Fantastic Four 167
“Titans Two!”
Published November 1975
Writer: Roy Thomas
Pencils: George Perez
Inks: Joe Sinnott
Letters: Joe Rosen
Colors: Phil Rachelson
Editor: Thomas
Cover: Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott

Synopsis

After the Thing frees the Hulk from the military’s device, the two escape in an aircraft, heading toward St. Louis. The Hulk demands they alight at the Gateway Arch, where they are eventually attacked by the rest of the Fantastic Four. When he sees his teammates in danger, Ben sides with them agains the Hulk but suddenly begins to change into his human form, a result of exposure to the Hulk’s gamma radiation. He is easily defeated by the Hulk, who escapes.

What’s going on here?

This is a pretty unsatisfying end to a two-part story that had a lot of promise toward the end of last issue, where Ben realizes he and the Hulk are both monsters. The Thing alludes to that solidarity at a few places in the issue, but Roy Thomas doesn’t do much with it and it doesn’t take much for Ben to switch sides again. Thomas instead inserts a subplot of the Thing growing weak and dizzy in the Hulk’s presence, which eventually leads to him becoming human again. None of it makes much sense, and the two-issue arc feels very gimmicky, as it reads mostly as an excuse to shoehorn the Hulk into an FF comic (more guest stars will appear next issue, further evidence that Marvel was trying to goose the FF’s sales).

Joe Sinnott returns to ink George Perez, and it’s a big improvement over Vince Colletta, last month’s inker, although Sinnott can still overpower Perez at times (most times, really).

And speaking of over-powered, Jack Kirby’s pencils are unrecognizable on the cover under Sinnott’s inks. On closer examination I can see touches of Kirby — Reed’s legs, Sue’s posture, the faces of the spectators — but it’s certainly not obvious.

There’s also more inside-baseball in the issue, this time in the form of back-and-forth editor’s notes between Roy and Stan. I’m not sure what they are referencing — Branch Ecch was always code for DC, but who is the Torrid Titan (circa 1965)? — but this sort of thing always endeared me to Marvel when I was a young reader.

What I liked

There are some fun Perez sequences in this comic, like this one:

And this amazing page, with 13 — count ’em, 13! — panels:

Now that Sue’s powers are beefed up, she is shown using them in more interesting ways, like so (and note the footnote):

What I didn’t like

Ben changing into his human form is hard to understand since A, Ben’s powers didn’t come from gamma rays and B, he’s been exposed to the Hulk before. I don’t know if this comes up again, but it sure seems like it would be an easy way to cure Ben of his monstrous form. It’s yet another unexpected curveball thrown at Ben that doesn’t seem based in much from a story or scientific standpoint.

Anything else?

I don’t even know where to begin with this house ad:

Overall

Meh