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

05 Sunday Jun 2022

Posted by percivalhenry in The World's Greatest Comic Magazine

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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.

And Reed has “healing balms” at his disposal (and I’m not hydrogenous means what Reed thinks it means).

Fist fighting

Apparently boxing isn’t a sport in the Negative Zone

Bang! Pow!

There are some excellent sound effects in this comic.

The sexist sixties

Sue does virtually nothing in this issue except whimper and cringe.

Clobberin’ Time

A very good set up and deliver from Mr. Grimm.

Dig that Kirby Krackle

This sequence with Triton fighting Blastaar is textbook Kirby (note the fist-fighting).

A cool panel:

This one too:

Also on the news stand this month:

Next issue: The Sentry!

“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!” Fantastic Four No. 61

28 Saturday May 2022

Posted by percivalhenry in The World's Greatest Comic Magazine

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1967, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four 61, Inhumans, jack Kirby, Sandman, Silver Surfer, Stan Lee

Fantastic Four 61
“Where Stalks the Sandman!”
Published: January 1967
Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Script: Lee
Pencils: Kirby
Inks: Joe Sinnott
Letters: Sam Rosen
Cover: Kirby and Sinnott

Synopsis

With the conclusion of the Doom/Surfer story arc in the last issue, Fantastic Four 61 starts off with a bang, as Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman and the Thing are attacked by the equipment (the “atom igniter,” among other devices) in Reed’s lab. Eventually their antagonist is revealed to be the Sandman, who has turned the FF’s devices against them, although it’s never really explain how. The FF and the Sandman battle, and are eventually joined by the Human Torch.

Meanwhile, in a pair of digressions, the Silver Surfer’s board returns to him with his powers, allowing him to escape Latveria, and the Inhuman Crystal teleports with Lockjaw to a Metro College football game in search of Johnny.

During the FF’s fight with the Sandman, the villain generates poisonous gasses. To escape, Reed opens the portal to the Negative Zone, and while Johnny and the Sandman escape, Reed is sucked into the other dimension. The issue end on a cliffhanger with Reed’s fate unknown.

What’s going on here?

This is an interesting issue. It starts off as a fairly pedestrian story, and one that felt a lot like issue 57, when the FF also fought the Sandman in the Baxter Building. But the story takes a surprising and dramatic turn when Reed opens the door to the Negative Zone and tumbles through, leading to a genuinely suspenseful ending and compelling pathos as the rest of the team watches him float away. The issue also has some stand-out pages from Kirby and Sinnott.

There are, of course, a whole lot of implausibilities in this issue, starting with how the Sandman, up until now a lunkhead, managed to hijack Reed’s devices. Then there’s the question why Reed’s devices are so vulnerable—at one point Sandman leans against a lever and threatens New York (this also happens to be an excel Joe Sinnott panel):

FF 61 also continues the almost sadistic torture of the Silver Surfer that began in issue 57. Oddly, while we saw his baord begin its return to him in the last issue, it didn’t arrive until this issue (“at that very moment”). The FF were able to fly across the Atlantic in the time his board crossed Latveria.

Notably, when the board returns, it is without its keel, another datapoint in the keel vs. no-keel debate.

And like every issue for the last five or so, we have an obligatory Inhumans check-in. In this one, Crystal looks unusually curvy.

Who is that guy?

An unannounced (and unacknowledged) cameo from a certain Daily Bugle photographer.

Costume change

This issue also marks a new costume for the Sandman,a much more Kirby-esque getup than the striped shirt Steve Ditko gave him. You can almost sense Jack chafing at having to draw such a drab costume for some many issues up to now.

The sexist sixies

More gender-role conformity

Clobberin’ Time

This is a pretty good one, with it’s own font and everything.

Weird science

Watch out for those spectrum beams!

Crazy credits

They’ve been pretty tame the last few issues, but we get a bit of flourish here.

For sale

A computer for $4.99. It’s a great deal, because a similar device made by IBM in 1967 cost about $4 million.

Dig that Kirby Krackle

So much awesomeness in this issue! Like this sequence:

And this entire page:

Also on news stands this month:

Next issue: Into the Negative Zone!

“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!” Fantastic Four No. 57

17 Sunday Apr 2022

Posted by percivalhenry in The World's Greatest Comic Magazine

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1966, Dr. Doom, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four 57, jack Kirby, Sandman, Silver Surfer, Stan Lee

Fantastic Four 57
“Enter Dr. Doom!”
Published: Sept. 1966
Story: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Script: Lee
Pencils: Kirby
Inks: Joe Sinnott
Letters: Art Simek
Cover: Kirby and Sinnott

Synopsis

The main story begins in the middle of the action (in medias res, if you want to be fancy), with the Fantastic Four (minus the Human Torch) fighting the Sandman and Wizard in a prison, as the Thing explains the team were summoned to the prison under a ruse. The Wizard is easily subdued but Sandman escapes. He eventually resurfaces at the Baxter Building, where Reed and Sue fight him (the Thing is off looking for him at this point) and eventually chase him away.

That plot line alternates with another, in which Dr. Doom lured the Silver Surfer to his castle in Latveria. After asking the Surfer to demonstrate his powers, Doom traps him in a devices that siphons his cosmic power to Doom.

Lastly, two other sub-plots are advanced: Johnny and Wyatt continue to teleport around the universe with Lockjaw—this time landing on a planet filled with monstrous creatures before escaping—and in the Inhuman’s city of Attilan, Black Bolt shows signs of life while Maximus the Mad reveals that he could speak the entire time (the powers of his voice has yet to be revealed).

What’s going on here?

Fantastic Four 57 is very much a transitional issue, as Stan and Jack continue to move their chess pieces around in advance of some bigger events. The only traditional story in this issue—one with a beginning, middle and end—concerns the fight with Sandman, and despite some nifty Kirby art, it feels like filler (and it can’t really be said to have a beginning, since it opens in the middle of the action). After seeing the FF fight Galactus, it’s hard to get too worked up about the Sandman.

The centerpiece is of FF 57 is the interaction between Doom and the Surfer. Doom is at his most duplicitous, lulling the Surfer into believing he is a benevolent monarch, then cruelly clamping him in a device that steals his power. It could be argued that this scene is where Doom really makes the leap from a generic bad guy into a truly fearsome villain. Certainly, nothing up to this point suggests he was capable of a plot as ambitious or nefarious as this.

It’s also an opportunity for Jack (and Joe Sinnott) to go absolutely nuts with the Kirby Krackle:

Years later John Byrne recreated this sequence in a flashback in 1983’s FF 258 when Doom once again tried to harness the power of a herald of Galactus, but in that case it was Terrax, not the Silver Surfer.

The sexist sixties

There’s some strange stuff going on with Sue in this issue. Early on, as the FF are recapturing the Wizard, she gives a very grim assessment of the FF’s status quo.

We then get a fairly typical sequence of Reed barking orders and Sue following them faithfully:

Followed by some more worrying and fretting. Every time Stan and Jack’s characterization of Sue seems to have turned a corner, she reverts back to the wingeing, cringing dish towel. Blech.

The incredible Mr. Fantastic

A fun sequence:

It’s Clobberin’ Time

It’s been a few issues since we got one of these.

Let’s talk about us

Ben is watching “The Marvel Super Heroes Show,” a short-lived animated series that ran in syndication in 1966. The stories were taken directly from comics, and the animators used the original art by Kirby, Steve Ditko and Don Heck. You can check it out here.