X-Men - 1963 and all that: Part 2

AS THE FOURTH ISSUE OF THE X-MEN HIT THE NEWSSTANDS, there was quite a shift in Stan and Jack's approach to the way the title would evolve.

Magneto's back ... and he now has friends to help him: Toad, Mastermind, Quicksilver and the Green(-ish) Witch. One of my favourite Marvel covers of the period, despite the colouring glitch.

The X-Men 4 (Mar 1964, on sale 3 Jan 1964) introduced us the The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, a kind of reverse version of the X-Men, led by defining arch-nemesis Magneto. This would have been the first - though certainly not the last - "mirror image" team of baddies in Stan and Jack's oeuvre. The Avengers wouldn't meet their evil counterparts for another four months, and the Fantastic Four would have to wait until their March 1965 issue to meet The Frightful Four.

Stan and Jack make a strong point by literally comparing the two groups side-by-side and leaving it to the readers to decide which bunch of people they'd rather hang out with.

The thing I'll take issue with here is Stan calling them the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants". It was established back in issue 1 that Magneto doesn't consider himself evil ... in his own way he's trying to protect mutantkind from the humans. We might not agree with his methods, but even at this early point, there could be an argument that Magneto is not evil, per se. And to be fair, nowhere does Magneto nor any of his confederates refer to themselves as "evil". Only Prof X uses that word to describe them (and Stan a couple of times in caption boxes). They are kind of unpleasant, though.

Both Mastermind and The Toad are pretty loathsome specimens, governed by their own self interests, tempered with a healthy dose of fear. Quicksilver only seems to be there to protect his sister. We'll find out shortly what keeps the Scarlet Witch with the group.

Stan and Jack give us a bit more info about Magneto's little playgroup before we get to move on to the meat of the story. The fault lines within Magneto's group are swiftly drawn, where we very quickly grasp that loyalty is a rare commodity. Each seems only out for himself, though they follow Magneto's lead reluctantly. Only siblings Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch have each other's backs.

I particularly like the colouring choices here. Quicksilver, despite his name, is coloured green for "Go", and Scarlet Witch is coloured red for "Danger", or even "Stop", because her powers do seem to stop stuff happening. And colouring the slightly lacklustre Toad and Mastermind in subdued tones of brown kind of fits with their bland personas.

The cover glitch was explained by Stan on the X-Men 7 letters page by claiming, "sometimes we change a costume's color on the cover to balance the design a bit." Or you could just own up to the error on Stan G's part, Stan.

This is pretty important stuff (though it only gets four panels), as we find out why two relatively decent people have aligned themselves with Magneto's megalomanic plans. And of course it foreshadows the big changes in store for The Avengers a couple of years later.

Once we have the background details of Magneto's group out of the way, we can get on with the masterplan to take control of a small South American nation to use as a base of operations against Home Sapiens.

Between Magneto's armed freighter and Mastermind's illusionary army, the Bad Mutants seize control of the South American republic of Santo Marco, though no convincing reason is given for what they need their own country for. 

Quite why ol' Maggie wants to take over a small country isn't really made clear. "... As a test of our power!" is the only reason on offer, but there's no thought given to what happens next. Do they just hang out on the beach? Build a luxury hotel and casino to attract rich customers and make loads of money? Or perhaps the country occupies a vital strategic location?

With that accomplished, Magneto doesn't seem to have much to do except to wait for The X-Men to show up. Which, of course, they do. But here's where I start to have a problem with the storytelling. At the time I first read this story I was about eleven years old, so I didn't spot the one glaring error with the plotting.

If Kirby was indeed plotting even these early issues of The X-Men, then this was definitely something Lee couldn't have fixed in the dialogue. Individually, their powers are no match of Magneto's ... so why try to tackle him that way?

Over the intervening years, Jack Kirby made much of the claim that he did all the plotting, but if I were Jack, I wouldn't have been in too much of a hurry to claim this one. Because after establishing the idea that The X-Men train hard to blend their individual skills into one unbeatable team, how do they plan to attack Magneto's stronghold? Why, by approaching singly and from different directions.

The opening forays of the final battle inside Magneto's fortress are action-packed, to be sure, but it does all seem a bit random, with too much tactics and not enough strategy.

Needless to say, that poorly thought-out plan doesn't work out so well, with two of the five X-Men unconscious at the hands of the Meany Mutants. Fortunately, they manage to meet up inside the stronghold and come up with a better idea - attack as a team.

Stan's early take on the characters isn't quite defined yet. Here, Prof X "senses" that the wall of flame is an illusion ... but this isn't in keeping with what I imagine telepathic powers to be - the reading of human minds. A better take might have been, "Mastermind's illusions have no effect on my mind."

Once they figure that out, the X-Men manage to get off the back foot and barring one minor glitch where they don't recognise an advancing wall of flame as an illusion cast by, you know, Magneto's illusion-casting henchman, they start to gain the upper hand.

The final twist is that the earlier, minor explosion has apparently robbed Professor Xavier of his mental powers, but I'm not convinced that will be a permanent situation.

The final stages of the battle end with Magneto and his henchpersons fleeing the scene, but not before setting a couple of boobytraps designed to blow Xavier and his X-Men (and presumably the innocent citizens of Santo Marco) from the face of the map. The plan is only thwarted when Quicksilver, unable to stomach the thought of cold-blooded murder, defuses the bomb before himself escaping with Magneto and the others. But they would be back.

Even though The Scarlet Witch is fairly well-established by this time, Sam Goldberg is still colouring her green on the cover of The X-Men 5, which is odd, because wouldn't he also be the one colouring her costume red for the interior art? Note the change of art in the Marvel corner box.

We only had to wait two months for the return of Magneto and his nasty whatchamacallems, in The X-Men 5 (May 1964, on sale 3 Mar). More a continuation of the story from X-Men 4 than a sequel, this time the Evil Ones manage to capture The Angel to force him to reveal the location of their HQ.

The unexpected arrival of Jean Gray's parents at the mansion sparks a frantic cover-up, in which Stan and Jack get to explain the team's powers for the benefit of any late-comers.

Still dealing with the loss of Prof X's mental abilities, the X-Men face a minor emergency when Jean Grey's parents make an unexpected visit to the Academy. Then, Magneto baits a traps by luring the X-Men to a meeting with a newly-discovered athletic mutant. A battle ensues, but Magneto makes off to his orbiting satellite with the captured Angel, leaving the "bait" mutant - in reality, The Toad - in the hands of the X-Men. The dazed Toad is able to summon a magna-ship to return him to Magneto's sky island, and the X-Men hitch a ride, setting the scene for the final battle, high above the Earth.

Some examples of the new-look Hank McCoy from X-Men 5 ... you might be forgiven for wondering who that is breathing down the neck of the mystery mutant. It's The Beast. Jack just drew him wearing gauntlets.

There are some notable evolutionary changes in this issue. First, the transformation of The Beast continues, as he is depicted as even more of a scholar than previously.

"Big Words" from an unknown episode of Simon and Kirby's Newsboy Legion feature, which ran in Star-Spangled Comics 7 (Apr 1942) to 64 (Jan 1947).

It's hard to know who to attribute this change to. Jack (or possibly Stan) added pair of spectacles to Hank McCoy's civilian appearance in X-Men 4, though it was just in a couple of panels, so you may have missed it. There was a character in Simon and Kirby's Newsboy Legion, nick-named "Big Words", because he used - you know - big words. He wore spectacles, too. So it might have been Jack re-using an old idea, as he often would. Or it may have been Stan's continuing efforts to make The X-Men's Beast different from the Fantastic Four's Thing.

I suppose if you're ten years old, then this is a bit of a surprise twist. But reading this decades later, it seems like a bit of an unnecessary and cruel prank to play on a group of youngsters.

The issue closes with the revelation that Prof X never really lost his powers, he just pretended to so he could judge how well the team had absorbed their training to be able to function as an independent unit without his direction. Effectively, the second part of a two issue story.

Though this issue headlines Prince Namor, if you look really closely you can see Magneto and his screaming whatnots lurking in the background. I see the Marvel corner box illustration has gone back to the original version.

X-Men 6 (July 1964, on sale 5 May 1964) took us off in a slightly different direction - though I'd question the rationale behind the story, other than shoehorning a big ticket villain into a fledgling Marvel title.

The first four pages act as a reminder of who the main players in this series are, contrasting Professor X and his group against the far more unpleasant social structure of Magneto's band. While this is unfolding, both Xavier and Magneto are both pondering that The Sub-Mariner may be a mutant and that they should recruit him to their respective causes. What are the odds, eh?

We all know that Professor X has astounding mental powers ... but since when was Magneto able to duplicate Xavier's psychic feats?

Professor X is able to detach his astral self from his physical body and go searching for Namor - but weirdly, Magneto does exactly the same thing. I don't recall later Magneto being able to do this kind of thing, so I'll put this down to (most probably Jack) just adding and subtracting abilities as the plot required.

The Scarlet Witch as property? An unfortunate sign of the times is that Magneto figured he could secure Namor's allegiance by using Wanda in a honey-trap. Over the next couple of years, Marvel would become a little more sensitive to the kind of crap women were putting up with in the real world.

It's not long before Namor, intrigued by the idea he might be a mutant and by Magneto's offer of an alliance, arrives at the obscure island HQ of the evil mutants for what appears to be a job interview. But before we can figure out who's interviewing who, The X-Men show up and it's a three-way free-for-all - with Namor very much on his own side.

Magneto's efforts to defeat The X-Men quickly descend into chaos once again, and the Meanie Mutant is forced to flee the scene, leaving his reluctant allies - Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Namor - behind.

Predictably, The Sub-Mariner decides that all humans are idiots, even mutants, and paddles off back to Atlantis. Magneto and his syncopating sycophants row off into the sunset, leaving Professor X's merry band marooned on Magnetic Island, at least until next issue. We never do find out exactly how they were able to escape the island.

It's an okay-ish issue, bit it still feels a bit directionless. As though Stan still hasn't really got a handle on this and is leaving Jack to deal with the plot details - which I don't think he was doing very successfully. Arbitrarily giving Magneto mental abilities comparable to Professor X just seems like lazy plotting. And this is the third appearance of the Evil Mutants and nothing is moving on in that dynamic. Why are Wanda and Pietro still hanging around with this loser, given how downright rude he is?

On the plus side, the art is quite a bit better. I much prefer Chic Stone's polished finishes over the scratchy style of Paul "Inky" Reinman that we got in the first five issues. Stone would stick around for the next year or so, until he got tired of inking and departed to concentrate more on his pencilling work for ACG.

Well, at least the Scarlet Witch's costume is actually scarlet this time ... and  guess what? The "new" Marvel corner box art is back again ... and it'll stick for the next three years or so.

Funnily enough, the plot of X-Men 7 (Sep 1964, on sale 2 July) is pretty much the same as the previous issue. Magneto scouts around for further recruits to his band, and chances to discover The Blob (remember him from X-Men 3?)

Once more, Stan and Jack reinforce the contrast between the two bands of mutants. On Professor X's watch, all is kindness and mutual respect. Over on Magneto's side, sexual harrassment in the workplace seems like standard operational procedure.

The first seven pages take care of the housekeeping. The X-Men graduate their college, Professor X makes Cyclops the group leader, while elsewhere Mastermind thinks he has a chance at dating the Scarlet Witch. That low-level Lothario aspect to his character would be pivotal during the Chris Claremont run on the X-Men more than a decade later.

Stan and Jack seemed obsessed with carnivals, which turn up in quite a few early Marvel Tales. Note the shout of "Hey Rube!", an old-school carnie battlecry used when local townsfolk would try to drive the carnival off with cudgels ... a signal for roustabouts to drop what they were doing and rally to defend their comrades.

Then we finally get to the meat of it, with Magneto scouting a fairground in search of The Blob. But when The Blob initially rebuffs Magneto's advances, Magneto and his malignant ban are beset by an army of roustabouts and carnie performers. In the ensuing carnage, The Blob is hurled against a carnival wagon by Magneto's magnetic power (despite the fact that people aren't magnetic). The impact jars loose Professor X's mental block, and The Blob remembers that The X-Men are his enemies. Which sets us up for the next battle, this time between Magneto's extended troupe of mutants and our heroes.

Flying torpedoes everywhere. When all else fails, Magneto launches aerial dooblebombs at the X-Men. Fortunately it's the near-indestructible Bob that takes the brunt ... leading the chubby mutant to realise that everyone is just using him for their own ends.

At first, Magneto stands back and uses The Blob as his first line of defence. Even though the combined efforts of Angel, The Beast and Marvel Girl fail to subdue The Blob, Magneto launches a barrage of flying torpedos into the melee (boy, Magneto really loves an explosive, doesn't he?), which the X-Men tackle each in their own unique way. It only takes the fleeting interference of Quicksilver to bring the X-Men together in a battle formation lineup for Magneto to direct his magnetically-controlled torpedoes to bear on the group. Even the fact that The Blob is also in the line of fire doesn't sway Magneto from his strategy ... but when the flying bombs explode, it's The Blob that takes the brunt.

Once again, Magneto has failed and, despite the protests of the Scarlet Witch, he orders his band into a handy Magna-car and the Evil Ones escape, leaving The Blob to take the rap.

I strongly doubt that Mjolnir could be affected by magnetism, not even Magneto's. Why didn't Magneto "test" his power against Iron Man? That would have been far more interesting. The Strange Tales story is more of a sub-plot, focussing on Pietro and Wanda wanting to split with Magneto and seeking help from the FF.

And that's the last we'd see of Magneto for quite a while. I can't say I'm sorry. I always felt that Magneto had a bigger dominance over all around him than his powers warranted. And Jack would often show him doing stuff that was impossible by magnetism alone. And though he wouldn't be back in the X-Men title for another eight months (X-Men 11, May 1965), he would make a couple of appearances in other titles - Journey into Mystery 109 (Oct 1964), where he was seriously outmatched by Thor, and a cameo in Strange Tales 128 (Jan 1965), where The Torch and the Thing battle Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch because of, you guessed it, a misunderstanding.

And that's all I have room for this time. But we'll be back soon with a look at the next few issues of the formative X-Men title, discovering more mutants, an epic battle with The Avengers and the reintroduction of a character from the very dawn of Marvel.

Next: More Mutant Mayhem

Marvel Comics Cover Gallery - 1959

AS 1959 HOVE INTO VIEW, we would see fewer covers by Joe Maneely, as the last of his work filtered through the system, and more by Jack Kirby, as he bedded in as Stan Lee's go-to artist.

Publisher Martin Goodman continued to fiddle with the line-up, cancelling romance and kiddie titles to make way for science fiction and fantasy books that he thought would sell better.

JANUARY 1959

Marvel's eight titles cover-dated for the first month of 1959 were on sale between 2 Sept and 2 Oct 1958.

Fans of Homer the Happy Ghost and of Patsy Walker Miss America were due to be disappointed by the lineup. Both of those titles were deep-sixed to make space for two new fantasy books - Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish - forging a new look for the company's output that would shape it for the next eight or nine years.

Unusually, the cover art for Suspense was by Don Heck, who drew few covers during this era. The cover for Astonish was by the Kirby/Rule team.

Click the image to enlarge.

These two new books would last a hundred issues before Marvel next big transformation in 1968. The rest of the month's titles were stalwart sellers and would, for the most part, survive Goodman's incessant tinkering.

Interestingly, the newer additions to the line didn't sport the vestigial Atlas corner-flash on their covers, an anachronism that would cling on to the older titles until well into 1960.

FEBRUARY 1959

The lineup for the second month of 1959, on sale between 2 Oct and 4 Nov 1958, looked exactly like the Dec 1958 roster. Not a single change, which seems odd given the non-stop tinkering that Goodman was inflicting on the lineup during this unstable time for his company.

Click the image to enlarge.

Once again, the western covers were by EC stalwart Jack Davis, who also drew all three stories in Two-Gun Kid 46, but no interior art for Wyatt Earp 21. Davis had started drawing for Martin Goodman's company after the failure of Harvey Kurtzman's Humbug magazine, in which several of the former EC artists were also part-owners. Davis wasn't an investor but did hold the post of Assistant Editor. The sudden loss of income meant that Davis had to find work wherever he could and even Goodman's miserly rates were better than no money at all.

Joe Sinnott drew the covers for Battle and Strange Tales. Steve Ditko supplied art for the Strange Worlds cover and Carl Burgos contributed the cover art for World of Fantasy. As usual, Al Hartley was in charge of art chores on the two Patsy books.

MARCH 1959

The first March cover-dated comics on sale from Goodman's Magazine Management, on 4th November, were Kid Colt Outlaw, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish. The last one was Journey into Mystery which was available on 2nd December. The remainder would have been released between those two dates, though I've not been able to find reliable data on those.

Click the image to enlarge.

Jack Kirby and Christopher Rule supplied art for both the Gunsmoke Western cover and the Kid Colt Outlaw one. It was a bumper month for Steve Ditko as he supplied covers for another pair of second issues, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish. Dan de Carlo did the Millie the Model cover and Vince Colletta (studio?) provided the cover for My Own Romance. The remaining two covers - Journey into Mystery and Love Romances - were drawn by Russ Heath, making a rare return to Stan Lee's bullpen. 

Heath had been a fixture at the company from 1948 till about 1955, when he added DC Comics as a client and also provided to odd job to EC's fledgling Mad magazine. During 1957, his output for Stan Lee dwindled and by the end of that year he was working almost exclusively for DC. Those two covers, plus a four pager for Love Romances and another for Tales of Suspense, were Heath's sole output for Stan in 1958 ... after that Heath was pretty much exclusively a DC artist until, in the early 1960s, he began to acquire other clients, like Harvey and Dell. And let's not forget his unforgettable "204 Revolutionary War Soldiers" ad artwork ...

Who didn't want to have a 204-piece Revolutionary War set?

APRIL 1959

Strange Tales 68 was one of the first April cover-dated Magazine Management comic books on sale, hitting the stands on 2nd December 1958. The last would have been Patsy Walker, on sale 2nd January 1959. The others would have been scattered between these two days, but the only other confirmed on sale I could find was for Patsy and Hedy on 29 December.

Click the image to enlarge.

As Jack Kirby's assignments began to ramp up, he had four cover assignments for April - Strange Tales, Strange Worlds 2, World of Fantasy 17 and Wyatt Earp 22 - all inked by Christopher Rule. 

Al Hartley drew covers for the two Patsy books and the Battle cover was credited to Carl Burgos, though you could be forgiven for thinking it looks like a Russ Heath DC cover. Jack Davis did the cover for Two-Gun Kid, though the interior stories were all drawn by legendary "good-girl" artist Matt Baker.

MAY 1959

The first May cover-dated comics on sale from Goodman's company - Kid Colt Outlaw, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish - were on the stands on 2nd January 1959. A month later, the May Journey into Mystery went on sale. The remaining titles were, presumably, on sale between those two dates. I'm not sure what the logic was here. I could understand if the titles were on sale a week or two apart, but a full month does seem excessive.

Click the image to enlarge.

Jack Kirby drew three covers for this month - Gunsmoke Western, Journey into Mystery and Tales to Astonish - all inked by Christopher Rule. The Kid Colt cover was by John Severin, and the Tales of Suspense art was by John Buscema, making a rare early appearance at the fledgling Marvel. The Millie cover was by Dan De Carlo, the Love Romances was drawn by Jay Scott Pike and the cover for My Own Romance was by the Vince Colletta studio, with possible pencils by Dick Giordano.

JUNE 1959

The June issues of the Magazine Management comics line hit the stands between 3rd February and 3rd March 1959. There was no change in the lineup from the February and April issues, so Marty must have been happy with the spread of genres, at least in these even-month titles.

Click the image to enlarge.

Month by month, Jack Kirby's share of the cover chores was increasing. This month, he drew five of the eight covers published - Battle (his first on that title), Strange Tales, Strange Worlds, Two-Gun Kid and World of Fantasy. Only the two Patsy covers (by Al Hartley) and the Wyatt Earp cover (by John Severin) were assigned to different artists.

JULY 1959

Most of the July dated issues were on the news-stands on 3rd March. For whatever reason, Journey into Mystery went on sale pretty much a whole month later.

Click the image to enlarge.

It was another bumper month for Jack Kirby. All but three of this month's covers were by Jack (with his inker de jour Christopher Rule). Millie the Model was a cover-to-cover Dan de Carlo fest, while the two romance books had cover art from the Vince Colletta studio.

AUGUST 1959

The earliest title on sale for this month was the Strange Tales, hitting gthe stands on 3rd April. The latest was the August cover-dated issue of Patsy Walker, going on sale on 5th May. The others would have scattered between those two dates, but I wasn't able to confirm any of the other release dates.

Click the image to enlarge.

Jack Kirby seemed to settling in as Stan's go-to cover artist, contributing, once again, five of the eight covers for this month. The Patsy titles sported covers by regular artist Al Hartley, and the Two-Gun Kid cover appears to be a re-purposed Joe Maneely inventory cover, originally drawn for Kid Colt - Outlaw, and likely fished out of a drawer and redrawn by production man Sol Brodsky.

Kirby's Strange Tales cover is probably the first to qualify as a Giant-Monster cover. There had been other Kirby-drawn monsters on previous anthology covers, but these were distinctly science fiction aliens. Here, we see the accent on the main fantasy titles moving away from sf towards a more Kaiju-style take on the genre.

SEPTEMBER 1959

The still-not-Marvel comics cover-dated September started going on sale on 5th May. Confirmed books on the stands on that day were Gunsmoke Western, Millie the Model, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish. I can't vouch for any of the others, though I can tell you that Journey into Mystery arrived, stylishly late as usual, on 5 June.

Click the image to enlarge.

Jack Kirby was still knocking out covers at a rate of knots, pencilling Journey into Mystery, Love Romances, My Own Romance, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish. The two western comic covers were by a pair of EC alumni - Jack Davis and John Severin. Can you tell which is which? And Dan De Carlo was still making Millie look like an Archie book.

OCTOBER 1959

Finally, as the end of the 1950s peeped above the horizon, Magazine Management publisher Martin Goodman decided to shake things up a bit. Strange Worlds and World of Fantasy were both dropped. An odd move, because the new fantasy titles, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish by all accounts were doing quite well. In their place were an all-new teenage character book, Kathy (the Teenage Tornado) and, in another odd decision by Goodman, a new Millie title, A Date with Millie, making Millie effectively a monthly. So why not just make Millie a monthly title and save himself the cost of revving up a new title?

Click the image to enlarge.

For anyone keeping score the line was now: five teen titles, four westerns, four fantasy/monster books, two romance comics and a war book.

Kirby's cover output took a bit of a hit as a result. Down from his usual five covers, Jack only contributed two for the October issues - Battle and Wyatt Earp. The remaining 75% of the cover art was supplied by Al Hartley (Patsy Walker and Patsy and Hedy), Jack Davis (Strange Tales), John Severin (Two-Gun Kid), Dan De Carlo (A Date With Millie) and Stan Goldberg (Kathy).

NOVEMBER 1959

The comics for the penultimate month of 1959 maintained the status quo. No more dispatching and hatching - at least for the time being. The earliest on sale date for this batch was 1st July (Kid Colt Outlaw, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish). Journey into Mystery followed a full month later on 31st July.

Click the image to enlarge.

The Gunsmoke Western cover was patched together from two old Joe Maneely covers (Wyatt Earp 18, Aug 1958 and Kid Colt 75, Nov 1957). Jack Kirby pencilled Journey into Mystery, Kid Colt, Love Romances, My Own Romance, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish. Stan Goldberg was left with the Millie cover, as Dan De Carlo was pretty much exclusive with Archie Comics from the November cover dates onwards.

DECEMBER 1959

The last Magazine Management comics cover dated for 1959 were on sale during September of that year. Except for Strange Tales which was on the stands for the end of July. Go figure. The even months were now down to just one fantasy book, and overloaded with teen titles, but I guess Marty must've known what he was doing.

Click the image to enlarge.

Kirby contributed pencil art for the Battle, Strange Tales and Wyatt Earp covers. Stan Goldberg stepped into Dan De Carlo's shoes for the Date with Millie and Kathy titles and Al Hartley continued to soldier on with the Patsy titles. That left John Severin to pick up the art chores on the Two-Gun Kid cover.

Here's a bit of wild speculation. What if Martin Goodman launched A Date with Millie and Kathy, thinking that Stan Lee would get De Carlo to draw them. Of course, that would have meant De Carlo giving up his Archie work, as he wouldn't have time to do it all. If I'm right, then the plan backfired mightily when Dan packed up his pencils and moved over to Riverdale, leaving Goodman without his star teen-book cartoonist.

Next: Teenage Mutant Marvel All-Stars

The Best Marvel Annual: Fantastic Four 1

MY ALL-TIME FAVOURITE COMIC ANNUAL IS AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL 1, which I covered here nine years ago. But running it a close second is the first Fantastic Four Annual.

My second favourite Marvel Comics annual.

On the newsstands in the U.S. on 3 Sep 1963, this is Marvel's fifth 25-cent annual (tying with Patsy and Hedy Annual 1) although, as noted in my earlier post, DC had been pumping out reprint 25-centers from mid-1960 onwards. It features the sixth Silver Age appearance of Namor the Sub-Mariner in an epic-length clash with the entire human race, and is almost all-new material.

Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner was reintroduced during the Silver Age in Fantastic Four 4 (May 1962), then returned in issues 6 (Sep 1962), 9 (Dec 1962) and 14 (May 1963), making a sidebar appearance in Strange Tales 107 (Apr 1963) along the way.

It's interesting that editor Stan Lee decided to go with the Sub-Mariner for the first FF annual rather than Doctor Doom (who would be the antagonist for the following year's annual) but it's likely that Stan felt Namor's backstory allowed for more spectacle than the still under-developed Doctor Doom.

With much pageant and heraldry, Namor arrives in the newly-restored Atlantis for his own coronation, though we never get to find out just how The Sub-Mariner was able to track down his people.

And spectacular it is, opening with a vista of the restored kingdom of Atlantis, and its blue-skinned inhabitants back in their rightful abode. But wait ... hasn't Namor been searching for his lost people since Fantastic Four 4? Yet Stan and Jack choose to gloss over the reunion, merely mentioning it in a caption box on page 2 - "The mighty Sub-Mariner has finally found his long-lost undersea kingdom." It's a bit of a missed opportunity, but I can see why Jack would want to get straight into the action.

Probably Jack Kirby's first double page spread for Marvel Comics, the two pages look to have been drawn separately, as they don't quite match up in the way a single drawing would. Pretty cool all the same.

So, in order to demonstrate himself worthy to lead the Atlanteans in their battle against the surface people, Namor incites some of his pet sea monsters to start harassing the shipping lanes of the Atlantic. By sheer coincidence, it's exactly at this time that Reed Richards decides the team needs a holiday, and books them on to a restful sea cruise, with one eye on investigating the strange goings on across the world's oceans.

Investigating the appearance of sea monsters, the FF's rowing boat is captured inside an organic air-sac and dragged to the bottom of the ocean. If only Sue Storm had been able to throw a force field round them ... but she wouldn't get that power until Fantastic Four 22 (Jan 1964).

We don't have to wait long until the monsters show up and the FF take to a small boat to investigate. This was one of the problems I have with Jack's plotting details. Nobody in their right mind would go after a sea monster in a rowing boat ... except maybe for Captain Ahab ... oh, wait. Of course, they're easily captured by Namor, who simply insists they present his demands to the United Nations and he'll leave the surface people alone. And with that, he uses one of his implausible undersea contraptions to hurl them back to New York.

The origin sequence, narrated by "Dr G W Falton", is the first mention in the Marvel Age of the idea that Namor is a mutant. I'd argue against that, as Namor is the  result of combining two different sets of genes, rather than having slightly altered DNA to his parents.

Reed loses no time in setting up a special session at the UN and invited speaker Dr G. W. Falton offers a capsule history of Atlantis and the origin of the Sub-Mariner. Quite how he knows so much about Namor and his people isn't called into question. So it's not a massive surprise when the true identity of Dr Falton is revealed.

If Reed's supposed to be able to squeeze his entire body through the tiniest pinhole, I'm not convinced now that heavy equipment falling on him would hurt him in any way. A No-Prize is on offer if you can explain it to me.

Prince Namor must have been expecting the meeting at the UN to go badly, as he has his troops standing by in New York harbour for immediate deployment. With the element of surprise it's only a matters of hours before the Atlanteans are in control of Manhattan. And before the Fantastic Four can formulate an effective response, Reed is injured while preparing a device to combat Namor and his troops. Luckily, Reed just about managed to complete the device and Ben and Johnny know where the On switch is.

With his armies driven back into the sea, Namor tries to take on the FF alone. But even his power isn't enough and he resorts to escape instead, taking Sue Storm with him. 

The effect is immediate and devastating. Namor's troops are deprived of their life-giving water and are forced to abandon the battle and return to the sea. Now the FF just have The Sub-Mariner himself to deal with. Taking the fight to the Baxter Building, Namor goes a few rounds with the FF members until, outclassed, he's also forced to flee back to open waters, but he takes a hostage with him. Quite literally hot on his heels, The Human Torch gives chase while Ben and Reed get the experimental U-Car ready to follow.

The fighting is brought to a halt when the Fantastic Three and Namor realise that Sue Storm's life is in danger.

While Namor battles the FF above the waves, below aboard the Atlantean flagship, Sue Storm's presence has sparked rivalries and jealousies. Lady Dorma, realising that Namor and Sue have feelings each other floods the ship with seawater. Interestingly, it's Warlord Krang who seems concerned for Sue's safety. By the time the Atlanteans next appeared (in Fantastic Four 33, Dec 1964), Dorma is a more sympathetic character.

The various plotlines are wrapped up in a very hurried fashion, as though Jack Kirby saw the 37th page cantering up and had to squeeze what should have been four or five pages into two. The story might have been better served by dropping a couple of the pinups.

Not surprisingly, Sue almost drowns unnoticed by the combatants above, until Ben spots her trapped in kelp at the seabed. Their grudge-fest momentarily forgotten, the two combine forces to free The Invisible Girl and bring her to the surface. Over the FF's objections, The Sub-Mariner orders his people off the Atlantean flagship and hastens to deliver Sue Storm to a New York hospital for the proper medical attention. And that's pretty much it.

What seemed at the time like an epic, widescreen spectacular, doesn't seem to hold up quite so well today. With my reading of it for this blog entry, it definitely has Jack Kirby's plotting fingerprints all over it and isn't terribly well-structured.

Breaking it down, it goes like this:

Scene 1 - Namor in a restored Atlantis (4 pgs)

Scene 2 - Horseplay in the Baxter Building, Reed mentions the sea monster sightings (4 pgs)

Scene 3 - The FF take a cruise, see the Monsters, take off after them in rowboat (2 pgs)

Scene 4 - FF Captured by Namor, who orders them to present his demands to the UN, then frees them (3 pgs)

Scene 5 - At the UN, expert "G W Falton" lectures on the origins of Namor and Atlantis and is revealed to be Namor (6 pgs)

Scene 6 - Namor's army invades and takes NY, Reed uses a super weapon to drive them back to the sea (6 pgs)

Scene 7 - Now alone, Namor grabs Sue and returns to Atlantis (2 pgs)

Scene 8 - FF follow and give battle, Sue is injured (7 pgs)

Scene 9 - Namor rushes Sue to NY for medical treatment but is gone by the time Reed catches up (3 pgs)

It's only my opinion, but I think Scenes 3 and 4 just slow the story down. I'd rather have seen the FF investigating in the Fantastic-Car, perhaps having a battle with one of the sea monsters. As it is Namor captures them a bit easily, and then releases them with a message for the UN. Why not just address the UN himself? Why the folderol of posing as an "eminent" expert (who no one's heard of) to tell the story of Atlantis? It would have been more powerful if Namor had told it as himself. And Scene 9 could have used another couple of pages to show us that Namor has saved Sue Storm but lost his kingdom, rather than glossing over that big event in a caption box.

I think Stan left Jack too much on his own with this one, and by the time the art showed up in the Bullpen, it was too late for do-overs.

THE EXTRAS

One of the funnest parts of these old Silver Age annuals is the extras Stan would throw in, something we never got in the DC Annuals. And this one is no exception. We get 11 pinups of old foes, three pages explaining the FF's powers and a schematic of the Baxter Building, a bonus retelling of Spider-Man meeting the Fantastic Four from Amazing Spider-Man 1, all rounded out with the first 13 pages of Fantastic Four 1 for any latecomers.

As a listing of what had gone before, these pinups might be interesting to some newer readers, but they don't give much insight into what any of these foes were capable of ... they don't tell the story. An opportunity missed. Click to enlarge.

The pinups are okay, but look a bit like Jack Kirby knocked them off in a single day. I was never the sort of kid who ripped out pinups and stuck them on the wall. Also the pinups here didn't all have ads on the other side, so you'd be faced with some tough choices about which side to display.

What struck me in looking at this handy-dandy guide to the Fantastic Four and their skyscraper HQ is how the characters and set up owe quite a bit to the team dynamics of the pulp characters Doc Savage and his team.

Much more entertaining to me were the two pages explaining the powers of the Fantastic Four and the guide to the Baxter Building. What did occur to me when revisiting these pages was just how much the FF draws upon Doc Savage and his band for inspiration. It's especially apparent when you compare the Baxter Building to Doc's HQ on the 86th floor of "Manhattan's tallest building", which also had express elevators, science labs, a library and living quarters.

While Doc Savage had other companions he relied on - Renny, Johnny and Long Tom - Ham and Monk were by far the most popular, constantly insulting and playing tricks on each other. Though Pat was often seen as a "pest" by Doc, she was every bit as capable as the others.

It's easy to match scientific genius/inventor Reed Richards to Doc Savage. Doc's most popular companions, Monk and Ham, appeared in more adventures than any other team members and just like Ben and Johnny, were constantly "friendly feuding". Pat Savage was Doc's cousin and often invited herself along on Doc's adventures. Both Ham and Monk thought she was a "peach", though Doc felt that dangerous adventures were no pastime for a female.

The Kult of Kirby have long claimed that the case for Jack being the sole creator of the FF can be proved by how similar The Fantastic Four are to Challengers of the Unknown (actually a Simon & Kirby creation). In my view the characterisations of Reed Richards' band of heroes are much closer to Doc Savage's team, which neither Stan nor Jack have claimed any close affinity to.

In Amazing Spider-Man 1, the second story pit Spidey against the forgettable Chameleon. But in there somewhere, he tried to apply for membership in the FF ... and we all know how that turned out.

Another interesting feature is this annual was a re-telling of the FF's first encounter with Spider-Man, which originally happened in the first issue of Amazing Spider-Man (Mar 1963), occupied barely three pages.

Rather than simply re-using some of the panels from Amazing Spider-Man 1, Kirby redrew almost exact copies of much of the art, reworked slightly to fit in to the expanded continuity.

For the Annual, Stan and Jack expanded the scene to six pages and Ditko was drafted in as inker to give the art some visual continuity, probably because Kirby's Spider-Man was never terribly convincing.

While Ditko's inking helps with the Spider-Man figures, I don't think his work over Kirby's pencils is especially good. He did a better job on FF 13 a few months earlier, but still wasn't getting The Thing's hide right.

I had speculated in an earlier blog entry that this retelling was a substitute for another six-page Spider-Man/Human Torch encounter which ended up in Amazing Spider-Man 8 (Jan 1964). But in retrospect, this no longer seems plausible. The key evidence is the Job Numbers, which I admit I never thought to check before.

The Job Number for the six-page "The Fabulous Fantastic Four Meet Spider-Man" in the FF Annual is X-344. This is consistent with the other Job Numbers we can see in the Annual:

• X-324 - "The Sub-Mariner vs the Human Race", main story
• X-343 - Questions and Answers About the Fantastic Four
• X-206 - The Mad Thinker Pinup

The story in Amazing Spider-Man 8, "Spider-Man Tackles The Torch" was likely created some considerable time later, as its Job Number is X-529.

The Mad Thinker pinup Job Number is quite a bit adrift from the others, and was probably created right after Kirby finished up on Fantastic Four 15 ("The Fantastic Four Battle The Mad Thinker and his Android of Doom", Jun 1963), as that story has a Job Number of X-191, and several weeks before he started on the FF Annual in earnest. I note that the Job Number on Fantastic Four 17 (Aug 1963) is X-315, and for Fantastic Four 18 (Sep 1963) it's X-361, so Kirby would handed in the art for the FF Annual in right between those two FF issues.

And finally, the reprint of the first 13 pages of Fantastic Four 1. Except that it's not just a reprint. As often happened with the evolving appearances of characters in the Marvel Silver Age, just doing a straight reprint would probably have confused readers a little.

Above left: Dragoom from Strange Tales 76. Centre: The Human Torch as he appeared in the original printing of Fantastic Four 1. Above right: The Torch as depicted - altered by Sol Brodsky - in the reprint of FF1 published in FF Annual 1.

Back in Fantastic Four 1, The Human Torch was a shapeless mass of flame, not unlike the fire creature "Dragoom" in Strange Tales 76 (Aug 1960). Kirby had probably drawn him this way to look less like the original Human Torch from the 1940s' Timely Comics. But as the months went by, the look of Johnny Storm's flaming alter-ego changed quite quickly and by FF3 had become the red humanoid figure we're most familiar with. At the time Fantastic Four Annual 1 was published, the main FF title was already up to issue 17, and if Johnny's flame form had been left as is, most readers would be wondering who the fiery guy was and what happened to Johnny.

EDIT: Kid Robson sent me some scans from the first issue of Fantastic Four 1, so I've taken a moment to edit them together so you can directly compare the other alterations that were made to the reprint in FF Annual 1.

Though it's not the most significant change, Marvel's production department altered the masthead of page 1 to remove the inset pictures of the FF and replace them with giant lettering.

A little more interestingly, you can see here how Sol Brodsky (and his team if he had one at this time) made changes to reduce the height of Ben Grimm and to make Reed a little fuller in the face, to match their appearances in later FF stories.

The Thing's stature is considerably reduced in the reprint, making him more like six foot tall (noticeably shorter than The Hulk during the same period). And in the panel on the right, Reed's face has been made less gaunt. Yet weirdly, Ben is the same height as Reed and Johnny in FF1 and only Sue's height has been increased in the reprint.

And here's another image of the Fantastic Four, from both issue 1 and the altered version from the Annual, where the art changes on Reed are more apparent.

So in Fantastic Four 1, Reed was depicted as thin in the face and with more grey hair. In the altered reprint, Brodsky has filled out Reed's features and toned down the grey above his ears.

Coming back and looking over Fantastic Four Annual 1 with fresh eyes, I think I may have been swayed by other historians in my assessment of it. I still don't think it's as good as Amazing Spider-Man Annual 1 (Sep 1964), and Fantastic Four Annual 3 (Sep 1965) might actually be more fun. As spectacular as the 37-page epic is, it's not without its problems in pacing and general storytelling. And the pinups, inked for the most part by Kirby himself, seem rushed and lacking in detail, though none of that would have bothered me when I first saw this annual around 1966.

The three other Marvel Annuals for 1963 - Millie was all new material; Strange Tales Annual 2 had an 18-page Torch/Spidey story pencilled by Kirby and the Patsy and Hedy Annual was all reprint, still a lot to manage on top of the regular titles.

That said, we should also consider what else was going on in 1963, a massive expansion year for the burgeoning Marvel Comics. Around the same time that Jack Kirby was working on the FF Annual, he was also crafting the first issues of The Avengers and The X-Men, issue 18 of Fantastic Four, Sgt Fury 3 and the Human Torch/Spider-Man cross-over for Strange Tales Annual 2. And although Stan had given him some respite by taking him off the Thor strip in Journey into Mystery for the mid-part of 1963, he still was expected to draw covers for that title, along with Kid Colt Outlaw, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish and Two-Gun Kid. So, yes, some aspects of the Fantastic Four Annual may have looked a bit rushed, but not without good reason.

I still have a couple more Annuals on my list to look at, but that can wait until another time.

Next: Prototype, Schmototype