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

You can buy these Marvel Comics second-hand, too?

IN THE EARLY1960s, I discovered Marvel Comics and dedicated myself to tracking down comics featuring my hero Captain America. At first I was content with scouring the local newsagents looking for ... the spinner rack. Then I looked for kids in the neighbourhood who had Marvel comics that I really wanted and offered them ridiculous trades - three DCs for one Marvel.

Okay ... this is a spinner rack in an American store, but we had
them in UK newsagents, too. Trouble is they wrecked the condition
of the comics - not that we cared much about that back then.

But there was another source of US comics beginning to turn up during the Silver Age - second hand shops. At first it was just random shops, often selling bric-a-brac like brass ornaments or other household nonsense, that would have a box of old LP records and comics outside, priced at 3d or 6d.

The records outside those second-hand shops would be tut ...
terrible stuff I'd never be interested in. No Beatles or Dave Clarke 5 here.

In America, if comics were unsold, the newsstand owner could cut or tear the logo from the front cover and return it to the wholesaler for a refund. You'll sometimes still find old comics on eBay missing the logo for that very reason. The comics were supposed to destroyed ... but many made it on to cut-price racks. Later, the publishers figured this out and made the news sellers return the whole comic, and the wholesaler would then ink the edges with blue ink. These comics also made it out into the world again.

In the UK, if distributors Thorpe & Porter accepted returns, it would have been the entire comic, which they would then likely pulp or possibly commit to landfill. But even during the Sixties, American comics had a perceived value and it was possible to find second-hand comics in the oddest of places.

Back then, like many kids in the neighbourhood, I had a bike. After exhausting the newsagents in the area, I began to range further afield to get my hands on yet more Marvel Comics. There were more newsagents  to be found westwards along Woolwich Church Street, at least two of them before it became Woolwich Road and crossed over the Blackwall Tunnel Approach. Then, as Charlton gave way to Greenwich, I found a print shop that had a stack of comics in the window. That shop would become a regular source of older Marvel Comics for me.

Finally, at the furthest limits of my range, was New Cross and the Popular Book Centre, a sleazy haven for paperback books, assorted girlie magazines and three or four stacks of American Comics, all with a heavy "Popular Book Centre" stamp on the cover and a handwritten biro price, initially 6d, but that would go up over the next couple of years.

Admittedly, this one's not too bad, but very often,
the Popular Book Centre stamps were heavy and inky,
and often smudged on the glossy comic cover stock.

Later on, I'd become a regular customer of Bonus Books in Woolwich, which was much closer to home for me. In fact, I was in there almost every day and got to know the proprietor quite well, to the point where he'd save comics for me. I think his name was Dave. He seemed a like a very nice guy, even though he did appear to sell some quite scary porn, to some even scarier customers, from under the counter.

The comics I bought from Bonus Books have long since gone,
(and what happened to them is a story for another blog entry)
but I still have the Doc Savage paperbacks all these years later.

MORE CLASSIC MARVELS

Sometime in the second half of 1965, I had managed to find two really early Fantastic Fours ... 4 and 8. I forget now where I'd got them from, but I know I would have paid 6d from one of those second-hand shops. Being second-hand, they weren't in perfect condition, probably about Very Good to Fine in today's standards, but back then, condition wasn't a deciding factor, more of a bonus if the comic was a nice copy.

My next Marvel "classic" was Fantastic Four 4.
I had no idea that Sub-Mariner had been a major
Golden Age character ... but it didn't spoil my
enjoyment of this issue one bit.

Fantastic Four 4 brought back The Sub-Mariner from the Golden Age of comics. Then, I knew nothing about "The Golden Age of Comics" - and to be fair, Stan didn't bill it that way. What I did notice was that this was not the same Fantastic Four team I'd been reading about just weeks earlier. The Thing looked completely different. More like a mudslide than the blocky angular rockpile he later became. And he seemed much more ... dangerous than his later self. 

The underlying (at best) insensitivity of Reed Richards
is present here when he calls Sue "Sue"
in the last panel and Ben "Thing".

The issue begins with a brief recap of FF3 - the Torch has run off because The Thing shouted at him and now both Mr Fantastic and Invisible Girl are fed up with The Thing. The leader of the FF keeps calling Ben "Thing" over and over again, while Reed and Sue call each other by their names. My first thought, looking back, was that Stan was trying to establish new characters the readers weren't familiar with. But that doesn't seem to be the case. It's as though Stan was deliberately de-humanising Ben Grimm, so the readers would think of him as a monster, rather than as an ordinary man who's tragically devolved into a monster. That approach would change quite quickly.

Meanwhile, The Torch is hiding out in the Bowery. Why he would hole up in a fleapit flop-house isn't explained, but it's a quick way for him to meet The Sub-Mariner, who has lost his memory years before and is now a down-and-out. Stan and Jack show us an old Sub-Mariner comic but that didn't mean a thing to me, as I had no awareness of any comics older than 1960.

Johnny Storm finds a vintage Sub-Mariner comic in
a Bowery flophouse (yeah, right!) not six feet away from
the actual Sub- Mariner ... what are the odds?

Johnny suspects the true identity of the hobo, after the apparently frail amnesiac bounces several burly thugs around the dormitory as though they were weightless. Oddly, The Sub-Mariner allows Johnny to burn off his beard without even a blink, and is revealed as ... yup, Prince Namor.

The first of several close shaves with The Sub-Mariner.

Finally, Johnny does the stupidest thing he's ever done. He drops the Sub-Mariner into the ocean to restore his memory. Why would you do that, Johnny? What good can ever come of restoring the the memory of one of the most dangerous creatures on Earth? No good at all, as it turns out. But amidst the battles we see the beginnings of Namor's infatuation with Sue Storm and though his plans are balked, The Sub-Mariner escapes to fight another day ... as he surely will.

At the time, this was the earliest Marvel comic I'd been exposed to. Heck, they weren't even called Marvel Comics at this time. And to be honest, I didn't think it was anything really special as a story. Mostly, I was thrilled to own it because it was such an early number of Fantastic Four. Even then, I was as much a collector as a reader. 

One irony that occurred to me much later about this comic was the way that Jack Kirby didn't seem to have any qualms about using The Sub-Mariner in one of his Fantastic Four stories (Kirby had claimed for years that he did all the writing as well as the art and was robbed of his creations by Marvel), even though the copyright situation was a bit fuzzy, and the rights to the character may well have been owned by The Sub-Mariner's creator Bill Everett. I've always respected the heck out of Kirby's abilities as a creator, but even he can't have it both ways ...

LIKE A PUPPET ON A STRING

Anyway, in the same transaction I also acquired a copy of Fantastic Four 8. This too was a key issue because it introduced not only one of the dumbest-looking villains the FF have ever fought, The Puppet Master, but also the baddie's step-daughter Alicia, who would become the love interest for Ben Grimm and the key factor in the humanising of The Thing. 

Why did the Puppet Master look like a ventriloquist's dummy?
And why did no one comment on his bizarre appearance?

No rationale is given for why the Puppet Master looks the way he does. Precious little motivation is given for why the character wants to do mean-spirited things. He just does it because he feels like it. At this point, I don't think Lee and Kirby knew what they had or where they were going with it, so the whole issue feels like it was just a throwaway "comic book story". The elements that separated Marvel from DC were all here, just a little unfocussed. So everyone is still calling Ben Grimm "Thing" and he's still pretty angry with the world. 

When Reed bars Ben from the Lab, Grimm gets all paranoid and stumps off in a huff. Of course, Reed is working on a cure and doesn't want Ben disappointed if it doesn't work. But his moodiness is the catalyst for Ben to meet The Puppet Master - and more importantly, Alicia. This is one of the few times I can remember that Alicia is said to resemble Sue Storm. And the Puppet Master disguises her as Sue with the mere addition of a blonde wig and sends her back to the FF with a now mind-controlled Ben.

This is one of the first times that Ben Grimm reverts to his human state,
this time because of a chemical potion Reed has been working on.

I wonder now whether Stan was going somewhere with this. In the earlier issues of FF, he'd given Ben a romantic interest in Sue which ended up being forgotten. Perhaps he was toying with the idea of Ben falling for Alicia because she looked like Sue. But this idea was quickly abandoned and Ben and Alicia's relationship became its own animal, and a core principle of the Fantastic Four family legend. 

Even though Alicia is unable to see, she can sense that Ben is
essentially the same person, no matter what his outward appearance.

The other features in FF8 were a Feature Page which explained how The Human Torch's powers worked and an early Fantastic Four Fan Page on which all the letters began "Dear Editor" ... a formality that would be soon jettisoned in favour of "Dear Stan and Jack" or "Dear Marvel Madmen". 

The early issues of Fantastic Four were filled with fun features like this -
this one explains in "scientific" terms how Johnny Storm's power works.

But the terrible misfortune for me was that when I went from junior school to grammar school in September 1965, I took these two comics in with me one day and foolishly left them in my desk. And when I came back later, someone had taken them. It took me years of scouring the second-hand shops before I was able to replace Fantastic Four 4 and 8 ... but I learnt a valuable lesson. Some people are real a*holes ...

THE X FACTOR

This bit of bad luck and poor character judgement didn't deter me, though. It wasn't long before I uncovered a copy of X-Men 4 - a real key issue. It was the first time I saw Magneto (I pronounced it Mag-netto) and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

A brilliant iconic cover to introduce the reverse X-Men.
Pretty much perfect apart from a couple of silly colouring errors.

These days you wouldn't get a cover like that. It seems that contemporary editors would look at an illustration like that and ask why Magneto and his Evil Wotsits have been drawn as giants. But even as an eleven year old, I knew that Magneto wasn't really fifty foot tall. I just thought it was really cool and that the baddies looked really menacing.

Inside the story was fairly routine, except that the characterisation again was way ahead of what any other publisher was doing at the time. At this point, Magneto was still a bit of a dictatorial control freak. He wouldn't get in touch with his nobler side until much later. But his followers were a mix of repulsive and pitiable.

Without comment, we're shown life with the X-Men and how things go down
as Castle "Evil Mutant" and left to decide where we'd rather be.

Lee and Kirby compared the good guys with the bad guys side-by-side and left it to the readers as to which group they would prefer to hang out with. They would use this device again, notably in Fantastic Four 36, which introduced the Frightful Four.

But the key milestone is this issue is the introduction of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch as reluctant allies of Magneto. 

We're offered an origin of sorts for both Wanda and Pietro.
These four panels would be expanded on later by other hands.

Leading by fear, he exploits the humans' hatred of mutants to keep these two basically decent people in his thrall. Of course, later Pietro and Wanda would break away from Magneto's influence and join The Avengers in issue 16, which I covered in more detail in an earlier post.

The other high point for me in this issue was one of the house ads. It showed the very issue of The Avengers, coincidently also issue 4, where Captain America is introduced in a modern setting.

For a Captain America fan like me, this house ad depicted
the Holy Grail of comics ... The Avengers 4.

It would be many years before I managed to track down a copy of this immensely important (to me, anyway) Marvel Comic ... but that's a story for another time.

Next: More Marvel, more second-hand shops