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.

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.