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Fantastic Four (1961) #1-11 - Stan Lee/Jack Kirby

Finally, the book that started the Marvel Age!

The Fantastic Four were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961, after their editor asked for a team that could rival the Justice Society of America. Lee wanted the team to be different, more human - “heroes with hangups”. They bicker and are a bit dysfunctional family, they don’t have secret identities and they live in New York (but only after issue #3, note). The book was a success and the rest is History.

Issue #1 starts with a message in the sky calling for the Fantastic Four. We then meet Sue, who immediately turns invisible and causes mayhem in the street; Ben, who uses his strength causing some destruction as he makes his way; and Johnny, who flies away and is instantly pursued by some jets. Eventually, the three meet Reed, who informs them they have a mission.

We then take a brief flash back to their origin. Reed has created a spaceship but Ben doesn’t think it’s ready to fly. He relents when Sue calls him a coward and the four end up sneaking in the base and go into space, where they get bombarded by cosmic rays and changed forever.

They quickly decide they must use their new powers to help other and the Fantastic Four are born.

We return to the present, where Redd tells the others that nuclear reactors around the world are missing. He did a bit of geographic profiling, and found the location of the mythical Monster Island.

The island is there, despite Ben’s disbelief, and it sure has monsters. Each member gets to fight one - except Sue (unfortunately, that's a recurring theme in the beginning).

Johnny and Reed fall underground and meet the person responsible for the thefts - the Mole Man. He was a funny looking guy who was tired of being laughed at. He wandered alone until he found Monster Island. He fell into Diamond Cave and was blinded by the brightness, and now he’s basically Daredevil.

Still, the Fantastic Four prevail, drag the Mole Man to the surface - only to abandon him there, so he can blow up the island and hide in the Underground forever.

Issue #2 introduces the Skrulls. This galactic empire wants to invade Earth, but they’re afraid of the powers of the Fantastic Four. A team of Skrulls uses their shape shifting powers, plus some bits of technology, to impersonate the Four and and frame them for sabotage and theft. The Four end up apprehended by the military, but they easily escape - Sue just walks out when the guards open the door to deliver food!

They come up with a plan to discover who’s framing them. Ben and Johnny get in a fight because - a recurring thing, since Ben isn’t dealing with his transformation very well. The others are understanding, but still worry about what he can do.

Anyway, they track the Skrulls, use Ben’s temper against them to find out what is going on and end up convincing the Skrull fleet to leave by showing them pictures of Earth’s guardians: sci-fi monsters. In the way down, they pass through cosmic rays again, which render Ben human again for a brief time. He thinks it’s a cruel joke 😔

In the end, the remaining Skrulls confess they hate being Skrulls (sudden reveal, but we only have a page to wrap everything up) and Redd hypnotizes them into spending the rest of their days as cows.

In issue #3 the team fights the Miracle Man, whose hypnotic powers seem more like magic.

More importantly, Sue creates new uniforms for the team, saying they need to look like one if they are to continue crime fighting. Interesting to not that, so far, their powers have not affected their clothes - except for Ben, who has trouble find clothing in his size. He also keeps ripping them off when he goes into battle - which he does with the top half of his uniform first chance he gets.

Also, tired of being dismissed by Ben, Johnny decides to leave the team.

That doesn’t last long, because issue #4 is the return of Namor, the Sub-Mariner. Johnny tries to help an amnesiac, homeless man. He starts by giving him a shave and recognizes the face of Namor. So, obviously, he drops him in the ocean, hoping it will help Namor recover his memory.

It works. Namor quickly swims to his city, only to find it destroyed by radioactive testing. Despairing he won’t be able to find his people again, Namor declares war on Humanity. This time, he uses a horn to summon Giganto and aims him at New York. Ben defeats the beast by launching himself down its throat with a nuclear bomb strap to his back.

Sue steals the horn from Namor, but he catches her. He’s instantly taken with her, so he offers to spare Humankind if she becomes his bride. Sue agrees to sacrifice herself, which leaves Namor unsatisfied - she should be honoured!

He’s defeated by Johnny, who creates a tornado that sucks Namor and Giganto and drops them in the ocean.

Issue #5 brings Doctor Doom. He uses his powers in magic and science to kidnap the Fantastic Four. He holds Sue hostage as he tasks the other three with going back in time and retrieve Blackbeard’s treasure. Don’t worry, he invented a time machine and he would go himself, but someone has to stay behind to use the controls.

Reed gives a brief rundown of Doom’s background, but the personal animosity between the two is not expounded upon (yet). He believes Doom when he says he will release Sue if they fail to return.

Johnny is excited about the time travel. Ben is not, until they join a pirate crew and scare everyone with their powers. Ben likes being a pirate so much he turns on the other two and decides to stay behind as Blackbeard. Fortunately, or not, at that time a tornado destroys the ship, leaving the three marooned on an island. Ben comes to his senses and apologizes.

Oh yeah, they also found the treasure, dump the jewels (they’re important because they belonged to Merlin) into the sea (maybe Namor will find them - is that foreshadowing?) and take the treasure chest to hand to Doom. He sends the time machine back and tricks the trio with one of his Doombots and traps them in a oxygen-less chamber. Sue ends up being the one to rescue the others for once.

Honestly, Doom is fun - quite a bit of his characters is established in this story - but his plan is kind of silly.

But he’s back in the next issue, teaming up with Namor. They meet in Namor’s swanky underwater bachelor pad where Doom reminds him of his quest of revenge against humankind, in a very effective scene. Doom’s plan is to use a magnetic gadget to steal the Baxter Building (named this issue; there’s also a floor plan; they have a secret rocket launch pad!), take it to space and drop it in route for the Sun.

Namor agrees to help, although he doesn’t want to hurt Sue - he has a photo of her and everything. Sue, btw, also has a photo of Namor and keeps defending him - so, people saying there was never anything between the two - that’s not exactly true.

Doom plan works fine - his enemies, including Namor, are en route to the Sun. Namor ends up saving the day, after the Fantastic Four fail. He jumps into Doom’s ship, rips open the fuselage, redirects some electricity and sends Doom hurling through space, to never be seen again - or until next time, whichever comes first.

Also in this issue: unstable molecules and the FF answer fan mail.

Issue #7 is not very interesting. The team gets blackmailed into helping evacuate Planet X, which Reed does by inventing a diminishing ray that allows the entire population to fit in their only spaceship. They also get an invitation to a dinner in their honour in Washington. No one wants to go, fearing they’ll only embarrass themselves, except Reed - which fits the take he push them into becoming superhero celebrities so they wouldn't be feared and hated (okay, from a Doylist pov, Lee and Kirby haven’t invented mutants yet; from a Watsonian pov, they’re a conspiracy theory, but Weapon X is also a thing).

But issue #8 brings on the Puppet Master - Alicia Master’s stepfather, not her dad, as he keeps correcting (it’s mean, and petty, tbh).

The story starts with Ben leaving the team. The others don’t want him to enter Reed’s lab, so he loses his temper and gets in a fight. Turns out, Reed was working on a formula to transform Ben back into human. The formula works, but only until it dries out and Ben turns into rock again.

Back to the Puppet Master: he found some radioactive clay, used it to mold some puppets and discovered he can mind control the real person. He first uses it to control some guy into jumping out of a bridge, which attracts the Fantastic Four’s attention. So, he creates a little Thing puppet, gets his daughter to dress as Sue and sends them back to the Baxter Building to fight the other two.

Alicia goes along with this, seemingly for lack of understanding. Because of her blindness, she’s treated pretty much like a child. When she touches Ben, she intuits he’s gentle and sensitive, just under stress because of what happened to him. This is one those things that didn’t age well. (otoh, Sue gets to kick an idiot when she’s invisible)

With the Fantastic Four distracted, the Puppet Master executes phase one of his plan: release a bunch of prisoners. Not outside, just from their cells, so they’re barricaded inside the prison. Yeah, the team has no trouble dealing with them.

Phase two was to make himself king of the world. He explains this to Alicia, who tries to fight him. In the end, the Puppet Master trips and falls out of a window.

Issue #9 brings back Namor. Reed lost all the Fantastic Four’s money in bad investments (while also answering the question of how they could afford everything: Reed’s patents) and now they have to sell everything. Including their spaceship, which hits Ben the hardest. He abandons the team (again), but Alicia convinces him to return. She made him a doll depicting a white knight, because he’s her white knight and it’s not creepy at all!

They get an offer to do a movie in Hollywood, so they hitchhike their way to California, where they meet a bunch of cameos and their director: Namor! (he learned of the team’s misfortune through his underwater TV set)

He acts like he’s just trying to be friendly, but it’s all an act. In truth, he set up traps for the three boys, just so he can convince Sue to marry him. Sue is horrified, and decided to prove he can’t defeat the Fantastic Four if one is still standing. She holds her own for a bit, until the other three arrive. Sue convinces the others to let Namor go, because three-on-one is not a fair fight. And did it for love (although, I think she’s done with him now).

The Fantastic Four get their movie money, though, and are back in business.

Just in time for Doctor Doom’s return!

The story starts with Ben showing off statues Alicia made of their enemies - still not creepy! Also, Sue’s not over Namor and now she’s having second thoughts about her engagement with Reed. That story gets interrupted when Doctor Doom himself shows up at the Marvel offices and gets Lee and Kirby to call Mr. Fantastic into the office so he can kidnap him. Oh yeah, we’re going full on fourth wall break!

Doom survived his deep space trip by meeting some Star Trek aliens (very advanced beings whose technology is almost indistinguishable from magic). He now knows the secret of body swapping - which he proceeds to demonstrate with Reed.

He manages to fool the rest of the team and Reed is imprisoned in an acrylic cell, with the oxygen running out. He manages to escape and makes his way to Alicia’s place, where Sue subdues him. She calls the rest of the team, but they find themselves unable to defeat him because a gut feeling.

Meanwhile, Doom has been busy creating a minimizing ray that will destroy the rest of the Fantastic Four by making they so small they disappear. When they bring Reed back, Doom decides to put is plan in action, under the pretence the ray will help develop their powers.

As Reed pleads with the others not to trust Doom, Johnny comes up with a plan: will turn the workers using dynamite down the street into a mirage inside the room… somehow - that bit of weird science is too weird for me to make sense of it.

Anyway, seeing the dynamite, Reed tries to protect the others while Doom tries to escape. He's so discombobulated at being discovered he loses focus and swaps bodies back with Reed. He's accidentally hit with the ray and disappears forever - or until next time.

We finish this batch with issue #11, which has two stories. The first half is a scripted letter column where he get some fourth wall breaking and some backstory info: Ben and Reed were college roommates and became good friends despite their differences. Ben was a football star and later a daring pilot in the war (still WWII at this point); Reed came from money and spend a fortune developing a ship to beat the commies to space. There’s another recap of their crash, although, this time, Ben gets the credit for their safe landing, instead of the auto-pilot.

Sue reveals she’s been receiving hate mail, saying she contributes nothing to the team. Reed and Ben take issue with that, pointing out she was the one to free them from Doom’s chamber, back in his first appearance, and then they run out of examples. But then they have cake for Sue’s birthday and that’s nice.

The second half of the issue introduces the Impossible Man, an amazing shape shifter from the planet Poppup. He came to Earth on vacation, but keeps causing trouble, and intends to continue, because he’s having so much fun. When physical confrontation fails, Reed starts telling everyone to ignore him, until the alien gets so bored he leaves.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun reading these issues. The Fantastic Four are some of my favourite heroes and it’s interesting to see where they started. Each issue spends a couple of pages just showing the four hanging out, which really highlights the fact they’re a family first, team second. And they work well together when they’re not bickering with each other.

Also, the number of times someone flounces from the team (temporary) is 3.