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Post by owene on Oct 11, 2010 13:31:15 GMT -5
Not sure that this is the right place for this but other than this site I'm totally out of touch with online fandom these days. Anyway I've started reading through the silver age Marvel Universe in order and decided to attempt to add to my beginners guide to the avengers with guides to everything else. Hope nobody minds me posting them here. I'll keep them to a single thread and would love any responses
My own copies have cover pics and are setup to be hyperlinked to any other (as yet unwritten) write ups they reference but I don't know how to include stuff like that here so it's text only. I'm copy and pasting so the formatting may be a bit off. Oh and I doubt if they will all be this long but this is the one that started it all.
Starting at the begining we have.
Fantastic Four #1
The Fantastic Four By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and (apparently) George Klein. Villains: The Mole Man and assorted Monsters Guest Appearances: none
So What Happens?: The words “The Fantastic Four” appear over in a cloud of smoke over Central City, spooking the population and provoking swift reactions from three residents.
Refined Susan Storm literally disappears from her society tea party and invisibly catches a taxi cab across town.
The monstrous Thing stops his futile quest for clothes in his size and heads off across the city, provoking and armed response from the police and tearing up the street and passing traffic as he goes.
Johnny Storm leaves his hot-rod and, bursting into flame, flies to the rendezvous, pursued by USAF fighters whose missiles can only be stopped by the freakishly stretching arms of the man who set off the signal, scientist Reed Richards.
The four remember the ill fated rocket flight that gave them their powers and how, after some initial squabbles, they vowed to help humanity.
Reed fills them in on a fresh threat. All around the globe nuclear power plants have been collapsing into the ground. Reed has tracked the source of the threat to the mysterious ‘Monster Island’ and needs them to set off immediately to investigate.
The Island is well named and on arrival they are immediately attacked by a three headed flying lizard. Despite Reed managing to lasso it with his extendable arm he and Johnny get caught in a cave in caused by their battle and fall into a blinding cave full of diamonds far beneath the earth. They pass out and when they come to they find themselves dressed in protective clothing and facing the misshapen half blind Mole Man.
On the surface the Thing manages to protect Sue from another creature before they too head underground in search of their team-mates.
The Mole Man tells Reed and Johnny how he had been an outcast in human society and had eventually left it in search of the world’s core. Injured underground he had lost most of his sight but learnt to prosper in total darkness and discovered countless monsters and hidden secrets. He was now ready to get his revenge on the surface world. Under attack from the newly arrived Thing he panics and summons an army of monsters.
The Fantastic Four flee and use Johnny’s flame to melt shut their escape tunnels as they leave. They attempt to bring the Mole Man with them but at the last minute lose him; as they leave the island by plane the Mole Man seemingly explodes it behind them.
So is it any good?: There is a lot to like but it is somewhat let down by the ending.
The Mole Man is seemingly a threat to all of civilisation and important enough to go half way around the world to tackle, but they meet him, hear his origin, listen to him tell them he will attack the surface with his creatures and then run off in the face of those same monsters with Reed seemingly leaving him behind because ‘he’ll never trouble anyone again’.
They have done absolutely no damage to any of his plans or monsters apart from melting shut one tunnel of a world wide web of passages. The really silly thing is that the Mole Man seems to agree and blows up Monster Island in a huge mushroom cloud as the FF flee. It’s hardly a heroic or even rational ending.
Which is a shame because I really enjoyed the first two sections of the issue. Lee and Kirby had even done very well on the Mole Man’s origin. You can understand his alienation, his fall into the depths is dramatic and he even seems like a competent physical threat, someone who has adapted perfectly to living in a dangerous environment. Unfortunately the page count runs out and everything gets wrapped up instantly without him actually threatening the team very much let alone attacking America in the way the cover and countless references suggest.
The introduction and origin sequences that crowd the Mole Man out of the story are extremely well done. Reed is shown to be a very mysterious figure whose elastic powers are the ones that deal with the flying monster, save Johnny from falling twice and deal with the air forces’ missiles. While the others are all shocked by their powers he instantly takes the lead and is happy to name himself Mr Fantastic.
He is very much in control throughout and the reference to his work creating their space ship shows he must also be a scientific genius. Because Ben and Sue are so far from their finished states here and Johnny too is visually very different it is easy to skip over the differences in Reed. But here it is his elastic powers that he relies upon and he comes across as a confident man of action, there are very few explicit references to his intellect and even the fact that he created the space ship that they took off in is undercut by the fact he failed to protect them from cosmic rays.
While there is a lot of resentment of Reed from Ben, and a lot of out and out violence and menace in his depiction it is actually Sue who goads Ben into taking part in the space flight by calling him a coward.
The flight and its effects on Ben have been returned to again and again over the years as a source for conflict so it was interesting to see Sue’s role in overriding Ben’s genuine concerns about safety. Of course her and Johnny’s presence on the flight also stand out as being very strange in any rational examination of the events. While Ben displays his temper towards Reed he mainly acts to protect Sue from monsters and in fact Sue doesn’t really get to do anything but react and use her powers to hide throughout the story. I liked the scenes that introduced her and showed the strangeness of her powers but apart from a quick mention of her disappearance disorientating a monster she doesn’t do much throughout the issue.
As well as his anger towards Reed Ben is marked by an unstable, far more monstrous form than he later has. What facial features he has are blurred and smashed into his head like a stereotypical prize fighter. The scenes of him crossing central city come directly from a monster comic with his face in shadow and bystanders running in terror from his huge form.
Looking at the man within the monster later gave the book its heart but here he is all monster and even before his transformation he seems angry and aggressive. No sign yet of him being Reed’s oldest friend.
Like his sister Johnny is overshadowed by the older men, visually he is far more clearly modelled on the golden age Torch than he would later be and his powers get a few run outs in this issue without him really seeming as competent or threatening as Reed or Ben. He does hold off the Mole Man’s monsters and seal them in by melting the earth but that isn’t really much more than covering their escape.
While there is quite a lot of exposition the dialogue reads surprisingly well. While the characters might be very different than they are in later stories they are well defined. Similarly it is a very good Kirby art job with menacing monsters and dramatic city scenes. A very good start to the series and to the wider Marvel universe as well as a link to the monster stories that came before it.
Are there any goofy moments? As would be expected there is quite a lot of corniness but the only out and out stupidity comes in the section showing off the Torch’s powers. Johnny flying across the city understandably causes alarm, so the USAF scrambles jet fighters ‘within the hour’, Johnny must have been dawdling as they still manage to intercept him and to attack him with heat seeking nuclear warheads. Central City is saved from nuclear oblivion however as Reed catches the missile and tosses it harmlessly out to sea. Even if Central City was on the coast (which it isn’t in any other stories) Reed would have to be displaying a level of strength he has never shown since to toss it more than a few hundred meters let alone a distance that would save the city. I’m sure there will be similarly stupid atomic references throughout the run but it really caught my eye.
Trivia: The history of Monster Island was filled in in Roger Stern’s Marvel Universe title in the late 90s. It was a Deviant staging post where Warlord Kro grew a monster army intending to use it to attack humanity.
As well as being linked in to all of the pre-FF Kirby monster stories it has also been used as a homage to Japanese Monster movies and has therefore been placed near to Japan but it’s location isn’t actually given in this story.
The two main monstrous residents seen here have since been given the names Giganto (the large creature seen on the cover) and Tricephalous (the three headed dragon). Similarly the Mole Man eventually got the name Harvey Elder, a double EC monster comics reference. The Mole Man detonates what seems to be an atomic device destroying the Island in this story. The scene on the cover of Giganto battling the FF in an American city doesn’t take place in this issue. The retroactively added Fantastic Four: First Family #3 adds it on.
Is it a landmark?: Of course.
Where can I read it?: Countless places including the first Fantastic Four Essentials and Masterworks and Omnibus volumes.
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Post by owene on Oct 13, 2010 12:50:31 GMT -5
Fantastic Four #2 The Fantastic Four meet the Skrulls from outer space By Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and George Klein. Villains: The Skrulls So What Happens?: The Fantastic Four appear to be committing a crime wave, Sue Storm steals a priceless diamond, the Thing topples an oil rig, Johnny melts a statue and Reed turns off the city’s power. As the media whips up a storm of anti-FF hysteria the team hide out in an out of the way cabin and ponder how to counter their unknown adversaries. Said adversaries turn out to be shape changing aliens called Skrulls who are using a mixture of their own powers and alien technology to fake the Fantastic Four’s abilities. While the FF argue over the best method to flush out their enemies they are surrounded by the army and after surrendering are taken to specially prepared cells. Despite surrendering without a fight the team soon use their powers to quickly escape from their individual jail cells and regroup. They take a chance on their enemies planning to disrupt an upcoming rocket test and have Johnny interfere with it himself. He does so successfully and is soon recruited by their alien foes who think he must be their own Human Torch stand in. Johnny signals for the others and they arrive and make easy work of the Skrull warriors. Stealing the Skrull space craft the team flies into orbit to dock with the Skrull mother-ship. Thinking they are his team of impersonators still in disguise the Skrull leader takes in Reed’s evidence of how dangerous the Earth is (clippings from monster comics) and calls off the invasion. He gratefully allows his four infiltrators to return to Earth to clear up any evidence and gives them all a medal for their self sacrifice. The menace averted the Four return to Earth, their latest trip through the cosmic rays causing the Thing to temporarily return to normal. This momentarily gives him false hope that he could again live a normal life but he is soon back in his rocky form. The team is confronted by the Police but convince them that the crime wave was down to the Skrulls. The Police come with them to capture the Skrulls who have escaped and put up a brief fight before throwing themselves on the Fantastic Four’s mercy. To keep them out of trouble Reed hypnotises the Skrulls into believing they are cows and leaves them happily in a field. So is it any good?:There are huge plot holes, other than the Skrulls attempts to discredit the Fantastic Four almost nothing holds up to any scrutiny at all. Even ignoring the specific plot holes this is at best a mixture of a DC style ‘why is the hero doing unexpected things’ super hero story and a twist ending Marvel monster/sci-fi tale that Lee and Kirby had done countless times. Despite the heroes powers the two groups of Skrulls are either dealt with by being tricked in a corny fashion or being hypnotised. Neither depends on the FF’s powers or personalities and neither would have been out of place in a pre-hero story. The team don’t even wear costumes. That said there is something different in the way the Thing interacts with his team mates and the way the authorities turn on the team that do suggest there is something of the nascent Marvel super hero style about the story. The Skrulls are stereotypically (and literally) Little Green Men and the idea of a small cell of them fitting in as Humans and working against the Earth is a staple of paranoid cold war science fiction. Lee and Kirby could work with those tropes in their sleep and they manage to build a story that entertains despite its clear failings of logic and originality. In fact there is something quite interesting in seeing something that is clearly a hold over from the previous era of comics being nominally done as a super hero tale. The characterisation largely follows the previous issue. Reed is shown as resourceful but not some super genius. The Torch is a hot headed kid who despite his powers largely stands back while Reed talks down the bad guys. Sue does at least get to trip up a Skrull and isn’t just protected by the others but receives little characterisation and largely uses her powers to escape things. The Thing on the other hand is yet again extremely belligerent, happily coming to blows with his team mates and wishing the Torch didn’t have his powers so he could really hurt him. The rest of the team talk about him behind his back, and indeed with him there next to them as if he is a real threat about to blow at any time. Their responses to him and his own dialogue are much closer to the classic Hulk than to the later established Thing. I guess when the Hulk debuted a few months later Lee found a better subject for that style of story. In the scenes where the Thing briefly regains his humanity Lee hit upon a far more fertile source of characterisation and pathos for the character. I did enjoy it, the scene of the Thing toppling an oil rig is classic early 60s Kirby, I’ve always quite liked the pathos in the individual Skrulls once they get beat, despite their nastiness they just don’t seem like a match for any Marvel hero and the cow ending is a classic. The issue as a whole isn’t but it’s still fun. Are there any goofy moments? Skrull Reed blacks out the entire city to a standstill by extending his hand through an open window and flipping a single switch. In front of a janitor. He then hangs around outside in the dark laughing evilly. No idea why the janitor didn’t just flip it back on. The army prepares cells for each of the FF tailoring them to their powers. Then send guards to Sue’s cell with food, only for them to be totally shocked by the empty cell after she has used her powers to disappear. The Skrulls make a big deal of explaining how they didn’t actually duplicate the FF’s powers. Skrull Sue didn’t become invisible but merely shrank, this somehow caused the huge diamond she was holding to also shrink despite it now being too big for the Skrull to hold. Reed claims at one point that they had taken the fourth skrull into space with them when they clearly hadn’t was probably Lee trying to cover up for an art mistake but it still makes no sense. The Skrulls are convinced by drawn pictures of Monsters Reed has grabbed from comic books. Says a lot for the reconnaissance the Skrulls must have done in order to identify the FF themselves as threats. Reed and the team had encountered actual monsters the previous issue but he is still worried that the Skrulls will see through their ruse about their being monsters on Earth. Trivia:It’s only a throwaway mention amongst other papers but this issue features the first appearance of the Daily Bugle. It was probably a coincidence that it would return in the Spider-Man books but there it is. For the second issue in a row the villains of this issue would eventually be explained by tying them in to Jack Kirby’s Eternals series. The Skrulls were revealed to in fact be the Deviant off shoot of a non-shape changing race and like Earths Deviants were created by the Celestials. There were even apparently Skrull Eternals although almost every story have concentrated on the Deviant branch. Despite claiming they hate being Skrulls and begging to be something else the Skrulls do not stay content as cows for ever more. They would resurface in the pages of Avengers. Their time spent as cows would lead to complications in Fantastic Four Annual 17 and Skrull Kill Krew
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Post by sharkar on Oct 13, 2010 21:12:10 GMT -5
Fantastic Four #1 The Fantastic Four By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and (apparently) George Klein A very underrated inker, IMO. I consider Klein to be the definitive inker for both Curt Swan and John Buscema. The really silly thing is that the Mole Man seems to agree and blows up Monster Island in a huge mushroom cloud as the FF flee. It’s hardly a heroic or even rational ending. Despite the charming story of Stan's wife encouraging him to do a superhero comic "his way," FF #1 strikes me as being a rush job, possibly cobbled together from two different stories. I think Stan had the Mole Man stuff lying around (for one of his monster comics) and then when he was famously charged with producing a new superhero team comic, he (with Kirby) quickly created some new pages and grafted the two together. The story is certainly disjointed, plus there are panel sequences that can stand on their own in a straight monster story. ...it is actually Sue who goads Ben into taking part in the space flight by calling him a coward. The flight and its effects on Ben have been returned to again and again over the years as a source for conflict so it was interesting to see Sue’s role in overriding Ben’s genuine concerns about safety. Yep, that's our "sweet" Sue for you. I love the positioning of the characters when Sue is calling Ben a coward--Sue's face, the shot of Ben from behind--his hair, the rugged line of his cheekbone and jaw, the tilt of his head--you immediately get that he'd do anything for her. This is a great panel, and I love it when other artists recreate this iconic Kirby panel in all the subsequent retellings of the FF's origin. ...Central City is saved from nuclear oblivion however as Reed catches the missile and tosses it harmlessly out to sea. Yep, Central City...just another Metropolis, or Gotham City. NYC's FF debut is still a few issues away. ...As well as his anger towards Reed Ben is marked by an unstable, far more monstrous form than he later has. The oft-reprinted synopsis Stan wrote for FF #1 (for Goodman? For Kirby? Or just for posterity? ) paints a "monstrous" depiction of all four characters: Sue was to remain invisible (she'd have to wear a mask and clothes to be seen); Johnny couldn't flame off; and Reed's stretching would cause him excruciating pain. Perhaps the synopsis was originally intended for a one-shot story in a monster/sci fi comic, and Stan adapted the concept when Goodman gave the order to create a new superhero team book. On the other hand, maybe Kirby just reached into his bag of tricks, after all, a few years earlier in Jack's Challengers of the Unknown #3, one of the characters on that team went on a space flight and was bombarded by cosmic rays and came back with powers such as flame- throwing, invisibility, strength, etc. ;D
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Post by sharkar on Oct 13, 2010 22:04:05 GMT -5
Fantastic Four #2 The Fantastic Four meet the Skrulls from outer space By Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and George Klein. Villains: The Skrulls
The Skrulls are convinced by drawn pictures of Monsters Reed has grabbed from comic books.Not only that, but the comic books in question are explicitly called out (in Reed's thought bubble): "Strange Tales" and "Journey Into Mystery." Stan at his marketing best! ;D Despite claiming they hate being Skrulls and begging to be something else the Skrulls do not stay content as cows for ever more. They would resurface in the pages of Avengers. You know, for years I always wondered how Neal Adams could draw such a terrible Johnny in Avengers #93--just god-awful. Years later when I finally read FF #2, I realized he'd basically copied the original Kirby panel (sans Sue) and in those very early FF issues, Kirby did not make Johnny look very good (Johnny looked very young and scrawny). Yeah, I get that in Avg. #93 Adams was trying to faithfully recreate some of the scenes from FF #2, but geez...he could have made Johnny look a bit better. What was acceptable in 1962 just looked silly in 1971, especially in the hands of that great realist, Adams. Also, in FF #2, I love the panel with the two flying Torches (Johnny and the Skrull), when they're about to collide. Since the two have different-sized bodies (Johnny's smaller than the flaming Skrull), I wonder if older readers at the time were reminded of the android Human Torch and Toro?
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Post by owene on Oct 14, 2010 13:59:50 GMT -5
Thanks for the really detailed replies. Made me remember a bunch of stuff. It's weird reading from the begining having largely forgotten most of my previous readings of this stuff (and avengers aside I've never done it in order before, I was a back issue reprint collector back then, unable to afford masterworks and i read stuff in the order i found it)
Re#1
There were so few book length Marvels back then and there are such obvious chapter breaks in both the early FFs and the first Hulk issue that I wouldn't be surprised if at the very least the stories were planned so they or even just sections of them could be run in the anthology books, both titles certainly retain a mystery/sci-fi feel for a while. FF4 is probably the first one that has actually had anyone physically fighting a villain as opposed to a monster.
challengers is probably the Kirby run i've read the least of. It would be interesting to have a look at it if I'm going to be reading all of Kirby's early 60s stuff as it is definitely an influence on FF and would be free of Lee's contributions (not that thats a good thing, but it's a nice way to see what he added). Not sure i want to start buying archives as well as masterworks though :-)
Klein really is great on the two guys you mention. He did a handful of credited Kirby Thors after Colleta left, the first origin of Galactus in fact, it's years since I saw them but i remember liking them. Re#2 That Adams panel is bizarre, I'd totally forgotten it. There's a little bit of Adams own style in the bottom right trio of skrulls but the rest is just such a weird pastiche of an already weird Kirby Johnny (or rather of already deliberately slightly off-model Skrulls from a period before Kirby had worked out what was on-model) that you probably wouldn't even place it as Adams unless you knew the issue. The art on Johnny was really bugging me reading #3 and #4. He looks like he's stepped out of something like Boys Ranch or even one of the 40s Kid gang strips. Totally different from what you think of for 60s Kirby
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Post by owene on Oct 14, 2010 14:59:26 GMT -5
Tales to Astonish #27 The Man in the Ant Hill By Stan Lee with Larry Leiber, Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. Villains: Some Ants So What Happens?: Scientist Hank Pym has concocted a chemical that can shrink his office furniture and then restore it to normal size. He casts his mind back and remembers how the scientific community had always belittled him and laughed at his outlandish theories. He starts to think of all the good he can do in the world if he can shrink and restore things at will and decides to test it on himself to see if it works on living beings.f
He shrinks down to a tiny size and starts to panic, running around his lab and outside into the garden. His restorative serum has been left on a high window ledge he can no longer reach. His cries for help are heard by the denizens of a local ants nest who start to hunt him down. He attempts to hide inside their ants nest but falls deeper into the ground and almost drowns in their stores of honey.
One of the ants rescues him from the honey but the rest of the swarm continue to attack him. He finds a discarded matchstick and lights it to keep the ants at bay. Climbing back out to the garden he gets the friendly ant to carry him up to the ledge holding the serum and restores himself to full size.
He destroys what is left of his potions and has to face the laughter of his peers when he tells them that his experiments were failures.
So is it any good?: It’s a fairly standard sci-fi short that Lee presumably remembered when he saw the sales figures for Fantastic Four or some other hero comic (or possibly those of the Atom over at DC).
It’s 7 pages introduce a character who comes across as a generic mad scientist type, has him realise his ambitions before concluding that something’s are best left alone.
It’s all very formulaic and I can’t really see that much potential in the shrinking powers on show here. They just seem to make huge dangers out of everyday things. Fine for an unscary horror comic take on Alice in Wonderland but hardly great for a heroic series.
If you are really reaching you can see some of the roots of Pym’s later characterisation in the way the scientific community treats him and the way he makes great discoveries before deciding not to carry on with them after he can’t really cope with their practical usage.
While consistent that really is a reach and the truth is that this is just one of many sci-fi short stories but one that retroactively got fitted into the heroic Marvel Universe. There really are no signs that Pym will even keep the chemicals, despite the fact that they would presumably be totally safe for use on non-living subjects which on its own would be a huge scientific breakthrough.
Are there any goofy moments? Pym’s “I’ll show them” interactions with his fellow scientists are quite funny.
As is the idea that he will escape the ants by hiding in the ant hill.
Oh and leaving the serum that will bring him back to his proper height on a high ledge?
Trivia: This story was apparently very close to an earlier Syd Shores story “Trapped in the ant Hill” in Mystic 57. The short mystery and sci-fi ideas were of course constantly recycled but there has been a long history of historians or more likely back issue dealers spotting 'try out' stories for the marvel super heroes and Pym's later importance got that issue identified as one.
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Post by owene on Oct 17, 2010 11:41:25 GMT -5
The Menace of the Miracle Man By Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Sol Brodsky. Villains: Miracle Man Guest Appearances: none So What Happens?: The team are having a night out watching a stage magician, the Miracle Man. He mystifies them with illusions and seemingly beats the Thing in a contest of strength as well as harmlessly taking a punch from him. Reed muses that they might be unable to deal with him if he ever turned to crime.
As the Fantastic Four return to their new Baxter Building headquarters the Miracle Man has worked out that he can use a giant monster statue promoting a new film to aid a villainous master plan.
The next day Sue unveils some new matching costumes for the team but their free time is ended when they see a news report of the monster statue terrorising the city. As they get ready to investigate the Police receive a message from the Miracle Man promising he will conquer the earth.
Reed attempts to block the huge statue by stretching himself into a net across the street but the Miracle Man downs Reed by throwing a house brick at his head.
As Reed apologises to the Police commissioner for his failings the Torch takes his turn to attack the statue. The Torch manages to burn it to the ground before it can steal an army prototype tank but the military still turn their guns on the Torch. The Thing at least gets to attack the Miracle Man but he is defeated with a single gesture which sends Ben to his knees. Seemingly triumphant the Miracle Man escapes with the tank, not knowing he is being followed by the invisible Sue.
The three male heroes argue over who was to blame for their defeats and Johnny touches a nerve when he mocks the Thing’s new rocky appearance.
Sue reaches the Miracle Man’s hideout but is detected by his guard dog. The villain soon hypnotises her and has her summon the other members of the team. When they arrive they are easily held off with a machine gun and the Miracle man, despite summoning them, runs away again. With their helicopter damaged they follow in a vintage car. Malleable Reed taking the place of a missing tyre.
Johnny manages to fly on ahead and let out a blast of white hot flame, blinding the Miracle Man and seemingly robbing him of his ability to hypnotise.
The villain dealt with the Torch and Thing return to their argument and Johnny flies off vowing never to return.
So is it any good?:
Not as such, but it contains the first sight of a lot of things that make up the classic FF.
It is the first issue with a cliffhanger ending, previewing the soap opera component that played such a large role in the classic Marvel feel. Presumably this is what prompted Roy Thomas to write a letter praising its ‘continuity’ that would be published two issues later.
The team wear costumes for the first time and the Baxter Building and Fantasticar are introduced, as in a tiny cameo is the Pogo Plane.
The story involves the team using their powers and acting as super heroes far more than in previous issues. Reed stretches himself across the street and the villain is finally beaten when Johnny burns in a bright flash to blind him. The Thing's power is still mainly directed at his teammates particularly Johnny.
Issue 1 featured the team encountering monsters in a far off land and fleeing, hoping they would be hidden forever. Issue 2 featured a plucky Reed tricking the alien invaders to save the Earth. Both staples of the stories from Strange Tales or Journey into Mystery. Here the team tries to stop a villain’s crimes using their powers and with the co-operation of the authorities. It is far more recognisably a super hero tale. It was also nice to see Sue acting alone and following the villain after Ben had told her to keep out of danger. She was captured by a dog and immediately hypnotised but at least she was taking an active role.
Unfortunately the issue features a fairly poor villain who is revealed as being simply a hypnotist. Even his design is stereotypical and could have come from the 1940s. While the team makes heavy going of defeating him, each threat is revealed to be far less than they thought, something which sucks a lot of the drama from the story.
How many of the threats they faced were actually real and in how much danger were they? Lee still doesn’t quite have faith in the idea of telling a super hero story seriously as high drama in the way that would mark the best points of his and Kirby’s run on the title.
Kirby does a lot of good design work here and was clearly having fun with both the monstrous statue and the classic cars. His Thing mask is discarded within a few pages but the rest of the team’s uniforms have stood the test of time. His Johnny is still very young looking, he is not quite the dashing teen sensation of later years but more like the goofy kid sidekick of a dozen 40s and 50s Kirby titles.
Are there any goofy moments? The cutaway diagram of the Baxter Building includes a ‘Giant Map Room’ for the team to store all of their Giant Maps.
The Miracle Man relies on a tossed brick to deal with Reed. Despite all the ‘Atomic Tanks’ some things remain low-tech.
The whole section with the vintage cars reads like Kirby throwing in a bizarre interlude just because he fancies drawing jalopies. Reed taking the place of one of the tyres feels a lot more like Plastic Man than anything you would see in the FF a few years later.
Trivia: The Mask that Ben briefly wears in this issue was intended to be accompanied by domino masks for the other members. An idea that was discarded after the initial pencils tried it out and it was found to look silly. The Thing returned to his face mask during Tom DeFalco’s run after his face was injured by Wolverine.
The Miracle Man was never used again by Lee or Kirby but did return, with real powers, during Gerry Conway’s run in issue 138, he appeared in a variety of other titles before being killed by the Scourge of the Underworld. He wasn’t quite the only Kirby villain to meet that fate (the Ant-Man foe the Hijacker was also on the list as was the Vamp from Kirby’s late 70s Cap run) but he was by far the victim with the longest history in the MU.
Is it a landmark?: It’s the first appearance of the team’s costumes, the Fantasticar and the Baxter Building, the Miracle Man is less important.
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Post by sharkar on Oct 17, 2010 19:39:00 GMT -5
challengers is probably the Kirby run i've read the least of. It would be interesting to have a look at it if I'm going to be reading all of Kirby's early 60s stuff as it is definitely an influence on FF and would be free of Lee's contributions (not that thats a good thing, but it's a nice way to see what he added). Not sure i want to start buying archives as well as masterworks though :-) If you don't mind black and white, you may want to pick up the Showcase Presents Challengers of the Unknown volumes (much less expensive than the Archive editions); the Kirby issues are in Volume 1 (there are 2 volumes). Re#2 That Adams panel is bizarre, I'd totally forgotten it. There's a little bit of Adams own style in the bottom right trio of skrulls... Adams also based the "bottom right trio of skrulls" on another Kirby panel in FF #2. Plus Adams used the last panel in FF #2 (the three Skrull-cows grazing) in Avengers #93 as well. Adams was fond of using reference and for Av. #93 he went straight to the source, the Kirby panels, to recreate some scenes/characters. Their styles are so different; Adams aping Kirby just looks strange! The art on Johnny was really bugging me reading #3 and #4. He looks like he's stepped out of something like Boys Ranch or even one of the 40s Kid gang strips. Totally different from what you think of for 60s Kirby Kirby trying to show how young Johnny is compared to the others, I guess; it would be a couple of years before Kirby would broaden Johnny's shoulders and give him a more of an adult physique (though Kirby would always draw Johnny as being shorter than Reed). Both Johnny and Reed look much better in FF #5, inked by Sinnott; he gives them handsome faces. BTW--great thread, Owen!
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Post by sharkar on Oct 17, 2010 20:31:48 GMT -5
Re Fantastic Four #3: I actually have this issue! I bought it about five months ago and it's my oldest Marvel comic, apart from Tales of Suspense #10 (1960). There's a small piece of dialogue I especially like, when Ben says he wants Sue to look at him the way she looks at Reed; I found this very poignant. Stan was probably going to set up a Reed-Sue-Ben triangle but wisely decided against it (he used Namor instead). The Menace of the Miracle Man By Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Sol Brodsky. Not only did Sol Brodsky ink this issue; he also found time to write a letter! Check out the last letter in FF #3 (which contained the FF's very first letter column, called the Fantastic 4 Fan Page); it's from "S. Brodsky, Brooklyn, NY." S. Brodsky asks if the FF publishers are the same ones who put out Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense, Kid Colt Outlaw , etc., and "teen-age titles like Patsy Walker? If so, how do you do it?" Stan's answer: "With great difficulty!" What a way for Stan and Sol to remind readers of the other comics published by Martin Goodman's company! ;D The very first letter in the letter column is (presumably) a genuine letter from a fan, and it's from a Mr. Alan Weiss (who would later work for Marvel). He writes that he likes the Fantastic Four and thinks it will be a success, and he wants to know the name of the artist. The editor (Stan) answers that since the artist signs his name on his work it's safe bet that the artist's name is Jack Kirby! Great cover: simple yet so memorable. And I have a hunch Rich Buckler found it--or at least the Torch--memorable, too.
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Post by owene on Oct 18, 2010 11:50:43 GMT -5
Thanks for the replies, I'm not sure anyone else cares about this ancient history :-)
I'd guess that the origins of Rich Buckler panels could easily be a running feature on the beginners guides, if I remember enough about his issues to pinpoint them. It will certainly enliven my readings of his issues if i ever get that far.
Congratulations on the FF#3. When I was actually collecting I think my oldest FF was #34 and my oldest Marvel was a very beaten up Tales to Astonish 44 for the Wasp. But I sold them long ago and am reading from the FF Omnibus now (with trips into black and white for the Hulk and Ant-man essentials)
I think you are right about the Ben/Reed/Sue triangle and why it was discarded. I think the Thing really needed to get toned down to work in a team book. His and Johnny's interaction starts out a very long way from friendly banter and namor offered more possibility for Sue to actually be attracted too rather than just have the unrequited angst from Ben but I'm sure there will be more Ben/sue stuff until Alicia is introduced.
You're also right about Sinnott's inks on #5 which i just read today. While Doom is a little different from the character he will become everyone looks much better than in preceeding issues and there is a real detail to the backgrounds and supporting characters. The pirate sections are some of the best art the title has had so far.
For some reason the Showcase Challengers seems to be unavailable in the UK, they have it on amazon marketplace but only from US sellers and i'd rather not sit around waiting for several weeks before finding it got turned back somewhere which has happened before.
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Post by Shiryu on Oct 19, 2010 10:18:45 GMT -5
This is a great topic, hope you keep at it! IIRC, the 4th Skrull turns up to have become a politician rallying people against the Avengers and the FF during the Kree/Skrull war. In the TPB introduction, Neal Adams explains how he had always remembered that art mistake and tried to come up with an explanation for it.
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Post by owene on Oct 19, 2010 12:36:25 GMT -5
The Hulk. By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Paul Reinman Villains: The Gargoyle Guest Appearances:, Rick Jones So what happens?:
Dr Banner is almost ready to test his Gamma Bomb but his procrastination and obsession with safety is driving the Army brass mad. Banner’s assistant Igor keeps badgering Banner for the science behind his bomb but Banner insists on keeping it to himself. In fact only General Ross’ daughter Betty has any time for Banner at all.
As he prepares the bomb Banner notices a car venturing into the test site and heads out to warn them away. He tells Igor to pause the test but he fails to act on this and as Banner reaches the young driver of the car the bomb goes off. Banner manages to knock Rick Jones into a protective trench and is hit by a blast of gamma radiation.
Banner can’t understand why he isn’t dead or injured by the radiation as he is showing dangerously high levels of it on a Geiger counter. As night falls he finally sees what the radiation has done to him as he finds himself turning into a huge grey brute. He crashes through a wall and through a passing army jeep, the soldiers manage to name him the Hulk as he goes, and he heads off to Banner’s quarters. Trailed by Rick Jones who feels he owes Banner his life.
In his apartment they find Igor, frantically searching for the Gamma Bomb plans. He shoots at the Hulk but it has little effect and the Hulk effortlessly knocks him out before growing even more violent when he sees a picture of Banner. Rick tries to explain that the Hulk is Banner and he turns on him and attempts to strangle him. Only the sun coming up saves Rick, as when it does the Hulk reverts to Dr Banner.
The soldiers crash in searching for the Hulk but settle for arresting and imprisoning Igor while Rick, and Banner, worry about what will happen when the sun goes down once more.
Igor manages to send a message to his communist masters. One of their leaders, the deformed but brilliant Gargoyle is intrigued by the Hulk and immediately makes his way to the base by special rocket.
As nightfall approaches Banner and Rick drive into the desert to change away from the military but soon after it happens they are found by the Gargoyle.
Betty has been worrying about Banner and follows him into the desert only to find the Hulk and faint in terror when he shouts at her. The Gargoyle then reveals himself and shoots both the Hulk and Rick with a mind control pellet.
He takes them to a waiting submarine and is soon rocketing them back to Russia. Unfortunately for his plans to harness the Hulk’s strength, daybreak leaves him with just a wimpy scientist and Rick Jones.
Banner immediately works out that the Gargoyles deformities had been caused by radiation and offers to cure him. His cure is successful and the grateful Gargoyle denounces communism, sends his former captives back to the states and blows up his communist base.
So is it any good?:
The first half is. It is an extremely frequently retold story, constantly referred back to, refined and riffed on in later issues but I still got into the drama of the bomb test, largely thanks to Kirby’s extremely expressive art.
The art is in fact far better than in the issues of Fantastic Four of a similar vintage. Reinman is not an inker who gets a lot of plaudits despite inking quite a few key Kirby issues but his work here is very good. Kirby is actually at his best here with the scenes of Banner’s desperation to stop the test and then horror when he realises what he has exposed himself to. I’m reading in the black and white Essentials volume and the change from the quite garish omnibus colouring of the FF helps with what is essentially a paranoid cold war horror story.
American weapons being disrupted by red spies. Deformed commie geniuses, hated by their own men, who can parachute into the American heartland and steal off the best and brightest at will. Submarines waiting just outside America’s waters equiped with nukes and secret technonology. The question of just how much you could rely on namby pamby intellectuals in a war to the death with communism. Just what those scientist’s weapons would do to those who worked around them and innocent American kids caught nearby.
It’s a story seething with period anxieties written in a way that strikes those notes far more cleanly than the similarly genre mixing stories in the first few Fantastic Fours. The title would soon lose its focus but for the first two thirds of this issue it is a surprisingly confident and consistent drama. The Hulk himself is suitably brutal to fit right into that story.
It loses it a bit when they get to Russia and Banner proves that American scientists are good at heart however many bombs they design.
By having the plucky, self-sacrificing American scientist simply cure his self-hating communist foe in the time between the Hulk’s nightly visits it undercuts the power of the earlier sections and like most of these early issues wraps things up too quickly.
But the atmosphere created earlier and the brutal honesty of the Hulk’s hatred of Banner, not to mention the way it is only daybreak that stops him turning on Rick as he seeks to destroy all links to Banner, lifts this above the Marvel issues to date.
The nocturnal trigger for the changes works well as a nod to Dr Jeckyll style horror stories but presumably really limited the possibilities for the series.
I even found myself being interested in Thunderbolt Ross, who I’d previously found extremely repetitive and clichéd. The scenes of him comforting Betty and vowing to bring in the Hulk after he has menaced and terrified his daughter actually demonstrate his love quite well. He would still become a buffoon but he works in this issue.
So a lot to like. I even enjoyed the comedic scenes of cowardly communists repeatedly delegating the job of taking a message to the feared gargoyle. For some reason it reminded me of 60s Billy Wilder comedies like One, Two, Three in its broad patriotism.
Are there any goofy moments? Not that many, some of the nuclear stuff is a bit weird with hindsight but at least they do talk about danger and precautions whereas most comics from the period were happy to put nuclear reactors in household appliances if it sounded like it would safe some housework.
The final panel where Banner hopes that the Gargoyle’s death will lead to the end of communism hasn’t aged all that well. In fact the book is at its silliest when it is explicitly dealing with its fears about communism rather than piling them into the subtext.
Oh and an assistant called Igor?
Trivia: Having died a heroic death opposing communism the Gargoyle never returned. His son the Gremlin debuted in Hulk 163 with the same deformities and high intellect.
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Post by humanbelly on Oct 19, 2010 16:06:21 GMT -5
The Hulk.
It loses it a bit when they get to Russia and Banner proves that American scientists are good at heart however many bombs they design.
I know this'll be a little ways down the road for you, Owen. . . [Good grief-- is this reading project truly possible?? I'm thinking Marvel has to have produced, what, like 15,000 or more comic books in the last five decades? Maybe 20,000? Man, that's a lot o' readin' to commence with! Probably need to pick up the pace. . . ] . . . but when Banner begins appearing in Tales to Astonish it turns out he's had a whole slew of projects in the military's weapons development pipeline. It will become a little ridiculous, as each one was "nearly completed" or "completely designed" at the point in time where the Hulk interrupted Bruce's work. One of them (and NOBODY remembers this. . . because it's just seems too doofy) was a time machine, in fact. Ol' Bruce was clearly more than a pretty face hooked solely by the siren song of gamma rays. . . I kind of like the fact that this really does put him on an intellectual level with Reed & Doom. HB
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Post by owene on Oct 19, 2010 16:49:09 GMT -5
The Hulk.
It loses it a bit when they get to Russia and Banner proves that American scientists are good at heart however many bombs they design.
I know this'll be a little ways down the road for you, Owen. . . [Good grief-- is this reading project truly possible?? I'm thinking Marvel has to have produced, what, like 15,000 or more comic books in the last five decades? Maybe 20,000? Man, that's a lot o' readin' to commence with! Probably need to pick up the pace. . . ] Oh I know it's impossible. I considered just doing FF but I'd really like to read the silver age output in chronological order as it was something I wanted to do when i was last reading comics but didn't actually have all the issues for, but i carried on buying Essentials even when I was away from comics (due to financial issues I was selling my silver age collection on ebay and picking essential volumes to replace them with some of the money i made was my way of making sure i'd never want to read them again and get disappointed they were gone) so I think I have pretty much everything until Kirby leaves for DC in some format or other apart from the Ka-Zar stories from Astonishing Tales and maybe a few of the MSH tryout issues (although I still have a few of those in originals). In fact the Beginners Guide was something I really wanted to do a decade back. I planned on hyperlinking in the issues mentioned in the avengers one i did on the old AML mailing list. I'm not sure how long I'll keep on reviewing, I know it's never going to really work out, beyond the silver age I'm only really interested in the core titles where you can look at the changing historical side of things and there seems to be a totally free approach to continuity these days that stops me wanting to even bother (I tend to do a write up on any 70s or 80s issues i read but I dont bother for current ones) but it really does make me look seriously at each issue i read and the developing characters and styles and I think I can at least do the first few years. I've just finished the review of Hulk 2 where the Toad Men single out Banner as the Earth's premier scientist. Tracking him down with the... Of course Stark hasn't been invented yet and Reed has yet to really shine as a scientist. Banner and Doom are the top guys so far in my reading
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Post by sharkar on Oct 20, 2010 17:57:19 GMT -5
Re FF #3: Congratulations on the FF#3. When I was actually collecting I think my oldest FF was #34 and my oldest Marvel was a very beaten up Tales to Astonish 44 for the Wasp. But I sold them long ago and am reading from the FF Omnibus now (with trips into black and white for the Hulk and Ant-man essentials). Owen, that's wild--back when I first started reading Marvel and DC, I was lucky enough to live near a collectibles shop that sold back issues, for 35 cents apiece ($1.05 for the Giant/Annuals). So in addition to buying current Marvels/DCs at the candy store, I was also able to "collect backwards"...and back then my oldest Marvel comic was Fantastic Four #34!! I think you are right about the Ben/Reed/Sue triangle and why it was discarded. Right...Namor could be a viable suitor for Sue, so he could add drama to the Reed-Sue relationship. Ben had his own unique set of issues to deal with. You know, when Alicia debuts a few issues later in #8, the Puppet-Master remarks that Alicia resembles Sue physically. But I don't know of any subsequent stories in which this resemblance is mentioned, except (surprisingly) for a fairly recent (2005) Marvel Knights 4 story (in which Reed has Alicia impersonate Sue as part of his plan to defeat Psycho-Man).
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Post by sharkar on Oct 20, 2010 18:34:21 GMT -5
The Hulk. By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Paul Reinman Villains: The Gargoyle Guest Appearances:, Rick Jones So what happens?:In fact only General Ross’ daughter Betty has any time for Banner at all. I love the panels where Betty and Bruce are talking to one another, she's very solicitous of him, they're looking into each other's eyes...and Rick is disgusted by the mushy stuff! Reinman is not an inker who gets a lot of plaudits despite inking quite a few key Kirby issues but his work here is very good. Yeah, you don't hear much about Reinman but I've seen (and liked) his inks on some of the early Kirby Avengers and X-Men issues. Reinman also penciled; in fact, the Tales of Suspense issue I mentioned earlier ( ToS #10, from 1960) has four stories and the art is by: story 1, Kirby(pencils) and Ayers (inks); story 2, Reinman (pencils&inks); story 3, Ditko (p&i); and story 4, Heck (p&i). The stories contain artist credits, except for the one illustrated by Heck. HB: just curious--do you have any Hulk issues from Greenskin's original series?
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Post by owene on Oct 21, 2010 16:49:24 GMT -5
I almost mentioned that panel with Rick and Betty. It was a great scene between Betty and Banner but the 'yuck....girls' stuff from Rick just makes him seem like that annoying younger kid who followed the cool kids around. Which admittedly ended up being Rick jones' default personality for quite a while. Despite buying quite a few issues over the years I've never really read much silver age hulk in order and the use of Rick is something I'm quite intrigued by, a lot of writers and a lot of titles have used him at various points but never particularly well except maybe PAD. Even in the really good stories that featured him prominently like the Kree Skrull War he seemed to be there to make some heavy handed point about humanity in general or because Thomas couldn't bear the idea of a character called Captain Marvel who didn't have a Billy Batson.
As far as I can remember I quite liked his appearance in avengers forever but in the silver age at least he always seemed one of the most DC things about the Marvel line.
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Post by owene on Oct 23, 2010 4:39:26 GMT -5
Fantastic Four #4 The Coming of the Sub-Mariner By Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Sol Brodsky. Villains: none Guest Appearances: Namor So What Happens?: The team is distraught that Johnny seems to be going through with his plan to leave them and never come back. They separate to look for him in various places he has been known to frequent although Sue and Reed are a little worried that the Thing plans on continuing his feud with the Torch if he is the one who finds him. Despite their concern Reed and Sue’s searching methods need some refinement. Sue goes to a coffee shop and invisibly drinks a coke, scaring the customers, while Reed pulls random passers-by from the backs of speeding motorcycles to ask them if they have seen the torch. They haven’t. Ben does manage to track Johnny down to a motor repair shop. Knowing the Torch can’t flame on around gasoline Ben threatens to smash him with a car and wants to show him what he will do to deserters. Ben’s rage seems to trigger a change and he momentarily returns to a human form. This allows Johnny to escape and Ben then breaks down as his skin yet again hardens to its orange rocky form. Feeling that the team is out for his blood Johnny wanders the Bowery, getting lost among all the other derelicts. He tries to spend the night in a flophouse but the local down-and-outs insist on teasing one of their number who is apparently as strong as the long lost Sub-Mariner. The drifter easily throws off his attackers and the torch uses a flame to burn away his beard and reveal the Sub-Mariner. The Torch carries Namor to the nearby bay and throws him into the water, curing his amnesia and sending him off at high speed towards Atlantis. He arrives to find it in ruins, with a radioactive glow still evident. His people are long gone. While he knows they won’t have been harmed by radiation Namor is still angry over the damage done and vows to attack the surface. He returns to New York and Johnny and tells him of his plans for revenge before heading back to the sea to wake a sea monster to lead the attack. Johnny promptly signals his teammates. The giant monster Namor unleashes destroys a fishing boat and heads straight for New York. The Governor immediately gives the order to evacuate the city. The FF stay and attempt to turn it back but Johnny is soon doused with water and knocked out of the fight and the monster climbs onto land and starts to ravage the city. The Thing volunteers to carry a nuclear warhead into the stomach of the beast. He barely escapes back out through its mouth before the bomb explodes and kills the monster. The blast manages to also knock out the Thing who gets carried away by his newly grateful teammates. Namor merely vows to summon more monsters and starts to blow the horn that will bring them to the city. Sue invisibly steals it away from him but Namor soon catches her and when she returns to visibility he instantly falls for her. After he threatens a constant wave of monster attacks on America’s cities Sue agrees to be his bride. The men however are having none of it and attack with the Torch flying fast enough to create a tornado that dumps Namor and his dead monster back in the sea and separates him from his monster summoning horn into the bargain. So is it any good?:I enjoyed it, even though it has dated a lot. In the scale of the attack on New York and the large role played by Johnny it owes a lot to the Namor/Human Torch battles of the 1940s. It also finds time for Ben to earn some genuine sympathy. There is a real malice in his attack on the Torch, to the point that the pathos of his flipping back and forth between rock and flesh doesn’t earn him much credit but the scenes of him carrying the bomb into the maw of the monster are possibly the first heroic acts we have seen from him in the title and Kirby squeezes a lot out of them. Similarly Johnny is starting to be more recognisable, he is more handsome and looks less like an annoying kid brother than in previous issues and by running away from the team’s ill-treatment but returning to save the day he too gets his first moments of heroism. In previous issues it has seemed like Reed was the audience identification figure but here your sympathies are with Johnny and explicitly as a misunderstood but brave teen, something the core audience was more likely to understand. He and the Thing are starting to shape up as the two break out characters of the title. Sue at least tries to get involved by stealing Namor’s horn but she is soon caught and with the villain swooning over her is ready to follow him into the sea and marry him if it will save the day. Brave in a way but quite a weak, reactive way. The frisson between her and Namor would pass for characterisation for both of them for quite a while. It’s not a good issue for Reed, apart from using his stretchable body in a few pointlessly extravagant ways while searching for Johnny he doesn’t get to do very much at all. Namor is drawn in quite a 1940s style but, while he doesn’t do much more than demand his revenge and assert his royalty, he has more charisma than the previous antagonists and it is clear that we, like Sue, are supposed to see something admirable in him. Despite his strength and power he, like the Mole Man and Miracle Man, largely battles the team by sending monsters against them. This issue features a big battle in as much as the scenery gets damaged but we still haven’t seen much of slugfest against a bad guy. Are there any goofy moments? The US military seemingly have depots within New York City which contain nuclear weapons that they would leave unattended during the city’s evacuation. Namor’s monstrous bipedal whale has a blowhole. Something that whales use to breath oxygen. I’m not sure how the creature managed to do this during its ‘ages long slumber’ on the sea bed. The Torch also goes out of his way to take the monster with Namor in his huge water spout despite it already being pronounced dead. Trivia:Namor’s amnesia prior to this story was revealed to be caused by Destine and his Helmet of Power (the disguised Serpent Crown). He was eventually revealed in the Iron Man and Sub-Mariner one shot and featured heavily in the first year of Namor’s own title. Namor’s kingdom was apparently never referred to as Atlantis prior to this story. Despite this issue promising that Namor’s horn (eventually named as the Horn of Proteus) being lost forever it was in fact found by Captain Barracuda in Fantastic Four 219 Is it a landmark?:Yes, the reintroduction of the Sub-Mariner would be a landmark in itself but the way that it tied the series to the 1940s Timely comics was even more important from the point of view of the creation of a shared universe.
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Post by humanbelly on Oct 23, 2010 17:30:15 GMT -5
[ HB: just curious--do you have any Hulk issues from Greenskin's original series? I don't, sadly. But I do have an odd reprinting of them. In the late 70's or early 80's, Marvel (cashing in on the success of the television show) reprinted those first six issues in a single small digest-sized book. It's kinda tight viewing, admittedly, but still readable. Well, actually, I haven't tried reading it since I've begun wearing glasses. . . so I may have an unpleasant surprise. And I have at least a couple of old coverless Collector's Item Classics containing some of those stories, as well. It doesn't really bug me, though-- I'm the kind of collector on whom pristine mint, astronomically-valued key issues would be wasted--- a burden, even. I would want to READ them-- and they would immediately become devalued. My poor Hulk #181 would probably bring tears of horror to the eyes of a serious collector/dealer. Been read many times, and I'm sure there are spaghetti stains on least a couple of the pages. But. . . that's what makes your average collectable comic "real" for me-- the interaction with it-- the relationship with it, even (although that may sound a touch overblown)-- which elevates it above the level of merely being an acquired thing that one checks off of a list before moving on. Mind you, if I came across that initial Hulk run that had been used as a dog-bed mattress, and they were going for $10/issue, I would totally snap them up. . . HB
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Post by humanbelly on Oct 23, 2010 19:09:34 GMT -5
As far as I can remember I quite liked his appearance in avengers forever but in the silver age at least he always seemed one of the most DC things about the Marvel line. That's a very neatly-phrased comment, owen. I'd never looked at Rick in quite that light. In a way, though, you could make a case that Rick was maybe a "Marvel-ized" take on a typical DC archetype: the earnest, youthful sidekick. A bit of a hard-luck Jimmy Olsen, as it were. Except that his pal wasn't the idol o' millions, but rather a dangerous, volatile, unpredictable rage machine who was only barely recognizable as being, in fact, a good guy. And the attachment bond has nothing to do with hero=worship & admiration, but is grounded in a complex (and honestly unhealthy) combination of gratitude and guilt. But you're right-- the whole teen side-kick thing is much more a DC staple--- VERY few in the Marvel Universe. Hmm, and as I think about it, after Johnny & Rick- who appear in Marvel's first two major offerings- do we even ever see another one? I. . . I don't think so. That's kind of neat-- it didn't take long for them to commit even further to their overall break from convention. HB
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Post by owene on Oct 30, 2010 17:09:02 GMT -5
Incredible Hulk #2 The Terror of the Toad Men. By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko Villains: The Toad Men Guest Appearances:, Rick Jones So what happens?: The Hulk is on his nightly rampage.
Shrugging off gunfire, trashing a small town and eventually being led away from civilisation by Rick Jones, the only person he will listen to.
The next day, with the Hulk back as Banner; he and Rick head into the desert with digging tools, intent on creating a prison for the Hulk to spend his nights in.
Meanwhile in orbit the Toad Men are seeking out the most intelligent man on earth to fill them in on Earths defences. Their magnetic sensors decide this means Bruce Banner and they strike Banner and Rick with a ray that leaves them helplessly floating above the ground.
The Toad Men come down and extract their prisoners. They aren’t really interested in Rick and send him back to Earth but they soon have more than they can handle when Banner transforms into the Hulk. He easily deals with the entire alien crew and decides to use the space ship to get his revenge on the Earthly authorities who have tormented him.
The space ship is easily shot down by US missiles and when the military examines the wreckage they find only Banner. And promptly arrest him for treason.
The Toad Men escape and send a signal to the rest of their invasion fleet to continue the assault.
The arrival of a fleet of UFOs spreads panic and prompts a range of disasters, all caused by the Toad Men’s magnetic weapons. The Military are powerless and can’t even keep Banner locked up. When night fall provokes a change into the Hulk he escapes easily, smashing his way through any troops trying to stop him. He kidnaps Betty Ross and tries to take her to Banner’s lab. Far from being calmed down by Rick Jones he instead tries to kill him. However he is knocked over by an earthquake caused by the Toad Men’s magnetic weapons and then transformed back to Banner by the rising sun.
Banner makes sure Betty is Ok and then sets about working on his gamma ray experiments for something that can aid against the Toad Men. He turns to his prototype Gamma Gun and while Rick keeps the oncoming army patrol at bay with a firehose Banner’s invention sends the Toad Men’s invasion fleet back to where they came from.
With the world saved Banner voluntarily locks himself in the underground prison he and Rick had designed.
So is it any good?: It’s a lovely mix of Kirby and Ditko, with Kirby totally overshadowed by Ditko’s excellent inks. In fact I’d say it is the best Marvel issue that I’ve seen so far, visually. Their Hulk is superb, brutish with a heavily browed face and a palpable attitude.
However the story is weak, despite the thematic strength of the Banner/Hulk idea there is no getting away from the generic alien invasion plot.
It’s not just a genre staple, it’s only a few months since the Skrull invasion in FF 2 and here you have another, visually very similar, alien race coming from nowhere to invade. By the 80s off-beat humour issues of various titles were making a lot of just how often the cosmically insignificant Earth had been invaded. It’s early issues like this that used alien invasions, complete with huge damage and panicking crowds, as a throwaway event and made them seem rather commonplace.
The damage done would of course never be mentioned again and plenty of civilians would continue to act like the existence of aliens was a huge shock to them in future stories.
There are interesting touches, the Hulk capturing the alien ship and deciding to use it for his own attack on his foes in the US Military was unusual and suggests that more recent vengeful Hulk stories have as much or even more of a connection to the original issues than the childlike 70s Hulk that is often seen as the classic version. This anti-hero role and frequent flippings from hero to villain are reminiscent of the 1940s Namor stories and the ease with which he turns on everyone, including threatening Rick for the second issue in a row, are very similar to the early belligerent Thing appearances.
For the second issue in a row it is actually Banner who saves the day, dealing with the Toad Men via his Gamma gun cannon much as he used his intelligence to cure the Gremlin last issue. His nightly transformation into the Hulk is a curse that gets in the way of Banner’s heroic efforts to serve mankind. In later years the Hulk would go runs of issues without changing back to Banner but here he is really the focus.
I don’t even really dislike the Toad Men, I quite like their design. Like the Skrulls it is squat and somewhat comical and they appeared in one of the first Hulk stories I ever read. However it’s not an issue to get excited over.
.Are there any goofy moments?
I love the Toad Men’s magnetic Mind-Detector. The panel that features it is a classic of silver age goofiness. And a lot more Ditko than it is Kirby. Some of the machinery Banner and Rick use on their Hulk prison must have taken some nifty handiwork to put into place. Not to mention appropriation from some military budget somewhere.
Trivia: The recent Hulk comics have made a little in-joke of ranking the Marvel Universes super geniuses in a top ten. Interesting that in this story Banner is picked as the world’s best. Reed Richards hasn’t really started to be depicted that way yet or I’m sure Stan would have had some cross promotion here to go with Johnny reading an issue of Hulk in FF5
The Toad Men are more correctly called the Tribbitites. They would appear again in the story featuring Glorian and the Shaper of Worlds in Hulk 190-1 before being relegated to comic relief in John Byrne’s She Hulk and as throwaway villains in a few panels of the short lived Defenders v2.
Is it a landmark?: No, it’s not even the Marvel Universe’s first alien invasion. It is the first issue chronologically of any title that isn’t really any kind of landmark. :-)
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Post by owene on Nov 3, 2010 16:24:35 GMT -5
Meet Doctor Doom By Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott. Villains: Dr Doom Guest Appearances: none So What Happens?: Dr Doom leaves his vulture infested castle and heads off in his helicopter (painted with a cool shark design) to fly into the city and capture the FF. They are bickering away in the Baxter Building totally unaware of their impending problems when the power cuts out and they realise that the building has been covered in a giant net.
Doom announces that he has a job for them and that he wants to take Sue hostage to ensure their co-operation. Reed recognises Doom from his voice and realises he is a student he knew from college. He remembers him as a scientific genius but obsessed with the occult and injured when a bizarre experiment backfired. Despite this the team agrees to hand over Sue as a hostage and to be taken to his castle in upstate New York.
Here Doom and his pet lion keep them occupied while he tells them that he has invented a time machine and needs them to go back in time and retrieve Blackbeard’s treasure chest. He sends them back to the days of the Spanish Main and they soon manage to outfit themselves as pirates.
The Thing particularly likes his eye patch and black beard and wants to spend his time chasing serving wenches in a nearby tavern. They are soon spotted by press-gangers and given drugged drinks until they pass out. They wake up on a pirate ship.
When they wake up they use their powers to make easy work of the crew only to find themselves under attack by another pirate galleon. They lead the remnants of their crew in boarding that ship and deal with its inhabitants as well. As they plunder its treasure Ben is proclaimed as Blackbeard by the crew.
With the fame going to his head and unwilling to go back to being a freak in the 20th century Ben turns on his teammates and attempts to set them adrift in a rowing boat. Unfortunately for him a twister destroys both boats and deposits them all, with Blackbeard’s treasure on a desert island. Ben breaks down when he realises his plans had come to nothing and he had, yet again, turned on his friends.
Reed remembers that he had only promised to retrieve Blackbeard’s treasure chest and replaces the all important gems with some old chains. Doom retrieves them and loses his temper when he sees Reed’s trickery, he had been hoping for mystical gems that once belonged to Merlin.
The Thing turns on him but a well placed punch reveals they are dealing with a robot. The real Doom contacts them from another room and informs them that he has them trapped in an inescapable room and that the oxygen is being drained away. Luckily Sue manages to invisibly sabotage some of his equipment and then set her teammates free. The team free themselves from the castle but Doom escapes on a jet-pack. Johnny’s attempts at pursuit end when his flame runs out and he falls to earth. Johnny worries about how safe they can be with both Namor and Doom free.
So is it any good?: Yes, the pirate sections, although bizarre (and not at all what you would expect if you came across the issue looking for the first appearance of Marvel’s premier villain), are very well drawn and a lot of fun.
The shipboard battles allow for really inventive uses of the team, especially Reed’s, powers and the Thing’s pirate outfit is superb.
Although Doom doesn’t feature for large chunks of the story, and is by no means the finished article, it is very interesting to see those aspects of him that are there from the start. He is clearly a scientific genius, Reed’s intelligence has yet to be really played up in the series so there isn’t yet any real rivalry, in fact Reed talks of Doom in rather hushed, impressed tones.
His very first panel features a book called Science and Sorcery and his use of a time machine to hunt for a magical treasure gets to the heart of his twin threat right away. It is also clear that his college accident is an attempt to use a scientific machine to break through occult barriers. A throwaway detail in this story, it doesn’t really amount to much but obviously the basis for so many stories.
His bandaged face after the accident and the haunting panel of him striding through the Tibetan snow in search of dark secrets are there from the first for writers to come back to and expand.
He even uses his first Doombot, setting a pattern from the start of always being one move ahead of anyone who thinks they have defeated him. There is, as yet, no sign of him being in any way royal other than the castle.
The heart of the story is in fact the time travel and Doom is largely there solely to expedite it, his deathtraps and jet packs are quite clichéd and not yet anything special but Stan and Jack piled enough ideas into the background of this story that he could grow into Marvel’s greatest villain without really changing much of this story.
As for the team; Reed is still being written largely for his physical powers rather than intellect and I really liked his battles on the pirate ship and the way he pulled sections of castle wall down by twisting around the barred windows. Very inventive use of his powers and something that was toned down when his intelligence was highlighted. While the Baxter building is full of cool technology that presumably came from Reed he hasn’t actually invented anything in the stories yet or displayed the almost super human intelligence of later stories.
Ben is still ready to attack his teammates for the slightest thing and despite Lee’s attempts to show his sadness he is very rarely shown in any kind of positive light.
Sue is just taken hostage and sits out the whole time travel adventure. While she saves the day here she does so by invisibly knocking over a machine and finding the button that opens the door. She remains sidelined and without any force field powers; she can only really hide from an occasionally surprise an enemy.
So, a good issue for the visuals, the high adventure of the pirate section and the clear potential in Doom. While I am wondering why the rest put up with Ben it is also interesting to see his genuinely quite nasty beginnings.
Are there any goofy moments? I’ve been noticing the similarities between the early Thing appearances and the Hulk. So has Johnny who reads the first issue of Hulk in this issue and brings it up with Ben to a predictably violent response.
Sue breaks up Ben and Johnny’s fight by turning her vacuum cleaner on her brother and extinguishing his flames. This at once brings out her role as the mother of the group and is possibly the most sexist moment for her yet. It’s no surprise later when she has to sit out all the action as Doom’s hostage.
I can’t decide whether Doom having crocodiles in his moat counts or if it’s just cool. The vulture in his library y and shark-copter are possibly a little too far, I think most readers will have got that he is EVIL from the creepy mask and book on Demons he has on his table.
Seconds after Reed announces they need some period costumes they come across some pirates fighting over a bundle of stolen clothes.
Trivia: Latveria wasn’t shown until Doom’s origin story in Fantastic Four Annual 2. Until then he tended to be based at his castle in upstate New York that allowed him to have his feudal trappings, complete with crocodile infested moat, without actually making the ruler of a country yet. As the site of his time machine it featured in stories otherwise unconnected to Doom such as Avengers 56.
Johnny worries that Namor will find the all important magical jewels but in fact he didn’t and Doom was still looking for Merlin’s magic gems in Dazzler 3 and 4. The early 80s pre-Byrne FF weren’t really Doom’s best period.
Given the connection to Merlin it's worth noting that Doom did meet King Arthur in Iron Man 150 but Merlin wasn’t around at that point.
Is it a landmark?: Yes, Doom seems to interest writers a lot more than the FF themselves and he has been almost as important to the Marvel Universe.
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Doctor Bong
Young Avenger
Master of belly dancing! (No, really...)
Posts: 73
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Post by Doctor Bong on Nov 4, 2010 2:11:29 GMT -5
Both Doom and Iron Man did meet Merlin on a later adventure, set in the future (I forget the IM issue number) which, for all intents and purposes, was a "second part" of the story you mention here.
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Post by owene on Nov 4, 2010 15:06:07 GMT -5
Thanks, I'd forgotten the sequel I'll edit my copy of the review. Think I still have it somewhere. I have read tht run but it obviously hasn't stuck in my memory as much as Michelinie and layton's first run.
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Post by sharkar on Nov 4, 2010 19:39:34 GMT -5
...And I have at least a couple of old coverless Collector's Item Classics containing some of those stories, as well. God, I loved Marvel Collectors' Items Classics (what a great title--I was disappointed when its name was changed to Marvel's Greatest Comics later on). Back then I was a huge FF fan so not only was I was buying current FF issues, but I was also buying as many FF back issues as I could find (as mentioned #34 was the oldest FF I had); and then, to fill in the gaps, there was MCIC! Then I began seeking out back issues of MCIC...oh, it was a vicious (but enjoyable) cycle. ;D A bonus was that MCIC introduced me to other features--Iron Man, Hulk, and Dr. Strange--a great cross-section of Marvel characters. And I don't think I realized back then that the MCIC Hulk reprints were from his own, short-lived initial run. IIRC there were no issue credits in MCIC (at least in the issues I had), so I assumed the MCIC Hulk reprints were from older Tales to Astonishissues.
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Post by sharkar on Nov 4, 2010 20:05:04 GMT -5
Re FF #4: Kirby was fond of using three panel progressions, and IMO this is one of the greatest comic book sequences ever. Unforgettable.
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Post by sharkar on Nov 4, 2010 20:42:12 GMT -5
...In a way, though, you could make a case that Rick was maybe a "Marvel-ized" take on a typical DC archetype: the earnest, youthful sidekick. A bit of a hard-luck Jimmy Olsen, as it were...But you're right-- the whole teen side-kick thing is much more a DC staple--- VERY few in the Marvel Universe. Hmm, and as I think about it, after Johnny & Rick- who appear in Marvel's first two major offerings- do we even ever see another one? I. . . I don't think so. That's kind of neat-- it didn't take long for them to commit even further to their overall break from convention. I wouldn't call Johnny a teen sidekick; he was a full-fledged member of the team. I'm sure many of us here are aware of Stan's oft-proclaimed opinion about teen sidekicks; he didn't like 'em. So once Stan started the Marvel superhero line in the early 1960s, he didn't use teen-agers as sidekicks. As stars in their own features (Spidey, the X-Men), yes--but not as sidekicks. Now as for Rick, sure, on the face of it, he was a teen sidekick. But IMO Stan cleverly and deliberately used him to subvert the whole teen sidekick convention--Rick was almost a Bizarro version of a teen sidekick, at least during the Silver Age. To wit: - Rick is the one who causes Bruce's tragedy. (As you pointed out, HB, their connection is not a healthy one.) - Rick was always whining about not being allowed to join the Avengers (you have NO POWERS you idiot!). Compare this to the JLA, who would express regret whenever their cherished honorary member Snapper Carr couldn't join them on a mission. - Rick fails as Cap's partner in the Steranko Cap issues. - When Rick finally achieves his dream of becoming a superhero (with Cap Marvel), it's closer to a nightmare---RJ ends up in the Negative Zone! (And yes, Roy Thomas never met a Golden Age element he didn't want to recreate!). Let's face it: As a teen sidekick, Rick was a f**k up! ;D
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Post by sharkar on Nov 4, 2010 20:59:34 GMT -5
Re FF #5: Reed recognises Doom from his voice and realises he is a student he knew from college. And no inkling that Ben was there at that college, too. There's nothing that contradicts it, it's just not mentioned. Sinnott's inks here really make Kirby's work look less rough and more conventional (in a good way). It's not the first time Sinnott inked Kirby but it's the first time on a Marvel superhero comic; and they'd be the art team for the first Thor story (just after this FF story). Sinnott's touch is especially evident on Johnny and Reed's more refined facial features (eyes, eyebrows, noses, cheekbones); he really pretties them up. The references to Namor in this story foreshadow his appearance in the next issue (Johnny is especially prescient ;)when he mentions Namor and Doom in the same breath, as they'll join forces in #6). Stan is clearly establishing a cast of recurring characters here. The letter column leads off with a letter from a reader who gushes that he loves the FF so much that he's subscribing for two years; and that he hopes the FF comic runs for a lot longer than two years. The reader's name? Roy Thomas.
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Post by owene on Nov 5, 2010 12:12:04 GMT -5
Now as for Rick, sure, on the face of it, he was a teen sidekick. But IMO Stan cleverly and deliberately used him to subvert the whole teen sidekick convention--Rick was almost a Bizarro version of a teen sidekick, at least during the Silver Age. To wit: - Rick is the one who causes Bruce's tragedy. (As you pointed out, HB, their connection is not a healthy one.) The first two Hulk stories both feature Rick being genuinely menaced by the Hulk at the point the Hulk changes back to Banner. The third features a terrified Rick having to keep himself awake all night with the Hulk locked in the cell they have built for him and later having to run in terror as he is hunted across the desert by a hulk who never gets tired. A sequence that, in the black and white Essentials at least, wouldn't have seemed out of place in an EC horror comic. When Rick gets mindlinked to the Hulk and has control of him, he is left again having to sit outside the Hulk's cell, this time scared that if falls asleep the Hulk will slip out of his control, smash his way out and attack. It is almost as if Rick too has been cursed by the presence of the Hulk (fitting, because as you say he really caused his existence) and again it's an image that wouldn't have been out of place in the most brutal pre-code book. It shows a genuinely desperate and broken Rick.
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Post by owene on Nov 6, 2010 5:24:19 GMT -5
God, I loved Marvel Collectors' Items Classics (what a great title--I was disappointed when its name was changed to Marvel's Greatest Comics later on). Back then I was a huge FF fan so not only was I was buying current FF issues, but I was also buying as many FF back issues as I could find (as mentioned #34 was the oldest FF I had); and then, to fill in the gaps, there was MCIC! Then I began seeking out back issues of MCIC...oh, it was a vicious (but enjoyable) cycle. ;D A bonus was that MCIC introduced me to other features--Iron Man, Hulk, and Dr. Strange--a great cross-section of Marvel characters. I'm sure this is quite a familiar story for collectors everywhere. It certainly goes for me. In the mid 90s those giant early MCIC and Marvel Tales showed up at our local second hand book stores and markets for a couple of pounds each, often in the sort of condition that put the actual Kirby FF's I could afford to shame. and they had so much else in them. I'd always been an FF and Spider-Man fan and was looking for the early stories from their titles but the giant reprints introduced me to everything else from the period. On the Doom/Merlin thing I reread Iron Man 250 the other day, quite enjoyable story that I'd totally forgotten, a little lightweight and corny with regard to Merlin and Arthur and the future society but fun. I quite liked Doom's role in it (even if some of his dialogue lacked the gravitas I like in the character)
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