Out of the Vault - Fantastic Four #176

Posting this a day late. Sorry.

So one of the very few blogs I read regularly anymore is snell's "Slay, Monstrobot of the Deep," and for a while now, he's had this sporadic series going where he's building up to a recap of Fantastic Four #177, featuring the Frightful Four. But the actual hook he used to start off the series was the final panel of FF #176, featuring this shot of the Frightful Four's three main members (the fourth member has changed over the years).

So I thought it would be a good change of pace, after three weeks of blogging about comics featuring real people, to jump back into a good old-fashioned mainer-than-mainstream superhero comic. And what better issue to feature than the issue that leads into snell's series, Fantastic Four #176.

Cover-dated November 1976, Fantastic Four #176, titled "Improbable As It May Seem--The Impossible Man Is Back in Town!," is a palate cleanser. The FF had just finished an epic multi-issue adventure on Counter-Earth that had culminated in a titanic battle between Galactus and the High Evolutionary. Cosmic stuff, man, and I got briefly hooked on reading FF as a result of it. Issue #176 was a low-key, comic relief interlude before the next big multi-issue arc.

So the issue opens on a spaceship as the Fantastic Four are returning to Earth. Ben Grimm is upset, because he has become the Thing once more (he had spent the previous arc as a human, wearing an exoskeleton that was an exact duplicate of his rocky self). After several pages of recap and exposition, in which we learn that Galactus is responsible for the Thing's rocky return, our heroes make reentry--with one tiny extra problem. The Impossible Man, an alien shapeshifter who can duplicate any shape and any power, has also stowed away on board.

It does not go smoothly. The tachyon-powered ship comes into too fast, and the Thing shatters the controls when he tries to decelerate (apparently, Galactus made him stronger than he was before). The ship crash-lands in the lake in Central Park, providing the Impossible Man with his first bit of entertainment.

Our heroes next attempt to take a taxi to the Baxter Building. After some hijinx involving the Invisible Woman sitting unseen on Reed's lap so they'll all be permitted to ride in the same cab, the drive is promptly cut short thanks to the Impossible Man's pranks. During the confusion of the ensuing traffic jam, the Impossible Man wanders away and ends up visiting the Marvel Bullpen, where Stan Lee and...

Oh crap!

You mean this is another comic book featuring real-world people in a superhero story? Seriously???!!!!

So okay, yeah, both DC and Marvel did this to an extent (for a DC example, see Superman vs. Muhammad Ali)., but Marvel seemed to do it more. Someday, I'll have to cover the issue of Marvel Team-up featuring the Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Players (which was the name of the SNL cast at the time).

So yeah, Marvel had in an early issue once mentioned the fact that there was a Fantastic Four comic book that chronicled their adventures. And in Fantastic Four #176, we see a conference between Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the FF's original creators, and Roy Thomas and George Perez, this issue's writer and penciller, over what to do for the next issue.

See, the Fantastic Four have been busy off-planet for a while now, what with fighting Galactus and all, so the guys at Marvel haven't been able to get in touch with them to find out about their latest adventure. Suddenly, Jack "King" Kirby has a craaaaazy idea...


...when the Impossible Man pops in and demands they do a comic book about him. When Stan remembers that readers didn't like Impossible Man's earlier appearance because he was too silly, the Impossible Man goes psycho. He decides to prove his real power by mimicking the powers demonstrated on the comics covers displayed around the room. He bounces around the room as Captain America's shield, blasts everything in sight with Iron Man's repulsor rays and Cyclops's optic blasts, even flies around on Namor's dainty little ankle wings.

At which point the Fantastic Four show up for a very brief battle, which draws in cameos from more Marvel artists and writers. Reed finally convinces Stan to agree to do an Impossible Man story in one very special issue of Fantastic Four, and the day is saved. All is well.

Until "Roger" (who I'm guessing is Roger Stern) shows Reed Richards a newspaper with a very disturbing classified ad. The Frightful Four are conducting supervillain auditions at the Fantastic Four's headquarters in the Baxter Building. Say what?

Our heroes rush over to the Baxter Building to find out what's going on, leading to the final confrontation with the Frightful Four, which leads into snell's series.

Overall, the issue isn't bad. The art is standard early George Perez, means lots of stiff poses and straight-on head shots (see the Fantastic Four in action above), but Joe Sinnott's inks are as slick as ever, and the story is fun.

The guys at Marvel must have been proud of it, anyway, because they replaced the normal letter column with a text feature detailing the genesis of the story, and mentioning that it would tie in to a later issue of The Man Called Nova, also featuring the Bullpen.

Can't wait.

Big Audio Wednesday - More Doctor Doom

So I'm coming home from work, and as I come down the exit ramp, ahead of me I see a low-slung sports car with a naggingly familiar silhouette. Low and wide, it looks sort of like a Ferrari, only with two dark rectangular attachments on either side and something slender and white sticking up from the center. "No way," I thought, but as I got closer, turns out I was right.

It was a DeLorean, fully tricked out as a replica of Doc Brown's time machine, complete with Mr. Fusion. No bullshit, Jack. Coolest drive home from work I've had in a long time, let me tell you.

This week's old-time radio show is another Fantastic Four episode, starring Bill Murray among others. In this episode, the Fantastic Four are joined by Ant-Man as they battle the return of Doctor Doom.

I don't want to spoil the hilarity for you, but let me just say, this is probably the trippiest and silliest superhero adventure I think I've ever listened to, and that includes the juvenile Power Records adventures I listened to as a kid.

Fantastic Four on the Radio

So last week, I was listening to a ton of old Superman radio episodes from 1945, looking for the first radio appearance of Batman (which I may have found, but I'm not sure). I figured it would be a good tie-in to my recent post on "The Brave and the Bold."

But then I stumbled onto these Fantastic Four episodes from the mid-70's, and had to do this first. These make the Blue Beetle episode I posted a while back sound positively lavish. Cheap classic radio shows featured sound effects usually performed by a live prop man, with a single organ for music.

The Fantastic Four series featured a canned theme song and goofy scripts based closely on the original early issues of the comic, slightly updated in places (Jonny Storm admires a stereo with Dolby in one episode, for instance). Voice acting was mediocre, and is mainly noteworthy for a young Bill Murray sleepwalking his way through the role of the Human Torch. Sound effects are limited to a bunch of theremin farts.

So, in honor of my recent post about the first appearance of Doctor Doom, here is the radio version of that story. Let Stan Lee transport your imagination through Marvel magic and dull narration. Listen to the psychedelic wonder of the Fantastic Four's talking signal flare ("four..."). Thrill to the adventures of the Fantastic Three as they travel through time on an urgent mission. Quiver with delight as the Human Torch utters the immortal line, "This beverage really quenches my thirst," with complete conviction. Tremble with fear as Doctor Doom does a cross-promotional deal with H.P. Lovecraft by summoning monsters from Carcosa.

This, my friends, is the best of the early 60's crossed with the worst of the mid-70's, brought to you through the modern future miracle of the Internets. Click the widget to listen.

Alternate Versions

Okay, Marvel fans, you'll have to bear with me for a while, cause this one is freaking crazy. While flipping through websites looking for material on Iron Man's past, I made a really bizarre discovery. I'm sure someone else has pointed this out somewhere before, but I've never seen it, so I'm passing it on.

But first, a brief (perhaps not-so-brief) history lesson. In the late 50's and early 60's, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were working for Atlas Comics (soon to be Marvel) riding a fad of monster books. Stan Lee has mentioned how much fun he had doing those books, featuring creatures with names like Kraa and Goom and Monstrollo and (of course, you knew I had to say it) Fin Fang Foom. But, you say to yourself, how many of those books were they really doing? I mean, sure they did some monster books, but were they really that significant?

Roll over to Coverbrowser and look at the books of the time, like Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense and you realize, yeah, they were actually shoveling those out by the metric ton. And looking at those covers, I realized I was seeing the seeds of the Marvel Universe being planted.

Number one is the obvious stuff, like issues of Journey Into Mystery featuring a monster named Hulk a year before the debut of the Fantastic Four. Other hero and villain names were also presaged, like the Molten Man-Thing and Sandman and Vandoom, He Who Made a Creature! (presaging the FF villain Doctor Victor Von Doom in name if nothing else, about whom more later)

But more than that, you can see that when Marvel introduced its heroes, it made sure to hedge its bets by keeping one foot in the monster genre.

Fantastic Four was the first of the Marvel superhero books. The cover of the first issue was dominated by a standard giant Kirby monster, with the four heroes small in the frame surrounding him. The adventure inside featured the Mole Man attacking the surface world with his army of monsters. And not only did the Fantastic Four wear no standard superhero costumes, but they were all rather monstrous in their own ways (Mister Fantastic stretching into weird shapes, the Invisible Girl reminiscent of horror movie staple the Invisible Man, the Human Torch a mass of living flame, and of course, the Thing).

In issue two, the heroes battled the monstrous alien Skrulls, and fended off their invasion by scaring them away with Kirby monster comics (literally--they showed the Skrull leaders the comics panels and said they were photographs of actual monsters--the Skrulls fled, because aliens are stupid). I don't remember the villain in issue three, but issue four featured an attack on the surface world by the Sub-Mariner commanding an army of sea monsters. In the July issue, number 5, the Fantastic Four were introduced to their most fearsome foe of all, the nefarious Doctor Doom, a mad scientist who wore an iron mask to hide his disfigured face (click the pic for a larger version).

By that time, Marvel had introduced its second superhero, The Incredible Hulk, featuring a man who turns into (guess what?) a super-strong monster. And during this period, the other Marvel titles, like Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense and Journey into Mystery, were still featuring the standard collection of monster tales.

In Aug. 1962, Journey Into Mystery introduced Thor battling (what else?) the monstrous Stone Men from Saturn. Meanwhile, a character named Spider-Man appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15. For the first time, there were no monsters in a hero's debut story; then again, Amazing Fantasy was being canceled anyway, so they probably figured why bother? A month later, Ant-Man appeared in Tales to Astonish, battling both human foes and monsters over his first few adventures, to be joined soon by the Hulk, after his own book was canceled.

The last gasp of the Marvel monster fad was in Tales of Suspense in Feb. 1963. The next month, Iron Man debuted in its pages, with nary a monster in sight. And a couple of issues later, the Marvel logo began appearing on the company's covers. The superheroes had taken over; the Marvel Age had officially begun.

But here's the thing which caught my attention: while looking through all the covers of Tales of Suspense preceding Iron Man's introduction, I saw a very familiar face. Issue #31 of Tales of Suspense, cover-dated July 1962 (the same month that Doctor Doom made his debut in Fantastic Four #5), featured on its cover "The Monster in the Iron Mask." Look at this cover image and see if anything looks familiar.


Even the color scheme is the same. Either Kirby was obviously so proud of this design, he used it twice, or else he was so insanely busy he didn't have time to do another design and literally recycled it almost whole.

Either way, now you know the rest of the story.

Superhero Weekend

It was a superhero weekend here. City of Heroes/Villains has had a double xp event going all weekend, so I got my main guy, Metatronic, to level 50 (as high as the game goes) finally. After 677 hours of gameplay, and there wasn't even a fireworks display or anything. That was Friday night and Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon, I took Metatronic's evil twin, Dark Meta, up to level 25.

Then on Saturday evening, I wrote the first draft of a new Digger short story. There's some good stuff in there, but the ending is weak, I think, so I may have to redo it.

This morning, Sunday, I took my evil mastermind, Metalord, to level 18. Then The Girl took me out for Father's Day. We went to see Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

It wasn't bad, as comic book movies go. As I've said before, I wasn't fond of the first one; I thought it was too goofy, and I hated what they did with Doctor Doom.

Well, Doom comes back in this one, and I don't like him any better this time around. But the adventure works a little better this time around, although the Fantasticar flies way too fast for something without a windshield. Then again, not only do the comedy bits work better in this movie, but the climactic shout-outs to the original comic and the classic villain, the Super Skrull, are pretty cool.

Then it was back home to squeeze a little bit more out of double xp weekend, leveling up both Doctor Jolt (a City of Heroes character based on one of my Hero Go Home guys) and MC Square (a hero who's set to appear in the sequel to Hero Go Home).

Oh yeah, and in between I watched cartoons. So yeah, it was pretty non-stop superhero action for me.

Cool And Yet Not

I'm having very mixed feelings about Heroes nowadays. I still like SuperHiro best of all, but I don't like the directions they've taken his storyline. First, they made him way too naive. Then they crippled his power just as he was really learning to rock with it. Then they pulled that dinosaur bait-and-switch. Then they introduced Hiro's dad, and as cool as it was to see a cameo by George Takei, I really hate that they basically changed Hiro from an average sarariman schlub with an awesome secret into a super-rich geek who's just been slumming.

And now, as kick-ass as last night's episode was, they've tied in SuperHiro's dad with the Invulnerable Cheerleader's adoptive father (her biological father being, of course, the Flying Pol) and it's all just getting too damned incestuous for words. Less with the twisty backstory connections, more with the super-powered ass-kicking please.

Speaking of super-powered ass-kicking, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but the new commercials for the Fantastic Four sequel look awesome. I was underwhelmed with the first one. Too sitcom-y, lightweight cast, slim plot, really stupid reiterpretation of Doctor Doom. But I've got to say, the scenes of the Silver Surfer from the first trailer really got me going, and the glimpses of the FantastiCar in the new commercials (plus the hints that Galactus himself might be featured) have me totally sold. Only things that worries me: the movie doesn't come out till June, and they're already blitzing the commercials in February. How loud does the hype machine have to get for this movie to get out from under the shadow of Spiderman 3 (which also looks pretty damn good).