“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” Fantastic Four No. 3

17 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by percivalhenry in The World's Greatest Comic Magazine

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1961, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four 3, jack Kirby, Stan Lee

Fantastic Four No. 3
“The Menace of the Miracle Man”
Published: Dec. 1961
Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Pencils: Jack Kirby
Script: Stan Lee
Inks: Sol Brodsky (uncredited)
Cover: Kirby and Brodsky

Synopisis:

The Fantastic Four attend a performance of the Miracle Man, who demonstrates amazing powers and appears more powerful than the Thing. A worried Fantastic Four return in the Fantasticar to their skyscraper headquarters , where they watch on television as a giant statue of a monster becomes animated and rampages through the city. A note from the Miracle Man claims responsibility as the FF fail to keep the monster from stealing first jewels, then the military’s new “atomic tank.”

As the Miracle Man drives off with the tank, the Invisible Girl stows away. She is discovered, and hypnotized into summoning the rest of the FF. After a confrontation and another chase that culminates with the Human Torch’s flame blinding the Miracle man , Mr. Fantastic reveals the Miracle Man has a hypnotist who is powerless without his sight. The story ends with a frustrated Human Torch quitting the team.

What’s going on here

The Miracle Man story is pretty forgettable, and the big reveal—that his seeming powers were all an illusion—doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny (how did his power of illusion steal a tank?). The story is notable because it’s the first where the FF really starts to resemble the team of superheroes with which we’re familiar. The story introduces a number of elements that make up the FF brand: their blue-and-black costumes, the Baxter Building (although it’s not named in the story), and the”air-powered” Fantasticar, one of the many gizmos that become part of the FF’s identity.

The story also further cements the fractious relationship between the members, with Ben flying off the handle, Johnny sulking, Reed trying to get them to behave and Sue cringing about it all.

The Miracle Man fades into obscurity after this issue and doesn’t reappear for more than a decade, in FF 138. He pops up a few more times over the years but never becomes a major villain.

About those costumes

After two issues of fighting bad guys dressed as civilians, Sue presents the team with their uniforms. Ben resists and eventually tears his off, but the basic concept of matching uniforms becomes a key visual element throughout the FF’s history. Note Sue’s high heels. Ben’s helmet doesn’t last the issue, but it does reappear decades later after Wolverine’s claws injure his face.

The FF aren’t the first supergroup to wear matching uniforms, and it seems to be another aspect Kirby borrowed from his design of the Challengers of the Unknown at DC a few years earlier. Unlike the Challs, however (I love that nickname), the FF wears a “4” insignia, and I recall reading somewhere—I wish I remember where, but it might have been by Grant Morrison—that the introduction of the insignia to costumes was the key break that separated the first superheroes like Superman and Batman from the pulp-era characters like the Shadow and the Phantom that preceded them. I don’t know if Stan and Jack were consciously using the logo to attach the FF to a superhero tradition, but it worked.

The “4” later gets added to their vehicles and even becomes part of the architecture of Four Freedoms Plaza, a building that replaced the Baxter Building for a while. The deliberate branding of the FF as public and flashy colorful, as if they were a consumer product like Pepsi, is later ret-conned into their history by writer Mark Waid in 2002. As Waid writes it, going public is an effort by Reed to help make up for the damage he caused his friends by arrogantly insisting his spaceship was ready to fly through the cosmic rays. As retcons go, it’s a pretty good one, since it attempts to solve a few of the big apparent inconsistencies in the FF’s origin: What was Reed thinking, and why are they so public?

(That run by Waid, with art mostly by Mike Wieringo, is one of the best in recent FF history).

About that headquarters

The Baxter Building won’t get its name for a few more issues, but it’s clearly established as the same team headquarters which will remain more or less intact until it’s destruction in the 1980s.

This issue features the first of many cut-away drawings that will appear over the years (and includes instructions to “save this for future reference”):

The schematic introduces the FF’s Pogo Plane and their passenger ICBM, neither of which appear again in this issue but are used in subsequent stories.

The similarity to the Challs’ mountain headquarters is noteworthy:

What’s up with Johnny?

The Human Torch is particularly sulky and grumpy in this issue, perhaps an effort by Stan and Jack to clearly distinguish him as a the team’s moody teenager. At one point he goes off with his friends, who seem more like irritating hanger-ons:

Then, at the end of the issue and without much build up, he take off (literally and figuratively), setting up a bit of a cliff hanger:

By this point Johnny no longer looks like a human-shaped flame, but is much closer to the red-briquette form we’re familiar with.

We’re No. 1

For the first time, a version of the “World’s Greatest Comic” appears on the cover. I’m not sure what the FF did in the first two issues to earn the honor, but it sticks.

They’re fighting again!

The sexist sixties

Sue gets a rare turn as hero, calling off the National Guard and turning invisible to pursue the Miracle Man:

But she’s back to wimpering by the end of the story

Dig that Kirby Krackle

Jack knocks it out of the park with the movie monster, naturally

And this quieter panel, of the FF seen through a window, is pretty cool too:

Oops!

Did Stan have to write around a Jack continuity error here? It sure seems like it, since the action the Torch describes is never shown and has no real purpose in the story.

The incredible Mr. Fantastic.

At various points Reed is stretched into a web, forms a bouncing ball, and here becomes a spare tire:

For sale

A mint (9.8) FF No. 3 is worth about $105,000.

Pin up

This month Johnny gets the pin-up treatment. Handsome devil, aint’t he?

Next issue: The Sub-Mariner!

“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” Fantastic Four No. 2

10 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by percivalhenry in The World's Greatest Comic Magazine

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1961, Fantastic Four 2, jack Kirby, Skrulls, Stan Lee

Fantastic Four No. 2
“The Fantastic Four Meet the Skrulls from Outer Space”
Published: September 1961
Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Pencils: Kirby
Script: Lee
Inks: George Klein (uncredited)
Cover: Kirby and Klein

Synopsis:

One by one, members of the Fantastic Four are shown engaged in acts of vandalism and theft: The Thing demolishes an off-shore oil rig, the Invisible Girl steals a diamond, the Human Torch melts a statue and Mr. Fantastic stretches into a power plant to switch off New York’s electricity. The four are revealed to be Skrulls, shape-shifting aliens who are framing the Fantastic Four as a prelude to their invasion of Earth. The real Fantastic Four are taken prisoner by the US Army, but the FF quickly escape the cells specially designed to hold them.

Now free, the FF devise a plan for the Human Torch to attack a rocket in order to flush out the Skrulls. The plan works, and once Johnny reaches the aliens’ headquarters, he sends a flare to attract the rest of the team who quickly subdue the Skrulls. The team then uses the Skrulls’ space craft (disguised as one of New York’s ubiquitous water towers) to fly to the orbiting mother ship, where, while masquerading as the four invading Skrulls, they present the Skrull commander evidence of the terrible monsters ready to defend Earth (in reality, images clipped from Marvel comics). Terrified, the Skrulls flee, and the FF return to Earth where they clear their name and pacify the remaining Skrulls by hypnotizing them into believing they’re cows.

What’s going on here?

The introduction of the Skrulls is the most significant development in the Fantastic Four’s second issue. While a lot of Marvel’s Silver Age villains appeared once or twice, only to vanish in obscurity, the Skrulls go on to become a major part of the Marvel universe. The basics are all laid out here: they’re a war-like race bent on conquering Earth, and will use their shape-shifting powers to infiltrate human society. Over the years the Skrulls become one of the three major alien empires, with the Kree and Shi’ar, that feature across the Marvel line. Some Skrulls receive individual identities, including various members of the Skrull royal family. At one point it’s revealed that Johnny Storm is married not to Alicia Masters but to Lyja, a Skrull in disguise, and Hulkling, a young hero, is the product of a Skrull-Kree romance. A Skrull incursion became a major cross over event in 2008 (called Secret Invasion, naturally enough), and Skrulls played a major part in 2019s Captain Marvel movie.

The Skrulls are classic Silver Age villains—literally little green men from space—and products of Cold War paranoia, with the menace Communist infiltration is a recurrent theme throughout science fiction. Their shape shifting makes them potent characters and it’s not hard to see what Lee and other writers would return to them again and again.

Anything else of note?

Stan and Jack are still figuring out what the Fantastic Four are. While their individual identities are clearly established, a lot of the team’s familiar trappings—their uniforms, their gadgets, their headquarters—won’t appear until next issue. Instead, they’re dressed as civilians, they’re hanging out in an “isolated hunting lodge,” of all places, and a text block refers to them meeting at “one of the Fantastic Four’s many secret apartment hideouts.” I’m not sure those hideouts every reappear. At this early stage, it’s not quite clear if Lee and Kirby want these characters to be superheroes, or perhaps a band of super spies, like 007.

Despite this being just their second issue, the Fantastic Four are apparently quite famous, and the various imposters are identified by their code names by the public.

The torment of the Thing

Ben Grimm’s anguish at being a monster is again on display, as it will be almost every issue for the next 60 years.

This issue also has him briefly changing back to human form as the FF again passes through “the radiation belt” (not cosmic rays), as they return to Earth from the Skrull ship in orbit. Over the years the FF go to space a lot, but I’m not aware of this happening regularly.

They’re fighting again

Another ongoing feature is Ben fighting with his teammates:

The sexist sixties

Sue is again portrayed as a helpless bystander:

Trapped!

This is the first time the FF are caged in cells designed to neutralize their powers (and which they eventually outwit) but it won’t be the last. This device appears frequently over the years.

Let’s talk about us

Reed’s use of Marvel comics (specifically “Strange tales” and “Journey into Mystery”) to fool the Skrulls is the beginning of a long tradition of Stan and Jack bending the fourth wall by inserting Marvel and its creators into their stories. The in-universe explanation, later retconned, of why this works is that the war-like Skrulls have no tradition of representational art and couldn’t perceive that the images were illustrations.

Dig that Kirby Krackle

Jack delivers some great art in this issue. Here’s a great panel of the army advancing to arrest the FF:

For sale:

A mint edition (9.8) FF 2 sold for $145,000 in 2013.

Pin up time

Bashful Benjamin Grimm gets his own pin-up at the end of the comic, the first in what becomes an ongoing feature. Note the careful qualification “the strongest man-like creature on the face of the earth.”

About those cows

In a clever bit of story telling, and nice use of the Fantastic Four’s history, John Byrne took the throwaway line at the end, about the Skrulls being hypnotized into cows, and built a great horror story around it in 1983’s Fantastic Four Annual 17. The story essentially asks, what happens when an entire town spends years drinking Skrull milk? It’s also a useful reminder that despite Reed’s brilliance, not all of his ideas are thought through to their conclusion.

Next issue: The FF get costumes!

“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” Fantastic Four No. 1

03 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by percivalhenry in The World's Greatest Comic Magazine

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1961, comics, Fantastic Four 1, jack Kirby, Mole Man, Stan Lee

Welcome to the inaugural installment of what I’m hoping is a multi-year project to blog the entire run of the Fantastic Four, from its 1961 debut up until the present (assuming it’s still being published however many years in the future that will be).

Why the Fantastic Four? The easy answer is that it’s my favorite comic, but also because it’s steeped in history. The Fantastic Four launched the Silver Age at Marvel, and ushered in the Marvel universe as we know it, the overlapping and self-referencing world of superheroes and characters that, nearly six decades later, now spans tens of thousands of comics. The Marvel comics universe, of course, also gave birth to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a potent pop-cultural force that has introduced many more millions (billions even) to these characters.

I don’t recall my first exposure to the Fantastic Four—it might have been the either the 1967 or 1978 cartoons—but I clearly remember the first FF comic I bought: issue 260, off of a spinner rack at the Amenia Variety store, near my parent’s house in Dutchess County, New York, in late August of 1983. I had spent the previous months at summer camp, and a fellow camper was Eddie Galton, son of then-Marvel president James Galton. I wasn’t particularly friendly with Eddie (now Edward, and a TV producer) but he had hundreds of comics, and they washed around our bunks. I had read comics before, mostly things like Archie and Richie Rich, but that was my first taste of modern Marvel superheroes and I was hooked (I can’t recall much of what I read that summer, although The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe No. 11 one was definitely among them. When I got back from camp, I eagerly sought out more, and FF 260 was the first I bought.

In retrospect, you would be hard pressed to find a better single-issue introduction to Marvel comics from that era than FF 260. Written and illustrated by comics maesto John Byrne at the peak of his powers, it featured the FF tussling with their best bad guy, Dr. Doom, and guest appearances from some of prominent supporting characters like the Silver Surfer and Sub-Mariner (more about that issue when we get to it in few years). More importantly, the individual personalities of the team’s members were clearly defined, as was their relationships to each other. This was more than a team, it was a family, and it was clear from the first issue I read.

Ultimately, that dynamic is what keeps me coming back to the Fantastic Four after many decades and creative teams. They’re not a team of superheroes who banded together to fight evil, like the Justice League or Avengers; they were a family of adventurers who became super heroes. Like all families they quarrel and sometimes drift apart, but they are tied together by love and shared history.

A few notes about this project: I hope to cover one issue a week, starting with the first. This is not a new format, and there are many similar blogs tackling lengthy comic book runs (including, probably, the Fantastic Four). I was inspired by The Matt Murdock Chronicles, a sadly defunct issue-by-issue look at Daredevil, and particularly Austin Gorton’s X-aminations X-Men Reviews, a heroic attempt to document every X-Men related comic on the The Real Gentlemen of Leisure blog. If some of the features look familiar, I will confess to having borrowed some of the best elements of from those two blogs. For historic data, I’m relying on Mike’s Amazing World, a great resource.

When possible, I will take note of non-story elements that will be relevant, such as notes from Bullpen Bulletins and the letter’s page, when they appear. Unfortunately, I’m relying on my Marvel Unlimited subscription for early issues, which doesn’t include those elements, so I won’t have them available until we get to the comics I actually own. If nothing else, this exercise should help spur me to fill into the gaps in my collection.

So with all that throat clearing out of the way, here is the one that started it all, Fantastic Four No. 1:

Fantastic Four No. 1
Published: August 1961
Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Pencils: Kirby
Script: Lee
Inks: George Klein (uncredited)
Cover: Kirby and Dick Ayers

Synopsis:
A mysterious man sends off a flare, summoning three strangely powered individuals: a woman who can turn invisible, a monstrous brute, and a teenager who bursts into flame. The man who summoned them is revealed to have stretching powers. A quick recap explains their origin: Scientist Reed Richards leads his best friend (Ben Grimm), his girlfriend (Sue Storm), and her younger brother (Johnny Storm) to sneak aboard a rocket for an unauthorized mission to space. Despite Grimm’s misgivings about the unknown effect of cosmic rays, he agrees to pilot the ship after his courage is called into question. In flight, the craft is bombarded by cosmic rays and after a crash landing, their powers manifest. After a brief squabble, they agree to use their powers for good.

Back in the present, Richards informs the rest of the team about atomic plants vanishing underground around the world. He pinpoints the location—Monsters Island!— and the team flies to investigate. After confronting a three-headed flying monster, Reed and Johnny are separated from Ben and Sue, tumble beneath the earth and meet the Mole Man, a misshapen man driven underground by a a cruel world. A fight ensues, Ben and Sue eventually catch up and Johnny blazes a path out of the cavern, sealing the Mole Man and his monsters beneath. An apparent nuclear explosion destroys the island as the team flies off.

What’s this all about?

The Fantastic Four was born from a mix of influences. The genesis was a business decision: Magazine and comic publisher Martin Goodman wanted a comic that could compete with the Justice League of America, a super hero team-up book launched a year earlier by National Comics Publication, a precursor to DC. Goodman directed Stan Lee, his editor, to come up with something, and Lee recruited artist Jack Kirby, then newly arrived at what would become Marvel. Who actually contributed what to the origin is still debated, but it’s clear both Lee and Kirby played a role.

The use of space travel and cosmic rays as an origin device is very much of its time: Sputnik had launched four years earlier, and Yuri Gargarin became the first man in space in April of 1961. Space was on everyone’s minds, particularly the teenage boys the comics was targeting. The specter of communism is also present, as Sue warns that “the commies” could beat the team into space (and of course, they had).

Unlike the Justice League, which was an assembled group of existing heroes with their own origins and costumes, the Fantastic Four was created together. Their origin and uniformed appearance is very similar to that of the Challengers of the Unknown, a team Kirby created in 1958 while at National (you can read more about that here).

Other aspects of the story also echo earlier Kirby works, particularly the Mole Man’s monsters, the latest in a long line of bizarre monsters Kirby created.

It’s also worth noting that the powers acquired by the team aren’t particularly unique. Invisibility is a well-established power dating to H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man (at least), a man who changes into a hulking monster draws from Beauty and the Beast and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (and many others), Plastic Man was a stretching character dating from 1941, and not only did Marvel itself have a character who could burst into flames in the 1940s, but he was also called the Human Torch. At one point Stan Lee said he was riffing off of the four elements when he assigned the team their powers:air (Sue), water (Reed), earth (Ben) and fire (Johnny).

About that origin

The five short pages of origin are among the most scrutinized texts in comics. Over the years the story has been expanded and retconned, often in an attempt to address some of the story’s central mysteries: Why would Reed, allegedly one of earth’s smartest men, risk exposure to the cosmic rays that even Ben knew were a risk? Why would he take along not just his fiancee but her teenage brother? Why would he sneak aboard his own ship in the middle of the night? The in-story explanation is that Reed doesn’t have time to wait for official clearances because “conditions are right tonight,” and that Sue and Johnny insist on accompanying Reed and Ben.

Ben’s resentment at Reed for his disfiguration and Reed’s guilt and attempts to cure Ben have fueled dozens of stories and remain a potent thematic element of the Fantastic Four through the present. In one of the recent retellings, by Dan Slott in Point of Origin, the space ship was adequately protected from ordinary cosmic rays but the ship was subjected to a barrage of the rays from the alien planet Spyre, the team’s original destination (no actual destination was given in the first issue).

Ben’s long-simmering resentment at Reed is hinted at early on:

So who are these guys:

The first issue lays the template for hundreds of stories to come, and by-and-large the basic characters are established from the beginning, and while their appearances and powers change, the essential notes of their personalities will remain in place for years.

Reed, appearing with his pipe and hair that is going white at the sides, is basically the same confident, aloof professorial Reed we’ve known for decades. He is a bit overpowered in this first issue, at one point grabbing a nuclear missile aimed at Johnny out of the air and throwing it into the Atlantic (why the National Guard thinks firing a nuclear weapon over New York was prudent goes unaddressed).

The basic character beats of Sue that persist for years are also established: She’s demure and dainty, supportive of Reed to a fault. Her power at this point remains invisibility, a metaphor for her vanishing personality, until issue 22, when she gains the ability to create force fields. It wasn’t until the 1980s and under John Byrne that those force fields are depicted as offensive weapons, and she eventually she is described as the team’s most powerful member.

Johnny is a hot-headed teen (metaphor alert!) who is crazy about cars, a long-lasting element of his character. In his first appearances he resembles an actual flame, not the red man surrounded by flames he later becomes.

The Thing is the character whose initial appearance is most unfamiliar to modern readers. It’s not just his monstrous form, which transforms into the orange rocky one gradually over the next dozen issues (apparently Kirby found that version easier to draw) but his personality undergoes a major shift. His diction in this issue is more formal and archaic (at several points he says “bah!) and has none of the dropped g’s and colloquialisms that become his trademark. Nor does he have the sense of humor that helps define the character.

The Mole Man (here referred to as the Moleman) also debuts, and becomes a recurring villain. Although classically Silver Aged in his world-dominating ambitions, he’s given a sympathetic backstory and thus becomes a more nuanced character. Plus, he’s got some sweet moves:

The more things change

Some elements, however, will remain with the book for years. For example, they’re fighting with each other from the get go:

In what becomes a long sexist tradition, Sue stand back and reacts while the men take action:

And Kirby delivers some knockout art:

For sale

A mint condition (9.8) FF No. 1 will set you back $4.6 million

About that cover

Fantastic Four 1 is one of the most copied, parodied or homaged covers in comics. It’s delightfully silly, and has nothing to do with the interior (who put those ropes around Mr. Fantastic, anyway?) It’s notable for a few other reasons, as well. The logo, with those groovy sixties letters, will be one of the the most enduring in comics, and while Marvel will occasionally swap it out for a more modern look, it often returns. Instead of Marvel’s logo, there is a tiny “MC” in a box under the Comic’s Code Authority seal. And the blurb introducing the team promises that they’re “together for the first time,” implying this is uniting a group of individual characters, like the Justice League.

Here are some other versions of the cover (it should be said Byrne in particular loved referencing it):