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Fantastic Four #4 introduces Prince Namor, the SUB-MARINER.
Let me be clear up front before discussing this issue. I hate the Sub-Mariner. I think he was created as a lightning-rod to absorb all the excess hatred of humanity, so that we could ultimately live in peace together. Sadly, the plan did not work, and we were left with a bunch of loathsome comics featuring this punk.
Full disclosure having been made, let’s take a look at FF #4:
There he is, the bastard. Running away with poor Sue Storm! A few points are worth making about this cover before we really start to lay into this guy.
First: Note the Torch’s admonition that it is urgent to catch Sub-Mariner before he reaches the water. Fair enough. But did anyone notice he’s IN THE WATER ALREADY? That may pose a problem.
Second: If the Torch is in such a hurry to catch this guy, why is he circling back and flying in loops to slow himself down?
Third: What about Mr. F? Wouldn’t this be a good time to stretch out his arms rather than practice his dragon-claw technique?
Fourth: Why hasn’t the Thing caught up to them? He’s wearing waterproof galoshes, for pete’s sake!
Fifth: I’m not even going to get into the Sub-Mariner’s eyebrows, haircut, ears, or footwings. Those are easy targets that surely have received derision from others more articulate than I.
Enough about the cover. Let’s get to the heart of the matter. The story begins with the Torch on hiatus from the FF for reasons that are not entirely clear. All we know is that the Torch is “thru” with the FF.
See, that wasn’t a typo. The Torch was anticipating netspeak! More proof that Kirby and Lee were far ahead of their time.
So the crew is out looking for the Torch. On the way, Sue stops for a soda.
Sue really, really likes soda.
After some twists and turns, we ultimately find the Torch in what appears to be a homeless shelter for superheroes. By nothing but PURE HAPPENSTANCE, he picks up an old Sub-Mariner comic to read!
Torch seems not to mind the creepy dude staring at him.
Anyways, a mysterious, grizzled, hairy strongman in the shelter draws the attention of Torch and the others. After fighting with some of the other vagrants, the strongman for reasons unknown decides to let the Torch give him a makeover.
That’s some pretty good work by the Torch. As it turns out—again, by PURE HAPPENSTANCE—this grizzled dude turns out to be the Sub-Mariner. Unfortunately, he has amnesia. But the Torch realizes that the ocean might cure what ails poor Namor.
Sub-Mariner regains his memory and finds that his underwater kingdom has been destroyed. He blames the humans, which isn’t an unreasonable assumption. C’mon, who else did it: the seahorses?
One might argue that the Sub-Mariner is a bit ungrateful. But it’s hard to blame him for being in a bad mood, given that he seems to be wearing the same briefs he wore decades earlier. Good thing he’s rinsing off in the ocean.
Long story short, Sub-Mariner tries to get revenge on the humans by enlisting some monstrous assistance. Said assistance gets walloped by the FF, principally because the Thing CARRIES A NUKE INTO THE GULLET OF THE MAIN MONSTER. (I just thought that merited all caps.)
Sub-Mariner has behaved like a jackass, but at least he seems to be motivated by principle: he believes his people have been destroyed by the humans, and therefore retribution is warranted. Even if he’s wrong, it’s hard to completely fault his perspective, right? But then Sub-Mariner encounters poor Sue Storm.
That’s either some poor coloring, or Sue was REALLY frightened by Namor’s grasp.
Apparently Namor’s sturdy principles of justified revenge are subservient to the overriding principle of “OMG hottie!” Sadly, in a mere page or two, Sub-Mariner confirms that he is just a dickhead. A pointy-headed, widows-peaked, manicured-eyebrows, scaly-briefs, wing-footed dickhead. The rest of the FF is not amused and tries to tackle him.
There’s some fighting involving accusations of clodhood. Serious stuff. It ends up with the Torch creating a whirlwind that picks up Sub-Mariner and deposits him in the middle of the sea. Sub-Mariner vows that he will return. Oh yes, he will return. Much to our dismay. Over. And over. Again.
Click on the image for a larger version!
Click on the image for larger version!
The villain of the hour in Fantastic Four #3 is the MIRACLE MAN.
He’s a tad abrasive.
Miracle Man is seemingly able to do pretty much anything he wants, much to the chagrin of the FF. He decides that what he really wants to do with his life is—can you guess it?—that’s right, conquer the earth.
Now, Miracle Man can be a jerk. But you have to admire a villain who writes his notes in a lopsided fashion so that a reader peering through a window, or, um, panel, can read every word on the page!
The Miracle Man battle isn’t the centerpiece of this issue, though.
OK, that’s not actually what Reed said.
COSTUMES! They all get costumes. This issue marks the first appearance of the FF in their blue regalia. That’s a milestone worth a moment of silent appreciation.
Back to Miracle Man. So it turns out he actually has no powers except the ability to hypnotize a lot of people all at once, which creates the illusion that he is all-powerful. Whatever. Now check out the first full-page ad:
That’s product placement, baby! “If you like what you saw in this issue, you too can try to conquer the world! And perhaps also be a total jackass!”
Yet another hypnotism ad appears later:
What is the strong power that men have over men and women? Notice the careful delineation between “men” on the one hand and “men and women” on the other. NO GIRLS ALLOWED IN THE HYPNOSIS CLUB! Note also that the subjects include mystic healing, telepathy, mind reading, thought transference, etc. Et cetera! Because everyone knows exactly what goes along with “thought transference”!
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Fantastic Four #2 introduces us to a race of aliens committed to destroying the FF.
OMG! SKRULLS!
The Skrulls, like any alien race with good taste in planets, intend to invade Earth. Only the FF stand in their way. Also, the Skrulls are incredibly stupid, which complicates their invasion plans.
The Skrulls are shape-shifters, so among the many hijinks they pull in their invasion, they impersonate the FF to turn humanity against the team. The plan doesn’t work so well. By the end of the story, the Skrull impersonators have permanently shape-shifted into cows grazing on a pasture.
You thought I was joking, didn’t you?
The Skrulls are a little goofy looking, but I like ‘em. They actually look like ALIENS. Although one of the Skrulls on the cover (getting schooled by the Thing) looks suspiciously familiar:
Not seeing it? Let’s change perspective and move a little closer:
The Skrulls are shape-shifters . . .
Never mind.
I could go on and on about Fantastic Four #1, but hundreds of other issues are begging for attention. A few words are in order, however, about the villain introduced in this issue:
THE MOLE MAN
Sorry. It’s just mean to show the poor guy out of costume. Let’s try that again:
TREMBLE AS YOU GAZE UPON—THE MOLE MAN!
Much better.
Apparently Mole Man is supposed to be very, very ugly. We know this via—expository panels!
Like many villains, Mole Man turned against humanity because he was an outcast. And because he got schooled by a dandy with a thin moustache and a green pinstripe suit. There’s no way to continue a civilized life after an experience like that.
So Mole Man has a plan to destroy the world with underground monsters. Not surprisingly, he is foiled by the FF. You can fill in the details using your imagination. It’s not that hard.
Reed captures Mole Man as the team escapes from the underground lair. But once outside, a teammate notices that Mole Man is nowhere to be seen:
Good thinking, Reed. Except you’re wrong. Wrong, wrong, WRONG! Too bad he didn’t say, “if Mole Man returns, I’ll eat Thing’s boxer shorts!” Because (SPOILER) he would totally have had to do it.
The first issue of Fantastic Four contains a lot of exposition. That’s natural for a first issue of a new series. But the character exposition on the cover (see prior post) actually seems to do a better, more accurate job showing the gist of the characters than the inside of the first issue.
Let’s start with the Thing. He’s supposed to be a gritty, blue-collar type who is street-smart and down to earth. He spends a lot of time mocking Reed’s nerdiness and prolix manner of speech. (That’s right, it’s prolix!)
But the first time we meet Thingy, his speech is astoundingly proper:
Just to make sure you didn’t miss his speech patterns amidst the exciting violence in these panels, here’s a recap:
“Why must they . . .”
“He’ll not get another . . .”
“Fool! Did you not see me in time!”
Yep, that’s exactly how you would expect a salt-of-the-earth, man-of-the-people type of guy to speak! He actually sounds just like Doctor Doom in these panels. But never fear, he’ll find his groove soon enough! Let’s take a look at the Torch:
Our introduction to Johnny Storm is apparently meant to inform us that he really can’t help destroying others’ vehicles. It just happens! They came too close! Good thing the pilots all used their parachutes. They would make excellent COBRA pilots! (As in GI JOE.) (Sorry.) OK, now let’s check out Mr. Fantastic:
Pretty boring introduction for Reed Richards, which is no shock given that he’s well, sort of a boring guy. He’s smoking a pipe for pete’s sake! But what strikes me is that for all his genteel intellectual docility during the first half of the comic, by the end of the origin story when the big four are choosing their “official” names, he chooses MR. FANTASTIC. Talk about hubris! What about Stretchy, or Flexo, or even, um, Elastic Man? But nooooooo, he had to coopt the name of his whole fledgling organization for himself.
I saved the best for last—poor, helpless Sue Storm:
Holy damn! Sue’s invisibility may be pretty weak, but she has an unbeatable alternate power: passive-aggressive red scare! Look how in a single panel she manages to manipulate the Pre-Thing with the spectre of communism and a blatant “are you chicken?” play.
Fortunately, Sue got her way, and the commies didn’t beat the FF to space. They did catch up later . . . but that’s a story for another day.
We start our journey, not surprisingly, with Fantastic Four #1:
There’s a lot to like about this cover. It’s a “welcome” to a new series. It introduces all the main characters, both visually and with expository dialogue that hints at the essence (such as it was) of each character. It shows a villain. It has ACTION! Plus some poor, anonymous, defenseless people at the outskirts (more on them in a moment).
What’s interesting about this cover is how accurately it foreshadows the relatively thin reed (no pun intended) of character each FF member will depend on at the outset of the series. Let’s look at them each in turn:
The Invisible Girl is shown helpless despite her ability to turn invisible. This is a familiar circumstance for poor Sue Storm. Her powers, while cool, are clearly the lamest of the four, at least at the outset of the series. But there’s more going on here. The others are all confident in their abilities to overcome their foe. But poor Sue is just scared and unable to cope. Sadly, she will be shackled with this problem for some time. The Ham Taco is rooting for her.
The Human Torch is portrayed here as a cocky jackass. He remains a cocky jackass for most of the series. I still haven’t seen the FF movie because I don’t think my delicate sensibilities could withstand hearing an actual human shout, “Flame On!”.
The Thing looks here like he has no skin. He actually does have skin. We know that because he never stops complaining about how ugly it looks. He isn’t even happy when he gets a hot blind girlfriend who doesn’t care about his appearance. Strangely, even though he’s self-conscious, he does most of his superhero work wearing nothing but briefs.
Finally, here’s Mr. Fantastic. He’s tied up at the moment. (That’s right. I went there.) It’s not clear how this giant mindless monster bursting from the ground was able to rope up a super-flexible genius superhero. Not to mention the fact that Mr. F can squeeze himself through friggin’ keyholes just a few issues down the road, making it hard to understand how some simple ropes could detain him for even a split second. But he’s got bravado here, and that’s all he needs!
Finally, back to those defenseless people:
Interesting bunch here. We appear to have Street Fighter villain M. Bison at the corner in the upper left, practicing his technique and wondering whether to enter the fray. We have green man, brown man, and gold-human-torch-look-alike man, all in varying degrees of distress. We have woman-with-a-purse, who we’ll see again during the Kirby era. And finally, we have a fire hydrant that either was missed by the colorist or was an errant target of the Invisible Girl.
All in all, particularly in the context of 1961, this was a heck of a cover, despite its snicker-worthy features viewed from a very sage 2006 standpoint.
More on this milesone issue to follow!
This site is dedicated to goofing around with Marvel's FANTASTIC FOUR comic book. Starting with issue numero uno, we will unearth the mysteries of one of the most popular comics of all time. I promise this will be a serious and scholarly exercise.
You may be wondering why a site about the Fantastic Four is called The Ham Taco. I really have no idea. I'm sorry. [more]
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