By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott (World Distributors {Manchester} Ltd)
No ISBN:
The origin of the Fantastic Four saw maverick scientist Reed Richards summon his girl-friend Sue Storm, their friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s teenaged brother Johnny before heading off on their first mission against invading subterranean monsters and their malevolent master the Mole Man. In a handy flashback we discovered that they were driven survivors of a private space-shot which went horribly wrong.
In the depths of space Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding and they plummeted back to Earth where they found that they’d all been hideously mutated into outlandish freaks…
Reed’s body became elastic, Sue gained the initially involuntary power to turn invisible, Johnny could briefly and harmlessly burst into living flame and poor, tragic Ben turned irrevocably into a shambling, rocky freak. Shaken but unbowed they vow to dedicate their new abilities to benefiting mankind…
With their red and gold uniforms in stark contrast to the Torch’s lethally hot blue flame and the Thing’s gritty granular monolithic mauve hide, the heroes won global renown and…
No, wait, surely that’s not right…
Well yes, but only in this beguilingly peculiar British album released to tie-in with a strictly regional British release of the 1967-1968 Fantastic Four cartoon series produced by Hanna-Barbera and designed by the legendary Alex Toth.
As the only survivor of a family day out, it’s still one of my most treasured comic possessions and I’ll admit it makes precious little sense on a cognitive level. It’s certainly no more than an intriguing or irrelevant oddity to most fans, but for me – and many similar Brits of a certain vintage – items like this are irreplaceable nostalgic touchstones of a personal Grand Age of comics wonderment which even smell and feel of thrills and fun and innocent joy…
The contents are an odd mix too. The cartoon show adapted many of the earliest and formative groundbreaking Stan Lee/Jack Kirby classics but the trio of terrific tales came from the stunning mid-Sixties run when the creators were at their absolute peak of perfection…
The only complete and self-contained yarn is ‘This Man This Monster’ from Fantastic Four #51 (June, 1966) and still considered by many to be the greatest single FF story ever. A masterpiece of mood and introspection, it found the Thing’s body usurped by a vengeful, petty maverick scientist who subsequently discovered the true measure of a man, paying the ultimate price for his jealous folly…
The Black Panther was an African monarch whose secretive kingdom was the only source of a unique alien metal dubbed Vibranium. These mineral riches had enabled him to turn his country into a technological wonderland and he had attacked the FF as part of an extended plan to gain vengeance on the murderer of his father. He was also the first Negro superhero in American comics.
Although that tale didn’t make the final cut his origin was revealed here in ‘The Way it Began..!’ (from Fantastic Four #53, cover-dated August 1966) and disclosed how decades before when a ruthless scientist and his mercenary army had invaded Wakanda,  the young Prince T’Challa had single-handedly avenged the murder of his father T’Chaka and driven off the raiders. Now, as incredible creatures of living sound ravaged the Hidden Kingdom, the Panther and the FF teamed up to stop the returned villain who had been transformed into an utterly new form of life and was calling himself Klaw, Master of Sound…
Fantastic Four #57-60 displayed Lee & Kirby at their utmost best; with an extended epic of astounding drama and majesty as the most dangerous man on Earth stole the Cosmic Power of alien refugee the Silver Surfer and rampaged unstoppably across the face of the planet.
Sadly, ‘Enter… Dr. Doom!’, ‘The Dismal Dregs of Defeat!’ and ‘Doomsday’ were omitted for this edition and the strangely compelling card cover classic only includes the very last chapter of that superlative saga wherein the team’s valiant resistance allowed Reed’s ingenuity and sheer guts to turn the tables and save all humanity in magnificent manner in ‘The Peril and the Power!’(#60, March 1967)…
These are the stories that cemented Marvel’s reputation and enabled the company to overtake all its competitors. They’re also still some of the best comics ever produced and as exciting and captivating now as they ever were, even in this truly bizarre and torturously truncated form. This is a surely only one for the most dedicated completists, but the timeless tales reprinted are stories every fan should know.
© MCMLXIX (that’s 1969 to you True Believer!) Marvel Comics Group. All rights reserved throughout the world.