I don’t want to do this.
I don’t want to write this.
Shoot, I didn’t even really want to finish reading this book. This may finally be the end of my reviews of
superhero comic books. (Though I did buy
an Archie comic after this.) Was this
presentation of all-time classic Fantastic
Four stories really that bad? No,
but it was disappointing and a culmination of an almost unending series of
disappointments in reviewing comics.
Just click on the “Comics Review” tag and read any of them. I think there’s only a handful of positive
ones.
I was reasonably upbeat about Penguin’s Captain America volume. I even finished it eagerly awaiting the
release of a Fantastic Four one. In
truth, the Captain America book had issues (pardon the pun). I really liked some of the material, but it
was all kind of hokey even the really good stuff. I feel about the same about this FF book,
except it doesn’t have any really good stuff in it and the hokey stuff is even
worse.
The Fantastic Four was a very innovative superhero comic
for its time. The four characters were
not exemplary heroes, unlike the DC superheroes. They’ve all got personal hang ups and issues
with one another. In the case of Ben
Grimm becoming the Thing, he directly blames Reed Richards for his condition
(correctly). Reed is also a lousy
boyfriend/husband for Sue Storm, who acts way too needy at times herself. (And her fidelity to Reed is in doubt until
their marriage.) Johnny Storm is a
literal and figurative hothead and causes a lot of needless strife with
Ben. In spite of their personalities,
they come together as heroes against incredible threats to the world.
Regrettably, the stories in here are pretty goofball and
ridiculous. “What do you expect from a
superhero comic?” Obviously, I expecting
something a little less silly. I can
suspend a lot of disbelief, but I need some basic logic in any story. If a story is going to border on pure whimsy,
I’d actually prefer not having a pseudoscience veneer and characters showing
serious emotions.
All of this is easy to critique on in retrospect. Like I said, the character work was a
revelation at the time it was created.
The “soap opera” elements of the Fantastic
Four would become standard in other comics like the X-Men in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s.
One wonders what if Stan Lee and Jack Kirby weren’t so overworked at the
time when they created these seminal tales.
If only the stories weren’t so hyperbolic and absurd. You could even keep the basic plots just give
them some internal logic and stories that don’t rely on outrageous coincidence
to progress.
I’m being really harsh on this classic material. I was expecting more. I do not feel cheated, though. These Penguin books are very well
formatted. For $28, you’re getting 350
pages. There’s a bunch of fluff and
filler and some questionable commentary, but it’s still plenty of comic book
material. You might be better off with a
Marvel reprint trade paperback of some sort, but it probably won’t be as nice. Actually, there’s much better FF stories
later on. Buy a trade of issues from the
late 70’s or later for better entertainment.
Let’s get to some specifics about the book. This first half features the earliest issues
with the FF. They face off against the
Mole Man in their first issue. It’s kind
of like the standard monster comic of the time, but with some interesting
protagonists. Next, there’s the Skrulls. I hate the Skrulls and always have. Shapeshifting races in general irritate
me. Then they face Miracle Man, who is
an outright loser. The first two issues
were at least iconic, but this one could have been dropped for another issue
surely.
The FF then meet the Submariner. Namor is an intriguing character introduced
in the most contrived way possible. You
do get the above dramatic scene with the Thing attempting to take out a giant
monster with an A-bomb strapped to his back.
Next up is the introduction of the iconic Dr. Doom. The story features the guys going back in
time to get Blackbeard’s treasure and the Thing might have actually be
Blackbeard. Oooookay. That’s not the most auspicious beginning for
the great villain. The collection does
not include the Submariner/Dr. Doom team up issue. I know that story. It’s weird.
Breaking . . . no . . . shattering . . . no . . .
vaporizing the fourth wall, Stan and Jack appear in the return of Dr. Doom as
he forces them to lead Reed into a trap involving the old mind switcheroo. Hijinks ensue. In another meta-contextual story, the FF read
their fan mail. The boys find themselves
defending Sue from some readers calling her basically useless. She’s genuinely hurt. Reed offers a forceful, but ineffectual
defense of the Invisible Girl being on the team. After she later developed telekinetic powers,
Sue was much more useful. (I don’t know
when that happened.)
Well, I eventually got to what I came for and what would
hopefully save the volume for me: Galactus’ first appearance. There he is in all of his glory with that big
“G” on his chest to let everyone know who he is. He was also sporting his “summer” ensemble
for these issues. Perhaps he was
planning on hitting the beach on some other planet after absorbing the earth’s
biosphere.
Actually, this trilogy of issues is pretty good. Galactus, the Watcher, and the Silver Surfer
are in full Shakespearian voice.
Galactus might look a little dippy, but he is fully formed in
character. There’s some contrivance, but
it plays out as a cosmic drama. It is a
bit curious that basically only the Watcher, the Surfer, and the FF stand
against Galactus and nobody else or any other superheroes are involved in this
apocalyptic story. The characters are
what really make this fairly straight forward premise work, otherwise it works
out a bit like a play on a stage rather than an epic.
Stan and Jack must have been a bit dissatisfied with the
story, as well. They redid it with only
the Silver Surfer as the opposition in a 70’s graphic novel. I read that a long time ago and still have the
book. It has a much stronger
narrative. By no means are the FF and
the Watcher deadweight in the original, but it’s more dramatic with just the
Surfer. (Stan and Moebius teamed up to
do something of a sequel to the graphic novel in the 80’s. It’s also pretty cool.) My first exposure to the original story was a
podcast radio play revision/deconstruction of it focusing on a throwaway line
in the story where J. Jonah Jameson thought the whole thing was a hoax. It’s awful.
Avoid it.
This story leads directly into Johnny Storm enrolling in
college and the Thing deserting the team in This
Man . . . This Monster. It’s another
body-switch story, but this time featuring the Thing. The main story is okay, if heavy-handed.
The Johnny Storm college subplot, continued from the end
of the Galactus saga, I found a bit more interesting. Johnny is a public figure as an unmasked
superhero, so he has a celebrity life.
That has plusses and minuses, but is definitely interesting. The character was popular enough to have his
own side title for a while. For that
matter, the Thing used to be a very popular character. He once had a team up and then a solo
title. Heck, Dr. Doom used to be the
main Marvel villain. What happened? (The X-Men became the main characters at
Marvel in the 80’s and up until the MCU films.)
Finally, the FF stories close with an annual and a long
form story. It’s a lot closer to a
modern comic than the rest of the book.
While the story of going into the Negative Zone and fighting Annihilus
to get a cure for Sue, who is giving birth, is exciting and visually
impressive, it does rely on some questionable story logic.
In an appendix, the Submariner’s origin story from the 30’s
is reprinted. Boy, is he a homicidal prick
in this. Okay, here’s where I got a beef
with Penguin. The editor’s notes were genuinely
excited that Namor’s fight was against “White men.” The term is used a couple of times in the
story, so it wasn’t an accident. The
editor felt this was an early stab against colonialism more than social
justice. I’m not sure why the character’s
creator, Bill Everett, put this in.
Namor is shown with alternating blue and green skin underwater, but is
White when he’s on the surface, along with his cousin, Dorma. It’s a mystery.
Overall, the book has lots of imagination and was ground-breaking
when it was made, but it’s too rough in execution for me to recommend. The second half of the volume does have some
great, and at times, trippy artwork by Jack Kirby. You’re better off getting a trade of the
Fantastic Four from the 70’s or 80’s, where the writers took the material a
little more seriously. (I know it’s a superhero
comic, but if you don’t treat it seriously, it’s a costumed farce.)
I think I should have bought the Spider-Man volume to
begin with. I didn’t because I figured I’d
already read the material, which I don’t think I actually have. Whatever.
I’m done. I was seriously
thinking about getting the Avengers volume that was released with this wave,
along with the X-Men. Simply, these
nascent 60’s versions of the Marvel superheroes are maybe worth reading, but
not worth owning.
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