macmcentire

Re-reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Issue 15 has the team battling an evil genius, a giant android, and their own ennui.

On the first page, the caption states, “You are now experiencing one of the most exciting moments in magazine reading: The start of an all-new Fantastic Four adventure.” Tall order. The action begins when Reed fires the “4” signal into the sky, altering his teammates to come running. This of course kicks off this issue’s the-characters-have-an-excuse-to-show-off-their-powers-for-a-few-pages routine. Sue is in the middle of getting her hair done, Ben is getting pranked by the Yancy Street Gang, and Johnny is in a parked car with a girl (hubba-hubba). Back at HQ, Reed informs the others that something big is going on. Police have informed him that all the mobsters and gang leaders of the city are up to something.

Cut conveniently to the secret hideout of our villain du jour, the Thinker, where all the mobsters are arriving on schedule, just as he predicted. That’s his thing – he uses his high-tech computers and advanced mathematics to calculate all probabilities in any given situation, eventually giving him the most likely outcome, which he then uses to his advantage. So, basically, he can see the future. He does so not with magic or with time travel, but with math. Get this: The Thinker’s plan is to use all the mobsters to take over New   York and declare it an independent nation with him as its ruler. Before he can do that, though, he’s got to take out the Fantastic Four.

  The FF, apparently having forgotten that business about mobsters gathering, find themselves unknowingly falling into the Thinker’s traps. Reed is offered a job from a high-tech research group, Ben is offered a part in a pro wresting circuit, and Sue lands a role in as an actress. Then there’s Johnny who is contacted by his “cousin Bones” who runs a circus, and asks Johnny to join him. Calling it a “vacation” the four go their separate ways. Then, a meteor lands just outside New York, knocking out the power. The Thinker predicted this would happen, and the power outage gives him the opportunity to break into the FF’s now-empty headquarters.

The private sector/wrestling/Hollywood/circus thing ends up being a disappointment, so our heroes reunite, only to discover a crystal shell has been erected around the BaxterBuilding. Here’s where the issue stops being silly and starts being genuinely exciting. They fight their way inside, with the Thinker taunting them the whole time. The Thinker uses Reed’s inventions against them, and every time they defeat one, the Thinker is on hand to say he knew that would happen, and that it was all part of his plan.

Hey, what about that android? It’s here, all right. As it shows up, Reed exposits that it’s actually his android, that the Thinker it created from Reed’s notes. The android has mimicry abilities, able to recreate Reed’s stretching and Ben’s rocky exterior. Reed manages to slow it down, long enough for Sue to invisibly subdue it by using her “sensitive touch” to press the “motor nerve terminal” under its arm. So… she tickles it? Well, it works, and the android is out for the count.

The FF reach the Thinker, who has a bunch of weapons aimed at them. Weapons of Reed’s invention, which could rob the FF of their powers. The weapons unexpectedly blow up in the Thinker’s face, allowing the team to capture him easily. Reed explains that before the team’s assault on the building, he left a message for their mailman, Willie Lumpkin, to press the doorbell outside at a specific time. This, Reed says, activated a “circuit breaker,” which rendered the weapons useless. The human element, Reed says, is the one thing the Thinker couldn’t predict. The police arrive to haul off the Thinker, and the FF are back together again.

Unstable Molecule: This issue raises a lot of questions about what, exactly, goes on in Reed’s lab. In the first few pages, we see him creating a new life form in a Frankenstein-like DNA experiment. Then, we see that his lab is full of deadly weapons the Thinker can use against our heroes.

Fade Out: Sue is the one who defeats the monstrous android. Earlier in the book, there’s a scene with her volunteering to help orphans. She stays busy.

Clobberin’ Time: The Yancy Street gag is a good one, with them sending Ben a picture of him in a tu-tu. This issue has what I believe is the first reference to Ben as a pro wrestler, something that will come up again and again throughout his history.

Flame On: OK, who is this “Cousin Bones” who has a relationship with Johnny? Is he also Sue’s cousin? Is he working with the Thinker, or did the Thinker merely predict his arrival? Too many unanswered questions here.

Trivia Time: Our two villains, in their first appearance, are only called “The Mad Thinker” and “The Awesome Android” on the cover and the splash page. Throughout the rest of the comic, they’re merely “Thinker” and “android.” Future appearances, though, will have them both using the longer monikers.

Making return appearances are the Yancy Street Gang and Willie Lumpkin. It could be argued that Willie is the one who saves the day in this issue, and he didn’t even need to wiggle his ears to do it.

Fantastic or Frightful: We get some good character development in this issue, as the four heroes go their separate ways, only to learn they really want to be back with their teammates. Other than that, though, the first half of the issue is pretty ridiculous. The second, with the FF breaking into their own headquarters, is really solid – classic Jack Kirby action at its best.

Next week: The Microverse!

Want more? Check out my book, CINE HIGH, now available for the Kindle and the free Kindle app.

Re-reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Issue 14 is another supervillain team-up… of sorts.

The story begins right where the last issue left off, with the Fantastic Four returning from their trip to the moon. A crowd of fans and reporters are waiting for them and mob them upon arrival. This is the issue’s “the characters show off their powers for a few pages to get new readers up to speed” thing. Reed stretches away from his fan club (Reed has a fan club!?!), Ben tosses a phony wrestler from a promotional scam into a trash can, Sue of course turns invisible to sneak away from the crowd, and Johnny finally does the fly around in a circle and create a vortex thing, using it to get everyone back to headquarters.

Back home, Reed decides to check in on Sue, only to find her using his “experimental roving eye apparatus” to spy on the bottom of the ocean. Reed surmises that Sue is looking for Namor, the Submariner. Cue the angst! Reed mopes because he thinks that, despite all his accomplishments, Sue likes Namor better. Sue meanwhile, mopes because she can’t decide which hunk she likes better. (If these had been published today, would fans have divided into “Team Reed” and “Team Namor” camps? Let’s hope not.)

Elsewhere, a stranger is released from a sanitorium, and immediately starts plotting revenge against the Fantastic Four. It’s revealed to be the Puppet Master. He breaks out the ol’ radioactive clay and starts crafting a puppet of the Submariner, because Subby is the one villain the FF haven’t flat-out defeated yet. At the bottom of the ocean, we catch up with Namor, who is still searching for the lost people of Atlantis. The Puppet Master’s mind control takes over Namor’s body, and here’s where we’re introduced to an ongoing theme in this issue — insanely impossible sea life. He uses a “mento-fish” to send a telepathic message to Sue, asking her to meet him. She goes to the docks, where Namor is waiting for her. He then uses a flying “hypno-fish” to hypnotize Sue. The hypno-fish seals Sue inside a “globule” (I swear I’m not making this up), and Namor takes her to the bottom of the sea.

Puppet Master then commands Namor to send a projection of himself to the other members of the FF, challenging them to try to rescue her. On the way to the rescue, Ben takes a side visit to Alicia, where there’s two pages of comedy bits about a jerk charging Ben way too much to park the Fantasticar in his lot. Alicia fears that if Ben dies, she’ll have no one to be with. To quell her fears, Ben somewhat questionably decides to take Alicia with him on the rescue. Why? Because the plot demands it, I guess.

Reed, Johnny, Ben and Alicia take an “experimental bathyscope” to the bottom of the sea, fighting more crazy sea life on the way, including an undersea porcupine and a giant “scavenger clam.” They reach Namor, to find Sue still trapped in the globule, and threatened by not just an octopus, but “the mightiest octopus of the seven seas.” Of course a fight breaks out. Namor defeats Johnny using a “ravenous unthinking flame-eater” (we’re supposed to believe that’s a type of sea creature) to douse his fire. Namor then uses a “dagger-needle coral” against Ben. Somehow the coral transforms into a fungus, immobilizing Ben. Reed stretches his arms around Namor as a cage, and, amazingly, this works.

Now free from the fungus, Ben fights the octopus, sending it swimming. Puppet Master is watching all this from his private submarine (where’d he get that?), and decides it’s not enough for Namor to defeat the FF, he must go the distance and kill all four of them. Alicia says she can sense her father nearby, and that’s all the exposition Reed needs to figure out what’s happening. Namor is about to douse our heroes with poison gas, but tries to resist the Puppet Master’s control, thanks to his having the hots for Sue. Puppet Master wins out, though, and Namor fires the gas. The FF survive, thanks to the unbelievably convenient “flex-o-glass packets” Reed just happened to have on him.

The octopus shows up again and smashes up the place. It then turns its attention on the Puppet Master’s sub, grabbing it and dragging it down the depths. This frees Namor from P.M.’s control. Namor demands everyone else leave — everyone but Sue, that is. Sue turns him down, saying she hasn’t yet decided where her heart lies, but for now her loyalty is with Reed.

Unstable Molecule: Reed puts up a good fight against Namor, restraining him for some time. His “flex-o-glass” protects the team from the poison gas.

Fade Out: She gets captured again, and this time doesn’t engineer her own escape.

Clobberin’ Time: Ben fights a giant octopus and a giant octopus, but his biggest achievement in this issue is chewing out that overcharging parking lot guy.

Flame On: Johnny bends physics all over the place, first with creating a vortex, and then by flying around underwater with his “white flame” protecting him.

Trivia Time: Continuity gets all messed up here. When we last saw Puppet Master, he had fallen out a window, seemingly to his death. Reed in this issue even does the old “I thought it was dead” routine. Did no one check P.M.’s pulse or anything? How did he get in the sanitorium? How’d he get his own submarine? And so on.

Fantastic or Frightful: Not a standout issue, but nothing necessarily wrong with it, either. Basically, it’s an excuse for the FF to duke it out with Namor again, and for Jack Kirby to draw all kinds of crazy undersea monsters. Nothing wrong with that.

Like to read? Check out my book, CINE HIGH, now available for the Kindle and the free Kindle app.

Re-reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Issue number 13 is the most dated from this era, but in many ways, it’s also one of the most exciting. It’s all about evil soviets and their apes, the great space race, and some seriously great art.

The issue begins with an explosion in Reed’s lab and HOLY CRAP STEVE DITKO IS INKING JACK KIRBY’S PENCILS. Ditko is of course a comics legend for his work with Stan Lee on Amazing Spider-Man, which ran concurrent to these issues of Fantastic Four. How and why he filled with the inking on this issue I’ll never know, but the melding of the two artists’ styles is fascinating. Kirby drew big, larger than life action, while Ditko’s work was quirkier, sometimes more focused on character work and expressions. You’d think they’d be too different to work together, but in this case the results are impressive. Under Ditko’s inks, Ben looks more monstrous than usual, with black shadows around his eyes, and Sue looks especially gorgeous.

But why analyze art when there are communists? Wait… make that communist APES. The issue begins with Reed experimenting with a new type of rocket fuel, which he says will allow the U.S. to be the first to the moon, before those pesky Russians get there. Meanwhile, behind the iron curtain, the sinister Ivan Kragoff has trained a bunch of apes to be his cosmonaut crew. A gorilla is the pilot, a baboon has been trained to fire a machine gun, and an orangutan is the mechanic, able to “fix anything,” Kragoff says. (Why are these apes better than a human crew? That’s never explained.)

Both the FF and Kragoff take off in their spaceships at the same time, making the space race literal. While the FF’s ship has extra-special protection against the cosmic rays that gave them their powers, Kragoff and the apes are in a special see-through ship, allowing them added exposure to the cosmic rays. They get zapped, and Kragoff and the apes gain powers. The orangutan can manipulate magnetic waves, the baboon is a shape-changer, and the gorilla has superhuman, er, superape strength.

 Both ships land on the mysterious “blue area” of the moon, finding an abandoned city there, a remnant of a long-since-dead alien society. There’s breathable air in the blue area, and the alien machinery is still operable. The FF splits up, and Ben runs into the apes. They fight, and Kragoff reappears, revealing that the cosmic rays gave him the power to turn intangible and walk through walls. He now calls himself the Red Ghost.

The fight is interrupted by a huge, bald alien, who introduces himself as the Watcher. The Watcher is just that, one who watched the galaxy from afar, but never interfering. He says the conflict between the U.S. and Russia will soon explode into full-blown war that will destroy the Earth, and he refuses to let the conflict spill over onto his home on the moon. He intends to settle the matter right then and there by having the Fantastic Four and the soviets fight it out in the dead city. The apes easily defeat Reed, Johnny and Ben, and Sue is taken captive. The Red Ghost explains to Sue that the apes are under his mental control.

The Red Ghost none-two-wisely leaves Sue alone with the apes while he runs off to set up a trap for her teammates. She sets them free, both from their cage and from the Red Ghost’s mind control. Sue then rejoins the others, warning them of the Red Ghost’s trap, a deadly laser. Johnny and Sue take out the laser. The Red Ghost escapes, and comes across the Watcher’s house. He sneaks inside, hoping to use the Watcher’s advanced alien tech for his own uses. Instead, the interior of the Watcher’s home is so far-out and otherworldly that it nearly drives the Red Ghost mad. The Watcher threatens a series of time travel-based punishments, but instead just tosses the Red Ghost out of the house.

The Watcher declares the Fantastic Four the winners, and says that no matter how far humans travel in space, they will never be alone. Freed from the Red Ghost’s mind control, the apes turn on their former master and chase him off across the lunar surface. Reed and company leave him there and return to Earth, promising to turn the new fuel source over to the National Space Agency. (Why didn’t they just that to begin with?)

Unstable Molecule: Reed invents a new source of rocket fuel from a meteorite. He also debuts a stretchable asbestos suit for his work with dangerous materials in the lab.

Fade Out: At first, I cringed at the sight of Sue being taken captive again, but then she turned the table on her captor, freeing the apes from his mind control and rescuing her teammates from the Red Ghost’s deadly laser.

Clobberin’ Time: Ben is in a jovial mood in this issue, making comedic wisecracks the whole time. It’s interesting that the Watcher chooses to appear first before Ben, and not Reed.

Flame On: Johnny’s environmental suit also uses asbestos. (Lots of asbestos in this issue.) To catch up to the Red Ghost, Reed at one point puts Johnny inside a metal tube and has Johnny use his flame as a human jet engine. Nice.

Trivia Time: It’s the first appearance of the Watcher, who will go on to be a major part of Marvel lore. He has a habit of always showing up just before really, really bad things happen. This issue ends with him saying that he’ll leave for another galaxy, but it’s later established that he and his crazy home in the blue area aren’t going anywhere.

The blue area of the moon is another fun Marvel oddity, allowing Marvel characters to visit the moon anytime they want without the need for spacesuits. It later becomes a permanent home to the Inhumans, but we’ll get to them in this re-read soon enough.

Fantastic or Frightful: All the references to communism and the space race date the issue and make it unintentionally hilarious. Add apes into the mix, and you’ve got a wonderfully weird tale. The “space opera” aspects of the story are great fun, though, with a sense of exploration and wonder with the Watcher and the alien city. Let’s not forget that the Kirby/Ditko combo art is to die for. This issue is why we love Silver Age Marvel.

Next week: More mind control, and another super-villain team-up.

Like to read? Check out my book, CINE HIGH, now available for the Kindle and the free Kindle app.

Re-reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. Issue 12 gives us the series’ first big guest star, and I do mean big.

Right on the first page, we’re dropped into some silver age silliness. Ben and Alicia are on a date, to the symphony. It’s not Ben’s style, and he’s his typical grumpy self. Then, out of nowhere, a company of U.S. army soldiers just happen to marching by, in the middle of New York, and they start a fight with Ben. They just happen to have a specially-prepared bazooka with them. It fires steel cables at Ben, temporarily trapping him. They then knock out Ben with some powerful sleeping gas.

An army captain calls off the fight, explaining that his men mistook Ben for the Hulk. Ben heads back to headquarters, and here, for the first time, we learn it’s named “The Baxter Building.” Yay! Ben is a grump because he doesn’t like being compared to the Hulk. Reed says this is good timing, because the FF have just received a call about the Hulk. General “Thunderbolt” Ross arrives, and says he wants the team’s help… to find and destroy the Hulk.

Debuting a sleek new design for the Fantasti-Car, the Fantastic Four and Ross fly to Ross’s base in the southwest, where Ross says the Hulk has destroyed a valuable new anti-missile system. Reed conferences with a wimpy scientist, Bruce Banner, troublemaking teen Rick Jones, and some guy named Karl Kort. Banner argues that the Hulk did not destroy the machine, but that it was a saboteur known only as the Wrecker. Kort leaves, drops his wallet, which Johnny picks up. Foreshadowing! Another fight breaks out between Ben and the army guys, for pretty much no reason whatsoever, after which Johnny gives Rick Jones Kort’s wallet.

Out in the desert, Rick meets with Banner, who’s upset because he can’t convince anyone that the Hulk is not the saboteur. From there, Rick goes to return Kort’s wallet. Peeking inside, he sees a card for a “subversive communist-front organization.” Kort is literally a card-carrying communist. Kort reveals he is really the Wrecker, and he takes Rick hostage.

Meanwhile, again for no reason, the Thing is testing out the army’s new rocket sled. Part of the track has been destroyed, and once again everyone suspects the Hulk. Banner tries to convince them that the Hulk is innocent, but, again, no one will believe him. So Banner has no choice but to retreat to the desert, to his secret lab, where he reluctantly douses himself with gamma rays and transforms into the Hulk.

The Fantastic Four explore the underground caves beneath the rocket sled, and the Hulk is in those same caves. The Hulk and the Thing meet face-to-face, in what the caption describes as “one of the most dramatic moments in the history of adventure-fantasy.” Of course they fight, up through the caves, and to an abandoned Old West ghost town outside. The Hulk easily takes out Reed, Sue and Johnny, only to have the Thing slow him down with a “piledriver punch.” Only it wasn’t all Ben, but a beam from underground that also struck the Hulk. There, our heroes discover a giant robot, which the Wrecker used to frame the Hulk. Ben destroys the robot, and Sue, while invisible, disarms Kort and saves Rick. The Hulk flees, to go change back into Banner.

It’s a big happy ending as Reed and Banner shake hands and the soldiers salute the FF. Then, a day later, the Hulk is out in the desert swearing that this is not the last time they’ll meet.

Unstable Molecule: Reed’s role in this issue is mostly as an authority figure, as his smarts and reputation are what inspire the army to ask for his help.

Fade Out: She can’t fight the Hulk, but Sue makes quick work of the armed saboteur.

Clobberin’ Time: This episode is a showcase for Ben, as he first talks big about defeating the Hulk, and (with a little help) actually defeats the big green guy.

Flame On: In this issue, Johnny’s flames have a telekinetic quality, as they’re able to lift Kort’s wallet without burning it. He and fellow teen Rick Jones don’t quite along.

Trivia Time: This is the first time another Marvel hero guest stars in the Fantastic Four, although the FF made appearances in other comics, most famously Amazing Spider-Man #1.

This is also the first time the Hulk and the Thing fought each other. For many years, Thing/Hulk fights were always a major event whenever they’d happen in the comics. This is because the two were often depicted as equals in terms of physical strength. In recent times, though, Ben has been depowered somewhat, while the Hulk has been ridiculously strong, which is too bad. I miss getting excited about a Thing/Hulk slugfest.

This was Kort’s only appearance as the Wrecker. He’s not related to the guy of the same name from the Wrecking Crew.

The new Fantasti-Car debuts, as Reed explains that fans kept calling the previous one a “flying bathtub.” Sure enough, “flying bathtub” would go on to be the unofficial name for the original Fantasti-Car, as it still gets used many times in future comics.

Fantastic or Frightful: There are some silly parts here and there, but overall this is a really great issue. The mystery of the Wrecker is pretty obvious, but the long buildup to the fight against the Hulk works great. The threat and menace of ol’ Greenskin makes the issue an exciting read.

Like to read? Check out my book, CINE HIGH, now available for the Kindle and the free Kindle app.