Fantastic Four 53 “The Way it Began!” Published: May 1966 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Artie Simek Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Synopsis
After defeating the Black Panther in the last issue, the Fantastic Four (plus Wyatt Wingfoot) are now his guests. T’Challa explains his kingdom’s wealth and technological prowess derives from vibranium, a rare mineral that can absorb vibrations. He then tells the FF his origin: His father, T’Chaka, was murdered by Klaw (later named Ulysses Klaw), a villainous scientist who attempted to steal Wakanda’s vibranium. A young T’Challa chased them off by seizing Klaw’s sound weapons, and maimed Klaw in the process. T’Challa then devoted himself to revenge by adopted the mantle of the Black Panther.
Meanwhile, strange red monsters are rampaging through the Wakanda. The FF join T’Challa to battle the creatures, which are revealed to be made of solid sound by Klaw. As the FF fight the monsters, T’Challa tracks Klaw to a cave, where they battle until the Black Panther overload’s Klaw’s machinery, causing the cave to collapse as T’Challa escapes. With the FF’s encouragement, T’Challa pledges to continue to fight injustice while a battered Klaw enters his “sound transformer” machine.
What’s going on here?
FF 53 unveils the origin of the Black Panther, a story expanded on in much greater length over the decades. The main elements remain the same: T’Challa is from a royal lineage that venerated the Black Panther totem, and he swore revenge after the murder of his father by a plundering European. Stan and Jack seem aware how cliched the story sounds, so they employ Ben to wink at the audience.
Despite the relative progressivism of the idea that Wakanda is a technologically advanced society hidden in the African jungle, it’s hard for Stan and Jack to escape the exoticism that feels inevitable when comic characters travel to Africa. The splash page, as wondrous as Kirby makes it, embodies the contradictions in the treatment of T’Challa and Wakanda.
FF 53 is also the debut of Klaw, who goes on to become a major Marvel villain, who will debut a much different look in a few issues. He’s most associated with the Black Panther, but over the years battles the FF, Avengers and Daredevil, and plays a starring role in the first Secret Wars series (written as a loopy idiot by Jim Shooter).
Black Panther 15 (1979, J. Buscema/Milgrom)Secret Wars 12 (1985, Shooter/Zeck/Beatty)
Crazy Credits
An Irving Forbush reference
Living in the future
Reed is impressed by T’Challa’s hi-fi system, which includes … a tape recorder. And note the nod to Hugh Hefner.
Comparative Religion 101
Stan educates the reader via footnote.
It’s Clobberin’ Time
There’s something muted about its use in this panel, which is one of the first when Ben says it without simultaneously delivering a punch. This might mark it’s transition from an exclamation to an all-purpose catch phrase, as Ben even notes how “cornball” it sounds.
The sexist sixties
Only Sue is scared of the loud noises.
Dig that Kirby Krackle
Lots of cool stuff from Jack in this issue. Like this:
Fantastic Four 52 “The Black Panther” Published: April 1966 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Sam Rosen Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Synopsis
Fantastic Four 52 opens with Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Girl and the Thing (the Human Torch is off at college) tooling around in a new flying car they received as a gift from “an African Chieftain” called the Black Panther. The Black Panther’s emissary offers the car to Reed permanently if the team accompanies him to Wakanda to take part in a hunt. Reed, saying the team needs a vacation, takes him up on the offer, first stopping to pick up Johnny and his roommate, Wyatt Wingfoot.
Wakanda is revealed to be technologically advanced, but when the team arrives, the emissary vanishes and the team is attacked by the Black Panther. He manages to subdue each member of the team but Wyatt manages to free them, ultimately foiling the Black Panther’s conquest. The issue ends with him beginning to explain his motives to the team.
FF 52 also cuts away from the main story to reveal the Inhumans are struggling to escape the Negative Zone that has imprisoned them, an indication that we will be seeing much more of them.
What’s going on here?
Obviously, the big development of FF 52 is the introduction of the Black Panther, a character who goes on to be a member of the Avengers (and a fill-in member of the FF for a time) and be the star of his own on-again, off-again solo title. With the success of the MCU Black Panther movie in 2018, he’s only become a bigger deal, moving in to the upper tier of Marvel characters.
The significance of the Black Panther isn’t just that he’s a black, or African, hero—although both were rarities at the time—but that he upends so many of the stereotypes of blacks and Africans that were (and to some extent still are) pervasive in comics. Wakanda, as created by Stan and Jack, isn’t a primitive backwater, but a sophisticated enclave. T’Challa isn’t a hot-blooded savage, but a calculating scientist. The Fantastic Four wasn’t lured to Africa by a villain, but by a hero. In a world where B’wana Beast was still waiting to debut, Black Panther is a remarkable creation.
Given the Black Panther’s impact, it’s easy to overlook the other big development in FF 52, which is the realization of Wyatt Wingfoot as a bona fide member of the FF’s supporting cast. Wyatt was introduced as Johnny’s college roommate in issue 50 and we learned a bit more about him last issue—his dad was a standout athlete but Wyatt had no interest in joining the college football team—but he really comes into his own here.
Like the Black Panther, Wingfoot, a Native American, refuses to conform to the comic book stereotype. He doesn’t wear a fringed jacket or a feather, he doesn’t talk like Tonto, and even if he does evince skill as a tracker, he’s more adept at thinking than fighting. Wyatt doesn’t have the same profile of the Black Panther—surprisingly, he never gains powers or becomes a real super hero—but remains a classic member of the FF’s supporting cast.
He later becomes She-Hulk’s love interest, adding a new dimension to his character (even if he is wearing the same T-shirt). They meet in FF 269-270 (written and illustrated by John Byrne).
A fun running gag in FF 52 is Wyatt’s imperturbability. He seemingly can sleep through anything.
Crazy credits
The sexist sixties
The Black Panther may be technologically sophisticated, but he’s not exactly progressive.
Weird science
There’s a lot of dubious claims in this issue. Like these “cosmic channel waves”:
And these polarity guns:
The comic code was here
Shouldn’t T’challa have nipples?
Dig that Kirby Krackle
Some great stuff from the King:
These panels are amazing (Joe Sinnott deserves a lot of credit here, too):
Next issue: The FF and the Black Panther fight Klaw!
Fantastic Four 51 “The Man, This Monster” Published: March 1966 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Artie Simek Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Synopsis
The Thing, still morose after Alicia Masters’s apparent rejection last issue, continued to wander the streets of New York. He is taken in by the unnamed bald scientist, introduced last issue, who is determined to destroy the Fantastic Four and Reed Richards, who he sees as his rival. He drugs Ben’s coffee and after the Thing has passed out, subjects him to his “duplication apparatus” which transforms the scientist into a replica of the Thing while leaving Ben in his human form.
Meanwhile, the Human Torch is acclimating to life in college with his new friend, Wyatt Wingfoot, when they are confronted by the school’s quarterback/ bully Whitey Mullins. The team’s coach, who, like Mullins was introduced last issue, arrives to diffuse the situation and tries to recruit Wyatt, whose father is revealed to be a star athlete and former teammate of the coach.
Back at the Baxter Building, the imposter Thing is enlisted by Mr. Fantastic to help with him a dangerous experiment that he hopes will unlock the secrets of faster-than-light travel and prevent incursions by threats such as Galactus. The real Ben Grimm shows up but the fake Thing convinces Reed and Sue that he’s the genuine Thing, leaving the real Ben to storm off. Reed then uses a device enters “sub-space”—which seems to be the Negative Zone—while fake Ben holds his tether. Fake Ben sees an opportunity to kill Reed, and when Reed signals to be pulled back, he hesitates. Too late, he realizes he misjudged Reed, and tries to save him. The tether snaps, so fake Ben plunges into sub-space himself then hurls Reed out. Satisfied he has redeemed himself, he goes to his death in peace. The real Ben is transformed back into the Thing, and the team is reunited.
What’s going on here?
Fantastic Four 51 is often singled out as one of the highlights of the Lee/Kirby FF run. It was voted No. 2 on a list of the top 60 FF stories, and No. 4 on a list of the top 100 Stan Lee stories, for example. Douglas Wolk began his book All of the Marvels— a literal reading of every Marvel comic—not with FF 1 but with issue 51.
Its reputation as a standout is interesting, since it’s such an odd story. After three multi-issue epics—the lengthy Frightful Four/ Doom story, the Inhumans saga and the Galactus trilogy—it’s a chance for a breather with a one-and-done story with a new and ultimately disposable villain (we never even learn his name!). In that sense, it reads a bit like earlier, sci-fi flavored FF issues.
More strangely, the FF are really supporting characters in the narrative arc of the nameless villain, who begins the story scheming to destroy Reed and by the end is so impressed by his nobility and selflessness that he’s willing sacrifice himself to save Reed. In a sense, the villain serves as a window through which we see Reed with new eyes. The villain also gives as new appreciation for Ben in his absence: Reed calls Ben “the greatest partner a man ever had” and the villain, preparing to save Reed, believes he “can really be Ben Grimm,” ie. a true hero.
An unwritten—and maybe overly prosaic explanation—of his transformation from villain to hero is that the device that transformed the villain into the Thing transferred Ben’s character as well as his appearance. It would be a testament to Ben’s virtue, while explaining the radical shift in the villain’s motivations. That explanation would at least place Ben at the center of the story because despite its iconic cover, Ben is really absent for most of the issue.
FF 51’s renown is also deserved because of Kirby’s art, which is just jaw-dropping. I’ll highlight some pages later, but it features perhaps his greatest collage:
Jack’s fantastic, cosmic art is the necessary counterbalance to Stan’s pathos-driven story. In his New York Times review of Wolk’s book, Junot Diaz identifies the magical mix that made the Lee/ Kirby Fantastic Four—and by extension the larger Marvel Universe—so powerful:
But it was in Issue 51 that Kirby and Lee hit the mother lode; discovered the precise amount of human misery you need to inflict on a superhero in order to sell the galactic and fantastic, to make it real. The galactic fantastic without human anguish: kid stuff. Human anguish without the galactic: soap opera. But the two blended together in the right proportions equaled a new type of imaginative vibranium. Once Kirby and Lee cracked the Galactus Equation, Marvel never looked back.
Meanwhile
Unlike previous issues, FF 51 breaks away from the main action to build out a subplot; in this case, Johnny’s immersion into college life and the troubling dynamic between the Metro football coach and his jerk quarterback. It’s also becoming clear Wyatt Wingfoot is shaping into a significant supporting character and he get a bit of his backstory, including learning that his father was an Olympic decathlete (the parallel to Jim Thorpe is too obvious too miss).
Weird science
There’s a lot of it in this issue, starting with the “duplication apparatus.”
Then there’s this explanation of subspace, which sound a lot like later descriptions of the Negative Zone
Mail call
This issue features letters from a Yale Law student and a GI in Vietnam.
Fantastic Four 50 “The Startling Saga of the Silver Surfer” Published: Feb. 1966 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Same Rosen Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Synopsis
Fantastic Four 50 picks up where issue 49 left off. The Silver Surfer, having the value of humantity revealed to him by Alicia Masters last issue, confronts his master, Galactus, who is preparing to drain the earth of its energy. As the Surfer and Galactus battle, the Watcher reveals his plans for the Human Torch to Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Girl and the Thing. When the Torch arrives from his voyage across the cosmos, he delivers the Ultimate Nullifier to the Watcher. Reed then uses it to threaten Galactus with the destruction of the universe if he doesn’t abandon his plans to consume earth. Galactus concedes, but before he leaves earth, he strips the Surfer of his ability to travel through space.
As the FF dust themselves off, Alicia shows up to praise the Surfer for helping save the world, leaving Ben jealous and despondent.
FF 50 then pivots to a series of vignettes that set up future stories. The first introduces a nameless bald villain who, after reading news accounts of the FF’s victory, announces plans to destroy the FF. The second concerns an over-the-hill college football coach and his inability to rein in his hot-headed star quarterback. Finally, Johnny enrolls at Metro College, where he meets his new roommate, Wyatt Wingfoot, while still pining away for the Inhuman, Crystal.
What’s going on here?
This is a busy comic, and not just because of the epic resolution of the Galactus storyline. In another peculiar pacing decision similar to issue 48, the main narrative essentially ends halfway through the comic, with the rest of the issues devoted to subplots and foreshadowing. A contemporary comic would use all the space available for the main tale—if there’s ever a story deserving of a space-consuming double-page splash, this was it—and sprinkle the foreshadowing elements throughout the comic. As it is, the reader is raised to the crescendo of the FF’s triumph over Galactus, only to be handed a mystifying story about a football coach.
The climax of the Galactus arc, as brief as it is, gives Stan and Jack another opportunity to stretch their cosmic muscles. They make it clear here that larger forces are at work, and the Fantastic Four are mostly bystanders. Unlike most villains, Galactus isn’t defeated by Reed outwitting him or whipping up some gizmo, but by the Watcher’s machinations. Even Johnny, the ostensible hero of the story, is overcome by the scale of the universe and pretty much wrecked by his trip across the universe.
If the FF are secondary characters in their own comic, it’s also because the story of the Silver Surfer is so dramatic. After Alicia reconnects Norrin Rad to his lost humanity, he turns on Galactus to defend the earth. Galactus is surprisingly chill about the betrayal, at several points telling the Surfer how much he likes and respects him, and basically telling the Surfer he’s going through a phase.
Galactus claims he bears the Surfer and FF no malice, but still he strips the Surfer of his space-faring powers. It’s not obvious if at this point Stan and Jack anticipated the Surfer having his own series, but keeping him trapped on earth was a useful plot device when his solo book eventually launched.
The Ultimate Nullifier serves as a convenient deus ex machina that solves the problem of Galactus. It reappears on occasion over the course of Marvel’s history, usually in a story with some big stakes.
What’s up with Ben?
Ben has been his usual melancholic self over the past few issues—he had an introspective sequence when the FF was in Atillan—but it kicks into overdrive in FF 50. First, there’s this revealing “kidding-not-kidding” exchange with Sue, where he explains how he uses humor to deflect his trauma.
Then the Silver Surfer, who barely knows him, senses something is amiss.
That’s followed by Ben’s jealous reaction to Alicia greeting the Surfer, as Ben’s insecurity about his appearance kicks overwhelms him.
Finally, as Ben wanders the streets of New York, he startles a woman, sending him down a spiral of self-pity that will play out next issue.
Who’s the new guy?
As if there wasn’t enough going on, FF 50 introduces Wyatt Wingfoot, a longstanding supporting character and, notably, a Native American character who isn’t reduced to a bundle of cliche and stereotypes. Here, he and Johnny meet cute.
Crazy Credits
The usual modesty
The sexist sixties
Again, another sequence of Sue stamping her feet because Reed isn’t paying her enough attention. At least Reed apologizes.
Read all about it
A nice connected-universe swipe at J. Jonah Jameson here.
Dig that Kirby Krackle
After using this silly phrase for 50+ blog posts, we finally get some genuine Kirby Krackle. For the uninitiated, Kirby Krackle are the black dots Jack uses to illustrate the release of energy. A trademark effect of the King’s, it hasn’t really appeared until this issue. Now we can, indeed, dig that Krackle.
Here’s some more:
We also get a great panel of Galactus giving the ol’ stink-eye.
And Johnny tooling around campus in a sweet set of wheels.
Fantastic Four 49 “If This Be Doomsday!” Published: Jan. 1966 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Sam Rosen Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Synopsis
Fantastic Four 49 picks up where issue 48 left off, after Galactus makes his entrance, intent on draining earth of its energies. The Watcher urges Galactus to reconsider, and the FF confront him, but to no avail and he begins assembling his earth-energy-sucking machine on top of the Baxter Building.
Meanwhile, the Silver Surfer, reeling from his fight with the Thing, landed on the roof of Alicia Masters’ building. She nurses him back to health and begins to awaken him to the possibility earth might be worth saving.
After regrouping, the Fantastic Four again engage Galactus, save for Johnny, whom the Watcher singles out for a mission. As the rest of the team fight the Punisher, a creature Galactus dispatches to deal with vermin, Johnny travels through space and time to arrive at Galactus’s enormous space station.
Back on earth, as Galactus prepares to drain the earth’s energies, Alicia appeals to the Silver Surfer’s lost humanity and convinces him to confront Galactus to save the earth. The issue ends with the Watcher warning the reader that the Surfer may disrupt his own plans and doom the earth.
What’s going on here?
FF 49 is everything you want a Fantastic Four comic to be. It’s arguably the high point of the Lee/ Kirby partnership, and showcases both at the peak of their powers (aided significantly by Joe Sinnott’s inks, of course). In Galactus, Stan finally has an antagonist worthy of his bombast and grandiosity. After years of trying to convince us Diablo or the Thinker were threats to humanity, In Galactus Stan has a villain that lives up to his over-wrought writing. And in the Surfer, he has an alien hero who can philosophize while speaking in the lofty, faux-Shakespearian tones Stan loves so much.
Kirby rises to the occasion too. The story’s huge sweep and cosmic overtones gives him the freedom to produce amazing character designs for Galactus and the Punisher, an eye-popping panel of Galactus’s space station—it’s so big that planets orbit it—and stunning visual effects of Johnny confronting Galactus and traveling through space.
The whole story just feels big—big in its scope, big in its stakes, and big in its ambition
Who is this guy?
While Galactus technically made his first appearance last issue, this is really his debut. We don’t yet get the full story (more on his origin in a bit) but we get the basics, and the basics are more than enough: He’s a cosmic being of incredible power who is sustained by draining planets of their essence. Interestingly, while he has appeared in countless comics over the years, unlike other characters, he has changed very little. His costume design has remained essentially the same, and while his role in the Marvel universe has been explained and put into context, he acts pretty much as he does in his first appearance: traveling the universe looking for planets to consume.
The traditional account of Galactus’s invention is that Stan, searching for a story idea, said “let’s have them fight god.” Mark Evanier, in his biography Kirby: King of Comics, disputes that narrative and instead offers two alternative ideas. One is that Jack wanted to upend the conventional science fiction idea that if aliens arrived, they would engage with humans and exchange technology. What if they didn’t care about humans? Jack wondered, according to Evanier. What if they just wanted to eat our planet? The other idea reflects Kirby’s growing disillusionment with Marvel and the business of comics. In this interpretation, Galactus is a hostile company buying up smaller firms and draining them dry. (In the letters pages, readers projected a Vietnam metaphor on the story, with Galactus acting as hostile communist forces and the Silver Surfer as the US coming to the rescue of South Vietnam).
Galactus’s origin is relatively uncomplicated. In the original telling, revealed in a back-up story by Stan and Jack in Thor 169, Galactus was originally Galan, a citizen of an advanced planet called Taa. The planet is facing extinction by a plague, so Galan and three others decide to die as explorers and head into Taa’s sun. Galan survives and is eventually transformed into Galactus (as Brian Cronin notes in his Comics Should Be Good blog, this sounds like a mash-up of Superman and the FF’s origins.)
A few decades later, Marvel editor Mark Gruenwald decided to revamp Galactus’s origins. Instead of merely the last survivor of a planet, he became the last survivor of a universe, and he emerged from the Big Bang. Gruenwald basically took the Stan and Jack story, wrote over some of it with some new pages by John Byrne and Ron Wilson, and republished it in 1983 as Super-Villain Classics 1. Here are some relevant pages:
The notable thing about this origin is that establishes Galactus as a cosmic entity, a force of nature and not merely a villain, despite the destruction he causes. That tension became a major storyline during Byrne’s FF run, when Reed Richards begs Galactus to spare earth in FF 243, and Galactus basically says, “nothing personal, it’s just business.”
Reed, with the help of the Avengers, then saves Galactus’s life in FF 244, arguing they had a moral responsibility to prevent the death of a living thing.
Noble as it was, that decision didn’t sit well with the survivors of the worlds Galactus destroyed, and in FF 262 Reed is summoned to be tried for his crime of saving Galactus. Through Reed, Byrne makes the case of Galactus’s importance in the universe:
There’s a lot more to it, but it serves to anchor Galactus as a unique force in the Marvel universe. On a personal note, FF 262 was the third FF comic I ever read. My 12-year-old mind was blown.
About that outfit
In his first appearance, Kirby has Galactus wearing shorts with a big G on his chest:
Fortunately, he soon put on long pants and got rid of the G, but his appearance, with the elaborate headgear has remained pretty much the same ever since. Yet despite its visual appeal, it’s not obvious why he’s dressed that way, given that he is a cosmic force and not a run-of-the-mill bad guy. The Lee / Kirby origin in Thor provides one answer: He was given that outfit by a Watcher, who witnessed his emergence from his incubator and created “a unique body-suit which would help him regulate his awesome energies.”
Later, Byrne in FF 262, suggests only humans see Galactus as humanoid, and that he appears to other alien races in whatever form they take (I never much liked this explanation, since he’s never depicted as anything other than humanoid, and it makes more sense to me that he’s human-like because Galan of Taa was also human-like). It’s a pretty cool page though.
Wrong guy
Whaddya mean there’s another Punisher?
That sounds familiar
On his cosmic voyage, the Human Torch passed through “celestial barriers known as un-life” which sounds a lot like ‘anti-life,” a concept that became a big part of the Fourth World mythos Jack created at DC about five years later.
About that vow
On several occasions the Watcher references his vow not to interfere in human affairs while busily interfering in human affairs
Prime real estate
A few issues ago, Dragon Man crashed into Alicia’s apartment while fighting Ben and Johnny. Now, the Silver Surfer just happens to land on her roof.
Crazy credits
It’s clobberin’ time
One of the more ineffective attempts to clobber from Ben
Dig that Kirby Krackle
There’s a lot to choose from in this issue, but here are a few stand-out pages and panels, starting with the amazing splash page:
A very cool sequence:
And another amazing page:
Nextissue: The conclusion of the Galactus trilogy!
Fantastic Four 48 “The Coming of Galactus!” Published: Dec. 1965 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Artie Simek Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Synopsis
As has been the pattern or the last dozen issues, Fantastic Four 48 picks up where FF 47 left off. The team is in Attilan, the city of the Inhumans, and Maximus has set off his Atmo-Gun, intending to destroy humanity so the Inhumans can rule the earth. Black Bolt, who last issue wrested his crown back from his brother Maximus, confronts him and knocks him silly. Medusa explains to Maximus his plan was doomed because the Inhumans are still human despite their powers, and a device that spares Inhumans would also spare humans. In a last gasp, Maximus reverses the charge on his Atmo-Gun, generating a “negative zone” — a term that should sound familiar—around Attilan. The Invisible Girl creates a force field which allows the FF to pass through the zone and escape but the Inhumans are trapped behind it, leaving the Human Torch distraught when he is separated from Crystal.
Meanwhile, as the FF return to New York, we are introduced to the Silver Surfer as he glides through space, and are warned that he is a harbinger of Galactus. Back in New York, the skies are aflame, and panicking New Yorkers blame the Human Torch. The flames disappear, only to be replaced by “space debris.” The Watcher appears, and explains these effects are his doing in order to disguise the earth from the Silver Surfer. The Surfer then arrives and sends a signal to space before The Thing clobbers him. The signal summons Galactus, who emerges from his ship and announces his intentions to drain the earth of “all elemental life.” The issue ends with the cliff hanger.
What’s going on here?
FF 48 marks the beginning of the Galactus trilogy, arguably the apex of the Lee and Kirby run on the Fantastic Four. But oddly, before we can start this epic story, we need to resolve the last story, the FF’s adventure with the Inhumans. I’m not sure why Stan and Jack constructed the comic this way, but it’s strange that it’s divided into two stories.
The Inhumans portion of the comic establishes Maximus as the royal family’s principle antagonist, creates a bit of romantic drama between Black Bolt and Medusa, and ramps up the star-crossed-lovers theme between Johnny and Crystal. All good stuff, but it’s sort of forgettable compared to the rest of the comic, which introduces two major Marvel figures: the Silver Surfer, and Galactus. We’ll deal with Galactus in our next post, because there’s a lot to say about the Surfer.
The Surfer’s first appearance.
Who is this guy?
The Silver Surfer was one of Jack Kirby’s prized creations, and a source of major tension between him and Stan Lee, one which helped lead to Kirby’s departure from Marvel. According to Mark Evanier in his biography Kirby: King of Comics, Jack created him without any involvement from Stan Lee, who first encountered the Surfer when he saw the penciled pages of FF 48. Allegedly upon seeing him, Stan said “Jack, this time you’ve gone too far.” But Lee soon fell in love with the character, and it’s not hard to see why, given his penchant for grandiloquent soliloquies. Stan soon launched a Surfer solo book to be drawn by new Marvel star John Buscema, and gave the Surfer an origin very different from the one what Jack had in mind, leaving Jack frustrated and angry. According to Evanier “his idea had been taken from him in every possible sense.”
So why a surfer? Evanier doesn’t say what inspired Jack to put Galactus’s herald on a surfboard, but it probably has to with the general interest in surfing as a sport in the early to-mid 1960s. Surf music was charting, with the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean were churning out hits like “Surf City” and “Surfin’ USA,” and beach party movies, which often featured surfing, starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello were in the theaters. The next year, The Endless Summer, a surfing documentary, would come out. Clearly surfing was in the zeitgeist.
Jack would reach into the same bag of tricks a few years later when he was at DC and created the Black Racer, a member of the New Gods who acts sort of like a herald of death. By then, ski racing was popular, after Jean-Claude Killy’s star turn in the 1968 Olympics and the release of 1969’s Downhill Racer, a movie starring Robert Redford.
But while the design of the Surfer was abstract and elegant enough so that he only looked like he was surfing through space and not an actual surfer, Black Racer is far more literal and, I would argue, far less successful of a design.
About that origin
According to Evanier, Jack envisioned the Surfer as a being of pure energy who had never been human, and thus needs emotions like love explained to him. But in the origin Stan told in 1968’s Silver Surfer 1, the Surfer was once an (alien) man, Norrin Radd, who pledges himself to Galactus in order to spare his home world, Zenn-La, and his love, Shalla-Bal. The theme of the Surfer’s sacrifice and lost humanity is a powerful one and gives writers lots to chew on over the years. Here are the relevant pages from Silver Surfer 1. (And while John Buscema might be cast as a bad guy in Stan’s dispute with Jack, he probably had no say in it and there’s no denying how gorgeous his art is, here inked by Joe Sinnott).
Over the years, the Silver Surfer has attracted some of the comic world’s best and brightest creators. Here he is drawn by Marshall Rogers and inked by Joe Rubenstein in his 1987 solo series:
And drawn by Moebius, Esad Ribic, and Francesco Manna:
Along with starring in several of his own solo series, he also was an on-again-off-again member of the Defenders:
The Defenders 2 (1972, story by Steve Englehart, art by Sal Buscema and John Verporten)
My first real encounter with the Silver Surfer came in John Byrne’s Fantastic Four 260, a comic I have discussed before as igniting my interest in comics in general and the Fantastic Four in particular. Here, he battles Terrax, another former herald of Galactus given new life by Dr. Doom. There was something incredibly cool about the Surfer, who is as unadorned and sleek as a hood ornament, and both bristling with power and noble in his restraint. Reader, I was hooked.
Keel hauled
One aspect of the Surfer’s design I’ve always been curious about is whether his surfboard should have a keel. According to Kirby and Rogers, it does:
Personally, I prefer a no-keel look, since the keel makes it look too literally like a surf board. It’s not – there are no ocean waves in space.
One last detail about the Surfer: He is introduced to readers by the Skrulls, who fear he might alert Galactus to their homeworld. Byrne, always a student of the Lee/Kirby issues, returns to that idea decades later when he has Galactus consume the Skrull’s planet.
FF 257 (1983, Byrne)
Crazy Credits
Young love
Johnny takes his separation from Crystal hard, which is weird since they barely know each other.
The sexist sixties
Sue’s pouting and histrionics aren’t quite as bad in tis issue as last, but it’s still pretty bad (and is Ben smoking a cigarette in the first panel?)
Clobberin’ Time
It’s starting to be a regular occurance now (this is No. 10 by my count).
Feats of strength
It’s been long time since we’ve had one of these sequences of Ben showing off his strength. They used to be in almost every issue.
Dig that Kirby Krackle!
As if this issue didn’t have enough going on, we get a Kirby Kollage as Galactus arrives on earth:
Nu Yawk, Nu Yawk:
Another very cool panel (Joseph Levine was a Hollywood producer behind bombastic adventure movies like Hercules):
Fantastic Four 47 “Beware the Hidden Land!” Published Nov. 1965 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Artie Simek Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Synopsis
Fantastic Four 47 picks up where FF 46 left off (once very unusual, the cliff-hanger ending is becoming the rule in the Fantastic Four). Dragon Man has escaped the Seeker and is on a rampage but before the team can pursue him, they need to attend to Triton, the fish-like Inhuman who is dying without water. Mr. Fantastic orders the Thing and the Human Torch to pursue Dragon Man, then instructs the Invisible Girl to enclose Triton in a forcefield, which he fills with water. Ben and Johnny eventually subdue Dragon Man, but not before the creature almost destroys the studio of Alicia Masters, Ben’s girlfriend.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Inhumans teleport back to the Andes and their hidden city of Attilan (called only “the Great Refuge” here) where it is revealed that Maximus, Black Bolt’s brother, has usurped the throne and dispatched the Seeker to capture the Inhuman royal family. After Maximus orders the ape-like Alpha Primatives to attack the royal family, Black Bolt eventually wrests the crown back from Maximus.
The Fantastic Four arrive, having tracked the Seeker, and confront Black Bolt, who demands the team leave. As the groups debate, the issue ends with Maximus preparing to fire his “Atmo-Gun” which promises to destroy mankind, leaving the earth to the Inhumans.
What’s going on here?
Fantastic Four 47 is a frustrating issue. It features some of the most outstanding Kirby art to date (the influence of Joe Sinnott is really apparent), a story jammed with plot and sub-plots, but also some of the most egregiously sexist characterizations in the comic so far. The depiction of Sue is almost unreadable, and Reed’s treatment of her is equally painful.
Let’s start with Reed barking orders at a flummoxed Sue, who seems incapable of understanding her own powers:
Then, as Sue suggests the Inhumans can tend to their own affairs, Reed shuts her down.
Later, as the Fantastic Four flies to Attilan, Sue attends to … her hair.
Which leads to this excruciating sequence:
And finally, once again Reed needs to tell Sue how to use her powers:
And if there was any worry that it was just Sue who was written like this, here’s Alicia—allegedly an accomplished sculptor with a life of her own—pining away for Ben:
It’s hard to understand where the treatment of Sue is coming from, other than it being just a particularly sexist product of its era. Frustratingly, in the previous dozen or so issues, Stan and Jack had written her having more agency and mastery over her powers, but it all seems to revert back to idiotic stereotypes in FF 47.
Elsewhere …
Fantastic Four 47 further elaborates on the Inhumans and the dynamics within the royal family. We are introduced to Maximus, and he’s revealed to be the real villain. Confusingly, a flunky of his says it was Maximus who ordered Gorgon to capture Medusa in issue 44, when it seemed obvious that he was working on behalf of Black Bolt to reunite her with the royal family.
Also, Maximus refers to an “accident” that left Black Bolt speechless and left unable to rule, an explanation which is eventually retconned away when the power of Black Bolt’s voice becomes the reason for his silence (his voice’s power isn’t revealed until FF 54, and his silence is more fully explained in the Thor backup stories).
Crazy Credits
Subtle but clever.
Star-crossed lovers
Ben and Alicia’s relationship is also given some attention in Fantastic Four 47, as Ben is desperate to save her as Dragon Man threatens to destroy her building. They make their feelings for each other known thusly:
Leading to more anguish from Ben later in the story, as he return to a familiar theme- his lost humanity.
Those crazy kids
Meanwhile, Ben isn’t the only one with relationship issues, as Johnny and Crystal reunite (oddly, her nickname is written here as “Chris” and not “Crys”).
Oops
Why are the FF flying a commercial jet instead of their Fantasticar, their Pogo Plane or their ICBM? Stan supplies an explanation, but I’m guessing Jack just forgot.
It’s Clobbberin’ Time
Ben is starting to say the magic words more frequently. This is the ninth time, by my count.
Weird Science
Beware the Atmo-Gun!
Dig That Kirby Krackle
Jack (with an assist from Sinnott) delivers some of the most dynamic pages yet. Here are a few:
Next issue: The resolution of the Inhumans sage, and the beginning of a little story featuring some guys called Galactus and the Silver Surfer!
Fantastic Four 46 “Those who would destroy us!” Published: Oct. 1965 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Artie Simek Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Synopsis
Fantastic Four 46 picks up where FF 45 leaves off, with the team battling the Inhumans on the roof of a New York City building. Black Bolt, leader of the Inhumans makes his appearance, and he and the Thing battle to a virtual standstill. Meanwhile, the Inhuman Triton is revealed to be a scaly fish creature who need a protective suit of water. When it ruptures, he flees to the nearby river.
As the teams fight, a new character called the Seeker leads a team of henchmen into the Baxter Building in search of the Inhumans. He instead discover the sedated Dragon Man, and mistaking him for an Inhuman, abducts him via his aircraft.
Black Bolt depletes his power fighting the Thing, and when the Inhumans can’t find Triton, they realize the Seeker has caught up to them. Using Lockjaw’s power, they teleport away, and after the Fantastic Four discovers Dragon Man is missing, they track the Seeker to his hideout, where he has imprisoned Dragon Man and Triton. The Seeker reveals the origins of the Inhumans (more on that in a bit) then Dragon Man wakes up, escapes his shackles and flees, while shattering the water-filled globe that contained Triton. The issue ends with Dragon Man running amok in New York.
What’s going on here?
More Inhuman action and the introduction of Black Bolt!
Black Bolt’s most salient quality is that he’s mute. Sure, he’s strong enough to battle the Thing, but his silence is what sets him apart from other characters. We’ll learn later that it’s because of the destructive power of his voice, but most of the time he’s a leader who can’t speak. In a world where there’s often a great deal of talk without much action, Black Bolt is cast as the opposite, the king who acts without talking. I doubt Stan and Jack meant Black Bolt to serve as a jab at anyone in particular, but probably as a blanket commentary on bloviating politicians as a class. The strong-yet-silent leader is a seductive concept, although one that works a lot better in comic books, where most conflicts are resolved with fists and not dialogue.
Black Bolt—whose full name was later retconned, painfully, into Blackagar Boltagon— occupies an interesting place in comics. As leaders of the Inhumans, he holds an important role, and is highly enough regarded enough, for example, to be part of the Illuminati, one of the six super heroes who dictate events in the Marvel Universe (according to writer Brian Bendis, anyway). Yet because he’s mute, he’s always been a cypher. His thoughts and intentions are always relayed through other characters, and he rarely is even given thought bubbles. What are his hopes and dreams? Who knows? It’s hard to think of another comic hero so prominent about whom we know so little.
Cover by Jim Cheung
About that mask
When the Inhumans were introduced, they almost all wore masks. While some have lost their’s over the years, Black Bolt almost always wears his. There’s no obvious reason in-story that’s ever given for his mask- it’s not like he was a secret identity to protect, or hideous scars to cover. Tracking down an image of Black Bolt’s actual face is surprisingly difficult, but here’s at least one instance, from 2015’s Uncanny Inhumans:
Uncanny Inhumans 20 (2015, story by Charles Soule, art by Brandon Peterson)
The best explanation of why members of the Inhuman royal family wear masks was provided by the great writer and artist Alan Davis, in his mini-series Fantastic Four: The End. It takes place in the team’s future, and Ben and Alicia are living with the Inhumans on Mars. It comes down to a tension about the appearance of the Inhumans, and the role of the transfarmative terrigen mists in their culture.
Fantastic Four: The End 3 (2006, story and pencils by Alan Davis, inks by Mark Farmer)
Who are these guys?
FF 46 also includes a brief origin of the Inhumans, courtesy of the Seeker.
The origin omits a critical detail (or more likely, Stan and Jack hadn’t come up with it yet), which is that the Inhumans were an experiment of the Kree, an alien race that will be introduced in Fantastic Four 65. Eventually a much longer origin is unspooled as a back-up story in Thor 146-152 (of all places), published in 1967-68. Here are some key panels that explain the role of the Kree (the whole story is gorgeous, with peak Kirby/ Sinnott art).
The Thor stories also delve into how Black Bolt became king of the Inhumans, and include this poignant sequence:
The Seeker
The Seeker is the heavy in this issue. In later stories he is named as Kadlec, a viceroy under a previous ruler of the Inhumans and given a bit of a back story. Although he never becomes a much more than a footnote in Inhumans history, he looks great here.
Crazy Credits A bit more subdued this month.
Weird science
Reed invents … the security camera and VCR?
Dig that Kirby Krackle
Some cool stuff from Jack, including a slumbering Dragon Man…
Fantastic Four 45 “Among Us Hide the Inhumans” Published: Sept. 1965 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Lettering: Artie Simek Cover: Kirby and Sinnott
Programming note: Before we dive into a big issue, this post marks a full year of blogging about the Fantastic Four. We’ve covered 45 regular issues and three annuals. Not quite the 52 posts I was aiming for but not bad. If all goes according to plan, the next few months will cover some of the biggest stories in comic book history, then the rest of the year will wrap up most of the remaining Lee/Kirby FFs. That’s the idea, anyway. But I’m open to ideas: What do you want me to write about? Should I continue issue-by-issue? Should I cover the FF’s appearances in other comics? Is there something you want more of? Or less of? Drop a line in the comments if you have thoughts. They would be very welcome.
Synopsis
Fantastic Four 45 picks off where FF 44 left off, on the crumbling roof of a Manhattan building. Dragon Man has flown off with the Invisible Girl and Gorgon has abducted Medusa. After Mr. Fantastic, the Human Torch and the Thing are safely on the ground, Johnny flies after Dragon Man, who is eventually calmed by Sue and returns her peacefully to the Baxter Building.
A morose Johnny later takes a walk and finds himself in a deserted neighborhood where he encounters a young woman who disappears in a windstorm. After squabbling with the rest of the team, Johnny returns, and discovers the woman has powers. Mistaking him for a fellow Inhuman, she introduces herself as Crystal and Johnny then meets Lockjaw and Karnak. But when he is discovered by Medusa and Gorgon, the Inhumans try to imprison him. Johnny escapes and summons the rest of the Fantastic Four. The teams are about to square off when Black Bolt makes his entrance, ending the issue with another cliffhanger.
What’s going on here?
The introduction of the Inhumans is obviously the significant development in FF 45. They’ve been a major part of the Marvel universe ever since, appearing either in their own series or, more frequently, as guest stars in other books almost continuously since. Finding the backstory for the Inhumans has proven difficult, but at one point it seems they were destined for their own series before a change in plans led Stan and Jack to fold them into the FF. Did Stan and Jack have a full team of super characters in mind when they introduced Medusa in FF 36? It seems unlikely. Here’s Stan, in a 1967 radio interview he gave alongside Jack:
“I mean, we didn’t sit down one day and say let’s do a group of Inhumans and these are their names and we’ll present them in this fashion, as with everything we do. We just sort of stumble into them as we go along.”
Earlier in the interview, Stan explains the concept started with Gorgon:
“He started out as a villain. We liked him so much, I should say Jack liked him so much, that he kept using him. We figured he has to come from somewhere. We decided, let him come from some strange land over in Europe, where there are a whole group of people like him. And well, what else could you call them except the Inhumans. Then Jack had to create a whole bunch of Inhumans and I think he did a great job. All these characters are really very imaginative.
When it came to doing the leader, we decided, well, there was no need for them all to be villainous. And you’re right, I think we did have in mind that Black Bolt would eventually be a heroic type.”
It’s of course possible that Stan was talking out of turn, and Jack had it all mapped out, but it was a joint interview, and he didn’t contradict Stan.
FF 240 (1981) Story, pencils and inks by John Byrne
Who’s the new guy?
The other big development in this issue—technically it was issue 44, but I goofed and forgot to mention it last week—is it marks the beginning of Joe Sinnott’s legendary run as inker. Sinnott inked FF 5, then starting with issue 44 goes on to ink the FF for 16 years until issue 231 in 1981, stopping only when John Byrne took over the book and inked himself. Then, after Byrne left in 1987, Sinnott inked the FF for another two years.
Sinnott’s inks help create the classic Kirby look. The lines are bolder, the shadows are deeper, the forms are more defined. His inks give the Thing his essential rockiness and give the Kirby Krackle its explosive energy.
His presence on the book for so many years after Kirby departed gave the FF a smooth, consistent appearance, although it could be argued that his inks smothered the unique qualities of some up-and-coming artists on the book like George Perez and Bill Sienkiewicz, who later flourished with other inkers.
Meet the Inhumans
Medusa and Gorgon we already know. In FF 45 we are introduced to Crystal, who has the power to manipulate the four elements: fire, water, earth and air.
We soon meet Lockjaw, a giant dog with the ability to teleport:
And Karnak, who can find the weakness in any substance:
Triton, a water breather, is kept hidden, with the promise of a bigger reveal later:
And lastly, Black Bolt makes a dramatic appearance at the end:
Plus, one more: While Stan and Jack almost certainly didnt intend it, the portal Johnny and Crystal travel through was retconned by Johnathan Hickman into Eldrac the Doorway, “once a politician.”
FF 577 (2010, story by Hickman, art by Dale Eaglesham)
About Crystal
While all the Inhumans have an impact of the Fantastic Four, Crystal is the one perhaps most closely tied to the team. She becomes Johnny’s love interest, then, when Sue is on maternity leave, she officially joins the FF in issue 81:
She later falls in love with Pietro Maximoff, aka Quicksilver, an Avenger and son of Magneto. Johnny is not thrilled.
FF 131 (1973, story by Roy Thomas, art by Ross Andru and Joe Sinnott)
Crystal and Pietro eventually marry in FF 150 (as shown in this post) and Crystal gives birth to baby Luna, so named because she arrived just as the Inhuman city of Attilan was transported to the moon:
FF 240
Eventually, however, Quicksilver goes haywire and Crystal leaves him to join the AvengersAvengers 343 (1992, story by Bob Harras, art by Steve Epting and Tom Palmer)
Crystal eventually reconciles with Quicksilver, but then he really goes off the deep end, and she ends things forever:
Silent War 3 (2007, story by David Hine, art by Frazer Irving)
She finally winds up with Ronan the Accuser before she is forces to separate from him in a very complicated story by Johnathan Hickman:
FF 21 (2012, cover art by Mike Choi)
They’re fighting again
More like a battle of wits, but I’ll count it.
The sexist sixties
Crazy credits
It’s Clobberin’ Time
This is the eight time Ben has said the magic words, by my count.
The incredible Mr. Fantastic
Why turn into a ball when when you can be a cube?
Teenage blues
Just a great sequence by Stan, Jack and Joe of a moody Johnny
Weird science
“Easy with that iconmetric frammistat”
Dig That Kirby Krackle
Just when you though this comic had everything, Jack gives us this:
Fantastic Four 44 “The Gentleman’s Name is Gorgon!” Published: Aug. 1965 Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Script: Lee Pencils: Kirby Inks: Joe Sinnott Letters: Art Simek Cover: Kirby and Vince Colletta
Synopsis
Following the marriage of Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Girl (in FF Annual 3), the team is back at the Baxter Building where the Thing and Human Torch are growing bored of the new domesticity. Johnny takes off in his Corvette when he is carjacked by Madame Medusa, who threatens him with a “vacuum gun” and demands he help her escape Gorgon. Meanwhile, an unseen Gorgon uses his hooves to attack the Baxter Building, then steals the team’s helicopter.
Medusa forces Johnny to drive her upstate, near the campus of State University, and when Johnny tries to escape, Medusa drains the air from him using the vacuum gun. Their scuffle awakens the dormant Dragon Man, last seen in FF 35, and when Gorgon arrives to capture Medusa, he and Dragon Man battle. Medusa and Dragon Man flee back to New York City, pursued by Johnny and Gorgon. Eventually all parties battle on the roof of city building. Gorgon demands the FF surrender Medusa or he will destroy the city when Dragon Man abducts the Invisible Girl. The issue ends with Gorgon bringing down the building around the rest of the FF.
What’s going on here?
Fantastic Four 44 kicks off a story arc that introduces the Inhumans, a major part of the Marvel universe for decades to come. It’s also the first comic in a 16-issue run that may be the most influential and creative stretches in all of comics. In these issues Stan and Jack introduce:
* The Inhumans: Black Bolt, Gorgon, Crystal, Karnak, Triton, Lockjaw, Maximus and their city of Attilan (all except Medusa, who first appeared in FF 36). * The Silver Surfer * Galactus * Wyatt Wingfoot * The Black Panther and Wakanda * Klaw * Prestor John
Plus they deliver one of the single best standalone stories (“This Man, This Monster” in issue 51) and arguably the best Dr. Doom story, when Doom steals the power cosmic from the Silver Surfer. Much more on all of this to come, of course!
The only comparable runs of similar length (about a year) I can think for their lasting significance in comics history are the Claremont/Byrne Uncanny X-Men from UXM 129-142 (which includes the Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past), and Green Lantern 76-89, the classic Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams run that brought contemporary issues to comics while introducing major characters. I’m sure I’m missing some, so feel free to drop your ideas in the comments.
FF 44 also introduces Gorgon, who becomes a part of the Marvel firmament, but almost always as part of the Inhumans. In some ways, this might be a high point for Gorgon, as he appears both immensely powerful here and not in the shadow of his even more powerful cousin, Black Bolt. While he appears to be depowered over the years, he occasionally gets to strut his stuff, as in this fun sequence from Uncanny X-Men: First Class.
Uncanny X-Men: First Class 1, (2009, story by Scott Gray, art by Roger Cruz)
What’s in a name?
A gorgon in Greek mythology, was one of three snake haired women whose appearance could turn one to stone. One of the sisters was, of course Medusa, suggesting that if Stan and Jack knew their myths, they were’t overly concerned with the details.
The real Medusa, a gorgon (painting by Rubens)
Crazy Kredits
Not only does the creative team get goofy credits, but the FF gets nicknames.
This image of Gorgon also foreshadows Mantis, a villain Jack created for DC about six years later:
The sexist sixties
Sue is so determined to be a ’60s housewife, she’s wearing an apron.
Oops
Did Stan have to explain why Johnny’s Corvette Stingray has a backseat? It sure reads that way. Also: A vacuum gun!
We have a helicopter?
The FF has two Fantasticars, a Pogo plane, an ICBM, and apparently a helicopter.
