MARVEL COMICS – @Marvel
[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]
WRITER: Stan Lee
PENCILS: Jack Kirby
INKS: George Klein (?); Sol Brodsky (?)
COLORS: Stan Goldberg
LETTERS: Artie Simek
EDITOR: Mark D. Beazley (collection editor)
COVER: Jack Kirby and George Klein with Stan Goldberg (?)
MISC. ART: John Buscema and Joe Sinnott; John Byrne and Terry Austin; John Byrne; Alex Ross; John Byrne with Gregory Wright; Scott Eaton with Richard Isanove; Eric Powell; Clayton Crain; Marcelo DiChiara; Ed McGuinness and Dexter Vines; Michael Wm Kaluta; Leinil Francis Yu; Arthur Adams with Justin Ponsor; Humberto Ramos with Edgar Delgado; Jack Kirby and George Klein with Dean White
48pp, Color, $3.99 U.S. (October 2018)
Fantastic Four created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee
Afterword by Dan Slott
“The Fantastic Four!”
The Fantastic Four #1 (cover dated: November 1961) is the comic book that basically started what we know of today as Marvel Comics and the “Marvel Universe” of superheroes, comic books, stories, and fictional mythologies. This comic book only credits two of the creative team, Fantastic Four creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Lee wrote a two-page plot that Kirby drew, via pencil art, as a 25-page comic book story. Lee, credited as the scriptwriter, wrote the exposition and dialogue for the 25 pages. You can experience this history in Marvel Comics' recent release, Fantastic Four #1 Facsimile Edition.
Because comic books then did not provide contributor credits as they do today, there is some question as to the rest of the creative team of this first issue of The Fantastic Four (also known as “FF”). George Klein and possibly Sol Brodsky provided inks over Kirby's pencils. Stan Goldberg was the colorist, and Artie Simek was this comic book's letterer.
The Fantastic Four #1 (“The Fantastic Four!) opens in the FF's original home, Central City. The ordinary citizens are in an uproar, as above them, someone has fired a flare gun that has unleashed a huge smoke cloud. Like a silent beacon, the smoke is emblazoned with the words, “THE FANTASTIC FOUR!” What does it all mean, the citizens of Central City wonder?
The one who fired the gun is Reed Richards a.k.a. “Mister Fantastic,” a scientific genius, who can stretch his body to incredible lengths and into endless shapes. He is calling Susan “Sue” Storm a.k.a. “the Invisible Girl,” who can make herself invisible. The call also goes out to Johnny Storm a.k.a. “the Human Torch,” Sue's younger brother, who can ignite his body with flames, generate more flames, and use the flames to give him the power of flight. The final cast member is Ben Grimm a.k.a. “the Thing,” whose flesh has been turned stone-like, giving him tremendous superhuman strength, durability, and endurance. Richards is the leader of this mysterious group, The Fantastic Four. On the day of Reed's signal call, the team must save the planet from a strange underworld menace, and the world will never be the same.
The Fantastic Four, of course, is now simply known as Fantastic Four, a fantastic name either way one says it. It is definitely one of the five most important individual issues of a comic book ever published, and there are several reasons why. The modern language of superhero comic books and to a large extent, the graphical storytelling language of modern comic books is based on Jack Kirby's comic book storytelling, beginning with his illustrations and storytelling in Fantastic Four #1.
However, what I like about Fantastic Four #1 is its unabashed craziness. Stan Lee does not pretend to be writing science fiction. This landmark comic book is full of crazy, ridiculous, stupid, hair-brained, wild, weird, wonderful, wacky, surreal, and strange stuff, and sadly, in the intervening years, comic books have tried to become too smart. It is as if comic books have been trying to make sense of the “wrongness” and “incorrectness” of Fantastic Four in the intervening decades since its release. Comic books don't need to be literature to be taken seriously. Comic book writers, artists, colorists, letterers, editors, publishers, etc. create storytelling that cannot be created in other mediums, and it is perfectly fine for the stories to be scientifically and practically non-nonsensical.
Fantastic Four #1 is like a B-movie or monster movie, but only in the most superficial ways. The imagination and inventiveness unique to comic books is unique to comic books because comic books are not like other mediums. A couple of times in the text pieces for Fantastic Four #1 Facsimile Edition, the word “crude” is used. On the surface, the illustrations in this sixty-seven year-old comic book story may appear to be crude, but the graphics and the graphical storytelling are beautiful, almost beyond words.
The combination of imagination, the uniqueness of the comics medium, and the innate weirdness of comic books flowed (and still flows) through what Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created so long ago. The Fantastic Four #1 is not quaint, charming, or crude; it was a new dawn, and it is still visionary. I have been reading The Fantastic Four #1 in reprint form, on and off, for over 30 years, and I never stop being excited while reading it. I really enjoyed Fantastic Four #1 Facsimile Edition.
[This comic book features previously published text pieces by Stan Lee, Tom DeFalco, and Walter Mosley.]
The text is copyright © 2018 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint or syndication rights and fees.
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