker about her three fathers (two are step-fathers) and after that I thought I would try her fiction. This books is unlike most books I read—it’s a quiet, contemporary story about a woman processing grief, in which most of the main characters are female—but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It took a little while to build up speed but the second half flies by.
13, A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine (2019)
More science fiction. If I recall, I picked this up as a free review copy that made its way to Quartz. It’s structured like an old-fashioned space opera with an intriguing premise, about a civilization that takes on the memories of their predecessors, and where verse and poetry have enormous cultural capital. Unfortunately, Martine (a nom de plume for Anna Linden Weller, a US historian) never really achieves escape velocity, and the plot, about an out-of-her-depth provincial ambassador in the empire’s capital solving a murder, seems to be mostly series of meetings and conferences before an obligatory action sequence ending.
14, The Good Earth, by Pearl Buck (1931)
I picked this up at our local library’s book sale, mostly out of curiosity. It’s a book I knew mostly by reputation, but had never encountered it or had to read it in school (apparently that’s where many people encounter it). I thought it was fascinating. Written by the daughter of missionaries who grew up in rural China, it’s the story of a peasant who endures hardships and famine as he builds wealth and raises a family in an almost medieval society. Buck is sympathetic to Wang Lung but doesn’t romanticize him or his callous treatment of his wife and children. While dated in parts, the book still feels like a valuable window on an element of Chinese history and culture that seems relevant today.
15, The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller (2012)
Another library-sale pick up. I would categorize this book as literary post-apocalyptic fiction, and include Station Eleven in the same category. This isn’t as good as Station Eleven, but it’s still pretty good, blending action and adventure with some beautiful nature writing and philosophizing about what it means to be alive. The plot concerns an amateur pilot who lost his wife and most everything else to a superflu, and now lives in a Colorado airport with his dog and a slightly terrifying survivalist. The story veers into cliches at times, and some plot developments are just too convenient, and at times the book made me wonder if I wasn’t really reading the treatment for a movie.
Fantastic Four 61 “Where Stalks the Sandman!” Published: January 1967 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Sam Rosen Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Synopsis
With the conclusion of the Doom/Surfer story arc in the last issue, Fantastic Four 61 starts off with a bang, as Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman and the Thing are attacked by the equipment (the “atom igniter,” among other devices) in Reed’s lab. Eventually their antagonist is revealed to be the Sandman, who has turned the FF’s devices against them, although it’s never really explain how. The FF and the Sandman battle, and are eventually joined by the Human Torch.
Meanwhile, in a pair of digressions, the Silver Surfer’s board returns to him with his powers, allowing him to escape Latveria, and the Inhuman Crystal teleports with Lockjaw to a Metro College football game in search of Johnny.
During the FF’s fight with the Sandman, the villain generates poisonous gasses. To escape, Reed opens the portal to the Negative Zone, and while Johnny and the Sandman escape, Reed is sucked into the other dimension. The issue end on a cliffhanger with Reed’s fate unknown.
What’s going on here?
This is an interesting issue. It starts off as a fairly pedestrian story, and one that felt a lot like issue 57, when the FF also fought the Sandman in the Baxter Building. But the story takes a surprising and dramatic turn when Reed opens the door to the Negative Zone and tumbles through, leading to a genuinely suspenseful ending and compelling pathos as the rest of the team watches him float away. The issue also has some stand-out pages from Kirby and Sinnott.
There are, of course, a whole lot of implausibilities in this issue, starting with how the Sandman, up until now a lunkhead, managed to hijack Reed’s devices. Then there’s the question why Reed’s devices are so vulnerable—at one point Sandman leans against a lever and threatens New York (this also happens to be an excel Joe Sinnott panel):
FF 61 also continues the almost sadistic torture of the Silver Surfer that began in issue 57. Oddly, while we saw his baord begin its return to him in the last issue, it didn’t arrive until this issue (“at that very moment”). The FF were able to fly across the Atlantic in the time his board crossed Latveria.
And like every issue for the last five or so, we have an obligatory Inhumans check-in. In this one, Crystal looks unusually curvy.
Who is that guy?
An unannounced (and unacknowledged) cameo from a certain Daily Bugle photographer.
Costume change
This issue also marks a new costume for the Sandman,a much more Kirby-esque getup than the striped shirt Steve Ditko gave him. You can almost sense Jack chafing at having to draw such a drab costume for some many issues up to now.
The sexist sixies
More gender-role conformity
Clobberin’ Time
This is a pretty good one, with it’s own font and everything.
Weird science
Watch out for those spectrum beams!
Crazy credits
They’ve been pretty tame the last few issues, but we get a bit of flourish here.
For sale
A computer for $4.99. It’s a great deal, because a similar device made by IBM in 1967 cost about $4 million.
Dig that Kirby Krackle
So much awesomeness in this issue! Like this sequence:
Fantastic Four 60 “The Peril and the Power!” Published: Dec. 1966 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Sam Rosen Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Synopsis
Fantastic Four 60 picks up where issue 59 left off, with Dr. Doom preparing to conquer Earth with the stolen power of the Silver Surfer. As the Thing rages in frustration, Mr. Fantastic urges patience as the Army is building a weapon he designed. But when Wyatt Wingfoot tells the team the Human Torch has gone after Doom on his own, the rest of the FF flies off in pursuit.
Johnny is defeated by Doom, and when the rest of the FF approach, he destroys their aircraft before battling the Thing in hand-to-hand combat. Doom and the FF then fight for most of the rest of the issue until Reed’s “anti-cosmic flying wing”—which we saw a glimpse of in the last issue—appears and stuns Doom. Doom then chases it into the stratosphere when he loses his powers, the result of the barrier Galactus placed around earth to prevent the Silver Surfer from escaping. This issue ends with the Surfer’s board heading back to the castle in Latveria where he was imprisoned.
What’s going on here?
FF 60 wraps up the four-issue arc start that started when Doom stole the Surfer’s powers in FF 57, and the 16 issue stretch, starting in FF 44 with the introduction of the Inhumans, that marks the apex of the Lee/Kirby run. To recap, in a bit more than a year, Stan and Jack introduced Gorgon, Crystal, Karnak, Triton, Lockjaw, Black Bolt, Maximus, Attilan, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, “the power cosmic”, the ultimate nullifier, Wyatt Wingfoot, Wakanda, the Black Panther, Klaw, Prester John, and Quasimodo, and along the way wrote FF 51, a one-shot many consider one of the greatest stand-alone comics of all time. It’s not that there weren’t great issues before and after, but every mountain has a peak, and FF 44-60 is Stan and Jack’s.
Given all that, FF 60 feels like a bit of a let down. The concept animating this arc—Doom stealing the Surfer’s power—is brilliant, and as I’ve said before, really cements Doom as a formidable villain. Up until this point he’d been crafty, but stealing the Surfer’s power added an element of ruthlessness and grandiosity that we’ll see again and again over the years. But the story’s end doesn’t live up to its beginning and middle: the business with the flying wing feels rushed, and when Doom is stripped of his powers, it happens basically off-camera and explained only in Reed’s narration.
The scene seems designed for a dramatic Kirby panel, with Doom crashing into Galactus’s barrier, so it’s a puzzle why we don’t see it. It’s possible Jack ran out of room to finish the story, something we have seen in earlier issues. Or maybe plans for another issue wrapping up the arc were dropped, meaning they had to cram the endinging into this one. In any event, it’s shame, because as a story-telling mechanism, it’s a great device: Doom, like Icarus, challenges the gods and is pushed for his hubris.
Who invited them?
FF 60 features a few odd cameo appearances. The Inhumans show up for a few panels, as the the royal family makes its way from its refuge. We’ve been following their story for a while now, so the subplot isn’t too surprising, but it is jarring when it appear in the middle of a the FF’s fight with Doom.
Stranger is the appearance of the Watcher, who observes the FF’s struggles, when (for once) obits his vow of non-interference and goes on to do something else. It’s a great excuse for Jack to draw some cosmic stuff but otherwise a peculiar insertion.
Hero time
Since most of the issue features the FF fighting Doom, there’s chance for each of the four to get a moment in the spotlight. In a rarity, Sue gets to use her powers creatively, and she rises to the occasion to take on Doom here.
Ben also battles Doom, and it’s another opportunity to showcase his tenacity and resolve.
Plus, we get an excellent …
Clobberin’ Time
This is one of the best matches between story, art and catch phrase to date.
They’re fighting again
The sexist sixties
It was probably too much to ask for a whole issue without a woman being demeaned. Here, in the Bullpen Bulletins, Stan manages to belittle Marie Severin while trying to praise her.
Oops
Not sure if this is a legit goof, ad Jack forgot to add the sound effects, or if Stan and Jack were just having fun.
Fantastic Four 59 “Doomsday!” Published: Nov. 1966 Story: Stan Lee & Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Artie Simek Cover: Kirby & Sinnott
Synopsis
After Dr. Doom’s defeat of the Fantastic Four in the previous issue, FF 59 is another stage-setting comic, where a number of storylines are advanced without any reaching their climax.
In the first, main thread, Mr. Fantastic, the Thing and the Invisible Girl are regrouping in the aftermath of Doom’s victory. Reed warns the nation’s of Earth to prepare for the menace of Doom, then, goaded by Ben, begins making plans to defeat him. Toward the end of the comic, we get a glimpse of what Reed’s working on: an explosive flying device that saps power from this it comment with.
Meanwhile, Doom is plotting his conquest of Earth. He dismisses an attack by (presumably) the Soviet Union, taunts the helpless Silver Surfer, a prisoner in Latveria, then circles the globe displaying his power, for example, by throwing cities into darkness for 24 hours.
In the third storyline, the Inhumans, trapped in their city behind a negative zone barrier for many issues now, finally break free after Black Bolt uses his voice to destroy both the barrier and the city. The Inhuman royal family then travels to help Crystal reunite with Johnny Storm.
And in the last storyline, the Human Torch decides he alone has the power to take on Doom, and despite his misgivings, his friend Wyatt Wingfoot joins him on his quest.
What’s going on here
This is a transitional issue, but a good one, enhanced by some of the best art on this book to date. Lots of character is developed here: Ben’s needling of Reed is revealed to be more cunning than buffoonery, Doom’s mania becomes more apparent, the Surfer’s resolve becomes more clear, and we finally see Black Bolt cut loose with his power. It had been hinted at for a few issues now, but we now understand why he is silent, breadcrumbs first dropped all the way back in issue 46.
It’s always a big deal when Black Bolt uses his voice, and comic book writers have generally been pretty sparing with it. Here’s a pretty good run down in Comic Book Resources of 20 times he used his voice, including in 2009’s War of Kings, where he uses it to defeat Vulcan (the crazy brother Cyclops and Havok never knew they had—it’s a long story) and then detonate a Terrigen bomb which tears a hole in spacetime. That’s a not-untypical use case for Black Bolt’s voice.
War of Kings 6 (2009, Pelletier, Magyar & Hennessy)
The F-Team
I may be dating myself here, but in the 1980s TV show The A-Team, there was invariably a sequence of rapid cuts where the team, having suffered some defeat, works energetically to build a device or hatch a plan to save the day as the theme music plays. That is what I thought of when Reed and Ben get busy working to defeat Doom.
The sexist sixties
Of course, while Reed and Ben are making their plans, Sue is in the kitchen, worrying.
They’re fighting again
It’s been a long time since we saw this kind of thing. It makes me nostalgic.
Red menace
Doom is attacked by .. it’s not exactly clear. It sure looks like the Soviet Union, but for some reason Stan is reluctant to say as much.
Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Sinnott
Every now and then Sinnott’s inks just jump out at me, like they do in this sequence
Weird science
It’s “a solar-beam gun”
Nice ride
Johnny’s Ferrari is apparently courtesy of a rich grandfather. I don’t think we ever learn more about him.
Dig that Kirby Krackle
This issue has so much great Kirby art that I could have picked something from virtually every page. I restrained myself, but it’s really an amazing issue.
Fantastic Four 58 “The Dismal Dregs of Defeat!” Published: Oct. 1966 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Artie Simek Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Synopsis
For the second time in two issues, FF 58 opens in medias res, with an apparition of Dr. Doom appearing above the Baxter Building during a lightening storm. Mr. Fantastic dismisses is as a freak occurrence but the Things knows better, and has a premonition of something terrible happening. As soon as Reed and Sue depart for a weekend in the Hamptons, Ben is attacked by Dr. Doom, who has stolen the power of the Silver Surfer (as seen last issue). They battle, but Doom gets the better of Ben and leaves him frozen, statue-like, in Central Park.
Doom then attacks Reed and Sue in their Hampton’s cottage. They are soon joined by the Human Torch, who was teleported back to New York with Wyatt Wingfoot by Lockjaw. The Torch left Wyatt to rescue Ben while he takes on Doom. Soon Wyatt and Ben arrive as Johnny battles Doom but he too is beaten. As Doom gloats, Reed admits defeat, and Doom leaves them to suffer the humiliation of his victory.
What’s going on here?
This is an excellent comic, one of the best of the Lee/Kirby run to date (it’s also one I own, so we have letters and ads to check out!). It’s got a few things going for it: First, it’s the product of several issues of build-up, so we’ve been primed for something big. Second, as discussed in my last post, Doom stealing the Surfer’s powers really ratchets up the stakes, both in terms of Doom’s ruthlessness but also making him an even more formidable opponent. Third, the story is effectively paced, from the low-key opening and Ben’s ghost-story jitters, to the final, pitched fight in the Hamptons. Lastly, the FF is rarely beaten (more on that later), and Reed’s surrender signals a low point for the team. In all, it’s just a satisfying story that delivers a powerful punch.
The cover does a great job of summarizing the book’s mood, with the FF humbled and Doom triumphant. Structurally, it reminds me of images of Adam and Even being cast out of the Garden of Eden. I don’t know if that was Jack’s inspiration but it has a similarly mournful quality.
Byrne Baby Byrne
It wouldn’t be a Stan and Jack FF issue if it wasn’t referenced by John Byrne at some point. In this case, issue 268 from 1984.
Weird science
After Doom slows Ben’s metabolism to barely moving, he is freed by a “portable metabolism accelerator,” which Reed of course has just lying around. Doesn’t everybody?
Say what?
I knew Johnny’s super-nova blast was powerful but killing several billion people seems like a bit much.
It’s Clobberin’ Time
That’s two issues in a row now.
Say what? (part 2)
Doom says the FF have never been vanquished but he clearly missed Fantastic Four 38, when they got their asses kicked pretty thoroughly by the Frightful Four.
Oops
Speaking of goofs, here’s an odd panel where the Torch is entirely off-screen, as Stan apparently is trying to explain what happened to him in the previous panel.
We get letters
The issue features one from cultural critic and Vanity Fair writer James Wolcott. How do I know it’s the same James Wolcott? He writes about it here.
For sale
These binoculars can help you see up to 18 miles. It says so right here.
Dig that Kirby Krackle
No splash pages this month but plenty of cool stuff, like this sequence
Fantastic Four 57 “Enter Dr. Doom!” Published: Sept. 1966 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Art Simek Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Synopsis
The main story begins in the middle of the action (in medias res, if you want to be fancy), with the Fantastic Four (minus the Human Torch) fighting the Sandman and Wizard in a prison, as the Thing explains the team were summoned to the prison under a ruse. The Wizard is easily subdued but Sandman escapes. He eventually resurfaces at the Baxter Building, where Reed and Sue fight him (the Thing is off looking for him at this point) and eventually chase him away.
That plot line alternates with another, in which Dr. Doom lured the Silver Surfer to his castle in Latveria. After asking the Surfer to demonstrate his powers, Doom traps him in a devices that siphons his cosmic power to Doom.
Lastly, two other sub-plots are advanced: Johnny and Wyatt continue to teleport around the universe with Lockjaw—this time landing on a planet filled with monstrous creatures before escaping—and in the Inhuman’s city of Attilan, Black Bolt shows signs of life while Maximus the Mad reveals that he could speak the entire time (the powers of his voice has yet to be revealed).
What’s going on here?
Fantastic Four 57 is very much a transitional issue, as Stan and Jack continue to move their chess pieces around in advance of some bigger events. The only traditional story in this issue—one with a beginning, middle and end—concerns the fight with Sandman, and despite some nifty Kirby art, it feels like filler (and it can’t really be said to have a beginning, since it opens in the middle of the action). After seeing the FF fight Galactus, it’s hard to get too worked up about the Sandman.
The centerpiece is of FF 57 is the interaction between Doom and the Surfer. Doom is at his most duplicitous, lulling the Surfer into believing he is a benevolent monarch, then cruelly clamping him in a device that steals his power. It could be argued that this scene is where Doom really makes the leap from a generic bad guy into a truly fearsome villain. Certainly, nothing up to this point suggests he was capable of a plot as ambitious or nefarious as this.
It’s also an opportunity for Jack (and Joe Sinnott) to go absolutely nuts with the Kirby Krackle:
Years later John Byrne recreated this sequence in a flashback in 1983’s FF 258 when Doom once again tried to harness the power of a herald of Galactus, but in that case it was Terrax, not the Silver Surfer.
The sexist sixties
There’s some strange stuff going on with Sue in this issue. Early on, as the FF are recapturing the Wizard, she gives a very grim assessment of the FF’s status quo.
We then get a fairly typical sequence of Reed barking orders and Sue following them faithfully: Followed by some more worrying and fretting. Every time Stan and Jack’s characterization of Sue seems to have turned a corner, she reverts back to the wingeing, cringing dish towel. Blech.
The incredible Mr. Fantastic
A fun sequence:
It’s Clobberin’ Time
It’s been a few issues since we got one of these.
Let’s talk about us
Ben is watching “The Marvel Super Heroes Show,” a short-lived animated series that ran in syndication in 1966. The stories were taken directly from comics, and the animators used the original art by Kirby, Steve Ditko and Don Heck. You can check it out here.
Dig that Kirby Krackle
Lots of cool stuff in this issue, starting with this sandy sequence:
And this (there’s a bit of an oops in this panel, with Stan using the guard to explain what Reed’s doing):
Fantastic Four Annual 4 “The Torch That Was!” Published: August 1966 Story: Stan Lee & Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Sam Rosen Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
(Note: Fantastic Four Annual 4 came out a week before FF 56, but follows it chronologically, which is why I’m writing about after issue 56. The annual also included reprints of FF 25 and 26).
Synopsis
The Fantastic Four’s fourth annual opens like many issues, with the FF hanging around the Baxter Building reading fan mail. The Human Torch and Wyatt Wingfoot suddenly appear, teleported by Lockjaw from the Himalayas, where they had sought to rescue Crystal and the Inhumans. Johnny, despondent that his efforts to find Crystal failed, flies to the desert to experiment with his powers.
Meanwhile the Mad Thinker, last seen in issue 28, has a new scheme: reviving the original Human Torch, the android knows as Jim Hammond. Threatening him with destruction via Quasimodo, a sentient computer, the Thinker sends the original Torch to battle the Johnny Storm. The two fight to a standstill when the rest of the FF arrive, teleported by Lockjaw. Lockjaw then teleports them all to the Thinker’s lair, where the original Torch turns on the Thinker and is rendered inert by Quasimodo. The Thinker escapes and Lockjaw teleports Johnny and Wyatt back to find the Inhumans.
What’s going on here?
The story in FF Annual 4 isn’t particularly momentous—it’s not a wedding or birth issue, like many annuals—but it does feature the return of a Marvel golden age character. Similar to Stan and Jack’s revival of the Sub-Mariner, way back in FF 4, they retroactively insert Jim Hammond into the Marvel universe, tying the golden age to the present.
While Jim Hammond never plays as prominent a role as Namor, he occupies an interesting place in Marvel continuity.
He first appeared in Marvel Comics 1, in 1939, as one of the earliest super heroes. Stan and Jack recap his origin in the annual, and are fairly faithful to Carl Burgos’s original version. Here Burgos describes his invention by Prof. Phineas Horton:
Here it is as told by Stan and Jack:
As drawn by Kirby, Jim Hammond looks like a Greek god (and I guess why not, since he’s a robot, he can look like anything).
The Human Torch fought crime and Nazis in the 1940s and essentially disappears after the golden age. He was later ret-conned into the Invaders, a WWII era super hero team, along with his sidekick, Toro.
Invaders 1 (1975, by Thomas,Robbins and Colletta).
After his appearance and apparent destruction in FF Annual 4, it was generally established that the Human Torch’s body was used by the robot Ultron and transformed into the Vision.
Avengers 135 (1975, by Englehart, Tuska and Chiarmonte)
That chronology got muddled when John Byrne revived the Human Torch in West Coast Avengers 50, suggesting that he never became the Vision, but that the Vision was assembled from Horton’s spare parts.
West Coast Avengers 50 (1989 Byrne/Machlan)
It’s all cleared up (sort of) in Avengers Forever, a limited series that tried to untangle some continuity, albeit in a very confusing way. As described by Kurt Busiek, Immortus, the tame-manipulating villain, split the Human Torch into two timelines, one of which became the Vision, the other of which remained the Human Torch. Hopefully that clears everything up.
Avengers Forever 8 (1998, Busiek, Pacheco and Merino)
The Jim Hammond Torch has resurfaced over the years, but never as a major character.
Quasimodo
Avengers Annual 4 also marks the first appearance of Quasimodo, a third-tier villain who shares only a name with the Victor Hugo character. Apparently the name is derived from “Quasi-Motivational Destruct Organ,” whatever that means. He, too, reappears on occasion, but never as a major villain.
Everybody plays the fool
I get the story-telling purpose of Ben not knowing there was another Human Torch, but it’s a little hard to swallow. Ben did serve in World War II as well.
Frequent Flier
In between panels Johnny flies from the Baxter Building in midtown to … the desert? is that in New Jersey?
Crazy Credits
Weird Science
Of course, everyone knows the one infallible way to destroy a flaming android.
Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Sinnott!
Check out the inks on this page:
Dig that Kirby Krackle
This one is hot!
Also on the newsstand this month
(This is a new feature I am experimenting with. Thanks to Mike’s Amazing World for the info.
Fantastic Four 56 “Klaw, the Murderous Master of Sound!” Published: Nov. 1966 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script:Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Artie Simek Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Synopsis
Like last issue, Fantastic Four 56 is split between the Human Torch and Wyatt Wingfoot’s quest to rescue the Inhumans, and the rest of the team in New York. In the second story, which makes up the bulk of the issue, Mr. Fantastic and the Thing are working a lab when Klaw, the villain from issue 53, reappears, now transformed into a creature of solid sound. After trapping Reed and Ben in the lab, he battles Sue, then Ben after he escapes the lab. Utilizing vibranium devices delivered from the Black Panther in Wakanda, Reed is able to absorb Klaw’s soil energy, rendering him unconscious.
In the other story line, Johnny and Wyatt try to coax Loackjaw into teleporting them back to Atillan and the Inhumans. In another arc, we check in with the Inhumans, last seen in issue 54, and learn that Black Bolt did not activate the absorb-bomb as intended because it would have destroyed the Inhumans. Medusa continues to despair. Issue 56 closes with a few panels of Dr. Doom spying on the Silver Surfer, teasing issue 57.
What’s going on here?
After a year of multiple-issue story arcs, FF 56 feels like a bit of a throwback to earlier, one-and-done issues. The story opens in the Baxter Building, with Reed and Ben kibitzing in a lab and Sue fretting about Reed’s inattentiveness. The fight with Klaw ends with the sort of deus-ex-machina reminiscent of earlier issues, too, with Reed cooking up some stratagem or device to defeat the bad guy. In this case, he calls on the Black Panther in Wakanda, signaling that he will be an ongoing part of the FF and Marvel universe into the future. In all, it’s a pretty satisfying story, and the Johnny/Wyatt/Medusa panels keeps that subplot moving as well.
FF 56 also reintroduces Klaw as a super villain in the form we are more familiar with. It’s a great Kirby character design, and could easily have been one of the New Gods Kirby created five years later. One question is whether Stan and Jack had this transformation, and his sonic cannon in mind, when they named him Klaw in issue 53, or if his name inspired the character design. If anyone has the answer, I’d love to know.
The sexist sixties
Sue is worried about her roast, and wonders why they can’t live like other people.
Sue does rise to the occasion later in the issue, taking on Klaw by herself.
Oops
Does Klaw have two hands here, instead of a sonic cannon where his right hand should be?
Medusa is back
She gets a melodramatic star turn in this subplot, a reminder of her status among the Inhumans, and that Stan and Jack created her long before the others.
Weird Science
Reed and Ben appeared armed with with a movie camera and reel-to-reel tape recorder.
Comanche Blood
Up to now Stan and Jack have done a pretty good job of steering clear of Native American stereotypes in their treatment of Wyatt Wingfoot. Not so much here.
Dig that Kirby Krackle
Just an amazing page here. I am pretty sure that creature makes a subsequent appearance, probably in a John Byrne FF, but I can’t place it. Anyone out there know if it reappears?
Klaw looks appropriately weird and menacing in this panel:
Some actual Krackle here:
And some great energy here:
Next issue: The original Human Torch returns in Annual No. 4!
Percival Henry: The Fantastic Four and more 