Fantastic Four #7

Prisoners of Kurrgo, Master of Planet X

By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers

Villains: Kurrgo

Guest Appearances: none

So, What Happens?

The far off planet of Xanthu is due to be hit by an unavoidable asteroid. Kurrgo, ruler of the planet, watches the FF on his monitors and dispatches his robotic servant across the galaxy to go and bring them to him. He has decided that Reed Richards is the only person who can save the day.

The team are busy preparing for a Washington banquet in their honour, however when the alien robot reaches Earth he starts a hate ray that turns everyone against the FF forcing them to flee the Capitol.

The robot intercepts their flight and, showing them images of how hated the team now are, asks them to accompany him to his planet. Despite fearing a trap the team go with him.

Arriving on Xanthu they are informed of the upcoming calamity and told that the alien race has only two space ships to hold its five billion members.

While the Thing and Johnny attack Kurrgo’s invulnerable robot Reed tries to think of a solution to the problem. Demanding the use of a laboratory Reed quickly knocks up some reducing gas that will enable the planets whole population to be shrunk and placed on one of the two space ships.

As the planet starts to break up Reed’s plan is put into action. Kurrgo refuses to join them in shrinking and also refuses to put down the enlarging gas needed to regain normal size on the ship, instead he dreams of remaining normal size and being served by five billion tiny slaves.

Slowed down by the enlarging gas canister Kurrgo is left behind as the billions of tiny Xanthans and the FF just make it off the doomed planet. On the way home Reed announces that Kurrgo had doomed himself for nothing, he had never bothered to create an enlargement gas, the Xanthans would have to start life on their new planet at the tiny size.

So is it any good?:

Yes and no. The plot is quite stupid despite a nice homage to ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ and some visually fun stuff in Washington. Most of the team spend the issue running away from things or futilely raging at Kurrgo’s robot while Reed has big ideas.

The final twist seems to be Stan still thinking in the style of a mystery comic writer, it isn't really neccesary and undercuts Reed's heroism up until that point. At this point in the marvel universe it seems fine to endanger a whole species of aliens simply because they were aliens. It will be a while before you get the Reed who was respected across the universe because he would actually help other cultures.

But I honestly think it’s the first issue that has started to feel like the book would a few years later.

You have the introductory section looking at the, very cool, day to day life of the team.

You have Reed Richards recognised as the smartest man in the universe; able to knock out a shrinking gas that Hank Pym would base a career around as a throwaway five minutes work. This isn’t really based on anything much we’ve seen previously in the title but would obviously become his default characterisation.

You have the team active on a bizarre planet, going there despite it clearly being a trap because Reed wants to explore and while they are there saving an entire alien race.

And you get Kirbytech, huge, baffling but brilliant, Kirby-tech for probably the first time in the Marvel universe. It’s still not quite there, the art is still locked in a nine panel grid that keeps everything too small to really burst from the page but for the first time it is becoming a book where anything can happen and scientific investigation is at the fore.

I’m not saying that it is a particularly good example of the classic formula, it’s a fairly average story at best but it is the first issue of the title where you can actually see that formula taking shape in Stan and Jack’s head.

Are there any goofy moments?

The whole plot is fairly goofy, especially the idea of Five Billion shrunken aliens getting on board a, still giant sized, ship in a matter of minutes and escaping from a dying planet.

Trivia:

You might think Kurrgo would be a good candidate for the Lee/Kirby FF adversary least likely to ever appear again what with him being a fluffy yellow guy with a huge head whose entire race had left him to die on a planet about to blow up.

But Roy Thomas brought him back in the Marvel Feature story that served as a try out for Marvel Two In One. His end in that story was much less conclusive than this one, being blown up in an explosion that other characters were later brought back from, but that time he stayed gone.

The FF end the story in possession of a working intergalactic flying saucer and having visited another galaxy. The team are occasionally said to be in possession of a Skrull saucer from FF 2 but they didn’t really have any way of acquiring one there so I guess it is actually this one that gets used.

Is it a landmark?:

No, out of the first 10 issues this is the one with the least historical significance.