{"id":32496,"date":"2025-03-26T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T09:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=32496"},"modified":"2025-03-25T18:27:33","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T18:27:33","slug":"mighty-marvel-masterworks-presents-volume-3-1963-1964-it-started-on-yancy-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2025\/03\/26\/mighty-marvel-masterworks-presents-volume-3-1963-1964-it-started-on-yancy-street\/","title":{"rendered":"Mighty Marvel Masterworks Presents volume 3 1963-1964: It Started on Yancy Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" \"\"
\nBy Stan Lee & Jack Kirby <\/strong>with George Roussos<\/strong>, Chic Stone<\/strong>, Sam Rosen<\/strong>, Art Simek<\/strong> & various (MARVEL)
\nISBN: 978-1-3029-4907-5 (TPB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

This book includes Discriminatory Content<\/strong> produced in less enlightened times.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m partial to a bit of controversy so I\u2019m going start off by saying that Fantastic Four<\/strong> #1 is the third most important Silver Age comic book ever, behind Showcase<\/strong> #4 – reintroducing The Flash<\/strong> in 1956 – and 1960\u2019s The Brave and the Bold<\/strong> #28, which brought superhero teams back via the creation of The Justice League of America<\/strong>. Feel free to disagree\u2026<\/p>\n

After a troubled period at DC Comics (National Periodicals as it then was) and a creatively productive but disheartening time on the poisoned chalice of the Sky Masters<\/a><\/strong> newspaper strip, Jack Kirby settled into his job at the small outfit that used to be publishing powerhouse Timely\/Atlas. There he generated mystery, monster, romance, war and western material for a market he suspected to be ultimately doomed. However, as always, he did the best job possible and that genre fare is now considered some of the best of its kind ever seen.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless Kirby\u2019s explosive imagination couldn\u2019t be suppressed for long and when the JLA<\/strong> caught readers\u2019 attention it gave him and writer\/editor Stan Lee an opportunity to change the industry forever. According to popular myth, a golfing afternoon led to publisher Martin Goodman ordering nephew Stan to do a series about a group of super-characters like the JLA. The resulting team quickly took the fans by storm. It wasn\u2019t the powers: they\u2019d all been seen since the beginning of the medium. It wasn\u2019t the costumes: they didn\u2019t have any until the third issue.<\/p>\n

It was Kirby\u2019s compelling art and the fact that these characters weren\u2019t anodyne cardboard cut-outs. In a real and recognizable location – New York City – imperfect, raw-nerved, touchy people banded together out of tragedy, disaster and necessity to face the incredible. In so many ways, The Challengers of the Unknown<\/strong> (Kirby\u2019s prototype partners in peril for National\/DC) laid all the groundwork for the wonders to come, but staid, hidebound editorial strictures there would never have allowed the undiluted energy of the concept to run all-but-unregulated.<\/p>\n

Another milestone in the kid-friendly paperback\/eBooks line of Mighty Marvel Masterworks<\/strong>, this full-colour pocket-sized compendium collects Fantastic Four<\/strong> #21-29 (spanning cover-dates December 1961 to August 1964) and shows how Stan & Jack cannily built on that early energy to consolidate the FF as the leading title and most innovative series of the era.<\/p>\n

As ever the team are maverick scientist Reed Richards<\/em>, his fianc\u00e9e Sue Storm<\/em>, their closest friend Ben Grimm<\/em> and Sue\u2019s teenaged brother Johnny<\/em>: survivors of a private space-shot that went horribly wrong after Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship\u2019s inadequate shielding and mutated them all. Richards\u2019 body became elastic, Susan gained the power to turn invisible and her sibling could turn into living flame. Poor tragic Ben was reduced to a shambling, rocky super-strong freak of nature… Soon the FF was recognised as being like no other comic on the market and buyers responded to it avidly if not fanatically…<\/p>\n

In late 1963, Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos<\/strong> was another solid newsstand hit for the young \u201cHouse of Ideas.\u201d Eventually its brusque and brutish star metamorphosed into Marvel\u2019s answer to James Bond<\/strong>. Here, however, he\u2019s a cunning world-weary CIA agent seeking the FF\u2019s aid against a sinister, immigrant-hating racist supremacist demagogue called \u2018The Hate-Monger\u2019<\/em>: a cracking yarn with a strong message, inked by comics veteran George Roussos, under the protective nom-de-plume George Bell.
\n\"\"
\nBy this juncture the FF were firmly established and Lee & Kirby well on the way to toppling DC\/National Comics from a decades-held top spot through an engaging blend of brash, folksy and consciously contemporaneous sagas: mixing high concept, low comedy, trenchant melodrama and breathtaking action.<\/p>\n

Unseen since the premiere issue, #22 heralded \u2018The Return of the Mole Man!\u2019<\/em> in another full-on monster-mashing fight-fest, chiefly notable for debuting Sue Storm\u2019s new increased power-set. Her ability to project force fields of \u201cinvisible energy\u201d also involved a power to reveal hidden things and make others invisible too: advances that would eventually make her one of the mightiest characters in Marvel\u2019s pantheon – and not before time either…<\/p>\n

FF<\/strong> #23 enacted \u2018The Master Plan of Doctor Doom!\u2019<\/em> by introducing his mediocre mercenary minions \u201cthe Terrible Trio\u201d – Bull Brogin<\/em>, Handsome Harry<\/em> and Yogi Dakor<\/em> – and the uncanny menace of \u201cthe Solar Wave\u201d (which was enough to raise the hackles on my 5-year-old neck. Do I need to qualify that with: all of me was five, but only my neck had properly developed hackles back then?)\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2018The Infant Terrible!\u2019<\/em> in #24\u2019s is a classic case of sci fi paranoia and misunderstanding and a sterling yarn of inadvertent extragalactic menace and misplaced innocence, with a reality-warping space baby endangering Earth, and is followed by a 2-part tale truly emphasising the inherent difference between Lee & Kirby\u2019s work and everybody else\u2019s at that time.
\n\"\"
\nFantastic Four <\/strong>#25-26 offered a cataclysmic clash that had young heads spinning in 1964 and led directly to the Emerald Behemoth finally regaining a strip of his own. In \u2018The Hulk vs The Thing\u2019<\/em> and conclusion \u2018The Avengers Take Over!\u2019<\/em> a relentless, lightning-paced, all-out Battle Royale results when the disgruntled emerald man-monster returns to New York in search of side-kick Rick Jones<\/em>, with only an injury-wracked FF in the way of his destructive rampage.<\/p>\n

A definitive moment in The Thing\u2019s character development, action ramps up to the max when a rather stiff-necked and officious Avengers<\/strong> team (Iron Man<\/strong>, Thor<\/strong>, Giant-Man<\/strong>, The Wasp<\/strong> and recently-defrosted Captain America<\/strong>) horn in, claiming jurisdictional rights on \u201cBob<\/em>\u201d Banner<\/em> and his Jaded alter ego. The tale is plagued with pesky continuity errors which would haunt Lee for decades, but – bloopers notwithstanding – is one of Marvel\u2019s key moments and still a visceral, vital read today.<\/p>\n

Stan & Jack had hit on a winning formula by including other stars in guest-shots – especially since readers could never anticipate if they would fight with or beside the home team. FF #27\u2019s \u2018The Search for Sub-Mariner!\u2019<\/em> again saw the undersea antihero in amorous mood, and when he abducts Sue again, the boys call in Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts<\/strong> to locate them. Issue #28 delivered another terrific promotional infomercial team-up, but remains most notable (for me and many other fans) because of the man who replaced George Roussos as inker\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2018We Have to Fight the X-Men!\u2019<\/em> sees the disparate super-squads in conflict due to the Mad Thinker <\/em>and Puppet Master<\/em>\u2019s malign machinations, but the inclusion of Chic Stone – Kirby\u2019s most simpatico and expressive inker – elevates the illustration to indescribable levels of beauty as the sinister savants briefly mind-control professor Charles Xavier<\/em> and order him to set his students on the extremely surprised first family…<\/p>\n

Closing this foray into the fantastic comes \u2018It Started on<\/em> Yancy Street!\u2019<\/em> (FF <\/strong>#29) opening low-key and a little bit silly in the slum where Ben grew up, before the reappearance of the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes<\/em> sees everything go wild and cosmic. The result is another meeting with the almighty Watcher<\/em>, a blockbusting battle on the Moon, and the promise of bigger and even better to come…
\n\"\"
\nTo Be Continued\u2026<\/p>\n

Bolstered by all Kirby\u2019s covers, this is a truly magnificent treat sharing pioneering tales that built a comics empire. The verve, imagination and sheer enthusiasm shines through and the wonder is there for you to share. If you\u2019ve never thrilled to these spectacular sagas then this book of marvels is your best and most economical key to another world and time.
\n\u00a9 2023 MARVEL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby with George Roussos, Chic Stone, Sam Rosen, Art Simek & various (MARVEL) ISBN: 978-1-3029-4907-5 (TPB\/Digital edition) This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. I\u2019m partial to a bit of controversy so I\u2019m going start off by saying that Fantastic Four #1 is the third most important … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Mighty Marvel Masterworks Presents volume 3 1963-1964: It Started on Yancy Street”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[191,351,94,317,158,54,98,125,120,117,72,174,127,107,39,155,70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-apes-monkeys","category-avengers","category-doctor-doom","category-dr-strange","category-fantastic-four","category-hulk","category-humour","category-iron-man","category-jack-kirby","category-marvel-masters-masterworks","category-nick-fury","category-nostalgia","category-science-fiction","category-spider-man","category-sub-mariner","category-x-men"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-8s8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32502,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32496\/revisions\/32502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}