Storytime with Annotations: FANTASTIC FOUR 11, 13 and ANNUAL 2
The Red Ghost and His Indescribable Super-Apes! (part 1)
Band Name or what? This is from THE FANTASTIC FOUR# 13, way back in April 1963 (a thousand years ago, as we say) and it is crying out for critical analysis. It looks as if I will be spending my declining years annotating Silver Age comics. Could be worse!
Page 1. The first thing you notice is that Steve Ditko is inking Jack Kirby's pencils. This only happened three or four times, and I absolutely love the results each time. Two artists with such different styles and views on storytelling; one consistently drawing larger-than-life heroic icons and one drawing down-to-earth everyday folks. Of course, Ditko was a peer of Kirby and turned out stories he plotted himself which were just as successful (so Stan would rather use him by himself), but it would have been great to see him ink Kirby a few more times. The Ditko-inked Thing is particularly interesting. He looks like he has rough dinosaur hide rather than a layer of broken rocks for skin, very cool.
As an aside, if I mentioned to anyone I know in everyday life that I love Ditko inks over Kirby pencils, they'd think I was talking about a local Thai restaurant. ("I didn't quite catch that, you want WHAT for supper?")
Page 2. That protective suit looks great, thick quilted material and a helmet with its own oxygen supply. Reed should have been shown wearing this during dangerous experiments but, as far as I know, this was not seen again.
So, Reed is still worried about beating the Reds to the Moon. Remember what happened the last time you tried to get there first, Mr Genius? "A meteor fell in Siberia..?" Are you talking about Tunguska, Reed?
Page 3. I notice it's Sue who says this new fuel means America may win the space race. In the very first issue, she was the one who said the space flight was important "unless we want the Commies to beat us to it." I don't know why it surprises me, but Sue is gung-ho for winning the Space Race and tells Ben Grimm he's a coward if he doesn't want to go up in Reed's ship. I guess she had stronger political views than I expected but why not?
The horseplay on this page as the three of them demand they go with Reed to the Moon shows why Marvel seemed so fresh and natural in the early 1960s. You'd never see dialogue like this from the Justice League, who acted as dry and unemotional as a convention of businessmen discussing new sales techniques. Marvel's characters had distinct personalities; DC's could mostly have their speech balloons swapped from one hero to another and you'd never be able to tell.
Page 4. Here is the "Oh Come ON!" part. We meet Ivan Kragoff and his crew of astronaut apes. Oh Come ON! (see?) Well, you know, it IS a Silver Age funnybook not meant to be taken seriously at all, a few minutes diversion after school. I personally think Kragoff is going to find himself exhausted after running around handling the ship alone. The gorilla manages one simple action after a colored light flashes and Kragoff barks orders. Yeah, that's going to be a big help during liftoff when dozens of dials have to be watched and switches thrown in correct sequence. Ah, we'll see how it works out. Keeping a baboon half starved and then giving it a loaded Tommy gun is one of the worst ideas I've seen in a long time. Like they are not aggresive enough by nature. Sheesh.
Saying a mechanic doesn't need brains for his work is hitting below the belt, Ivan. Say that to the guy who comes to work on your furnace or fix your car and see where it gets you. A wheel spinning off at sixty miles per hour, I bet. I don't see any indication here that Kragoff is sponsored by the Russian government or military. He wants to claim the Moon for the Communist empire but it looks as if he's just another crackpot mad scientist acting on his own.
Continuing the tradition of not being on top of things, that was Page 5 with Page 4's comments,
Here's Page 4, hope that helps (head bowed in chagrin)
Now the comments for Page 5,
Page 5. Oh, my God! Reed! Is that your idea of a streamlined aerodynamic shape... a rocket with a big round ball on the leading end?! That would work for something assembled in orbit, which wouldn't be expected to push its way through atmosphere at escape velocity. But you know, I guess Reed knows what he's doing. The Thing's comment is terrific. Not too long earlier, he has just been a surly menace ready to go berserk at any moment. This would work fine for a few issues but would get old real quick. By having Ben Grimm's basic personality resurface once he more or less came to terms with becoming a monster, his sarcastic sense of humor saved the character and made the Thing one of the most appealing Silver Age heroes.
Okay, Comrade Kragoff? Am I wrong or could you have just made the cockpit of your spaceship transparent and not the whole vehicle? You know, saving millions of dollars and avoiding huge amounts of technical obstacles caused by requiring a transparent vehicle. Oh, never mind. This was when Lee and Kirby visualized the Earth being surrounded by a permanent belt of cosmic rays which would mutate living things passing through it. As space travel became more common (both in the comics and in real world), this was changed so that the FF has been hit by a rare cosmic storm. Just their luck. Otherwise, all the American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts would be coming back down turned into six foot tall ducks, shooting lightning from their ears or growing extra navels, that sort of thing.
Kragoff doesn't seem worried he will just be killed instantly by the cosmic rays or develop massive cell breakdown, cancer, leukemia. Nope, he expects super-powers and nothing less. That's the attitude.
(What makes this worse is there's no one in the house to blame. i don't even have a cat that I could sat ran across the keyboard...)
If Stan knew back then that Orangutans are smarter than they look...
Page 6. This was a feature of the early Marvels that they soon dropped, breaking a story up into chapters, each with a splash page and title. Booklength stories were rare back then. Golden Age comics gave you a lot of five or six page stories each issue, but then they were 64 pages long and had lots of room. DC for the longest time kept putting three seperate stories into a 32 page comic, which meant it was hard to develop momentum or pacing; everything had to be jammed in.
That atmo-web suit is a typical Kirby throwaway invention. I don't think we ever saw it again. But I do want to say that our heroes are in a small enclosed area in outer space, where the oxygen and temperature have to be carefully regulated... and the Human Torch is standing there with his flame on for no good reason. Johnny, what is WRONG with you?
Or gorillas. In one story, an alien invader was killed by a gorilla because the beast was too stupid to be controlled. Also, in FF 14, the giant octopus kills (sorta) the Puppet Master because it is almost brainless.
Well, we've learned a good deal since. Always more to learn. I've been watching videos of crowds rewarding people who feed them by bringing trinkets. Now, if I could train a crow to bring me wallets because I put some bird seed... no, wait, I'd be an old Iron Man villain,
Page 7. I like the body language of the apes as they line up to report for duty, particularly the Orangutan just plopping down. Kirby and Ditko weren't really trying to get strict anatomical accuracy here; the baboon is kind of dodgy at best. I think their approach was to suggest the essence of a gorilla or an ourangutan and let it go at that. But then Kirby's anatomy for humans was usually less than scrupulous as well, with hands disproportionately large or stances with legs four feet apart.
Page 8. The baboon can change his shape to imitate other objects. Fair enough, but you know, what is part of the body is Cragoff holding him by? Ewww. No wonder the ape wriggles loose. And the Orangutan has quasi-magnetic powers that affect living beings? I love the apalled expression and body language from Cragoff in panel 5. Maybe he realizes he has gotten in over his head with this whole idea of giving three sullen primates super powers when he himself hasnt shown any new abilites.
Page 9. Notice Sue turning the wheel to close the hatch to the airlock. A small detail like that adds a lot to plausibility. And I'm just saying, but when you are getting close to hitting the moon, maybe someone should be specifically on duty to watch for it before you wreck your ship. ("Oh, the Moon... yeah, I didn't notice it, it just jumped out of nowhere.")
A stunning view of the Blue Area. It turns out it's the remains of some ancient civilization. How cool is that? Years later, we are told that this was an outpost of the Kree, leading us into Captain Mar-Vell and the war with the Skrulls and so on and so forth. But I like the awe and mystery of finding this unexpected unexplained dead city on the Moon, of all places. Early Marvel, before every little detail was mapped and explained, had a wonderful feeling of discovery.
Page 10. This CAN'T be how it happened. This shows why Stan could have used an editor himself. They did not just pop open the hatch and skip out onto the lunar surface to see if there was air. Some sort of probe must have been extended for analysis. But here's the panel showing them strolling around, so the situation needed to be explained quickly. Look at Reed's backpack and headgear, he is doing some tech readings right there. Sue's balloon should have read, "You're right, Reed, the air is exactly like that of Earth. But how?"
Page 11. Now we see Ivan Kragoff's power. If the cosmic rays gave abilities related in some way to a person's basic personality (a big topic in itself), then it seems Kragoff was worried about being harmed and wished to be safe. Well, he came from a culture full of in-fighting and backstabbing as scientists tried to rise in status at the expense of others, so this makes sense. The art is really cool here. The Red Ghost is shown as an outline that can be seen through. It looks remarkably like the way Sue was represented in the recent Fantastic Four movies.
Wait a minute. The Watcher? Where did he come from?
Page 12. And now, Lee and Kirby present another new character. Those first thirty odd issues of THE FANTASTIC FOUR had an impressive barrage of new characters appearing, nearly all of whom are still being used today. Marvel sure got their money's worth in those issues. The Watcher looks less human than he soon would; in his next few appearances, he resembled a regular human being, increasingly pudgy by the way. Here he has that oversized rectangular head and glowing eyes. He is wearing white robes like a Greek philosopher, appropriately enough I guess, but he also has some sort of purple tunic or breastplate under them and a high collared purple cloak as well. By the first Galactus story, though, the Watcher looked much less imposing, even harmless. My guess is this might have been to make Galactus seem even tougher, like putting James Coco in robes next to Charles Bronson in gladiator armor.
Page 13. The Watcher isn't thinking too clearly here. Maybe he has been up without sleep for too long, you know Watching. If his people are secretive and don't want their presence known, why reveal himself in full view and explain it all? Why not just relocate the intruders to another part of the Moon and conceal his home, or wipe their memories.. heck, just disintegrate them and let the people on Earth think they crashed? No, this Watcher has some issues. He is just aching to talk to somone, even if just to get all pompous and dismiss them. He needs message boards or Facebook or something.
This was one of the first superhero comics I read. I loved it.
Our heroes fight an evil communist ghost... and his super powered monkeys... on the moon
What's not to love?
Page 14. You know, just how did Reed find Ben? He stretches his arm out a mile or so and gropes around blindly? Not gonna work. If I had to come up with an explanation, maybe the FF had some sort of radio beacons built into their suits and Reed traced the signal, but that is just handwaving. (Actually, carrying little two way-radios would have saved them a lot of grief over the years. Reed should have worked on that rather than some of his whackier inventions.
The fifth panel shows Ditko inking Kirby to great effect. He just nails the facial expressions, with Reed and Sue being wary and Ben showing awe at what he has seen. And this is an old science-fiction cliche trotted out again, where a superior alien is pitting two groups of humans against each other to decide a conflict. I first saw this in the Fredric Brown story "Arena" but it has been used many times.
I was so fortunate to read these comics at an impressionable age. They are burned into my brain's DNA,
Page 16. This is the sort of thing that made feminist readers fume. "The helpless female" is seized around the waist and taken hostage. In all fairness, Sue had no force field ability at this time, and she had no combat training at all.. she wasn't a former police officer or karateka black belt or anything like that, just an ordinary young woman from Long Island taking care of her kid brother. Trying to punch it out with this scary guy who's holding a freezegun would likely get her beaten up or frozen in a shell of ice herself, if she had thought of it. Not that the boys are doing much better, to be honest. Reed gets frozen, Johnny is smothered in an asbestos wrap and Ben gets mandhandled by a gorilla. Round One goes to the Red Ghost and the Super-Apes.
Page 18. I don't buy Reed's explanation for turning Johnny into a jet engine. The sad truth is that the Thing was not built for marathon running and lumbered along too slowly for this situation. This improvised rocket got the two of them on their way without Ben throwing a snit and bringing it up again on every adventure/
Page 19. Sue Storm has an interesting political philosophy there. "The Communist masses, innocently enslaved by their evil leaders..." huh. At least she doesn't think all the Russians are themselves brutal bad guys, as was the common viewpoint during the Cold War by many Americans. So the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes is actually a metaphor for the Communist Party (the Ghost) and the general population of the Soviet Union. (I love the gorilla thoughtfully regarding Sue, it looks as if he is agreeing with her speech. "We are exploited, pretty American woman!")
Sue is no dummy. She figures there must be a power source keeping that force field running, and she finds the master cable and breaks the circuit to free the apes. I give her credit for staying calm in a stressful situation. Sue may not be a world-class scientific genius but she's smart enough and she doesn't sit in the corner crying about how helpless she is. As the apes dig into the food and break out of their prison, Sue has freed them and herself at considerable risk to herself. Good going, Invisible Girl.
Page 20. Wait, what? The deadly raygun "won't react against anythng which is below the visible spectrum of light?" Did Sue know this? How? Was she just being incredibly reckless by walking into what she knows is a trap? Beats me.
Then the Torch makes the Red Ghost run by "heating the molecules in the air itself." If you say so, Johnny. It's an interesting question though, whether the Ghost needs to breathe while he is in his unsolid form If he does, then making the air so hot it's unsafe to inhale would affect him. If not, if he doesnt need to breathe, then how can he talk? If he is making parts of his lungs, mouth and vocal chords solid enough to speak, then he is moving air and then would be affected. Johnny may not be as dumb as he seems.
Wrong issue m8
Page 21. The Watcher's actions here again just dont make sense unless you realize he is bored out of his mind and having fun flinging the Red Ghost around through time and space ("Watch this! Theres a dinosaur, scary eh? Now I'll throw him into the future, hee hee."). Reed whips up a Doubletalk Raygun to freeze the Red Ghost. Even as a kid, I knew that Reed's explanations didnt make too much sense scientifically. My guess was he was teasing his teammates by telling them nonsense and knowing they wouldn't get it... the same way adults sometimes tell little kids nonsense like the wind being caused by trees breathing, to see if they'll buy it.
Oh my God. Thank you. Maybe I am the wrong person to be doing this sort of thread. That's from the ANNUAL with the origin of Dr Doom coming up later.
I don't even have any excuses. This is like getting a speeding ticket and then backing up into the police car. Let me dredge up the right page.
Okay, now HERE is Page 13, where the Watcher explains the history of his strange people and gives the Thing and Red Ghost a slightly pointless warning.
I liked the Watch because most of the time he'd swear up and down he was NOT going to interfere and an issue later he'd be in everyone's business. He could nor help breaking his own rules. I've done that so many times (well, about lesser matters) that I sympathize with him.
Page 22. Hah! And the Red Ghost gets what he deserves. Good. The moral is, dont mistreat your ape slaves, especially if they have super-powers. If you find yourself in such a position. I suppose you could take this as a metaphor for the downtrodden masses overthrowing their cruel ruling class, if you think Stan and Jack were going in that direction. And why not?
The Black Panther lights up another one
From THE FANTASTIC FOUR# 52, July 1966. T'Challa takes a nicotine break. Note the classy lighter. Smoking was fairly common in Marvel comics of that era. Reed Richard, Steve Rogers, Henry Pym and Tony Stark were all seen holding pipes in that distinguished way (Tony also lit up a cig once in a while). Ben Grimm and Nick Fury preferred cigars.