Fantastic Four 189
“The Torch That Was!”
Published Sept. 1977
Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Pencils: Kirby
Script: Lee
Inks: Joe Sinnott
Letters: Rosen
Cover: Keith Pollard and Frank Giacoia

What’s going on here?

Fantastic Four 189 is a reprint of FF Annual 4 from 1966. It’s a fine comic book, featuring the original Human Torch, which I discussed at length here. It’s notable here for two reasons: It’s yet another sign of the chaos and lack of organization at Marvel as they cycled through editors in the late 1970s. And the cover is by Keith Pollard (in an homage to Kirby), making his Fantastic Four debut. He would go on to draw many more issues .


Fantastic Four 190
“The Way it Was”
Published Oct. 1977
Writer: Marv Wolfman
Pencils: Sal Buscema
Inks: Tony Dezuniga
Letters: John Costanza
Colors: Glynis Wein
Editor: Wolfman
Cover: Kirby and Giacoia

Synopsis

A dejected Thing, sorrowful over the latest break-up of the Fantastic Four, reminisces about the team’s history with Alicia Masters.

What’s going on here?

This is another anomalous issue which also can be best explained by the lack of leadership at Marvel. Len Wein, after delaying his start on the FF for several months, is now missing for two issues. The last was addressed with a reprint and this one is an odd type of fill-in issue, basically one long flashback. It’s not exactly an inventory story, since it fits into the FF’s continuity, but it doesn’t advance the story and it probably was hammered out quickly by writer/editor Marv Wolfman with a stack of back issues. (This is also Wolfman’s first work on the FF; he’ll go on to have a run of his own in a year or two). It feels a bit like Uncanny X-Men 138, a long long flashback as Cyclops says farewell after the death of Jean Grey, but that one was at least written and drawn by Chris Claremont and John Byrne.

Here, Sal Buscema jumps into deliver perfectly adequate work, befitting his status as Marvel’s ultimate journeyman, and Jack Kirby draws the cover (a pretty lack-luster one, if I’m being honest). In a side note that surely only interests me, this may be the first FF issue without an exclamation point in the title.

This comic probably had some value for new readers but it didn’t do much for me.

Anything else?

There were some fun ads, including the first for Sea-Monkeys, a stable of comics for years (iirc, they are actually brine shrimp).

Overall

A pretty disappointing two months for FF fans