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Isn’t it amazing that this is the first Fantastic Four Marvel Masterworks review that I am doing? I have every single volume but this is the first one I’m reviewing. I’ll have to get around to doing Vol. 1 one of these days. Vol. 1 is the first Masterworks set I ever owned (along with X-Men Vol. 1) and that was when they were in their original print run in the early 90’s. I remember I just had my teeth pulled in preparation for braces and this is what my dad gave me to help me recover. I must’ve read each volume upwards of two dozen times. I never actually read Vol. 2 until now. Volume 2 collects Fantastic Four #’s 11-20, as well as Annual #2. These ten issues run a span of ten months, from February of 1963 to November of 1963. The annual doesn’t have a month to it, but based on the villains mentioned in the back-up it looks to be sometime after #15. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are the two legendary creators who worked on this volume and I hope you know which one is the writer and which is the artist. Stan does the introduction and it’s the usual fare (talking up the stories in his usual manner with short – very short – synopsis of each issue).
Spoilers Ahead
-Fantastic Four #11- This is a very different tale from the rest of the ones in this collection. There are two stories. The first is one that Stan and Jack did tongue-in-cheek to answer some of the reader questions (like Ben and Reed’s back-story) all while answering fan mail. The second story features the first appearance of the Impossible Man. Stan wrote in the introduction that fans HATED the character from Popup with incredible powers. I always enjoyed the character FWIW. This was the true definition of a throw-away, which is amazing considering it was only issue #11 of the book. I always loved how Stan and Jack made sure to show that the FF were real characters in a real world that would read themselves in comics.
-Fantastic Four #12- This is a very monumental issue for the FF and Marvel. It was the first team-up in Marvel’s history and probably paved the way for books like the Avengers. General Thunderbolt is looking for the Hulk and they mistake the Thing for the Jade Giant. This angers the Thing. So the FF head out to find the Hulk and for some reason scientist Bruce Banner (who is the Hulk, although nobody knows it) says Hulk is not behind the destruction that they say he did. It turns out the Hulk is not the culprit but some Commie called the Wrecker (not the one who would be famous later on as part of the Wrecking Crew) and after the prerequisite Marvel super-hero fight (of which this is the first) the Wrecker is stopped and Hulk is cleared. It was the first Marvel team-up and it was a good one. I love the way Kirby draws these huge fight scenes.
-Fantastic Four #13- I reviewed this recently for the Marvel 70th Anniversary Trade Paperback so I will just copy and paste that here. This is a very interesting choice considering all the FF issues that could’ve been in here. But the reasoning given was convincing enough. (It has everything, Commies, the moon, and the first appearance of the Watcher…) So the Red Ghost and the FF race into space and end up in the Blue Area of the moon and meet the Watcher. The Red Ghost and his apes have all gained super-powers and the FF must deal with this newfound threat. This is just an awesome issue and anything from the Lee-Kirby run of FF is great.
-Fantastic Four #14- The Puppet Master returns and this time he’s taken control of Namor. He uses Namor to kidnap Sue Storm and keep her captive as the rest of the FF show up to free her. The Puppet Master is fingered as the real culprit and he’s taken out by a sea monster that Thing had tossed aside. Namor is free of the mind control but doesn’t remember a thing. He goes back to search for his people and I wonder if he will ever find them. This is the standard Sue/Reed/Namor love triangle at the time that really made the FF accessible to any reader.
-Fantastic Four #15- This issue introduces the Mad Thinker and he’s here in his thinking best, planning his whole scheme down to a T. He gets the FF to separate so he can take over their headquarters. He uses Reed’s own notes to create the Android beast. The FF eventually catch on and head back home but the Thinker seems to have them on the verge of defeat until Reed introduces the X-Factor (no, not the team) in the form of Willie Lumpkin pressing a button that powers down the FF’s building. I loved how these old Silver Age books contained a FULL tale in 21 pages. We are introduced to the Mad Thinker and we know right away what he’s up to. The FF are split and come together in the span of pages but these are action packed pages with tons of stuff going on. There is a cool pin-up featuring the fantastic foursome at home.
-Fantastic Four #16- I remember this one because I actually read it when my dad had it in his collection (before he got rid of them for some insane reason). We last saw Doom disappear into a molecular world. Is Doom dead? Of course not. He’s alive and well and he brings the FF down to his level and even shrinks them further. He’s taken over the molecular kingdom and nothing seems to stand in his way from taking over the world next! The FF had asked Ant-Man for help and when he realizes the FF shrank down he quickly follows and is even more quickly captured by Doom. The FF had already escaped and the clock on the wall is ticking for Doom. The FF put an end to his reign of terror, stop him from selling the team and the king and princess to alien monsters and Doom has to escape back to the regular world. Let me just mention how AWESOME this cover is.
-Fantastic Four #17- Doom is still somewhere around and the FF want to stop him. Each goes out looking for him (including a funny scene of Thing thinking a guy in a knight’s armor was Doom) but Doom is actually tracking the four! He plants a device on them that enables flying ghosts of sort of follow them and generally embarrass them. The FF catch on but not before Doom kidnaps Alicia. The FF soon realize that Doom’s flying ship is over Manhattan but it has defenses against them that they can’t get past. The force field around the ship is attuned to the FF’s own atomic and molecular structure so how can they pass it? Reed creates a serum that allows the Thing to become Ben for just a few minutes and that is enough for him to pass through, break into the ship, disable the defenses and bring the rest of the four onto the ship. They get past all the other defenses and after the Invisible Girl stops Doom in his tracks, Doom has no choice but to flee. The stories had been building to this, with Sue feeling a bit inferior to the rest of the guys and deemed the weakest of the team members. She wouldn’t develop her invisible force-fields yet so really all she could do was turn invisible and I think Stan always wanted to show Sue’s worth by having her take out Doom.
-Fantastic Four #18- The Skrulls are still smarting over their defeat in the second ever issue of the FF and this time they have an answer to their problems: The Super-Skrull has all the powers of the FF and sure enough, the Super-Skrull gets the better of the team the first time they meet. Reed does discover that there is some sort of energy being sent to the Super-Skrull, energy that is giving them his power. So Reed creates a device that stops the beams from getting to their enemy but who will place it on him? After the Torch and Thing succumb to the Super-Skrulls hypnotism Reed distracts the Skrull long enough for Sue to turn invisible and plant the device on him. Say goodbye to another Skrull menace!
-Fantastic Four #19- The FF battle Rama-Tut, a villain who would turn out to be Kang. The FF head back in time to ancient Egypt during a time that is not written in history since there is one hieroglyph that shows a blind man being able to see. They want to help out Alicia, after all. So the FF head back in time and it happens to be when Rama-Tut is in charge. Rama tells them that he’s from the year 3000 and he makes the FF his slaves with one of his ray guns. The Thing breaks control of this by turning back to Ben Grimm by happenstance and once that happens you can start hearing the fat lady sing for Rama. The rest of the FF are freed and Rama escapes back to the future. The FF find the optic nerve restoration (as it is labeled on the container, in plain English no less) but when they return back home using Doom’s device they forgot the one flaw with the device; you can’t bring radioactivity back with you! That’s quite a strange quirk to program into a time machine but what can you do?
-Fantastic Four #20- The FF meet the Molecule Man for the first time and for the first time the FF get help from the Watcher, who vows to not interfere in human affairs except for this one time and this one time only. Anyway, it’s a science experiment gone wrong and Owen Reese (not yet named here) got the power to control all inorganic molecules! The FF defeat him by tricking him (putting clay on them to pretend they were statues) and the Watcher takes him away at the end of the issue.
-Fantastic Four Annual #1- This is probably the best story in this collection and it’s a huge tale (37 pages!). Namor has found his people and he wages war on the land-dwellers. You get a pretty in-depth origin of Namor which has not managed to be retconned in any way. So Namor’s hordes invade New York but Reed figures out that they can’t breathe above water without their masks so he creates a device to nullify those masks, sending the hordes running to the sea. Namor is enraged and attacks the FF, besting them in battle, and kidnapping Sue. Sue is in Namor’s clutches when the FF find him leading to yet another fight. However, when Lady Dorma (who loves Namor) realizes that Namor is in love with Sue she loses it and breaks the submarine to allow water in. Sue escapes from the sub but is caught in the reef and is close to drowning. The FF and Namor forget their battle and save Sue. Namor returns home but his people have left him. Why would they want to be with someone who would rather be with a surface-dweller? This was a loaded annual because you also get a look at the villains the FF have faced in their title (all the way up to #15), a look at Spider-Man’s first interaction with the FF from Spidey #1 but the story has actually been expanded by Kirby and Lee (with inks by Ditko). There’s also a question and answer section, too.
-The Bottom Line- Heck, I could read Lee and Kirby all day long. I breezed through this in just a few hours and it’s really that damn good. If you haven’t read Lee/Kirby on the FF you need to. Now. These comics are still fresh even 50 years later and are just as entertaining to read. The story-telling is Lee at his best and Kirby was certainly in a groove here. It’s amazing to read this and think that Lee and Kirby would only get better as the title progressed. This is where the Marvel Age of Comics began and when the FF had, “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!” on its cover; it wasn’t hyperbole. I am a huge Lee/Kirby fan so this may be slightly biased but it still stands as a great collection of Lee and Kirby on their best title. I do have to mention the extras. There are two unused Kirby covers (for FF #3 and the first Annual) as well as Stan’s original idea for the FF, including Sue having to get nude to get invisible (which was used in the movie), the Thing actually being a tweener (hero/villain) in the group and Torch not being able to toss fireballs or show anyone on fire because of the Comics Code Authority. I also loved how he mentioned the Russians and the race to the stars which really puts the book in the period it was written. This is awesome stuff and a great collection. Highest Recommendation.
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