This is the first in an irregular series of posts looking at issues of FANTASTIC FOUR, “The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine”. There are several reasons I picked this title:
– It’s sometimes been very good and sometimes very bad over the course of its 45 years.
– It’s a barometer for approaches to mainstream comics. For a couple of periods in the early to mid 60s it was at the cutting edge of US comics, but mostly it has reflected trends not set them.
– It’s – mostly – starred the same characters throughout, so it’s also a good weathervane for characterisation in comics.
I won’t be attempting any kind of chronological critique of the FF’s mag: I’ll generally just hop around the comic’s history, posting when I feel like it. That said, this post is about FANTASTIC FOUR #1.
Published: 1961
Creative Team: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Summary: An origin story tells how the Fantastic Four got their powers, by exposure to cosmic rays on an unauthorised rocket flight. The four are then brought together to fight a number of monsters, who are under control of the villainous Mole Man.
Analysis: FF#1 is one of the most historically important comics ever – it launched the modern incarnation of industry leader Marvel Comics, it founded the shared “Marvel Universe” that’s home to some of comics’ most recognisable properties, and its heroes have gone on to cartoon series and films in their own right. Such is its importance that later this year Marvel are releasing FF#1 as a huge oversize hardback book with exhaustive annotations – a sure sign that these days this a comic to be appreciated more than enjoyed. The larger the print, and the more solemn and garlanded the add-ons, the less readers need to consider the actual story.
Which is…not bad, I guess. It’s a rather plodding monster story, at the tail-end of a long run of monster yarns that Marvel had been churning out. Goom, Googam, Gorgo, Xemu, Tim Boo Baa, Kragorr et al. have way more vim and zest to them than the generic specimens the Mole Man summons up. The comic was published at a time when superheroes had been bad box office for years, and so this isn’t strictly speaking a superhero comic. In fact the four protagonists are presented as somewhat eerie or uncanny, freakish even – though all but The Thing are well-adjusted and keen to fight evil. The inclusion of the Thing is the real masterstroke, though – set a generic monster to fight a generic monster! Stan, Jack and the publishers are having their monster cake and eating it.
The Thing’s predicament – he is trapped in monster form and hates the world because of it – is far more Gothic and dark than even the soon-come “angst-ridden” Marvel style would generally allow. The character in this issue is frightening – smothered in shades and a trenchcoat, genuinely ugly, lumpen and inexpressive, as likely to trash the world as save it. It’s been pointed out that this version of the Thing is a prototype for Marvel Comics’ second launch, The Hulk, and it is, but it’s also a throwback to the dank, hokey atmosphere of earlier monster comics, where terrible ruin in monster form would be visited on innocent mortals. Fantastic Four #1 doesn’t establish the idea of troubled or conflicted superheroes (Marvel’s great contribution to the formula) – its conflicts are older and grimmer (no pun int.) But I do wonder rather whether this much-vaunted Marvel Method wasn’t at least partly just a happy accident caused by Fantastic Four’s bet-hedging between monster and spandex storytelling.
The Thing is the most successful element: the other protagonists are either a bit colourless, or in Reed’s case just dickish. I’m sure that later retellings of the origin downplayed Reed’s cavalier approach to the cosmic ray bombardment – saying that he had made a calculation error, for instance. In the actual origin his attitude is more, “Well, cosmic rays, yeah, but sod that, got to beat the Commies”. The actual mission that’s so very urgent is a total failure, of course, and there’s no sign the four heroes try again, so presumably the Commies did get there, who knows?
The other problem with this issue is its villain, the Mole Man. HE IS RUBBISH. Again, the creators weren’t thinking in terms of establishing a ‘franchise villain’ for the team (although he’s proved tragically enduring) – they just wanted an excuse for monster action. But really, the Mole Man’s origin is deeply ridiculous – short, ugly man falls down hole, is buried and blinded, starves to death quickly adapts to the dark and tames all the ravenous monsters down there by means of…erm…yeah. Unsurprisingly once discovered this loser is dealt with in about three panels by our heroes, adding to a sense that the main story is a little rushed.
I’m going to love, love, love this column. A+.
Seconded. With this and the roleplaying columns, Tom has made himself my new Nerd King.
I think you’re being a bit kind though, for all it’s importance, FF1 is actually quite a shit comic. They don’t even defeat Moley, they just manage to escape, and he decides not to carry out his plan for some reason (which was something to do with destroying nukes or something, can’t really remember).
I kind of like the Mole Man, incidentally. Yeah, he’s just some chump-of-the-week, and definitely it would be more convenient for the history books if Dr. Doom had debuted in this issue. (How many franchises can claim that, incidentally? The X-Men, and…?) But to say he’s “proved tragically enduring” sells him a little short I think. Perfectly serviceable weirdo once in a while, and also I think he sets up a tradition for FF villains – all their best ones tend to either be strange things from outer space, OR freaky weirdos, nebbishes, and marginal mad scientists of all stripes. The Puppet Master, the Mad Thinker, CERTAINLY the Molecule Man…all owe at least something to the precedent set by the Mole Man.
Plus, on some level, one wonders if the FF would have suffered from having a definitive nemesis right off the bat – it might have tied them down from their more exotic explorations if Lee and Kirby had hit on a formula too soon.
These are good points – maybe it is time to revise my opinion of the Mole Man. It is totally true that the FF have a rogues gallery full of NERDS and LONERS – maybe because they are the “first family” of superheroes they have to be vigilant against these SICK FREAKS.
He’s still a bit rub in this one though.
If I know anything about nerds and loners, it’s that we love to compare ourselves to some straw man of the REALLY pathetic nerd/loner – “I may go to anime conventions, but at least I don’t dress up in costume,” etc. No way were Stan and Jack consciously on top of that the way they were with the more explicit teenage escapism of Spider-Man, say, but I wonder if it was part of the appeal of these characters.
For Your Information Tom (for a future installment):
http://blog.newsarama.com/2007/02/14/nothing-says-i-love-you/
They do go for getting to the Moon first again not many issues later – the first Red Ghost/Super-Apes story, which is again ‘must beat those nasty commies’ stuff.
As for superheroes’ commercial potential, this allegedly arose out of a round of golf between head honchos of DC and Marvel, where whoever it was at DC told Martin Goodman that their new superteam book, the JLA, was doing really well, so Goodman decided they should copy that – he told Lee, Lee told Kirby, etc.
My pal Steve has a very viable theory that FF1 was originally designed to be two separate stories, and the decision to keep the Thing as a member was up in the air for a while. He could explain the details very persuasively if he were to hand…
I’m particularly fond of the cover, in that every line – the four each get a speech bubble – is absurd. I particularly like the image that it creates of this gigantic monster defeating Reed by tying him up, those huge fingers fumbling with knots.
Note also that the origin story is 80% recycled from the Challengers of the Unknown, also by Jack, and the characters are mostly extremely similar too – Jack had a bunch of personality archetypes that he mixed and matched every time, sometimes combining them, so Reed gets to be the professor and the father figure, Ben is the street-tough scrapper (that’s Jack’s own avatar), Johnny is the reckless youngster – that’s three of the four Challengers again, with ‘a girl’ added. Sometimes the traits are separated (Reed splits into Highfather and Metron in the New Gods, for instance) or blended differently, but you can see it fully-formed from his kid gang comics of 20 years earlier.
Has anyone EVER established just how the Mole Man took control of the subterraneans?
I need to re-read the Red Ghost story – I remember it having a really amazing cover (as did a lot of these, of course). Wasn’t the Red Ghost waiting for them on the moon? So the commies DID get there first, HAR HAR.
The early issues can’t decide whether it’s the Moon or Mars they were going to , I think.