The Fantastic Four

Marvel Comics (Fantastic Four # 1, November 1961)

One of the problems with trying to analyze Marvel comics is simply deciding where to start. Before Marvel was Marvel, it was Atlas Comics and before that it was Timely Comics. In publishing terms, that's not really that important. Comic publishers changing names in the early days of comics wasn't that rare.

But the issue isn't so much about publishers as it is about story. (When isn't it with me, right?) Marvel's "universe" first appears in Marvel Comics # 1 from October 1939, which was published back when it was still Timely Comics. Except that even that contains a reprinted and expanded story from an earlier comic called Motion Picture Funnies Weekly # 1. Confusing enough yet?

Timely would go on to publish a whole ton of comics in the 1940's. This was the Golden Age of Comics and the newsstands were absolutely flooded with with books, some good, some not-so-much. If I'm being honest about the quality (or at least my view on it), I'd say Timely's books during the Golden Age ranged from average to slightly above with the occasional stinker (but those are going to exist in any age.)

For Golden Age fare, I'm of the opinion that National (fledgling DC) is pretty much king of the castle. Early National has an explosion of characters in the early Golden Age that's hard to match. That said, Timely's books have an interesting streak of moral grayness to them, with a focus on anti-heroes and even outright villains that makes a nice contrast to National's more consistently upright heroes. That contrast would be an interesting concept to explore and analyze.

Except...

Golden Age comics are, to my sensibilities at least, extremely repetitive. They have a formula and they stick to it. A lot of this was surely just to speed up production and meet deadlines but it doesn't change the fact that, once the Golden Age really gets going, it can feel like you're just reading the same stories over and over and over again. It's not necessarily a bad story. But it's the same story. There are exceptions to this, of course, books that stepped outside those repetitive confines, but they're not the norm and, as my intention is to analyze Marvel's universe as a whole, starting from the Golden Age would involve a LOT of repetition.

So, if not the Golden Age, when to start? Well, the title of this post is a bit of a giveaway, obviously. Basically we're starting with the beginning of Silver Age Marvel, not long after the company actually started calling itself that. Yes, there are pivotal issues that precede this one, and I will likely go back and revisit them at some point. But for now, we're starting at the debut of Marvel's Silver Age.

Further, I'm going to be restricting myself, largely, to Marvel's superhero fare. During the Atlas years, they'd built up a fair amount of titles devoted to other genres. Atlas did a lot of romance, western and science fiction/monster books many of which were still going as the Silver Age began. Like the Golden Age stuff, some of it will be relevant to Marvel's burgeoning universe and I may go back to explore it a bit later. Atlas also dabbled in horror (though not, I must say, to quite the degree that some other companies did) and did a LOT of war comics.

So where does all that leave us? Fantastic Four # 1.

Summary

One day, in the middle of New York, a flare appears in the air, forming the words "The Fantastic Four" in the sky. (Yes, I know the issue itself says it's "Central City" but, retroactively, it's obviously New York.) This causes crowds to panic in confusion and the police to worry, but to three specific people, it's a summons. Susan Storm turns invisible when she sees it and travels across the city. A huge man, dressed in heavy clothes to cover his body, discards them when he sees the flare and reveals himself to be a massive rock monster. He narrowly avoids a confrontation with the police by using his great strength to rip open the street and travel through the sewers. Young Johnny Storm sees the flare while working on a car with a friend and bursts into flame before flying into the air. The mayor, already on edge because of the previous events, has the National Guard try to shoot Johnny down with a missile which is intercepted, at the last minute, by the pliable, stretching arms of Reed Richards, the fourth member of the group, who rescues Johnny and who had fired the flare to summon them in the first place.

The story then shifts back in time. We meet Reed Richards, a brilliant scientist who's invented a rocket ship to travel to the stars, his fiance, Susan Storm, her younger brother Johnny and Ben Grimm their friend whom Reed wants to pilot the ship. Ben refuses, however, believing that Reed hasn't done enough research into Cosmic Rays, which pose a danger to them. Susan shames Ben into agreeing, however, and the four of them launch in Reed's rocket, sneaking in without waiting for official clearance. Ben's warning turns out to be correct, however, and the Cosmic Rays penetrate the ship's inadequate shielding, causing Ben to lose control of the ship which crashes back down to Earth. Though they survive, the four are changed. Susan can turn invisible, Ben's body is permanently transformed into a monstrous, rocky form, Reed's body becomes pliable and stretchy and Johnny's body can burst into flame, even allowing him to fly. At Reed's urging, they pledge to use their new abilities to help mankind as the Human Torch, the Invisible Girl, the Thing and Mr. Fantastic.

In the present, Reed explains that he's called them together to investigate a strange phenomenon. Atomic plants all over the world are being wrecked, apparently from below the ground. Even as Reed speaks, a plant in Africa is destroyed by a huge, green monster that erupts from the ground beneath it, under the command of a mysterious, small figure known as the Mole Man. Reed's scientific instruments detect this incident and he triangulates the center point between all the attacks, an island called Monster Isle.

The foursome travel to Monster Isle in their private jet. Once there, they are attacked by a giant, three-headed creature. Though they are able to defend themselves and defeat the beast, they are shortly separated, with Reed and Johnny falling into a crevice in the ground. There they encounter the Mole Man, while Sue and the Thing contend with a rock monster on the Isle's surface.

The Mole Man explains that, due to his short stature and grotesque looks, he was mocked on the surface world. To escape the cruelty of his fellow man, he set out to explore alone, eventually ending up on Monster Isle. While exploring a cave, he was caught in a rock fall, which blinded him. Nevertheless, he was able to find and master the creatures who lived below the surface. He even developed a "radar sense" that allows him to sense the movements of others, something he demonstrates by besting Reed in combat. The Mole Man then explains that, after he has wrecked every atomic plant on Earth, his creatures will attack and conquer the surface world.

Just then, the Thing and Sue arrive. The Mole Man unleashes his largest creature, the one that he uses to wreck the power plants, but Johnny uses his flame to fly up and drive it back, while Reed captures the Mole Man. The Mole Man summons a virtual army of creatures, but the Torch melts the walls of the chamber, trapping them in a rockslide. Reed releases the Mole Man, no longer considering him a threat, and they escape in their plane as Monster Isle explodes, the Mole Man having sealed himself off from the surface forever.

Credits

Writer: Stan Lee

Penciller: Jack Kirby

Inker: George Klein

Overview

The summary above can't really do justice to how revolutionary Fantastic Four # 1 was when it came out because what made this issue stand out wasn't its plot which was, let's face it, pretty much just standard issue adventure fare. Indeed, in terms of plot and character archetypes, it's an awful lot like Challengers of the Unknown, a team Jack Kirby had created for DC a few years earlier. (The Challengers didn't have any superpowers but they did fight monsters pretty frequently.)

No, the key to the Fantastic Four's success was all in the details and those details emerge from the combination of the talents of its two creators, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee.

Over the decades, there's been a lot of back and forth about who's responsible for which parts of the Fantastic Four's success. A fair amount of bad blood sprang up, not just between Lee and Kirby themselves, but between their respective fanbases. There are people who've made a point of studying this conflict, of trying to parse together who did exactly what and correctly assign the credit for the book's success to the right person.

I don't particularly have a side in that conflict, save to say that I think the Fantastic Four is only as good as it is due to the synthesis of Lee and Kirby's talents, rather than one or the other being the sole driving force. I base this largely on my broad opinion that their work together is significantly more impressive than their work separately and I don't think that's accidental. I know there are others who don't share this opinion (in particular, I know there are those who think Kirby's greatest work was later, for DC, doing his Fourth World stuff) but I can only speak for myself and what I see, in the Fantastic Four, is two talented creators bringing out the best in each other artistically (even if not personally.)

The Fantastic Four's success was, as I said above, in its details. Chief amongst those details was a subtle, but important, shift in the focus of how to tell a superhero story. DC comics were pretty much ruling the Silver Age superhero genre up to this point (as they'd done in the Golden Age) but, reading Silver Age DC of the time, it becomes clear that all DC's heroes have virtually the same personality. (Yes, even Batman.) What differentiates DC's heroes from one another is their power sets. The Flash is fast. Green Lantern has his ring. Batman has all his bat-gadgets. Superman has...well, all the stuff Superman can do, which is quite a lot by this point. Aquaman can talk to fish.

But, personality-wise, these characters are almost identical. It's an old joke, but not entirely inaccurate, that if you were to take all the dialogue balloons from the heroes in a Silver Age issue of Justice League of America and randomly assign them to different heroes, no one would really seem like they were out of character. That's probably a bit of an exaggeration. DC's heroes have almost identical personalities, but there are minor differences. Still, the key word there is minor.

Well, the Fantastic Four's personalities have far more than minor differences. Each character is distinct, with their own drives and motivations. If anything, their powers, far from being what defines them, seem like extensions of their personalities, their personas made manifest.

With more distinct personalities, comes the key to making the Fantastic Four so different: conflict. Not just conflict between heroes and villains, though that's there. But conflict between the protagonists themselves. In a DC book of the time, inter-hero conflicts were gimmicks, one-issue plots designed to entice the reader into wondering what twist had created this temporary situation. With the FF, it wasn't temporary. Their intergroup conflicts weren't single-story problems to be fixed before returning to complacent stasis, but ongoing character issues and dynamics.

In other words, the Fantastic Four were more like real people. Real people with superpowers, sure, but real people nonetheless. Gaining superpowers hadn't elevated them to becoming moral paragons. Even if they aspired to be good people, they were still vulnerable to the same faults and foibles that plague all people. Reed's cold and hyperfocused on this goals. The Thing's bitter and jealous. Johnny's overeager and careless. Sue's passive and overcompliant. And they're still all of those things at the end of the issue.

Which brings me to...

Characters

Reed Richards is the leader of the Fantastic Four. At first glance that seems a pretty obvious statement but it's worth noting that the various adaptations of the teams over the years actually blunt this quite a bit, making the foursome operate a bit more like a collective. In the original comic, however, Reed is in charge. Really in charge. He's the one who developed the rocket they initially flew. He's the one who decided how they were going to use their powers. He's the one who discovered the attacks on the power plants and he's the one who assembled them to do something about it. He plans the missions and he plans how to go about them. He is, effectively, the one who determines the direction and strategy of the whole team.

This is tied to another trait of Reed's that many of the adaptations tend to downplay: Reed's a genius. He's not your average, run-of-the-mill, slightly smarter than your average person scientist. Reed's smart on a level that leaves other scientists behind, hence why he can build the rocket in the first place and how he can track the source of the attacks. Future issues will make it clear that he is, arguably, the smartest person on the face of the Earth...and probably a bit beyond that.

With that kind of intelligence gap, it becomes clear why Reed is in charge. The other three are hardly dumb, but they're dumb compared to him. They may chafe at his leadership style, but none of them are under the impression that they can think on his level. He leads because he's the one who knows what to do and they don't. It's as simple as that.

Reed's a bit cold, though. He's not without emotions. He clearly loves Susan and obviously carries guilt for the accident he caused and its effects on them, particularly Ben. But, for the most part, he's all business. Reed's a problem-solver. That's his approach to life. Even his most emotional reaction in the issue, blaming himself for the failed rocket flight, only lasts a few seconds before he's moved on to how best to deal with the consequences (complete with losing his patience for Ben giving him grief about it.)

Examining that bit more closely, one can almost conclude that Reed's apparent coldness isn't really about lack of emotion at all, but rather about the sheer speed with which he processes things. Like most everyone else, Reed observes, emotionally reacts, processes and decides on a course of action. But he does it all so quickly that it almost seems like he's skipping from the first step to the last with no intervening period.

Whatever its origins, however, Reed's apparent coldness has consequences. Susan seems to know him well enough to see through it and Johnny clearly thinks this is all a fun game. Ben, though, obviously interprets it as Reed barely caring what happened to him.

Speaking of Bashful Benjamin Grimm, he's arguably the most dynamic character in the book, bringing a level of intergroup conflict that was almost unheard of in the DC books of the time.

If Reed's led by his intellect, Ben's led by his emotions. It's clear, even at this point, that Ben is not a stupid man. He is capable of piloting a space rocket, after all. He's also up on his science enough to recognize that Reed hasn't done enough research into Cosmic Rays. But, even before his change, Ben's led by his emotions. Reed doesn't argue him into piloting the ship. No, Susan goads him into it by implying that he's scared. And he falls right for it. After his transformation, Ben is even more at the mercy of his emotions. His anger at Reed is barely contained throughout the issue and one gets the impression that he's only able to keep it in check because Susan keeps asking him to.

Indeed, there's a bit of a subtle undercurrent throughout the issue that Ben's carrying a torch for Susan. It's her challenge that prompts him to pilot the rocket and when she first turns invisible, that leads to his fit of temper that prompts his own transformation. Plus, while the accident is the nominal cause of his antipathy toward Reed, having a thing for his friend's fiance would go a lot toward backing up Ben's attitude toward Reed. Reed has the girl Ben can never have. Even more so now that Ben's a monster.

That's the crux of it, though. Ben's a monster. It's easy to look at this issue and see Ben as just the cantankerous troublemaker in the group, but I think it's easy to forget just how awful Ben's situation is. The other three all got neat, useful powers. Ben got turned into a 500 lb rock monster. He can't turn back. Heck, he doesn't even have all his fingers. (I keep trying to imagine how that would physically feel, for a couple of my fingers to "fuse" together and just become one. I can't really picture it.) It's tempting to break it down to him just having gone from handsome to ugly but it's more profound than that. He's gone from being normal to being completely unable to function as a part of society. His opening scene shows how hard it is for him to do something as simple as find clothes that fit. The mere sight of him causes panic. Reed, Susan and Johnny have had their lives altered. Ben has had his life destroyed. No wonder he's angry.

The Storm siblings, on the other hand, seem to have adjusted fairly well. Indeed, at this point, they seem to have altered their lives the least.

When we first meet Susan, she's having tea with a friend, so this clearly hasn't affected her social life much yet. In fact, Susan seems to get a great deal of amusement out of toying around with the cab driver on the way to meet up with the others. Susan's power has practical uses for what the foursome do, but it's also...well, fun.

If I had to pick, I'd say Susan gets the least character examination over the course of this first issue. It's not non-existent, but it is a bit less than the other three. I suspect this is an unfortunate case of the time in which this issue was made. By no means do I think Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were especially sexist, but they were also products of their upbringing and that results in Susan being a bit less dynamic than the other three.

"Less" doesn't mean "none" though. Susan does have a personality. While it's become fairly common, in later years, to describe Susan as being the "team mom" I think that, at this point, it's more like she functions as an emotional backup to Reed's pragmatic leadership. In particular, she helps keep the Thing under control. I'm not sure if Susan realizes Ben has a thing for her but, if she does, she's not above exploiting it a bit to help reign him in.

And then there's Johnny Storm. Johnny's a teenager. You could arguably say that's all you need to describe him. He's clearly experiencing the least amount of angst over his transformation of any of them. In fact, he actively enjoys his newfound powers. He's ridiculously confident in his powers and his ability to use them, overconfident in fact, judging by him needing to be rescued from that missile. Nevertheless, his power is both useful and versatile and he's no slouch at finding creative uses for it. Johnny's clearly got a bit of an ego but, so far, it's hard to take him down a peg because he generally can back his confidence up. That's not just good for him, it's good for the team itself.

Speaking of which...

Team Identity

What exactly do the Fantastic Four do? It's tempting to just say that they're super heroes but what does that actually mean? Do they fight crime? Do they wear costumes? Do they have secret identities?

The answer to all those questions, at this early stage, is no (and one of them always will be no.) The group seems concerned with dealing with a large-scale menaces to mankind rather than simple crime. They dress in purely civilian costumes and generic jumpsuits in this story. They also don't go out of their way to hide who they are, though, at this early stage, they don't announce it either. (Johnny really gives his identity away, though, flaming on in front of his friend.)

So what, exactly, is the Fantastic Four's purpose? If we go back to right after their initial accident and their pledge to work together, Ben describes it as "We gotta use that power to help mankind," and he's obviously saying what he thinks is on Reed's mind. That really seems to be what Reed is leading the group to do. They're engaged in what can best be described as super-powered altruism. Effectively it seems to be just doing what they did prior to the accident on a larger scale afforded by their new abilities. Before it was about building a rocket to take mankind to the stars. Now it's about helping mankind deal with threats that it could never cope with on its own. That might include fighting crime but it stretches beyond that to menaces that transcend the normal.

A New Age

In publishing terms, the Fantastic Four was just a new comic. As I mentioned above, Marvel was already publishing a bunch of books, mostly western, romance and sc-fi/monster books. Fantastic Four # 1 has the "feel" of one of those monster books, just with the added dynamics of the protagonists having super powers. It's in the characters and their interactions that the real difference is felt. That difference was real and palpable, something reflected in how well the book sold, leading to Marvel becoming the cultural icon it is now.

But the events of Fantastic Four # 1 are, arguably, just as significant from a viewpoint within the fictional universe itself. As stated, Marvel was publishing a lot of western, romance and sci-fi/monster books. A great many (though not all) of those stories would be retained as having "happened" within Marvel's fictional universe. The history of Marvel's "Earth" (Earth-616 as it will eventually come to be called) is already riddled with extraordinary characters.

Back in the days of the Old West, colorful gunslingers like Kid Colt, the Rawhide Kid and the Two-Gun kid fought for justice on the Frontier. During the end of the Great Depression and World War II, beings with powers above and beyond the abilities of normal men began to emerge, like the original, android Human Torch, the aquatic anti-hero Namor the Sub-Mariner and the patriotic super soldier, Captain America. More recently, various monsters, some new, some ancient and some alien had emerged as threats to the world, like the Colossus, Fin Fang Foom, Goom (and his son, Googam.) In the midst of it all, some people just tried to get on with their social lives and find romance, like Millie the Model, Student Nurse Linda Carter and (perpetually?) young Patsy Walker.

Those listings merely scratch the surface, of course. The history of Marvel's Earth includes countless others, encompassing both stories that had previously been published by Marvel (and its predecessors, Atlas and Timely) and many stories retroactively placed well after the publication of Fantastic Four # 1. There have been Marvel epics set from the very beginnings of the Earth, through medieval times to the '50s and beyond. Trying to list all the pre-Fantastic Four Marvel characters would take me until the end of time.

But even with all of this history, the emergence of the Fantastic Four stands out as a singular event. It's the moment when humankind collectively realized that its world really did contain....well, the "fantastic." Sure there had been rumors about monsters (and even some superheroes) in the '50s. Sure the kids of this age would have read pulp stories about western heroes. Sure some of the current generation remember the exploits of the WWII era heroes. But these things are all at a remove. No one who didn't experience these things firsthand thinks of them as a part of the real, concrete world they live in.

Starting right in this issue, that changes.

Key to this is a storytelling trope that Stan Lee will return to many times, one I think is particularly effective. He takes the time to show how random people react to all these strange things going on. He's already shown us how normal people react to being a part of these events by following the foursome themselves, but I'm talking about his focus on people like the crowd who witness the "Fantastic Four" flare Reed launched, the cab driver who can't comprehend his invisible passenger, the clothing store owner who encounters the Thing, Johnny's teenage friend who witnesses him burst into flames, the police who have to try and cope with the panic from these strange events and even the mayor who overreacts trying to control the situation. (A missile fired over the city itself? Really?) Even the power plant attack is seen almost entirely from the point of view of the French soldiers witnessing the appearance of the monster. We're not just seeing the Fantastic Four appear. We're seeing the world react to the Fantastic Four appear and, perhaps more importantly, that it's having an impact on what the people of the world think is possible. These events are not presented as removed from the perspective of the normal citizen but rather something your average Joe is going to have to accept as real.

Yesterday the world was normal and any fanciful tales could be dismissed or ignored. Today it includes people with super powers and that's not going away. Adjustments will have to be made.

I mentioned that Marvel's pre-Fantastic Four output included a lot of monster stories and that some of those, retroactively, still occurred. Perhaps it's the existence of those events that prompts Reed to be on the lookout for something like the Mole Man's attacks. (Reed's certainly smart enough not to have dismissed those monster tales out of hand.)

Speaking of the Mole Man, one of the better parts of the story is that it finds a nice balance between making him somewhat sympathetic and still presenting him as the villain of the piece. We're treated to a montage of people rejecting him from various parts of society simply because...well, because he's ugly. It's quite a nasty sequence, really. Further, it begs the question that, if people are willing to do this to a man just because of his ugly (but still recognizably human) looks, how might they react to people are strange as the Fantastic Four themselves? Especially someone as grotesque as the Thing?

Further, the Mole Man's reaction to all of this, first to flee, then to seek revenge and dominion when he acquires some power of his own, is a sign that, in this fledgling Marvel universe, power isn't going to be presented as universally good or bad. Rather the ethics of power will be rooted in how one chooses to wield it. The variations across the issue, from Reed's altruism, to Ben's barely contained rage, to the Mole Man's malevolence, make it clear that it's the personality and the choices that matter more than the powers themselves.

The Fantastic Four, and Marvel as a whole, is going to be about the choices people make and what comes of them.

Little Tidbits

-The story structure, starting with introducing the individual members of the foursome and the public's reaction to them, then flashing back to their origins before they tackle the current threat, is a very good dramatic approach in my opinion, far more effective that I think it would have been to start right off with the origin story.

-One of the things that leads me to believe that Susan thinks her power is fun is that she chooses to use it when traveling across the city at all. It would have been far easier to just get a cab and travel while visible. But where's the fun in that? This first issue also starts the long tradition of Susan being portrayed as all white with a dotted outline while she's invisible, letting the readers see her but also making it clear that no one else can.

-I mentioned that Ben lets his emotions make his decisions for him. One might wonder, then, why he chooses to escape, rather than lash out, when the police shoot at him. I suspect that it's because, at the time, what he's feeling isn't anger, but the desire to be left alone.

-We get an early example of Johnny's lack of sense of consequence when he effectively melts the car he's sitting in. Mind you, we also see that Johnny's very brave and clever, but his notion of responsibility? Well, let's just say he's clearly not thinking the details through.

-Reed smokes a pipe in this issue. He'll do this, off and on, for a while. A few other "smart" characters in early Marvel will smoke pipes, enough so that I'm left with the impression that Lee and/or Kirby saw it as something smart, scientist-types do.

-The initial accident with the Cosmic Rays is, indeed, Reed's fault. We're getting an early example of one of Reed's few full-on character flaws: He values the pursuit of knowledge to the point of disregarding danger.

-Speaking of the initial accident, why are Susan and Johnny onboard anyway? The motivations presented in the issue (Susan goes because she's Reed's fiance and Johnny because he's Susan's sister) kind of explain their perspective but I think the larger question is why Reed let them come at all (he does actually protest but doesn't put his foot down.) It makes one wonder if, beneath that scientific confidence, Reed feels some need for his accomplishments to be validated by the people he cares about.

-The "pledge" scene where the four of them pick their codenames is interesting. Johnny's the first to pick a name. While he's not really old enough to remember the original, android "Human Torch" from the Timely era, one wonders if that title has become a part of the in-universe zeitgeist and he chooses it because of that. It's certainly not an explicit connection, though. "The Invisible Girl" is an obvious enough name, given Susan's power. Ben's a bit more depressing, though. While the others are clearly picking codenames Ben is effectively redefining his identity entirely as "the Thing." It speaks to how dark his mental state is. Finally, Reed chooses "Mister Fantastic." It's easy to attribute this to ego (It certainly doesn't have anything to do with his stretching power) but I suspect this actually just another example of Reed's brain jumping ahead of everyone else. He's already thought of "the Fantastic Four" as a branding and that he's going to need to be the group's front man. These matters are things that will crop up in future issues more than this one.

-Ben dresses in clothing that covers as much of his transformed body as he possibly can during this story, including hats and sunglasses to hide his rocky visage. This is hardly surprising but it's interesting to note that he does so even around the other three who are "in the know" about his condition. Ben is not comfortable as the Thing. It's only the instances when he "goes into action" that he strips down to basically a pair of shorts (and one suspects even that's just for greater freedom of movement.)

-Speaking of the Thing when moving, he is established as ridiculously strong, ripping up manholes, getting hit by cars and besting the Mole Man's rock monster with ease. The "strong guy" on any super team will come to be a standard, uh, thing, but he's effectively Marvel's first one. That fight with the rock monster also makes it clear that he's not just strong by human standards but that he's even strong by, err, "strong guy" standards.

-If it hasn't become obvious, I'm sure it will soon: The Thing is my favorite member of the team. I must admit, though, that a lot of this preference comes from later issues after he's developed more of his signature sense of humor. I do still like him in this early version, but he still feels like a bit of a prototype-Thing to me.

-I haven't mentioned much about Jack Kirby's art yet but I love it. His style, at this point in his career, is still reminiscent of Marvel's "monster book" approach and he plays with shadow and perspective really well. Kirby's books always have a dynamism to them that's palpable and infectious. I also know that his style will grow even more impressive over the course of his run on the Fantastic Four. Don't get me wrong, Kirby was already a giant of comic art even before this, but this is the book that will propel him to be a full-on comic art legend.

-Is it a coincidence that the creature the Mole Man uses to wreck the power plants looks a bit like Godzilla? Or an homage? Perhaps more interesting is how much the three-headed flying creature guarding Monster Isle resembles Godzilla's nemesis King Ghidorah...three years before he'd actually appear onscreen. (Although Kirby's version has front hooves, appendages the film monster lacks.)

-We get an early instance of that Fantastic Four "branding," The jet they use to travel to Monster Isle has a big "4" on the side. There will be many more such examples to come.

-It's a bit unclear how the blind Mole Man actually acquired his "radar sense." Contrary to strangely popular belief, you don't actually start spontaneously developing new senses if you lose your sight. Quite honestly, I don't remember when or even if this is explained in the future. Still, "radar sense" has a nice to ring to it...

-After going to all the trouble to seek out the Mole Man and learn his plans, Reed then proceeds to let him go rather than kill or even capture him. There is a certain sense in which this is a bit of an anticlimax, as if the Fantastic Four's actual adventure is presented as less important than their characterizations. On the other hand, that's kind of true and Reed's decision reflects that. Rather than choosing plot resolution, Reed's acting on character-motivation. Based on Reed's last line of the issue, "There was no place for him in our world. Perhaps he'll find peace down there. I hope so," it's clear that the Mole Man's recounting of his origins did actually touch Reed. Not as cold as he makes out, it seems. In a larger sense, it also makes it clear that Reed's priority for the team's adventures is going to be the neutralization of threats, rather than the punishment of perpetrators. The Fantastic Four are there to protect the innocent more than punish the guilty.

-On the flipside, there are Susan's last words, "I just hope we have seen the last of him." Even this early on, she's genre-aware enough to know that super villains always come back.

Before that, though, the Fantastic Four themselves will definitely be back. With this issue, the Marvel comics universe explodes outward. It's still expanding to this day and the Fantastic Four remain a firm part of its foundation.

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