Marvel Comics (Fantastic Four # 4, May 1962)
I started these Marvel reviews with Fantastic Four # 1 but, as I mentioned then, Marvel stretches back more than twenty years earlier than that. The company (and, arguably, fictional universe) that would become Marvel began as Timely Comics, but the writing was on the wall right from the beginning in that Timely's first actual comic was called Marvel Comics # 1.
Marvel Comics # 1 contains several stories, anthology books being the norm at the time of its publication. There's the Human Torch, not Johnny Storm but actually an android who bursts into flame with similar powers. There's an adventurer called the Angel, not to be confused with the later X-Man. The Masked Raider, basically a Lone Ranger knockoff, appears, as does a Tarzan-clone called Ka-Zar. (Like the Torch, later Marvel will redo the Ka-Zar name and concept.)
Rounding it out is the appearance of Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner. The Sub-Mariner had actually appeared in an earlier giveaway comic called Motion Picture Funnies Weekly # 1 and this second appearance was actually an extended version of the first, a "Director's Cut" if you will.
With the Sub-Mariner, we don't just get the reuse of a name and concept, like with the Torch. No, this represents the first time modern Marvel has explicitly tied itself to its pre-Marvel, Golden age past.
...and it's all the better for it.
Summary
On the heels of the Torch quitting the team at the end of the previous issue, Reed, Sue and Ben set out to find Johnny. They leave in their three sections of the Fantasticar to search the city.
Reed and Sue's searches are fruitless but the Thing correctly guesses that Johnny will be hanging out with some of his teenage friends at a local garage, working on cars. Furious at Johnny's choice to abandon the team, the Thing starts a fight with him that ends when the Thing temporarily reverts to his Ben Grimm form, giving the Torch time to escape.
Johnny decides to lose himself in the bowery, amongst the poor and unfortunates there. He stays in a hotel and finds an old comic about the Sub-Mariner, remembering his sister mentioning him when they were younger. One of the other men in the hotel claims that there is an old bum at the hotel who is as strong as the Sub-Mariner was supposed to be. The man tries to bully the bum into showing his strength and the bum, wanting to be left alone, does so by knocking the man across the room. The men in the hotel tackle the bum but he dispatches them easily and laments that he can not remember his past. Johnny steps in to defend him, seeing that he clearly has amnesia. Johnny uses his flame to carefully shave off the bum's beard and finds that he is the Sub-Mariner.
Reed and Sue continue to search for Johnny, the latter just missing him and Johnny flies the bum to the sea, dropping him in, believing that the water will revive his memory. Johnny is right and the bum sheds his dingy clothes, remembering who he is and his undersea kingdom, but when he swims there, he finds that it has been destroyed. The glow of radiation leads Namor to conclude that it was destroyed by the surface people's atomic tests.
Unsure if he'll ever be able to find his people, Namor returns to New York and "thanks" Johnny for restoring his memory by declaring that he will take his revenge on mankind for what they've done.
Johnny uses his flare gun to summon the rest of the Fantastic Four, deciding that they will need each other in the face of the Sub-Mariner's attack. Namor. meanwhile, has returned to the sea, retrieved a special horn and used it to revive Giganto, a huge, whale-like creature with vestigial limbs. Namor uses the horn to lead Giganto toward New York. A wrecked ship manages to send warning ahead and the city is evacuated.
First the army, then Mister Fantastic, then the Human Torch try to tackle Giganto without success and it makes landfall, crushing several buildings. The Thing has a nuclear bomb tied to his back and climbs inside of Giganto through his mouth. The Thing sets the bomb, defeats a creature that Giganto had swallowed and barely makes it out through the mouth again before the bomb explodes, killing Giganto.
Undaunted, Namor says that he will use the horn to summon other sea creatures to attack. The Invisible Girl steals the horn from him but he catches her. When she becomes visible, Namor is immediately smitten with her and offers to spare the human race if she will become his bride.
The rest of the team interrupts, infuriating Namor, who declares that he will drive the human race back to dwelling in caves and scatters Reed, Johnny and Ben easily when they tackle him. The Torch flames on and flies around, creating a vortex that lifts both Namor and the body of Giganto into the air, depositing them deep in the ocean where the horn is lost.
Namor vows to return and Reed swears the Fantastic Four will be waiting for him.
Credits
Writer: Stan Lee
Penciller: Jack Kirby
Inker: Sol Brodsky
Overview
There's a lot of interesting developments in this issue.
At the simplest level, it picks up right where the previous one left off, with the team searching for Johnny. On the surface of it, that's not that big a deal. It's not as if serialized storytelling wasn't already a thing in comics, Marvel and otherwise, before this. But it does really contribute to the feeling that, in reading the Fantastic Four, you're following these characters through the events of their lives, not just reading individual adventures linked only by the main characters. Further, even though Johnny is back on the team by the end of this issue, a good portion of the story sticks with the idea that he really was planning on leaving them forever. This presents the reader with the feeling that, even if it didn't happen this time, the potential for larger changes to the story's status quo exist.
And then, of course, there's bringing Namor, the Sub-Mariner, the very first Marvel (Timely) character of the Golden Age, back in the modern day.
Again, on the surface of it, that doesn't seem like a big deal. I mean, ok, they brought an old character back. Big deal. Heck, he hadn't even been gone that long. There'd been a mid-'50s attempt to bring back the Golden Age characters during the period when the company had been known as Atlas Comics. The Sub-Mariner had actually been the character who had lasted longest during that attempt, last being seen in an issue cover dated October 1955. (I've always heard that his book continues longer than the others because they were negotiating the possibility of a television adaption.)
But in a larger sense, Namor's appearance represents a massive widening of the fictional universe the Fantastic Four inhabit. These days, when fictional universes abound in media, this might not seem like such a big deal but at the time of publication this was far less of a given. Until this issue, it was conceivable that the FF might be operating entirely as their own fictional entity, divorced from any wider comics universe.
As soon as Namor shows up, all that changes. Suddenly all the previous Marvel stories Namor appeared in are fair game as at least possibly having "happened." And, of course, Namor crisscrossed with several other characters across his previous appearances, including the original android Human Torch and Captain America, not to mention functioning as a part of the All-Winners Squad (which would, retroactively become the post-WWII iteration of the Invaders. The fictional past influences the fictional present which influences the fictional future which influences the fictional past. Steven Moffat would be proud.)
How much does this open up? Certainly any stories in which Namor appears become fair game but potentially all the stories in which those who interact Namor do as well. And what about, say, unrelated stories in the anthology books Namor used to appear in? Did it all "happen?" Or only some of it?
Well, if you've read my thoughts on canon, continuity and lore, you know that I think the best approach is to treat it as if this opens any and all previous stories up as resources from which to draw upon. And, indeed, that's the approach that Stan Lee and later writers really seem to take from this point on. They aren't categorically saying it all "happened" (and, indeed, they will eventually say some of it didn't...though they also may later change their minds) but rather that it's all fodder for future stories. And I think that's a pretty darned good way to approach it.
It's also in keeping with the company's tradition because Marvel has been crossing its characters over since the early years of when it was Timely. And even back than, Namor was involved! Waaaaaaaaay back in 1940, Namor was one of the features in Timely's flagship book, Marvel Mystery Comics and in issues # 8-10, Namor engaged in a conflict with the original Human Torch, a fire vs. water confrontation what represents one of the earliest super hero comic book character crossovers ever. (It's often touted as the first such crossover but that's not actually the case. Two characters from MLJ, the Shield and the Wizard, crossed over with one another just a couple weeks earlier, though it must be said that their crossover is much less dynamic than the Torch/Namor epic.)
Further, much like he is in this issue, Namor's appearance in that crossover was largely villainous, as he attacked the city of New York on behalf of his aquatic people and found himself at odds with the more conventionally heroic Torch.
There's a tendency, I think, for people to assume that all the early superheroes of the Golden Age were squeaky clean moral paragons but that image is actually something that got solidified more in mid-late '40s and '50s. The early days of comics were filled with more ambiguous, sometimes even villainous characters and Timely seemed to specialize in those types. I mentioned above that the android Torch was more heroic but even he started as a menace, created by a money-obsessed scientist and used by mobsters to commit crimes. Even once he frees himself and becomes more autonomous the Torch...well, still burns villains to death sometimes.
Early Timely had a bunch of these more morally gray protagonists, characters like the Laughing Mask, the Golden Age Black Widow, Jack Frost or even characters whose motivations seemed completely unfathomable like the Vagabond.
But Namor? Namor was the prince of the comics antiheros as surely as he was the Prince of Atlantis. Right in his first appearance he kills a pair of hapless divers, mistakenly believing them to be robots but once he discovers his mistake, he doubles down and attacks humanity in earnest. Over time Namor would become more traditionally heroic, turning his might specifically against the Axis powers rather than "good" humans but it remains baked into the character's DNA that he can be foe just as easily as friend.
Which makes him a perfect antagonist for the Fantastic Four. The book had already been playing heavily with the concept of flawed heroes. Building a sympathetic-yet-still dangerous villain into the mix was the next logical step. They'd toyed with the idea slightly with the Mole Man's somewhat sad backstory back in the first issue but with Namor, they're truly embracing the idea.
Characters
Still, at the end of the day, it's not Namor's book, is it? It's the Fantastic Four's book and they got left in a bit of a lurch last time with Johnny abandoning the team.
The reactions of the other three members of the team are pretty indicative of their differing personalities. Sue is just worried about her brother. Reed blames Ben for Johnny leaving (though there may be an element of Reed projecting his own guilt there) and the Thing's just angry at Johnny.
As we move into their actual search, the personality differences become more striking. Reed, in a rather futile gesture, tries to keep Ben under control by sheer force of will. Ironically, it's this sort of approach that led to Ben and Johnny fighting so much and Johnny running off in the first place. Reed's an incredibly smart guy, but he can't just intimidate the Thing into being cooperative. Reed also takes a pretty social approach to the search, literally just going up to people and asking them if they've see the Human Torch.
Most of Sue's search is pretty conventional. She turns invisible and she looks around the city. It's a good approach, especially considering Johnny does not want to be found. I do rather enjoy the bit where Sue stops, still invisible, to drink a soda, scaring someone who sees the soda draining. Between this and the taxi driver she paid while invisible in the first issue, I do get the impression that there's a part of Sue that enjoys using her power just to mess with people's heads. And why not? The joke potential of invisibility is practically endless.
Of the three searchers, however, it's Ben who finds Johnny. This isn't coincidence either. While Reed and Sue think to approach other teenagers, Ben's the only one who's been paying enough attention to Johnny's life to note his obsession with cars and modifying them. This is both consistent with what we've previously seen in the series (Johnny was actually introduced as a car enthusiast in his first scene) but also speaks to something rather important: Ben is a smarter than he lets on.
It's easy, given the way the story tends to present Ben as brutish and short tempered, as well as the way Ben talks which is very "low class," to assume that he simply isn't that bright but that isn't the case. Sure, he doesn't come off as smart compared to Reed, but who does? But right from the first issue we saw that Ben is capable of quite literally piloting a rocket into space. You can't do that without being pretty smart.
Here, though, we see Ben make practical use of his knowledge in a way that Reed and Sue don't. This shows us that Ben's intelligence, unlike Reed's is also on a more grounded level. While Reed is pushing the boundaries of science, he's also missing the little human details that Ben is aware of. Indeed, Ben may be hyper-aware of those human connections now, as so many of them are now denied to him.
That denial, though, brings us back to the core of the Thing's personality this early in the series, his anger. Reed might have thought a stern lecture at the beginning of the search was enough warning but we see here that the Thing's rage completely has the better of him from the moment he started searching. (Another human quality Reed is failing to notice.)
Why is Ben so angry at Johnny for that matter? Because, in a certain sense, Reed was right earlier when he said it was Ben's fault Johnny left. The build up to Johnny quitting had been the endless fights between the two, usually triggered by Ben losing his temper. Johnny left because the Thing kept threatening him...and now the Thing has tracked him down so he can threaten him some more.
If I had to guess, I'd say that the Thing's anger, in this case, is rooted in the fact that Johnny's become the first of Ben's friends to do exactly what Ben has been afraid will happen since the accident. Johnny abandoned him and if Johnny can do it then eventually Reed and Sue can do it as well. Ben will be left alone, a monster.
This is exemplified by the sequence where the Thing briefly turns back into his Ben Grimm form. As soon as that happens, Ben completely ceases to care about threatening Johnny, even shouting that he doesn't care as Johnny escapes. After all, if he's Ben Grimm, he can make new friends. He's no longer a social outcast. He can have a real life again.
Which makes it all the more sad when he becomes the Thing again. This is the second time we've seen Ben revert to his human form and then back to his rocky one (and the first time it doesn't get a significant explanation. Last time he was exposed to cosmic rays. Here it's just...oil an fumes from gasoline?) There's also an added element of pathos in that Johnny immediately recognizes that the change is temporary but Ben is still holding out hope that it will be permanent. But then Johnny isn't as invested in wanting to be normal as Ben is.
No, Johnny's moral compass hasn't really changed that much. Despite Reed's fears at the end of the previous issue, he clearly has no interest in turning his Human Torch powers against the world. He's just sick of being bullied and wants his former teammates to leave him alone. His actual departure was likely an instance of anger getting the better of him and, well, Johnny's a teenager so he doubles down on it.
But, push come to shove, it's not like Johnny's lost his sense of right and wrong. This is evident when he puts his feelings aside and calls his former teammates to help deal with Namor. Johnny's setting aside his anger for the greater good in precisely the way Ben didn't earlier.
And it's a good thing Johnny does come back because he turns out to be integral in the battle against Namor. He saves Reed when Mr. Fantastic's solo attempt to stop Giganto fails (and Reed saves Johnny in return. The whole of the team really is stronger than the sum of its parts.) Johnny is also the one who ultimately defeats Namor by sending him back out to sea, which is fitting because it was Johnny who revived Namor in the first place by doing the same thing.
Which brings me back to Namor himself.
It's an interesting approach they use to bring Namor back, really. The memory loss element allows them to link Namor to his past appearances but is vague enough that exact details of those appearances can be kept to a minimum. Despite his claim that his memory has fully returned it is clear that details still elude him. He has to actually see his destroyed homeland to realize it's been devastated and, even then, he's assuming that it was human atomic tests that did the damage. While that certainly seems plausible the story doesn't actually confirm it. Further, there are only the vaguest references to Namor's actual comic history. He does not, for instance, mistake Johnny Storm for the original Human Torch, his old ally/sparring partner, despite that fact that they look startlingly similar when on fire. Nor is he mentioning or thinking of characters like his cousins Byrrah or Namora, prominent figures toward the end of his last comics run in the '50s or even his love interest, Betty Dean. There are no mentions of his battles against Hitler (or the rest of humanity) or of his membership in the All-Winners Squad.
In addition the actual mechanism of Namor's amnesia is left as an unknown at this point. This is likely done simply because the story is about moving Namor into the role of an antagonist for the Fantastic Four but it also leaves open the possibility of exploring that tale in the future, something that will eventually happen (though it'll be a while.)
In effect, what they've done is bring back the idea of Namor the Sub-Mariner in this story. He's the sort of platonic ideal of Namor: powerful, arrogant, noble but also antagonistic. But the details, while they presumably still happened, are largely ignored. This isn't meant as a complaint. Namor continues to be a major character in Marvel to this day. (I write this just about two years after his MCU debut in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.) There will be plenty of time to explore the details of both his past and future. This story is about establishing him in the present (of 1962.)
So what is Namor actually like? Trivially, as a big Star Trek fan, the first thing I ever noticed about Namor was, of course, that he facially resembles Mr. Spock a lot...despite predating Spock by about 30 years. More than that, he almost has the opposite of Spock's personality, in that Namor is pretty much ruled by his emotions. When Namor feels something, he goes with it. When he gets angry about what happened to his people, he immediately opts for revenge. When he is attracted to Sue, he doesn't hesitate to act on it. These actions, impulse driven without the slightest impulse to second-guess himself, are very consistent with Namor's Golden age portrayal. They may not be focusing on the background details but they've got Namor's personality down perfectly.
They've got his physicality down right too. Namor's strong on a level that challenges the Thing (the first character since the book started who can really do that.) He's also still got his little ankle wings that inexplicably allow him to fly.
And water still revives him...because of course it does. Water being the source of Namor's strength and power is such a staple of the character that using the ocean to return him to the active world is almost a given.
I've mentioned that many of the details and side characters from Namor's past are simply not mentioned but Atlantis itself, Namor's home is present by its forcible absence. In this particular instance, Namor's past being missing is an actual plot point and motivation for the character. I noted that the story doesn't actually confirm that it was human atomic tests that destroyed Atlantis but it's worth noting that the story doesn't deny it either. It would have been easy for Stan Lee to slip in a line or two about Namor being mistaken about the cause if that was the intent. Instead we're left with the slightly less comfortable (but more dramatically interesting) idea that Namor may be right to be angry.
And if he is right, does that justify his attack on New York? From his point of view, the destruction of his kingdom likely represents an act of war. On the other hand, even if he's right, it was likely not deliberate. Food for thought, even if the story doesn't dwell on those issues. Like many of the early Marvel stories, it's a bit of a cautionary tale about how atomic energy might be a bit of a Pandora's Box.
So how does Namor unleash his legendary temper upon humanity? He throws a giant monster at New York. Not a small one, either. A whopping great Kaiju-sized sucker.
Enter Giganto
The presence of such a monster is hardly a surprise at this point in the Fantastic Four. Monsters, particularly giant ones, had been an absolute staple of Marvel in the late '50s stories leading up to Fantastic Four # 1. Xom the Menace from Outer Space. Zog the Unbelievable. Mummex. Titano. Sporr. Taboo. Groot (not that Groot, but same species.) Xemnu the Titan. It the Living Colossus. Goom. Googam, Son of Goom. Monsters really abounded in pre-FF Marvel. Heck, just a week before this issue there'd been an issue of Tales to Astonish with a giant mummy on the cover.
And this tradition has already continued into the Fantastic Four itself. We had the Mole Man's power plant-wrecking creature in the first issue (not to mention all his other monsters.) We had the Miracle Man's fake giant marquee statue last issue. Heck, even the Skrulls briefly took on some monstrous forms in the second issue.
We can look on this as Marvel possibly still hedging its bets a bit. Monster stories had been good to Marvel, selling consistently, helping them out of their late '50s financial jam. There may have been a sense that they didn't want to entirely abandon them for superheroes given that such heroes had turned out to have a limited shelf-life in the past. Ironically, The Fantastic Four is one of the books that helped make superheroes a permanent fixture of comics.
It's also possible that Stan and Jack just thought it'd be cool to throw a giant whale-monster at New York.
Certainly much is made of how impressively massive Giganto is. One panel shows Namor dwarfed by just Giganto's eye. There's also a small panel of Giganto rising from the sea, showing the sheer scale of the creature compared to a nearby tramp steamer in a way that makes Godzilla seem small. In terms of sheer size and power, Giganto represents a threat level beyond anything the Fantastic Four have yet to face. This is reinforced by the evacuation of the city. showing us the the authorities within Marvel's reality recognize just how much of a crisis this is. This isn't like one of those monsters from the Mole Man's island that the Thing can just pick up and throw away with ease.
Which is convenient because it gives us the chance for some much needed character development for the Thing. I mentioned, back when reviewing the first issue, that the Thing is my favorite member of the team and I stand by that. But I think it's fair to say that he hasn't exactly been the most cooperative member of the group in the first few issues. His short temper and anger issues, while understandable given his condition, make him more of a hindrance than a help at this point in the FF's story. At some point that was going to have to change or they would run the risk of Ben just being the "contrarian troublemaker" of the group and nothing more.
Giganto presents the opportunity to hint that there might be just a bit more to Benjamin J. Grimm than strength and anger. It gives us what is arguably Ben's first selfless act within the series, walking into Giganto's mouth with a bomb strapped to his back.
We can see why there really hasn't been any need for Ben to do anything that presented much risk to himself before now now because...well because there are so few things that actually are a risk to him. Don't get me wrong, the Thing isn't Superman. He can be hurt. He can be stopped. There are levels of force than can be thrown at him that are more than he can handle. We see that every time Johnny flames on and Ben shies back because of the heat. But, even given that, Ben could be forgiven for, up until now, believing that he simply was never going to run into anything that can just outpower him. When he's lost it hasn't been because something was stronger than him.
But Giganto isn't just stronger. Giganto makes him seem puny in comparison. This presents, for the second time in the story, the opportunity to show that Ben is not dumb. If Giganto can't be outpowered from the outside, perhaps it can be blown up from the inside. And he's the only one who can do it because he's the only one strong enough to carry the bomb. Importantly, this is presented entirely as Ben's idea. He's not just carrying out genius-Reed's instructions. As with when he found Johnny earlier, Ben's opting for a simple, practical solution to the problem.
The difference here is that this solution might get Ben killed. This is an important step. As mentioned, all we've seen up until now is Ben's resentment and anger. Even as he's acted to help the team and the world, there's always been the implication that he's only doing so because the others insist on it, that he stays with them not because he wants to aid humanity but because he knows how he'll be treated if he's on his own. Here we see Ben willing to actually risk his own life to stop Giganto, giving us probably our first glance at what Ben's personality is behind all the gruff talk and seething anger.
It's also just a really cool sequence, what with the Thing traveling inside the body of the massive creature. The scale of its internal anatomy is emphasized by things like the hulks of the wrecked ships that the Thing walks by as he travels. Ben even comments on how eerie it is to be inside something so big. And, lest we forget how strong the Thing actually is, he runs into a living creature, presumably swallowed by Giganto, that he defeats with ease. Ben's belief that he's a powerhouse isn't entirely unfounded. He's not an unstoppable force, but he isn't that far off from one either.
This all leads up to the final confrontation with Namor, which is surprisingly low-key, given all the buildup to it.
Love and War
In terms of physicality, when the three boys jump him, Namor knocks them all over in one hit. And then the Torch whips up a bit of a firestorm than throws him back in the ocean. That's it. (The Torch has been instrumental in the defeats of all the villains so far. It's no wonder he's annoyed when the Thing doesn't want to give him any credit.)
More important than the physical fight, however, is that this is the scene that establishes the Sue/Namor thing.
First off, it's very nice that Sue steps in (invisibly) to take the horn Namor is using to control Giganto, and that apparently can control other creatures, when the boys' attempts to stop Namor more directly fails. It's an intelligent use of her power, targeting the actual source of the danger and using her unique skill set to neutralize it. Now, I'd be remiss if I didn't note that Namor catches her pretty easily (especially since Sue can't yet make other things, like the horn itself, invisible) but I think that's less an example of Sue being vulnerable than it is of Namor being powerful, just in a less direct way than when he'd previous given the three boys the smackdown. It's not that Sue's weak, just the Namor's strong.
And, of course, as soon as she becomes visible, Namor gets the hots for her. This is another carryover from Namor's Golden Age presentation. He's had his head easily turned by a pretty girl ever since he saw Betty Dean way back in Marvel Mystery Comics # 3 back in 1939 (an instance in which this tendency was actually used to trick him, it's worth noting.)
It's really quite consistent with Namor's general personality. He's someone who feels an emotion and goes with it. When he's happy, he's very happy. When he's angry, he's a vengeful terror. And when he's...well, let's face it, horny, he treats it like true love. (And it's definitely not the latter, since he's known Sue for about 30 seconds.) It's also worth noting that his attraction to Sue doesn't lead him to want to cease his attack on the surface. Sure, he offers to "spare" humanity but that clearly means he'll rule them instead of outright destroying them. It'd have been easy for this story to end with Namor giving up his attack on the surface world specifically to spare Sue. They could even have continued the whole Sue/Namor ongoing plotline, just with more allowance for Namor being reasonable.
But Namor isn't reasonable. Honestly, I applaud that. I like that they don't take the easy out of resolving his villainy (and, at this point, I think that's an accurate description of his actions), instead leaving the conflict simmering for the future. It's also adds some messiness to the attraction between himself and Sue.
Now, in fairness, the attraction is only explicitly portrayed as one-sided in this story. Namor's got a thing for Sue. Sue doesn't accept his proposal.
But...
She doesn't turn it down either. She rejects the idea of becoming queen to a ruler who plans to literally drive her race back into caves but she doesn't reject the idea that Namor himself is attractive to her and, of course, later stories will make it quite clear that the attraction is mutual.
Hardly surprising. Namor is, for all intents and purposes, the ultimate alpha male. Certainly not all women find this type attractive and unquestionably there are a whole lot of problematic issues that come with the alpha male personality type (many of which Namor displays) but it'd be dishonest to pretend that it isn't a type that many women find alluring. There may even be a distinct element of "the grass is always greener" syndrome" going on since Namor's personality is very different from Reed's.
But more on that particular love triangle in a couple issues.
Art Evolution
Kirby's art style continues to grow and improve. In some of the earlier issues of the book, while the individual panels were very impressive, there could be some inconsistencies with characters, clothing and objects changing from panel to panel (possibly caused simply by trying to meet deadlines?) That has started to disappear, replaced with a more consistent look for everything that encompasses the whole issue.
Kirby's also starting to play with the depiction of the team's powers more. In particular, he showcases Reed's stretching ability a lot in this issue, particularly early on in the search for the Torch. And, of course, monsters like Giganto are Kirby's stock in trade.
What amuses me as I watch Kirby's art evolve is that I know this to be just a sort of mid-point in his artistic journey. He's already been drawing comics for over two decades now (though, apart from a talent for dynamic action, I find Golden Age Kirby art very different from his later work) and will go on to create even more impressive stuff in the future. Kirby's FF art is rightly legendary and we're still just in the first "Once Upon a Time..." of that legend.
Little Tidbits
-The cover blurb has fully codified into "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine!" which is how it'll stay for the next few decades.
-Throughout the issue, there are several little advertising blurbs in the margins which say things like "Who is the Hulk?", "You've Never Seen Anything Like the Hulk" and "The Hulk is Coming." Hmm, I wonder who the Hulk is?
-As in the previous issues, there are flashbacks to previous events. While the earlier flashbacks tended to focus on the origins of the team, this issue's specifically focus on the events of the previous issue, leading up to the Torch's departure. In today's age, when access to previous issues is relatively easy to obtain, such flashbacks may seem pointless but it should be remembered that, in 1962, comics came and went off the newsstands and easy-to-find back issues weren't a thing. Thus such flashbacks becomes something of a necessary evil in order to have a true, ongoing narrative, lest you lose readers simply because they missed an issue or two.
-The Fantasticar can fly with one of its sections missing, as we discover when the three remaining members use it to search for Johnny. Honestly, it's pretty obvious that it would be able to do that. If it can split into 4 pieces, it can obviously function "in-between" whole and the 4-way split. I have no idea why this fascinates me, but it does.
-There is a bit where Johnny's working on a car in the garage and decides to do some welding by lighting one of his fingers on fire. During this sequence, Johnny puts on some welding goggles, which begs the question...why? I guess I'd always just assumed that Johnny was immune to the glare from his own flame. I mean that seems like kind of a given for his power set. In a larger sense, I'm sure he's wearing them because they're trying to encourage any readers to wear them while welding so as not to be hurt and, I suppose, I can buy that Johnny's trying to teach the same lesson to his teenage friends who are there (although Johnny has never struck me as the "educate your friends" type.) I suppose it's also possible that, while the flame and glare couldn't injure him, a piece of sparked metal might actually hurt his eye.
Actually, if I want to justify it in-universe, I'm tempted to say it's just that Johnny still wears them out of habit, his car obsession predating his powers.
-Speaking of Johnny using his powers for precision work, he makes use of his flame control to shave Namor's beard off in this issue. That's both impressive and seems a bit dangerous. Except I presume it really isn't dangerous or Johnny wouldn't have done it. (Johnny can be very boastful but he doesn't seem inclined to risk other people's safety to back up his boasts.)
I suppose this bit shows us two things. The first is that Johnny really can control his flame to an incredibly precise degree, enough to burn away hair without scorching the skin beneath. Second, that Johnny's a showoff. We already kind of knew that but this is more reinforcement.
-The bowery is essentially treated as the worst someone can fall in life, to the point where Sue refuses to search for her brother there because she doesn't want to think Johnny could fall that low. During the scenes in the hotel, the denizens of the bowery are depicted as unthinkingly cruel, based on how they treat the amnesiac Namor.
All of this plays into all too common perception that people who have fallen on hard times to the point of near-homelessness are somehow bad people, that they've ended up in this situation because of a defect in their character, rather than circumstances outside their control. When Sue makes that judgment, I don't tend to see it as a Sue-specific observation, but just her reflecting the morays of the time. (And, unfortunately, it's still a very common viewpoint now.)
About the only character who displays any compassion about those who live in the bowery is Johnny himself, which makes sense because he's just found himself among them. As in real life, empathy is easier when you've experienced similar circumstances.
-While in the bowery, Johnny reads an old comic about the Sub-Mariner. Leaving aside the incredibly convenient coincidence that he just happens to be reading about a guy who's in the same room with him, there's also the revelation that Marvel Comics exist within Marvel Comics. This is kind of a given these days but this is the first instance of it coming up. (Although I could be wrong about that. Maybe there's an earlier one I'm unaware of.)
Further, Marvel Comics within Marvel Comics are slightly different in that they seem to chronicle "real" events rather than fictitious stories. The old comic is about Namor and Namor's a "real" guy. One wonders about the differences between the narratives of the comics and the comics-within-comics are. Presumably such things as secret identities are not a part of the latter. (I vaguely think there may have been a series devoted to showing these "Marvel Comics within Marvel Marvel Comics at some point" but I've never read it.)
-I like that there is still a conventional government/military/civilian response to Giganto's attack on the city. New York is evacuated. The military tries to stop the creature with artillery. This is not Gotham from '60s Batman TV show. The police commissioner does not have a "Fantastic Phone" in his office that he calls whenever something weird happens. Indeed, I recently watched an old episode of that show in which Batman had apparently gone on vacation and Gotham's police force appears to be completely unable to function without him. (In fairness, that show tends to be more of a pastiche of comic tropes than just an example of them.)
But, in general, this is still very early in the emergence of super-powered beings in the Marvel universe and I like that we're given scenes with the normal authorities trying to cope with the situation. The world isn't entirely filled with super beings yet and, even if it were, it would make sense that the rest of the world would still be seeking ways to cope with their presence without relying on their presence.
It's important to note, though, that the attempt fails. The regular military cannot deal with Giganto and it's only the actions of the Fantastic Four that save the city and possibly the world. This is the first real public instance of the FF saving the day. Their previous exploits have either been more private or they've been about smaller stakes. For many people this was probably the big moment when they realized the existence of the "Marvels" of the world were real, that they had to be acknowledged as something that was here to stay. It might also be the moment where it became clear that supernormal threats required supernormal responses.
-The horn that Namor uses to awaken and control Giganto in this story is not named here, but apparently it's called the Horn of Proteus. I honestly don't know if it ever shows up again but I'd be amazed if it didn't. MacGuffins rarely go away forever in comics.
-Namor is still at large and a potential threat at the end of the story. This is the first time this has happened with any of the team's antagonists so far. The Mole Man, the Skrulls and the Miracle Man all not only had their plans thwarted but were neutralized in terms of ongoing threat. Namor's the first antagonist to be left as a potential ongoing danger.
Like the Torch quitting at the end of the previous issue (though he seems back for good now) this contributes to the feeling that this is a long, ongoing narrative, not just a series of unconnected adventures that happen to feature the same characters.
-Namor vows revenge at the end in classic villain fashion. Indeed, for all his history, Namor is portrayed as far more villainous than not in this story. That is, of course, a legitimate way to portray the character because of that history but it's far from the only legitimate one. Fortunately, we'll soon see that Stan Lee isn't interested in locking the character into so narrow a portrayal.
Conclusion
Generally, I feel that Namor's presence elevates this story beyond the ones that came before it. Bringing him in opens up the Fantastic Four's world to include Marvel's Timely/Atlas past and expands the parameters of what sort of stories can be told. They could have told this story with a new water-based villain and even tried to give him similar justifications to those Namor uses in this story but that sense of history, of legitimacy would be lost. That character would only be a villain, just as the Mole Man, Skrulls and Miracle Man were.
Further bringing in Namor sets the precedent that the Fantastic Four's "world" will not be limited to characters created within the pages of their own book. Namor is from comics of the past but, now that he's appeared, characters from other present comics and comics to come are all fair game. It's signposting that the Fantastic Four isn't just one story, but the flagship story of a whole fictional universe.
So, Namor's presence, for me, really raises the stakes of the burgeoning Marvel Universe, even if he's stuck largely in full-on villain mode.
Speaking of full-on villains, wait 'til next issue...
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