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The Worlds GREATEST Comic Thread: Let's Talk Lee/Kirbys Fantastic Four!
Surprisingly, given how much Jacks checked out by this point, DOOMSDAY ON THE MOON (or Mystery on the Moon, as the interior suggests the title should be) is not only a continuation to a storyline that was left dangling waaay back in issue #65 but it's also a story RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES! Which is kinda confusing because the issue mentions some minor plot points from the alst couple of issues, so it has to take place after them, was published in may of 1970, presumably written a few months before that, and, as the narration box proudly proclaims takes place in July, 1969.
Hmm, I wonder if there was anything significant happening in the news cycle in July 1969 regarding the moon.
Well, whatever important news story about the Moon may be happening in July of 1969 (NASA was excited about it for some reason), Reed is not paying any attention to it (after all, he's been to the moon. Several times. Invited the guy who lives there to his wedding). What DOES catch his attention quite a lot more, however, is a strange alien message that all his lab instruments started picking up; the word TRANQUILITY repeated over and over, written in the language of the Kree!
Reed is baffled until he sees a newspaper Ben was reading with news about the Apollo mission, proclaiming that man is about to land on the Moon (he plum forgot) and, more relevantly, they're going to land in the Sea of Tranquility; and quickly surmises that the Kree (who he knows have been monitoring Earth closely since prehistoric times) have some particular reason to be alerted if humans ever set foot on the moon and stop it by any means possible.
As it turns out, this was a really good guess on Reeds part; as a second Kree Sentry (not good ol' 459, this one is red and purple, like a Sentinel) has reactivated after receiving a message from the Supreme Intelligence (here called the Supreme Council, presumably because either Jack or Stan forgot the things name), and takes off for the long-sunken Kree outpost that Sentry 459 was positioned on and died defending, raising it from the oceans depths.
All this in order to active ate THE STIMULATOR, a very situational Kree Super Weapon, aimed at the Moon, that can reawaken The Nameless Mass, (which we never actually see on panel); an unspeakable cosmic horror that the Kree entombed on the moon just in case anyone decides to set foot on it; and whcih exists solely to wipe the moon clean of all life.
My no-prize explanation here is that, yes, the Watcher DOES live on the moon and the FF and Red Ghost have been there multiple times, but the Watchers vow of non-interference means he's exempt from the Krees No Trespassing on the Moon edict, and the FF and Red Ghosts trips there were secret, and not international news, so they escaped the Krees notice.
Anyway, while the rest of the world is entranced by the Apollo 11 launch, which includes what I presume to be a few jabs at real-world people I lack the historical context for (someone named Ivan tells someone named Sonia to not worry because "when they land on the moon, WE can claim we invented it!", and a french guy says "If not for Brigitte Bardot, I would weesh to be an American, today"), Reed takes Johnny and Ben off on a mission to track down where the Kree signal is being sent to (Sue stays behind with Alicia and Franklin because... umm... casual misogyny).
And imagine their surprise to find that a volcanic atoll that they're very sure they completely exploded a couple years ago is right back where it once was, and there's a cheesed off robot flying out of it to kill them;
Presumably they aren't VERY surprised by this, they are the Fantastic Four, after all.
Presumably the Kree used all the GOOD parts building Sentry 459, as this Sentry is clearly not up to the same standards (as I said at the time; Sentry 459 was perhaps the best comic book fight of Jacks entire career) and is defeated surprisingly easily; and Reed and Johnny head deeper into the Outpost in order to figure out what the Kree had planned for the Apollo Mission while Ben stays behind to make sure the Sentry remains shut-down.
And, well, bad news for Americas Space Race, it turns out that the Sentry left the Stimulator turned on before he went off to fight the FF, and the NAMELESS MASS is about to awaken, break the moon apart like an egg and completely murder Neil Armstrong. FURTHERMORE, as a safety feature to avoid it being tampered with, the Stimulator is also emitting harmful waves of energy that drastically weaken anyone who comes close to it (thus explaining why this Sentry wasn't nearly as powerful as the last one) and Reed and Johnny are both nearly dead before they can even get close to being able to deactivate the Stimulator.
As luck would have it; Ben had gotten really bored sitting around with nothing but a powered down robot to talk to, so he left the Sentry be in order to bust into the outpost and see if there's anything inside that needs to know what time it was vis-a-vis clobbering. And, well, the Stimulators weakening effect isn't worth a hill of beans to someone just... chucking stuff at it from far away.
So the Stimulator is destroyed, and the NAMELESS MASS immediately resumes hibernating, and we close out on Neil Armstrong taking his first step on the moon, blissfully unaware of how close he came to having been eaten by a cthulhu.
NEXT TIME: EVERYONE VERSUS EVERYONE
Remember a few issues ago how Crystal was suddenly taken back to Attilan without much explanation and Johnny was briefly upset but instead decided NOT to cry in his Cheery Oats and arrest an international assassin instead? I wouldn't hold it against you if you didn't; the comic barely acknowledged it, and Stans whole thing was treating everything he wrote like an introduction to the series. But more relevant to this comic, Johnny suddenly remembered that fact and decided that the best course of action is to do what he does whenever confronted with any kind of challenge, be it managing a long-distance relationship, or fighting evil science-wizards on the moon; Turn Into a Flaming Jackass And Fly Headfirst Into Whatever Is Bothering Him.
So he does.
And for once, this isn't presented as a heroic charge, heedless of the risk to life and limb, or the actions of a man whose heart moves faster than his head or anything like that.
No, no this is just a straight up TERRIBLE idea on Johnny Storms part for absolutely every reason you could possible envision.
Johnny Storm causes an international incident because he's flying like a jackass through Soviet-occupied air-space and they are attempting to shoot him down with ICBMs. Or possibly he is flying out through Soviet air space and NATO is attempting to shoot him down. "Commie Hunter Missiles" could mean multiple things, and Stan doesn't take the time to put a hyphen in there anywhere where it could clear things up. Regardless, NATO is concerned about this man who is on fire who just blazed across half the globe and the missile strikes he is inspiring.
As for the rest of the team, they're flying behind him in the Fantasticar, trying to smooth over the diplomatic relations a bit.
Eventually, after outmaneuvering an entire Macross series worth of homing missiles, terrifying the population of France and terrifying a bunch of Mongolians (which... direction was Johnny flying?) he eventually decides to stop and rest for the night in a mountain cave, where he's suddenly confronted by a friendly Yeti.
A super friendly Yeti, in fact! Speaks fluent English and is delighted to have made a new friend! Especially one that can conjure flame, as that's a helpful super power!
But Johnny is making worse decisions than usual today and decides this congenial talking yeti is an enemy and tries to incinerate him on the spot the moment the Yeti lets it slip that he's actually an Inhuman!
...
At this point I would like to stress that I am not editorializing this story in any way, despite my general dislike of Johnathan Storm.
This was a very nice, friendly Yeti, and Johnny decided to try to murder it with fireballs the instant he learns of where it came from. And he's fully aware that outside of Maximus, the Inhumans are all Good Guys.
Anyway, this is as close as Johnny gets to being happy in this story, as he realizes that if he's found *and* Inhuman by hiding in this random-ass case, he must have found Attilan, since they tend to be kind of nervous about leaving that place; and this hunch pays off when he chases that Yeti, constantly throwing fireballs at him still and finds himself in the hidden land again!
And if you think he takes the time to ask the people around how they've been, or if anyone knows where Crystal is or why the Royal Family demanded she return, you haven't been paying attention to either this story, or Johnnys entire life so far; he immediately starts screaming Crystals name, flying around like am lunatic and setting EVERYTHING on fire. Evetually the Inhumans lead him to the Royal Palace, because... he's set a lot of innocent people on fire and is terrifying everyone and the Royal Family are probably the only ones powerful enough to stop him.
Johnny, once again, declines to be even remotely diplomatic and decides to try to single-handedly fight the Inhuman Royal Family, the instant he sees Crystal, assuming they're keeping her captive for no friggin' reason whatsoever. And, when Crystal attempts to calm him down saying she doens't mind being in Attilan and it's important she be nearby, he automatically assumes she's been brainwashed and decides to fight her too.
And, by God, this is probably about as close as Stan Lee ever got to writing a female character well and treating her with any kind of respect, in any kind of capacity beyond "Had a super power which was useful for this situation"; as Crystal is having none of this, and is deeply insulted that not only is Johnny not listening to her, he doesn't even think she's capable of making any kind of decision on her own without some man making it for her. Especially friggin' Johnny Storm
And, to put an exclamation mark on that, she also points out, pretty directly, that she's way, WAY more powerful than the rest of the FF put together, and single-handedly takes out Johnny with her Elemental power.
All of which Johnny takes as her wanting to break up with him and he... umm...
Well...
He reacts to this news badly and... umm... tries to destroy Attilan with the single biggest fireball of his life.
Luckily, before Johnny can get around to commiting any genocides, the rest of the FF finally catch up with him in Attilan and Reed has a special Anti-Torch missile that dissipates the fireball harmlessly, and Johnny is so worn out by this point that he has no choice but to listen to what people are saying; Crystal was never abducted and taken back to Attilan; she chose to go, because Black Bolt had been poisoned with a radiation sickness; and her power to manipulate the elements was needed to purge the toxins from his body so he wouldn't die. Doing this was kind of a full time job so she couldn't send a message back to the FF about what she was doing, and she was going to return as soon as Black Bolt was healed.
Johnnys reaction to this revelation was basically to say "Aww shucks, I must look like a real turkey. Can you forgive me?" and, in what is perhaps the single most implausible thing to happen in this comic about astronauts who fight science-wizards and are on a first-name basis with Space Gods, she says "Yes".
Johnny is not put on trial for crimes against either In or regular humanity because hsi were the actions of a love-sick teen.
You know, BLASTAAR only wanted to rob some banks; and y'all threw him into a space void.
Just saying.
NEXT TIME: PUNCH ALL THE BADS
Kids spending fifteen cents to see a gorilla get punched did not walk away disappointed.
Anyway, picking up where the last issue left off, with the FF taking Crystal back to New York after she finished using her elemental powers to cure Black Bolt of radiation poisoning (presumably, the rest of the royal family did not treat Johnny nicely). This flight back takes absolutely no time in going south as it's shot down by an unseen assailant.
But it doesn't take long to find out who the assailant is as we've got 20 pages of constant Villain Punching here, and we soon find out that it's Kang the Conqueror!
Which... umm... is my first issue with this issue since Kang ain't a FF guy. He's an Avengers guy. Sure, he eventually becomes an FF villain (and his time-variant Rama Tut was an early villain), but Kang himself is not. I imagine that Kang made the news at least once, so that's why everyone knows about him (and time-travelling warlords from the future are very much an FF kind of problem), but there's no cause for everyone to immediately recognize him and be spending years "wanting to lean on that bum".
But that slight plot hole is quickly set aside because working alongside Kang is Dr. Doom!
Doom also, as is his obligation, gets the best line of the issue; "You know I despise informality; my title is DOCTOR"
They aren't quite up the usual standards of villainous menace they warrant, however, as Crystal... umm... completely crushes them entirely to death with a tree.
Look, she hasn't been a superhero that long, she doesn't know you aren't supposed to murder the villains. Luckily, it turns out that these aren't the real Kang and Doom; they're life-like robots with the same capabilities and personality as the real people! And, Reed realizes there's only one person who could create such life-like robots; The Puppet Master!
Okay... so... okay...
First; Doom and Kang absolutely could build life-like decoy robots of themselves; building life-like decoys that are completely indistinguishable from the original is their whole deal.
Second; building robots is not the Puppet Masters thing. He controls people like puppets. That's... why he's called that.
I mean, he's teamed-up with The Mad Thinker, whose thing IS building robots, and you'd think that would act as an explanation, but nope. The robots are Puppet Masters and Mad Thinker is... just hanging around . Also his motivation has changed again and he's now just angry that people call him "Mad".
Anyway, the FF are attacked by more mechanical replicas of their old foes with more inconsistencies that bother me as I've been reading these straight through, instead of one-per-month over a decade-long period, including Sentry 459 (not nearly as strong as he should be), Dragon Man (speaking fluent English), Namor (evil again), The Hate Monger (looking like a medieval executioner, complete with battle axe and hypno shield) The Super Skrull (barely on panel, can't really comment), the Armies of Atlantis, The Red Ghost (uses his intangibility to put a grenade in the FFs car engine, which, I will give props to, good sequence), Diablo, The Red Ghosts Super Apes and The Frightful Four (only three of them).
My No-Prize explanation here for the plot holes is that the Thinker and Puppet Master don't really know most of these jabronis except vaguely, and they were busy building a LOT of robots, so naturally, they weren't that focused on getting the details Marvel Trading Card accurate.
Anyway, after witnessing the FF just... absolutely wrecking their entire robot army (as soon as they realized they were just smashing robots, they didn't feel a strong urge to hold anything back), the Thinker and Puppet Master decide to unveil their greatest creation; a perfect replica of The Incredible Hulk!
And well... it's a perfect replica of The Incredible Hulk, complete with the same personality; and he sees a couple of supervillains telling him what to do...
And nobody tells Hulk what to do.
So he Hulk Smashes them, and their lab, and blows it all up in so doing. The FF never even lay eyes on the place. Genuinely unsure if a lifelike replica robot of The Incredible Hulk made of radioactive clay ever comes up again either.
Either way, the robots have all stopped attacking the FF, so they charter a plane and head back to the US.
NEXT TIME: Now it's a NORMAL CRIME GUYs turn
Not gonna lie, I had low expectations for Bedlam at the Baxter Building (especially since it shares a title with one of my favorite stories in the run), since regular-ol' gangsters haven't been a credible threat to the team since its inception, and also because this is the penultimate Jack Kirby issue but this was actually a pretty solid issue. Nothing groundbreaking, but compared to a lot of stuff in the last couple of years worth of the book; perfectly solid.
A good C+/B- effort.
Independent of the issues with the story telling, the comic DID have a lot of coloring errors; but that might have just been the scans on Marvel Unlimited.
ANYHOO; an impromptu Fantastic Four Dance Party (one of the better ways to have a cold open) is interrupted by the world famous Baxter Buildings doorman, who is partly worried that the building is in danger of collapsing because the building is not cleared for Ben dancing and he was worried it might collapse, and mostly because he has to serve the FF an eviction notice; seems the world famous Baxter Building has been bought and paid for, and the new owners are the equally world famous Maggia!
The Maggia hasn't come up in FF before, but they've made themselves well known in other Marvel books, particularly Spider-Man and Daredevil; they're one of the most expansive and powerful (and relatively non-super powered) crime syndicates in the world. Which you probably guessed by the fact that they almost share their name with another famous criminal organization.
Look, sometimes Stan kind of goes for the obvious name; can't all be Otto Octavious.
Side bar, but I've never been sure if that's supposed to be a hard or soft g in the name; I never pronounce it the same way twice.
And just in case anyone reading didn't put together any possible overlap between the Maggia and organized crime; we're treated to a cartoonishly stereotypical mob scene where a maggia lieutenant known simply as The Top Man (no relation to Robot Master DW No.21.) explains his plan; Legally Buy the Baxter Building using the maggias enormous financial resources... then kick the FF out and legally own all their stuff.
A plan which works far better than it reasonably ever could.
Anyway, the newly homeless FF are... kind of bummed out that known criminals legally own their building, and kicked them out, but left all their stuff inside. Reed suggests letting lawyers handle it since, while I don't know much about home law, I'm pretty sure that there's lots of reasons this plan of theirs wouldn't work.
Johnny, on the other hand... is Johnny Storm, so he decides to Flame on and just... well... be Johnny Storm at the problem; see how that affects things.
And if you think there's an upper limit to how grossly overconfident Johnny Storm can become, this will quickly disabuse you of that notion, because Johnny is almost immediately knocked unconscious and tied up by the Maggia goons.
And as much blanket disdain I have for Johnny Storm in general; he's been a superhero for longer than nearly anyone else in the Marvel Universe; especially by this point in the comic continuity. He routinely handles alien invaders, advanced robots and some of the worlds greatest tactical and scientific minds; this was a handful of guys in dumb masks and jump-suits.
So Reed, Ben and Crystal see Johnny immediately get knocked out from across the city (it was a graceful stunning aerial failure) and decide he needs rescuing; and best to do it before Sue can get back from dropping Franklin off at Agatha Harknesses and she can learn what a stressful day everyone is having.
For the record, Crystal is much more genre savvy than everyone else in the book by out-right mentioning that a bunch of mob guys with dumb masks really shouldn't pose any kind of threat whatsoever; they're the friggin' Fantastic Four. Unfortunately, she points this out less than halfway through the issue, and that means that a handful of mob hitmen in goofy masks are more than a match for the worlds greatest superhero team; and the lot of them are immediately given a snoot full of the ol' sleeping gas.
Then, because mobsters gonna mobster, they decide to press this advantage by putting all of them in cement coffins, cahining them shut and chucking them into the river. Which is some real mission creep, since The Top Man just wanted to kick them out of their home legally.
Anyway, the dramatic escalation in threat doesn't really amount to much, since this assortment of random gangsters didn't collect Marvel Trading cards, and so they don't realize that Crystal isn't just a gal with a legitimately impressive dye-job; she's the princess of a super-powered nation and one of the most powerful Earth-born heroes to exist, and also she can control all elements of nature.
So yeah... being tossed into a lake is really not a problem for her, and she effortlessly breaks herself and the rest of the team free and, after confirmed that Johnny did not drown to death when knocked unconscious and sealed in a cement coffin, the team rallies and heads back to the Baxter Building since they're pretty sure that attempted murder is more serious than trespassing, so they can enter their house again.
And they needn't have bothered, as Sue (who was conspicously absent from the story so far) has returned to the Baxter Building, and found her family missing, and a whole bunch of Maggia goons milling about, and quickly determines that some comic book shenanigans are afoot. And furthermore; she has a whole bunch of really good super-powers and is up against a handful of murderous gangsters who have just attacked her family.
And so we're treated to one of the rare instances in the whole Lee/Kirby run of Sue just absolutely wrecking house. No zany antics, no waiting and being told specifically what to do by the men in her life, no simpering in the corner watching other people fight.
No no... just a solid four pages of a gal with telekinetic shields, invisibility, a complete disregard for the well-being of others, and 100 issues worth of being side-lined to work through.
And work through she does; single-handedly taking out the entire hit squad without breaking a sweat; kicking at least one guy directly in his entire face, and coming about as close as the CCA would allow to shooting a man by setting up forcefields to cause one mobsters bullets to ricochet back at him.
Kind of feel like Jack was feeling obligated to let the women he created for the book have at least one moment of unmitigated triumph before he left the book.
Anyway, the rest of the FF show up just as the last goon is dispatched; when that doorman from earlier shows up again and guns down one of the Maggia guys in cold blood. And THIS Reed considers to be a bit suspicious, so he grabs the doorman and takes off his hat; revealing the Doorman to be The Maggia Top Man after-all, killing off his hench-men so they wouldn't blab to the feds!
How Reed knew this I have no friggin' idea because he didn't interact with either the doorman and he didn't know that The Top Man existed; he just... has to take peoples hats off, I guess.
Anyway, the Top Man is hauled off the jail, and his entirely legal purchase of the Baxter Building is revoked (I... guess?) and Reed and Sue wonder aloud how they can bear to raise a child in a world so steeped in evil that it has gangsters in it.
NEXT TIME: Hail to the King
To be fair, Smilin' Stan was savvy enough to realize that the organization he was riffing on was... sensitive about their depiction in media.
I’d assumed that was the reason; not like that’s a copyrighted name.
Well folks, it's been a long strange ride. We've seen Stan and Jack create the modern superhero comic and all but perfect it. Then we saw what happens when half of a perfect comic writing duo starts to feel they're the more important of the two. Then what happens when a hatchet job of a newspaper article aggrandizes how much more important that one is to the finished product as a stealth job interview, and also when you don't pay the artist for the art he was drawing or comp him when he has to move for his familys health, and also force him to draw more pages of a comic than any human possibly could, and throw most of them away.
And somewhere along the way, we got a whole bunch of comics about science wizards and moon-men and planet-eating space gods and gangsters stealing baby aliens, and super-apes, and bug-draculas, and super-powered lost civilizations and fishman guys and huckster alchemists and androids both awesome and uninspired.
And it all leads to this; The Strength of the Sub-Mariner the final Jack Kirby issue of Fantastic Four.
...which is the part one of a three-parter, finished by John Romita. Featuring a someone who isn't even an FF bad guy. Also; Ben commits a full on war crime.
Comics will break your heart.
And what’s breaking Bens heart, or at least his ears nose and throat, is a nasty flu that’s going around the city. I was kind of expecting that to factor into the plot more than it did; it was really just to set up a gag where Ben sneezes, and he sneezes so hard the room gets wrecked.
And it gave Jack a chance to draw Ben in a fuzzy bathrobe and slippers. Which is a better look for him than his usual blue diaper/bloomers thing.
Meanwhile, deep underwater
We cut to the ol’ Imperious Rex himself, Namor, who is leading an expedition to the Antarctic, and which he’s a bit surprised to discover is very warm. This has less to do with global warming (this comic was published in 1970, before Dr. Seus discovered that the environment was Good, Actually) and everything to do with the fact that the South Pole, as all good Marvelites know, is the location of... THE SAVAGE LAND! The mysterious tropical rain-forest created by aliens in order to keep dinosaurs around for no reason other than the fact that dinosaurs are cool!
And even more germane to the plot, this is also the site of where the X-Men had just defeated this guy;
Furthermore, he was played by Gandalf in the movies.
This is where the plot starts getting... really confusing because the comic starts jumping around abruptly between multiple characters and locations with no explanation for what the heck is going on; and I'm not sure if that was intentional on Jacks part, as a final "Heck off!" to Stan to try to make him make sense of this nonsense, or if he originally wrote a MUCH longer issue with a lot more connective tissue and a lot of it got cut out by the editorial staff to make more room for ads. Both theories seem equally likely to me, but I also haven't done any due research on the matter.
As near as I can tell, Namor took on Magneto as an advisor (for... some reason?) after saving him from the Savage Lands dinosaurs, and Magneto used the opportunity to hijack some Atlantean technology in order to upgrade his magnetic powers in order to fake an attack on New York by Namor with the hope of forcing a war between Humanity and Mermanity which would leave both sides too diminished to stop him from taking over the world.
It's a spurious plan, so it's no wonder that Reed doesn't automatically assume Namor is behind a secret attack on New York (for one thing, Namor has been a nominal hero for a while now, and also he's a Water Guy, not a Magnet Guy), instead he uses some science gadgets to detect if there's anywhere with an unusually powerful magnetic field. And a second science gadget to... umm...
Shoot... giant missiles at whoever is doing it until they stop
To be fair, the comic repeatedly states that they're "harmless concussion missiles". Because concussions are the healthiest way to injure someone. Also, it's a missile the size of a couple of busses; so regardless of what the explode-y part is made of, it's sure as hell not going to cause a rash outbreak of diplomacy.
When Reed discovers that the magnetic waves attacking the city (causing buildings to fall up, electrical cables to attack people like a nest of snakes and garbage to start flying around) are coming from Atlantis, he doesn't have time to voice the confusion that using magnets to attack New York is a really weird thing for Namor to do.
This is because Ben heard that Namor was doing something so he just up and mashes the fire button on that ICBM launcher I mentioned.
Just straight up unannounced missile attack on a foreign power.
Luckily, Atlantis has a Rex who's feeling Imperious, and Namor defends the city by punching the crap out of the missile until it harmless explodes far away from Atlantis itself (and gave it's relaxing and therapeutic concussion to a couple of whales and an orca).
Namor was unaware that Magento had been secretly attacking New York from inside his own house, so as far as he knows, the Fantastic Four just bombed him for no friggin' reason at all; which is all the justification for him to attack New York in a way that's MUCH more in line with his standards;
Assembling Atlantis' full military might and marching on New York.
Which is quite a cliffhanger; and we'll never know how Jack expected it to play out, because he then left Marvel for the Distinguished Competition so he could finally write that Thor storyline he really wanted to.
NEXT TIME: I read a completely different Marvel comic for a while, in a different thread!