Storytime With Annotations: FANTASTIC FOUR 4 and 9, featuring Sub-Mariner
Staring with THE FANTASTIC FOUR# 9, December 1962. Before Kennedy's assassination, before the Beatles hit it big, before the Civil Rights Act. Seems like another planet at this point.
Page 1. Does it seem to you that this chamber is kept free of water, maybe from tanks of compressed air? It would be easier to keep a TV working if it wasn't submerged. This was years before cable-TV came in and I can't imagine what sort of antennae Sub-Mariner would need to pick up the NBC Nightly News. A two hundred foot tower on an island with a cable running down into the ocean. So this is one of those ubiquitous monitors of the Silver Age which show locations anywhere, even inside buildings, without cameras of any sort.Aside from the framed photo of Sue, Sub-Mariner's decor is very organic and marine-oriented. His chair is made from a giant clam shell, fishing nets are used as decoration, his table might be a big ol' starfish.
Page 2.Dang, Reed has messed up big time. He might be a scientific genius but he needs a money manager and an accountant. Honestly, though, I know this is a funny book and we have to cut the plot some slack but surely Reed still had many lesser inventions he could sell the patents to. It may not be as easy for the others to raise cash quickly. You think, well, Thing and Torch could clean up doing construction work or demolition. But there are unions and permits in the way. The Invisible Girl could be history's greatest pick-pocket and shoplifter if she wanted to, ha ha. Heck, all of them could start claiming rewards for the crooks the catch or accept payment from grateful citizens they rescue. But no, they're Silver Age and too noble for that.
Page 3.Those innocent workers are going to need fresh underwear after being treated like that. The Thing leaves himself up on assault charges so often, all I can figure is that the victims are too intimidated to press charges ("Those guys are famous super-heroes, we'd never win a lawsuit against them.")As an aside, Ayers' inking still shows the Thing as mostly having leathery dinosaur hide rather than the broken rock fragments which will take over. I like this earlier style better, to be honest.
Page 4.Ben may feel better after having let off some steam, but getting that taxi down is going to require a crane and some workers. Not to mention restitution to the cab company for totalling their vehicle. I bet the bill for this and other escapades from the Thing will be sent to the Baxter Building's famous occupants, as if they're not broke enough.Here's Alicia, giving moral perspective when it's needed most. She was as much a part of the comic's success as the four stars. It was the relationship with her that changed Ben from a seriously menacing monster about to run amok at any time to a hero with a self-deprecating sense of humor. I love the Thing's statement in panel 6. Despite his flaws, when Stan hit the mark he was the best dialogue writer of that era.
Looks like someone switched Page Three and Four. I'm not mentioning Gremlins, you understand but..
What's the story behind that big stone head in the corner? Souvenir of an unrecorded adventure? (And why did the Simpson's have a similar one in their basement? Was this a fad I missed?)A million dollars went further back then than it does now. Not that I will ever know firsthand,
>>114953457QUALITY
Page 6.Breaking up the story into five page chapters was a carry-over from the old Atlas monster comics. I liked the practice, it gave us some expansive splash pages where the art could breath a little. Early Spider-Man and Hulk stories did this as well but it faded out soon. In the splash, we see James Arness and Amanda Blake as Matt Dillon and Miss Kitty from GUNSMOKE. To the panel right, the familiar profile of Alfred Hitchcock and some unidentified pirate.Next, we see Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, then a flustered Jackie Gleason. All these actors were on contracts at the time which would be hard to break. Maybe Sub-Mariner walked into the Paramount office and calmly picked up a few executives, one in each hand, to shake them into agreeing their actors could be loaned to this new studio before someone got hurt.Hitchcock being shown how a rubber prop knife works is droll, considering PSYCHO had been a smash only a few years earlier.
>>114953683>big stone head.I want one.
>>114953707It's classic stuff, If only my mom hadn't thrown those issues away...*sigh*
Page 7.I think that's Dean Martin talking to Gleason.And Sub-Mariner makes a dramatic entrance. The cigarette holder is a nice touch, living underwater far from tobacco outlets makes smoking a difficult habit to acquire.
>>114953728Specify that the delivery men MUST bring it into your house and not leave it in the street.
>>114953731I had a box full of 60’s and 70’s comics my mom tossed away too. I still don’t get it.
Unpopular opinion, but I actually like Kirby's '70s and '80s stuff more than what's generally considered his peak in the '60s.
Page 8.You know, as master schemes of super-villains go, this isn't bad so far. A thick wad of cash for pocket money. Look at the way Sue is holding her loot to her chest. She's been attracted to this guy from the start. Now, with Reed having screwed their finances up, Namor is rubbing it in how rich he is and bailing them out. I bet she's batting her eyelashes whether anyone notices it. At sixteen, Johnny really needs some sort of personal manager to handle his finances. As soon as he gets some dough, he buys a sports car and picks up some Sunset Boulevard floozies errr nice girls to to cruising with. He'd be broke the next day no matter how much money you gave him. "Super-hero Rich," we used to call it.
>>114953800Everyone has their preferences. After 1968, when the smaller drawing paper size was mandated, Kirby started doing more four-panel pages and several splash pages each issue, He also tended to do more extreme close-ups and have the figures fill each panel to the edges, He had trouble adjusted. I like his late 1950s-pre Marvel work best, actually. BLACK MAGIC, ADVENTURES OF THE FLY, CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN. But it's all personal taste.
Page 9.This sequence is just to set up the gag of the Thing picking up a dozen body builders and throwing them in the ocean. Wearing only his blue trunks and spreading a couple of newspapers over himself is no way to be anonymous for someone who looks like that. If Ben really wanted rest, he'd hang out on the balcony of their hotel suite or doze in the park wrapped up in his camoflauge get-up. Meanwhile, dolled up and wearing a dress that still has the price tag on it, Sue "dines with the man who holds a strange fascination for her." We don't see Reed reacting to this at all. She knows Reed has feelings for her, they've been carrying on a sort-of-romance-but-not-quite for years. Maybe she's going with her emotions and Reed has vanished from her thoughts at the ("Reed? Oh, that stretchy guy?")
>>114953873I should add that if Johnny is driving over a highway that he has just fused smooth with a fireball, he's going to be sitting in a car with four burst tires. Just sayin'
Page 10.Pretty sure that's Brigitte Bardot sauntering through the night club. Kirby also had her appear in an issue of THOR and I don't blame her one bit. "Not long afterwards," Namor and Reed are sailing in the Mediteranean. What happened with Sue and Namor? Did they... well, you know? She's a big girl now, and if she rejoins the others late, I suppose it's her business. But I bet Johnny gave her a hard time about her dates and Ben sure dislikes Sub-Mariner. There might have been so chilly untalkative afternoons at the hotel where they were staying.But I doubt if anything really happened between them other than some dinner and conversation, though. Namor's behavior has all the marks of unsatisfied lust toward her. Comics Code aside, he's a multi-millionaire with a world-wide infamous reputation, running around Los Angeles. I'd be surprised if there wasn't a line down the hall to his office ("Oh, Prince Namor, I'd do ANYTHING to get a role in your movie, simply anything...). And he usually walks around mostly naked, showing off. He'd do all right.
>>114953907Panel 3. Namor, you phony. Acting friendly, putting a hand on Reed's shoulder while all the while you're planning his death. And Reed buys the whole bit about using telephone lenses from a ship at sea. Not to mention that he seems to think the animated monsters in the 1933 KING KONG were life sized. Mr Fantastic is not at his best here, maybe he's preoccupied with phone calls to his broker and trying to get a portfolio built up again.Page 11.Nice shot of the Cyclops. This may not be Polyphemus, THE Cyclops we all know from Odysseus. As to how he speaks, English? Well, Sub-Mariner has a deal with him. Maybe they've known each other a while, they're both long-lived. Panel 2 has the Cyclops saying he was told to keep Reed a prisoner. But he says he has no use for prisoners, which Sub-Mariner must have known. So this still counts as conspiracy to commit murder in the unlikely event any of this makes it to a court.
Page 12.In the early years, Reed's abilities were played up for great visuals as much as other super-hero's. But as time went on, it was more his semi-Mad Scientist ability to whip up crazy gadgets at short notice became more important to the team than stretching. There have been thousands of FANTASTIC FOUR comics published and I'd hate to even try to skim through them all. But I'm sure there were issues where Reed had his powers but never saw a reason to use them.Nice snappy one-liner about the dinosaurs. Remember the old bar room saying, "The bigger your opponent is, the more of a beating he'll give you." Wait, that's not right.
Page 13.I'd love to see how Reed gets home. I bet he made a raft of his body and oars from his arms, made it to the nearest island from which he could charter a boat and get to an airport. What a nuisance.How long a period of time does this story take place over? Sub-Mariner is flying his crew from Hollywood to the Mediterranean and now to Africa. In helicopters yet. I bet this is the first time since the space flight that Johnny has used a mundane plain old parachute. And once again, it's implied that Namor isn't trying to kill the three male FF members, just leave them imprisoned in faraway places. Picture Johnny not escaping. We see him with a long beard and graying hair, eating with the natives and getting used to their culture, maybe taking a wife. There's a whole 12 issue series right there.
Page 14.Of course, this is not the real historical Africa of 1962. This is what Lee and Kirby saw in old B-movies featuring Tarzan and Bomba and Sheena. It's Mythical Africa in the same sense as the Arthurian Camelot was Mythical Britain and the Marvel's comics with Kid Colt and the Rawhide Kid was the Mythical West. I bet anything that twenty miles away from this tribe was a lost city inhabited by the descendants of Phoenecian sailors or else a valley full of surviving dinosaurs.I do like the animal heads used as masks. If that crocodile-head helmet was available, I'd buy one.\\And Sub-Mariner must be paying these guys to keep Johnny prisoner. What else would they want with him? Why risk a UN task force showing up to see if they've got a famous white American being held against his will?
Page 15.Johnny's flame had a short time limit in the first few years. It was the same way Cyclops got dizzy after using his powers or it hurt Reed to stretch too far. They all got powered up pretty quickly. The display of the fire-resisting potion is pretty cool. These Africans seem to have a certain amount of ritual built around it. I like how angry Johnny is in panel 7, not only at being locked up by these guys but because he knows Sub-Mariner betrayed him. Of all people you don't want seriously mad at you, the Human Torch has to be near the top of the list.
Page 16.There's those multiple flame images again. It's not that the Torch can seperate some of his flame enough to create a sort of fiery sculpture that impresses me, it's that these flame images move independently. I swear, if this has kept up a bit longer, we'd have a story where an image rebelled and tried to impersonate Johnny and take over his life.
Page 17.Ack! The volcano's erupting. It must be the end of the movie, put your shoes back on. Now, wait, it's a comic. Anyway, the native tribe not only lost their magic potion but it looks as if everything they owned was buried under lava. Some neighboring tribes must have had to assimilate a bunch of refugees. Johnny certainly can't fly back to the US at this point in his career. He couldn't even be sure of escaping those fire-eaters. So, like Reed, I guess he flies and then walks and then flies until he finds a town with a radio or telephone service where he can call for a lift. ("There's goes the last of my advance for the movie. Easy come, easy go. I'll give Namor a sunburn he'll never forget.")Now, back in Hollywood AGAIN, we find Sub-Mariner setting Ben up. They had an unfinished tangle a few issues errr months ago, and it looks like Namor is aching to settle who's stronger. Such a Marvel thing. The emphasis on physical strength and brawling ability seldom was brought up over at DC. Those guys fought with trick arrows and beams of green light and obedient fish.
Page 18.Jack Kirby in his element, showing action. There's something primal in actually slugging it out that comics convey so well. This was a big factor in Marvel overtaking DC in sales. The Flash making crooks dizzy by running around them or Batman tripping them with a Batarang was okay, but compared to the Thing and the Hulk breaking cars over each other, it seemed anemic.
Page 19.Ben is ready to make Namor's head into more of a normal shape. Then, Plot Twist err Fate steps in.
Page 20.In the first few issues, the Thing spontaneously turned back into Ben Grimm for a few minutes. Or once, hot Egyptian sunlight triggered the change. Here's it's a lightning bolt. I liked the way Kirby drew Ben Grimm with a wide nose in the first few years, it gave him a kind of working class look. Ben is lucky his face isn't caved in, if Namor lands a punch that was meant for the Thing. Hopefully, Sub-Mariner didn't connect that well. Well, Sue, what have YOU been up the past few days? Shopping on Melrose Avenue? Making long-distance calls to your friends back on Long Island? ("Beth? You'll never guess where I am!") Getting a tan? I hope she hasn't been hanging out in the studio all this time, reading the magazines and gazing critically at her fingernails.
Page 21.Sue assumes that Namor hasn't killed the other three. She's right of course, probably she remembered that the Comics Code frowned on such things. Even the Red Skull and the Joker couldn't explicitly kill at this point. She's really mad that he pulled this. After that dinner date, I get the feeling Sue was considering a more serious romance with this guy wouldn't be too bad. And if it didn't work out, the fling might make Reed jealous enough to get serious about THEIR relationship.I give her credit for defiance. All she has is invisibility in an enclosed room and she knows how powerful Sub-Mariner is. But her response is, "Over my dead body! You'll have to fight for it."Namor having the powers of electric eels and cave fish and such. If any other storyteller arbitrarily gave a character new powers like that, I'd be annoyed. The whole reason you show the heroes using their powers at the start of a story is to establish what they could do. Kirby tended to pull new abilities out of his pencil all the time but for some reason, it never bothered me when he did it. I c cut him some slack because his art had such conviction.Still, he had Thor's hammer do whatever the moment required, from acting as a cyclotron to summoning magnetic waves from the earth to hypnotizing people by reflecting sunlight. He was the only artist I thought could get away with this.
Page 22. That radar sense wasn't used again that I recall, but it would be hilarious if it came up during a Namor/Daredevil rematch. Okay, this has gone past courting and flirting into full-scale assault. Picking a woman up off the floor with your arm around her waist, so you can carry her off to your hideout a thousand miles away. Yeah, Namor's looking at some serious prison time for that. I don't know if he tried to claim diplomatic immunity at this point; as far as he knew, he was the only one of his race left alive. Even so, I wouldn't want to be the cop putting handcuffs on him. Final panel. So imagine you're about to kidnap a woman and you haul her struggling and kicking form away. What's the last thing (Thing) you want to see coming through the door?
Page 23.Some odd interactions here. I'd expect Torch and Thing to brush Sue aside and keeping pounding away at Sub-Mariner. "Outta the way, Susie! This crumb tried to kill us today!" And it's surprising to see Namor allow Sue to intervene for him. A few issues earlier, he told her "Stand aside! Prince Namor fears nothing on this planet." Maybe he's emotionally confused by Sue first resisting him and then standing up for him. He may even be thinking (wait for it) that he may have been wrong. That would be a first for him, but you never know.And Sue is all over the map emotionally. At this point, I think she doesn't even know what she really wants. There's Reed... wealthy, acclaimed, stuffy and bossy but in love with her. On the other hand, there's Sub-Mariner... wealthy, royalty, bossy and tempramental but also in love with her. She's all conflicted. It's a Harlequin romance with super-powers. I bet she needed a nap after all this agita.
The final panel strains credulity as much as anything else. A major motion picture is shot from scratch, edited and distributed within weeks. What? All I can think of is that it wasn't a narrative but a documentary. Lots of news footage, new actions performed by the FF for the cameras, interviews with those who knew them before the space flight. That could be slapped together quickly. And the merchandise would keep money pouring in for years. Human Torch action figures with little flamethrowers, Thing masks and gloves, empty boxes supposedly containing Invisible Girl dolls (ha ha), stretchy rubber Mr Fantastic figures, models of the Baxter Building and the Fantasticar, it's Beatlemania all over again.
The way Jack Kirby drew Namor's flat-topped triangular head may look odd to new fans but believe, the dude was weirder looking back in the day.
One meeting at the Baxter Building, one at Justice League headquarters To understand just why Marvel Comics were considered so revolutionary and exciting back at the dawn of the Silver Age, consider the two samples below. First, we see the Justice League convening to consider admitting a new member. From JLA# 4, May 1961:Then from FANTASTIC FOUR# 4, May 1962, the heroes interacting in the Baxter Building:Quite a difference between the sedate League style, (with its emphasis on stories which were puzzles and gimmick-oriented) and the heated melodrama of the Fantastic Four, (with emphasis on action and conflict). One of the reasons DC comics became increasingly bizarre and irrational in the 1960s is that the editors and writers were trying to mimic what Marvel was doing without really understanding it. In the early Silver Age, DC was Tony Bennett and Marvel was the Beatles; DC was Ellery Queen and Marvel was James Bond. DC was Adam Strange thinking his way to beat unlikely alien weapons that turned people into dolls, Marvel was the Thing duking it out with Sub-Mariner while Sue defended Namor.
This contrast in approach was not a coincidence. Gardner Fox said he thought comics should be about plot rather than personalities. Take any Fox issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE. Except for stock phrases like "Suffering Sappho" or references to a specific super-power, you can switch the dialogue balloons around and never see a difference. Aquaman spoke the same way Green Lantern did, Wonder Woman and the Flash had the same bland, businesslike approach and lack of personality. Now take a Lee-Kirby issue of THE FANTASTIC FOUR. Just transcribe the dialogue away from the art and most of the time you can easily tell who was speaking which line. It's not Arthur Miller, but it was fresh and exciting back then. The heroes seemed like people with feelings and opinions rather than costumes acting out their actions. Stan Lee loved writing soap opera and romance comics, and it came out in his super-hero tales.
Also, the FF page is a good example of storytelling through layout. Your eye starts at the top left corner, where Mr Fantastic is pointing at the window. From Reed pointing, you see Sue standing there looking at Ben. So your eye goes down to Thing. His face and arms are pointing down at the next panel in the lower left of the page. In the lower left of the page, his face is turned to the right to where Sue is behind and to his left. We follow his line of sight to the next panel over where Reed is again on the left hand side, again pointing. If you draw an imaginary Z over the page, the art will lead your eye across it. Kirby did this all the time, mostly by instinct as I understand he was not much for preliminary sketches. It's clear and easy to folow. Not many other artists understood this principle. Some drew much prettier, more elegant poses (or had flashier special effects) but their panels were separate little posters that had no clear relation to each other.I always wondered why Mike Sekowsky wasn't put on war or Western comics. His art seems much more oriented toward normal people than super-heroes. His Justice League members often look awkward or ill at ease. But the way they sit and walk and fall down is very natural. Also, I have to say he was good at putting a dozen characters into a single panel without it seeming crowded and giving everyone some expression
>>114954749Good stuff, OP.Don't get much time these days,But always good to see your stuff in Holla Forums.
>>114954880Hi there! Glad you like this sort of thread. If you like, you can read them in the Archives when you get a chance,
>>114953800I love that stuff too, user- especially Kamandi and Captain America and the Falcon.
Early Marvel covers had those thick borders on the word balloons. No idea why but it looked cool.A lot of comics history began in these few pages. This is from THE FANTASTIC FOUR# 4, way back in May 1962. Script by Stan Lee, pencils by Jack Kirby. At this point, FF was the only super-hero comics being published by Atlas (soon to become Marvel); the Hulk was just debuting in his own title, as indicated by the little promotional blurbs on these pages. Aside from that, it was the usual giant monster comics in STRANGE TALES and TALES TO ASTONISH, along with MILLIE THE MODEL and GUNSMOKE WESTERN starring Kid Colt.From what I've read, publisher Martin Goodman saw DC's Justice League selling well and ordered Stan to revive Timely's unholy trinity of the Golden Age: Captain America, the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner. But as he often did, Stan subverted his instructions a little. The new title FANTASTIC FOUR did feature the Human Torch to act as a selling point on covers. But this was a new version, a teenager unrelated to the 1940s android. The Sub-Mariner was nowhere to be seen. A few years later, Stan said he had doubts about a gung-ho patriotic crusader like Captain America going over well in the increasingly skeptical and questioning air of the early 1960s. So FANTASTIC FOUR resembled a typical Atlas book with Giant Monsters and alien invaders on the covers. Even the Thing looked a lot like Goom and Googam, son of Goom and That, Son of What.
>>114955097To me, it's not Kirby at his peak but what the heck... whatever you enjoy reading is time well spent.
Page One. We hop right into ongoing drama (in media res, as my Lit prof informed me). The Human Torch has stormed out (har!) of the Baxter Building because he can't deal with the Thing. They had been friends before the space flight. Ben was the best bud of Reed, who was dating (sort of) Johnny's older sister. So they knew each other and got along for the most part. But Johnny didn't expect he'd become part of a super-hero team and have to live with Reed and Ben. (He and Sue had the family house out on Long Island.) Personalities grated, tempers flared and Johnny took a hike. I suppose it's like being in a band. Jamming on weekends and playing an occasional gig is one thing. Going on the road, sitting in tour buses hour after hour and staying in hotel rooms with the same four guys for weeks on end...! Yike. It's a wonder rock bands didn't try to kill each other after a few years of success.
Page Two. That's the Miracle Man's giant monster who originally appeared on the cover of issue # 3. Part of the ongoing attempt to keep the Big Old Monster fans who loved Fin Fang Foom and Monsteroso picking up this new comic. Somewhere along the line, Stan (who was responsible for covers) evidently thought the time was right to go full-superhero. The FF got new matching costumes, a headquarters, a flying bathtub errr the Fantasticar. And he thought it was time to play it all up. So a replacement cover spotlighted the team rather than the monster, with lots of enticing blurbs to lure coins out of the sticky little hands of kids browsing at the spinner rack.
>>114955128You can do waaaaaaay worse than off peak Kirby.
Page Three. Sometimes I wonder about Sue's sadistic sense of humor. In the first half dozen issues, she seems to go out of her way to make people think they're losing their minds. A taxi driver sees a bill hanging in the air, this kid watches a glass of soda empty itself. Twice, Sue roughly shoves people out of her way, knocking them down for no reason and then turning visible right in front of her. Maybe those cosmic rays scrambled her better judgement for a while. I know it's a Silver Age comic and not to be taken seriously. This is a gag. But I picture that kid telling his parents what he saw and then having a session scheduled with a psychiatrist. ("So. Disappearing soda, eh? How do you get along with your father?")
>>114955514Oh absolutely. If I could go back to 1976 and give an order to Stan Lee, I'd tell him to pay Kirby a decent salary just to design new characters, come up with storylines, spark up costumes created by other artists. Maybe pay Kirby full scale for doing breakdowns and layouts. Marvel Comics of that era would have had more energy and impact that way.
Page Four. Well, heck, now Reed is acting all thoughtless. What happened to that biker's cycle when he was lifted off it? Who paid for damages? Come on, Mr Fantastic, you're supposed to be the smart one on the team. Meanwhile, Johnny is working on cars. These seem to be high school pals and I think he missed hanging around with them because he had to be fighting Skrulls and what not. This was very near the end of seeing young men wearing suits and ties and hats as casual attire (as opposed to office wear). In a little bit, haircream would be discarded, hair would get longer, beards and mustaches would sprout and clothing would absolutely lose its mind. What we think of as the Sixties was on the way.
Page Five. What a showoff. Well, I can't blame him. His loving the attention is more realistic than moping around feeling sorry for himself because he's different. The Thing is still wearing his boots here. I believe Kirby stopped drawing those boots and kept him barefoot was for the same reason he drew the Torch flaming even in elevators or in cockpits where it would be absolutely out of place... because showing them that way was more interesting. Uh-Oh. Someone might get a thrashing.
Page Six. To be fair to Ben, Johnny did dish out a lot of uncalled-for insults in the early issues. He was a smart-mouthed punk. Although he might claim he was only kidding around, it wasn't like teasing his school chums about being a bad driver or wearing glasses.
Page Seven. Even at his most bad-tempered, I don't think the Thing would have really hurt Johnny. They had enough of a quasi-family past to prevent that. But a little bruising, maybe getting tossed around.. that I could see, The way the Thing turned back into Ben Grimm (for only for a moment) in the early issues provoked a lot of fan discussion. The others could turn their powers on and off. Speculation was that the Thing-state would eventually come under Ben Grimm's conscious control. Of course, this would also remove a lot of conflict and turmoil, greatly reducing the appeal of the character. Love the poses in the final three panels. You can almost see Ben sink as he despairs. That final shot of Thing in complete misery is still powerful.
We're hitting Page 8 and things are about to rock. Johnny Storm is wandering the Bowery and decides to stay at a cheap flophouse for the moment. I love the art on this page, it's so authentic. Kirby (as Jacob Kurtzberg) grew up on the Lower East Side in a Jewish area and he knew from experience what he was drawing. It's an interesting aspect of this phase that Kirby establishes a scene and then just skips backgrounds after that unless necessary. We see the outside of the flophouse and the one panel with Johnny stretched out on one of a row of musty beds. There are stairs, a set of rules posted on the wall, a few broken-down bums hanging around. Now we have the setting in our minds and Kirby doesn't keep repeating it in each panel. I noticed this as a kid and felt slightly cheated, but now I think this works because we concentrate on the characters and sort of fill in the background in our minds. It reminds me of watching a play where a bare stage with two chairs becomes a hospital waiting room in our imagination.
And Johnny finds an "old, beat-up comic mag" from the 1940s. It's an interesting touch that his sister Sue has already told him about Sub-Mariner... hmmm. Considering the romantic teasing that went on for years between them, I wonder if Sue had a childhood crush on Sub-Mariner and always wanted to meet him. I don't think this was ever mentioned. As with Captain America, Stan and Jack just seemed to ignore the brief 1950s revival of the characters and acted as if they had last been seen in the late 1940s. Actually, Sub-Mariner last appeared on the printed page in 1955, so he has only been missing for seven years but this story seems to act as if he has been gone for maybe a dozen years.All those late 1940s-1950s comics were revisited and explained in exhaustive detail much later, mostly by Roy Thomas.And one of the derelicts, unshaven and lounging in his T-shirt, is a troublemaker who watches Johnny and decides to pester that poor old man dozing at the table. Bad decision there, Laughing Boy.
>>114955924>Johnny, Status:currently not laughing boy.
Page 9. This pretty much speaks for itself. I do want to note that Sub-Mariner is not Aquaman, who (back in the Silver Age) would die if out of the water for more than hour (as if he really needs a weakness). Namor has been hanging out as a bum for years at this point, and he is still as strong as a particularly muscular human being. The bottom three panels showing the bad boys getting smacked aside in rapid sequence was a trick Kirby used in some Westerns like RAWHIDE KID around this time.
>>114956219I like the bum at the back of panel three. He’s hiding a bottle.
>>114956355Yes indeed. I have been looking for usage of "Laughing Boy". At least the Thing got in a Dr Doom "BAH!" on the first page
Page 10. These bums are not nice guys and they really intend to beat the hell out of an old man who was minding their own business. Namor was just leave them all broken and battered on the floor, of course, but they don't know that. So Johnny steps in. He's not intimidated by a half-dozen mean derelicts because, well, he can flame on and scare them silly. Johnny decides to give the mystery bum a shave and a haircut. Aside from the way that place would stink (have you ever smelled burning hair?), I am very intrigued by what is going on in Namor's mind at this point. He passively sits there and lets this kids burn off his hair with flame. Is Sub-Mariner vaguely starting to remember the original Human Torch from the 1940s? He fought with and team-up with the first Torch several times. Maybe he's thinking, hey this seems awful familiar... do I know this guy?A wonderful three panel sequence at the bottom of the page as Johnny is stunned at the revelation and the young readers of 1962 see the Sub-Mariner in close-up for the first time. Great moment.
>>114956464"Hope none of these bozos saw it.. maybe I can sneak a swig in the john."
Page Eleven, not really advancing the story but a nice layout. You can see why the division into chapters was dropped. Sometimes a large splash interrupted the flow. I think about issue 14 or so, there was a Chapter One and no further chapter breaks after that,
>>114956656
Page 12. You can tell Sue Storm was a doctor's daughter and grew up in a well-to-do neighborhood on Long Island. Oh no, Johnny would never come here. I bet Johnny did a lot of stuff she didn't know about.. wait until she goes to get his dirty laundry and finds the stack of PLAYBOYs... She turns away just before she would have seen Johnny and possibly recognized the Sub-Mariner. Oh, the irony. So Johnny flames on and carries the strangely docile Namor out over the Atlantic Ocean (not that far from the Bowery as the Torch flies). Being immersed in the sea restored Sub-Mariner's full strength and also his memories. I love the way he tosses aside his outer clothes with one gesture. What? How? His jacket, shirt, pants and shoes all go flying away just because he stretches? Never mind how that would work, it's a great image as is the triumphant pose as Namor realizes who he is.
Page 13. Uh-Oh. The surface dwellers have done it again. Back in 1939, when Sub-Mariner first appeared, his Arctic underwater civilization was flattened by explosives dropped from a ship (I think they were blowing up icebergs to protect shipping). Namor (whose name coincidentally means "Avenging Son") was sent to New York City where he went on a murderous rampage. He destroyed half the city and killed quite a few innocent citizens going about their business. And now atomic testing has done it again. Whoops. Hey, Namor, we didn't MEAN it. Sorry. No matter, his temper is roused and he is out to destroy human civilization again. And yet, he's not just a one-dimensional bad guy, he has reason to hate mankind, and even at his worst, he has a certain nobility and sense of ethics. Compare him to Dr Doom or the Red Skull, and Namor has more depth and can turn hero if circumstances warrant it. In the simplistic comics of 1962, this was pretty startling.
Now we have some questions. I'm going to get Johnny Storm the benefit of the doubt and assume he somehow hovered overhead after dropping Sub-Mariner in the ocea. He saw Namor swim excitedly away. But just how long has Johnny being loitering on that pier? How fast can Namor possibly swim, that he goes from the tip of southern Manhattan to the Arctic and back while the Torch stands around? Ah, it's comic book time, very flexible. Just as Spider-Man can deliver a thirty-word wisecrack while throwing a punch or an hour can go by and someone is still sipping the same cup of coffee, comic book time has its own rules. I suppose if a reader wants to, he might read this as Johnny coming back to the area the next day after waiting until midnight, hanging out again in hopes that Sub-Mariner might return.I do want to add I like the way Kirby draws Johnny as a real sixteen-year-old, shorter than most adults and not built like someone who hits the Nautilius machines all day every day. Johnny is also not particularly handsome in this early issues, he looks like a normal kid who just happened to get hit by those cosmic rays. In short order, of course, he became as buff and perfect as every other hero, but I like the early portrayal.
>>114956656Kirby uses similar chapter breaks later in Kamandi.
Sometimes the Thing looks so much like the John Agar monster in HAND OF DEATH that I raise an eyebrow. The comic came out in 1961, the movie in March 1962. But the Thing's looks evolved and it would take some cogitation to decide if maybe the inkers caught HAND OF DEATH at the drive-in before finishing the art the next morning.
>>114956821I forgot about that. I wonder why? Maybe he simply preferred larger panels at that point?
Some minor points here. First, it's miniscule trivia that does not have the fate of nations weighing in the balance. But I really like the wide black collars in the first issues. They got thin soon enough, sometimes not even filled in. This made the costumes look drab and undramatic. Secondly, did the FDNY Fire Marshal ever visit the Baxter Building and ask, "Who told you that you can shoot off flare guns in midtown Manhattan?"
>>114956249>Laughing BoyI watched RoboCop again last night and heard a cop call someone Laughing Boy. I thought of these threads.
Notice again how the Thing is shorter than Reed. Kirby often drew his viewpoint characters as a bit under six feet. Nick Fury and Orion come to mind. I guess at this point the Thing is about the size of a king size bed that got up and started walking around. That's a great poetic line about Namor's race being "old when the stars were young." But seriously, they evolved from humans so we're actually older than they are,
>>114957007This strikes me as immensely significant! (Of course it's late and I'm getting groggy.) Thank you. I must look into this, as the cop said at the glory hole.
>>114956954I like the black collars too.
Hmmm. I guess Stan and Jack still thought giant monsters were what kids really wanted yet. Replace Sub-Mariner with a diver triggering some device and this could easily be from a pre-superhero issue of STRANGE TALES or TALES OF SUSPENSE.
>>114957088I’ve always thought capes and giant monsters go really well together.
>>114957069Thank you. I don't anyone in day to day life who'd know what I'm talking about if I mentioned my favorite Kirby inker or the Fantastic Four collars or anything like that.
>>114957098We got a lot of that at DC around 1960. Batman, Blackhawk and even Tomahawk fought enormous aliens and extra-dimensional critters. But the stories had no sense of awe, it was just "Great Scott! That enormous mouse is eating my car."
Evacuate Tokyo. No, I mean, Manhattan. A walking whale is knocking everything over. Neither Reed nor Johnny seem to be having much luck with Giganto, At least Namor is having a blast*____*on that horn. Sorry.
Let me stretch my imagination a little, warm up that old suspension of disbelief. Ready. The Thing talks the US Army into strapping a nuclear bomb to his back to be detonated in Manhattan. Give me a minute. It's a 1962 comic book, I need to roll with it and enjoy the ride. It's like climbing into a roller coaster, you enjoy the thrills and chills as they come. "
>>114957088>>114957200Half these panels would be splash (heh) pages in modern comics. I like the way Kirby just crams these epic moments into regular panels.
>>114957272Much happens between panels that we fill in for ourselves. DC carried this density a bit too far, in my opinion.
>>114954418Namor used to have all kinds of marine life powers that have since been forgotten, because, you know, in the silver age you could just have a random new power for one page and never use it again. Namor for example could produce electricity like an electric eel in another FF story where Doom tries to shoot their HQ to space.
That second panel haunts me. Between the art and the caption, it's so evocative, Third panel. Hey, you're not Pinocchio!
>>114957425Those powers only popped up a few times. There was a STRANGE TALES story where he blew up like a Puffer fish. But the powers never really caught on. He was formidable enough as a flying brick.
>>114957551At some point, Johnny changed into his costume. Probably they keep a spare in the Fantasticar. He seems to have implicitly rejoined the team without much ado. The Thing's gruff remark to Johnny's praise shows they're back on old familiar terms again.
>>114957566Silver Age (and the Comics Code) morality. Villains can't hint that they simply want sex, marriage has to be brought into it to avoid getting the censors in a huff. "Marry me or I'll blow up this school!" "No! Never!"Of course, in this case, Namor be genuinely smitten at getting a look at Sue. He does obtain a photo of her and keeps it where he can moon over it in his undersea hangout.
>>114957577Boy, Stan and Jack nailed Namor's personality and mannerisms right at the start, Of course, he was created in 1939 by Bill Everett and drawn by Everett for years. The 1950s brief revival of Sub-Mariner showcased some of Everett's best art ever, But either Lee and Kirby remembered enough of the character or they browsed through whatever old comics were at hand because this Sub-Mariner hits all the right anti-hero semi-villain notes.
>>114957593Thanks OP.
>>114957593On a real-world level, it's likely that no one had given any thought to even mentioning the original Human Torch. They were only four issues in, plenty of time for that later, BUT in the in-universe viewpoint, Namor had fought and/or teamed up with the Golden Age Torch quite a few times. You have to wonder if after he saw Johnny flame on and fly around, Sub-Mariner thought, "Hmm, reminds me of someone I used to know...."
Sub-Mariner struggles with OBESITY! From the Human Torch's solo strip in STRANGE TALES# 106:Not to worry. He cut down on carbs and did some more swimming (har) and lost that weight right away.This was a very brief period after the Sub-Mariner was revived where he had the powers of sea creatures. If he couldn't command fish like a certain rival in another publishing house (what? no, not Hawkman! Let's be serious), Namor could do one better by using the abilities of those fish himself. He could discharge voltage like an electric eel, use a radar sense like blind fish in deep caves and so forth. Here he cleverly escapes being trapped in an iceberg by swelling up like a puffer fish.. admittedly, not a power you are likely to be called upon to utilize very often.Sub-Mariner also had a phase where he used bizarre and not remotely believable rare fish as weapons. An occasional giant octopus is okay, but a flame-eater that absorbs fire? A hovering hypnotic fish that also secretes a protective bubble big enough to envelop a person? My "Oh Come ON" sense was tingling.
>>114956219Once again establishing that Marvel Comics exist within the Marvel universe. ALSO that Sue is Johnny's older sister since she was old enough to remember Namor.
>>114958084With the sliding timeline, does that mean Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's timeline also gets moved some more decades? Cause at some point the Marvel Universe will start like around the time or even long after Stan Lee died.
And another reason old comics are hard to find in pristine condition. Those furshlugginer pin-ups that kids cut out of their copies.
>>114958149Yes.
>>114958084Wait a minute. You touched on something there. If Sue was old enough to have remembered WW II, say twelve years old, then she would have been hitting thirty when the Fantastic Four started. Not in her early twenties. Of course, she would still have been too young to have been the "girl Reed left behind during the war." It's hopeless. If someone had argued with Stan about this, he would have dropped the bit about Reed and Sue having known each other that long. To be honest, I'm sure we fans fuss over details like this more than Lee and Kirby did. They were already setting up the next issue when that page went to the printers.
>>114958172There is a great springboard for a sci-fi story there. A writer creates an immensely successful series with a sliding timeline. Then he realizes his own past is changing to keep us as well..!
Absolutely gorgeous art from the 1950s revival. I can't say Bill Everett is underrated-- serious fans hold him in high regard-- but I'm always glad to possibly expose some new readers to Everett art.
>>114957840>Sub-Mariner thought, "Hmm, reminds me of someone I used to know...."Well you can always explain that with his amnesia.
>>114953535What comics is Reed reading here?
Bill Everett's Venus, from 1972. Man, most artists in their 20s don't have that steady a hand.
>>114953683So they'll give them a million bucks, but they won't fly them out?
>>114958373He also brought her in for a cameo in his 70's run on NAMOR.
>>114953931page 11 is missing
>>114958350Hah, I bet it's a DC title like BATMAN. We sure don't see the cover.
>>114958311True enough. Both Namor and Captain America had their memories return in the Silver Age in fits and starts. If Cap wasn't so honest, this could have been a good way to snub people. "Major Harkins? No, no, sorry. My years in the ice, you know. Excuse me."
>>114958385I wondered about that too. It looks as if no advance was offered until they were actually at the studio.I dunno, it seems to me that Reed must have known some award-winning physicists and Sue known some ritzy society women who could have loaned them enough for plane tickets. Maybe they were too proud or embarrassed,
>>114958590Thank you. Here it is. I don't even have an excuse. I'm dawdling along posting these and adding comments at my own pace and I still goof up.
>>114958489I remember those issues as having great, stylized, highly detailed art. For an artist getting on in years and wrestling with a well-known alcohol problem, Bill Everett sure did fine work at the end.He did a horror story for a Skywald black and white magazine that was exquisite. I've got the pages around here somewhere, We need a Bill Everett retrospective!
The Elmer From the Black Lagoon
Okay, "Vengeance" first appeared in SUB-MARINER COMICS# 35, back in August 1954 (admittedly a few years back). I first saw it in its reprinting in MARVEL SUPER-HEROES# 16 in 1968 (which actually is not much more recent from today's viewpoint but let's skip that). Stan must have had some difficulty finding acceptable pre-Silver Age comics to reprint. Aside from just having decent copies available (negatives if possible) much of the Golden Age stuff from Timely was either too crude or too wildly racist or violent for the Comics Code to pass. So mostly MARVEL SUPER-HEROES presented stuff from the 1950s, which is fine with me as I thought it was great material. Joe Maneely's Black Knight and the revived Captain America and Human Torch were always fun to compare with the then-current product. But Bill Everett's Sub-Mariner's stories were unexpected gems. I think Everett hit his peak in the 1950s as far as storytelling and craftsmanship went. Still cartoony but more defined, his art then had a gruesome touch that still resonates.
I would love to be able to say that this story came out befcre THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, just to play Everett up, but nah. No such luck. It's a great touch that Everett usually placed his Namor in a variety of everyday clothing that was appropriate for the situation (only stripping down to trunks for action). This Sub-Mariner was relaxed and comfortable traveling the world, staying in ritzy hotels and being consulted by government agencies. As you read this, remember that Namor at this point had lost his ankle wings and nearly all his super-human strength and invulnerability. A TV series was being discussed and the revived Sub-Mariner was toned down to a more believable level to match that show (which, as it happened, didn't materialize.
My usual exhaustive weeks of research, that is to say shallow Google search says that this story was written by Paul S Newman. (Guess this was before he met Joanne, eh?)
This is off the top of my head, so take it with a dubious raised eyebrow. THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN with George Reeves was a considerable hit in 1953. This was when Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen received their own comics with Superman's name mentioned in the title on every cover. Martin Goodman, sensing that maybe costumed heroes might be making a comeback, revived his unholy trinity of Namor, Human Torch and Captain America, But they had short runs. The hour for super-heroes had not struck. In 1956, the new version of the Flash with his snappy new costume appeared and is generally credited for jump-starting the Silver Age. I have never read how far along a Sub-Mariner TV show to cash in on the Superman show ever got. Maybe only a few memos, maybe some preliminary talks with producers. Probably information is out there for those wise in the ways of Google. But the idea of a TV series was enough for Goodman to keep Sub-Mariner on the stands after he folded Cap and Torch. For a while, anyway.
And here's Richard Egan, considered for the role. He's got that withering stare down pat. I don't think there's the slightest chance Namor would have had pointed ears, not on a show with a lot of underwater scenes, The winged feet and super-strength had already been discounted. Most likely we would watched a variation on SEA HUNT except the hero didn't need an aqualung.
This is even more ironic Ironic, too, because Sub-Mariner was originally created for a serial that never got made (PRINCE OF ATLNTIS, if I recall correctly). And now more than seventy years later with a dozen movies starring everyone from Swamp Thing to the Punisher to Elektra, there STILL hasn't been a Sub-Mariner movie.
How to escape from Sub-Mariner's clutches Okay, he may be superstrong and bulletproof and amphibious. But how quick on his feet can he think?From MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS# 26, December 1941. "Ha ha! Sucker!"
Well, this situation sounds alarming. Aroused crabs..!Bill Everett was only 55 when he died. Ian Fleming was 56. Drinking and smoking have robbed us of a lot of great entertainment that died with them.
>>114959264
Sub-Mariner used to drive a Jeep he built himself.True or False?Answer: True. Natch,.
See, I would have taken him for a Mustang sort of guy. Here are some pages from MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS# 22 and 23, September 1941. (Marvel reprinted it in 1999). Evidently, after he was done killing dozens of New Yorkers in his rampages and before he decided to fight the Axis, Namor bummed around the West Coast for a while. I see him sipping coffee at truck stops, taking pictures and browsing in antique stores...
You might say, why does he need a vehicle when he can fly? Well, why do we drive fifty miles when we could walk.Also, he's a motorhead.
Homo Mermanus? That can't be right Right off the bat, let me spoil the big surprise of this sequence, because it's the only way I can comment on it. This is from FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL# 1, way back in 1963. Prince Namor has finally found his wandering race of Sub-Mariners and claimed his throne, next step is to declare war on the human race. Mr Fantastic requests a special general assembly of the United Nations to deal with the threat. And a scientist steps up to address all the crooks no-good rabble lying warmongers delegates. However, the venerable-looking marine biologist is none other than Namor himself. (What nerve!)Here we are at the UN. There was a famous incident in 1960 where Khruschev supposedly took off his shoe to bang his desk with it because he was mad over criticism of the Soviet Union. If you go by Silver Age comics or TV shows, this was a regular habit of his and Jack Kirby has immortalized the gesture. Next, Dr GW Falton is introduced. I assume the UN had a certain minimal security and background check before allowing someone at the podium. So was there a real Dr Falton that Namor is impersonating or what? Okay, "Homo Mermanus...?" What kind of screwed-up Latin is that? Namor's education obviously did not extend to the classics. My guess is the correct term might be Homo Marius or Homo Marinus. Are those gill slits on a skull? Aren't gills soft tissue that wouldn't fossilize? I love Kirby's idea of what an early whale would look like.You notice that, unlike whales and dolphins, Homo Mermanus became actual water-breathing creatures. That's quite an evolutionary jump to occur in the short time since humans appeared. But then, this IS Marvel, where mutations include being able to shoot force beams from your eyes or turn your body into living ice, so maybe the appearance of gills is not too big a pill to swallow.Bottom of the second page, what can I say except War Squid! What a great concept.
Top of the next page, we see an early Sub-Mariner distillery producing underwater moonshine. I don't get how the land humans could suspect a race of aquatic people and create the Atlantis legend... and as we see in this story, Homo Mermanus themselves call their kingdom Atlantis. Something seems fishy. If I had to explain it, I'd suggest that (despite the caption) there was some brief contact between the two species and the name Atlantis was mentioned.Now we get into the origin of Namor, first presented by Bill Everett in MARVEL COMICS# 1 in 1939. But it's told here by Namor and he shows his mother Princess Fen in a softened light. She bravely goes to investigate the surface people by herself. (Oh come on. When could a princess of an empire just come and go as she pleased, without guards or servants or chaperones?) And she and Leonard McKenzie fall in love over what seems to be quite an extended period. Weeks, at the very least, before the Emperor starts to worry about her absence. This doesn't speak well of his concern for his daughter. Notice how Namor describes himself as "noble, powerful, dedicated." Modest, no.Annnnd the war is on!
>>114959508Whoa! Caught a continuity error. Fen can stay out of the water for five hours but later in this same story, Atlantean soldiers asphyxiate as soon as the air in their helmets evaporates. What gives?Aw, I've been reading comics too long not to answer that myself. Fen was a superior variety of Atlantean. She brought a potion with her that extended her time out of water. She was a mutant (everyone else in Marvel is these days.) She kept dunking her head in the sink in the captain's private bathroom. That was simple. Now about those crazy little wings on Namor's ankles...
Everett did his best work in the 50s and 70s. Such a fucking goddamn shame he killed himself with booze and smoking.
>>114959762Bump
>>114959126>there STILL hasn't been a Sub-Mariner movie.That's because the movie rights were to a studio during, iirc, Marvel's 90s bankruptcy.