“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!” Fantastic Four No. 63

05 Sunday Jun 2022

Posted by percivalhenry in The World's Greatest Comic Magazine

Tags

1967, Blastaar, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four 63, jack Kirby, Sandman, Stan Lee

**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.