03/31/23: THINGS UNDONE

Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Monster Magazine?

Hey y’all,

Jumping right into it today. The first of what will likely, and eventually be a number of looks at Jack and Stan’s time on the Fantastic Four.

Transcript, art and liner notes below the video:

THE WORLD’S GREATEST MONSTER MAGAZINE?

Exiled from DC Comics in the early 1960s…writer/artist Jack Kirby returned to the company that would soon become Marvel Comics. A publisher that was barely surviving on its slate of westerns, romances, and a seemingly endless and unhinged carnival parade of Giant Monster comics.

But having seen great success as the co-creator of Captain America, Kirby still felt the superhero had more to offer.

Infected by Kirby’s enthusiasm—Stan Lee pushed the idea of a new superhero series on his Uncle, publisher Martin Goodman, — who may have arrived independently at the same conclusion, following a a golf outing with some fat-walleted rivals at DC Comics

(Continued after image…)

Still… when THE FANTASTIC FOUR hit newsstands in 1961…it seemed to give costumed superhero tropes sixty feet of social distance.

Borrowing heavily from Kirby's earlier work on "The Challengers of the Unknown” —the FF were presented as regular folks trapped in strange circumstances— as almost indistinguishable from monsters themselves.Without a true supervillain in sight— the mysterious, bickering, costume-less team was bonded more by the mishap that gave them their powers than a sense of justice. They operated from the shadows, raced to the stars in a cold war era sci-fi tale gone wrong, and fought shape-shifting aliens and the derp-faced giant monsters.

Behind an atypically pop art-influenced logo that vibed more GO GO than Superhero— Those FF could easily have passed for just another giant monster comic.

Which of course was likely the plan all along…

(Continued after image…)

A stealth-launched superhero title gave Goodman a puncher’s chance of avoiding The Sauron’s Eye of Independent News— a magazine distributor that not only held Marvel’s ability to ship any books tightly in its hands— but was also somehow owned by DC Comics.

The move turned out more chess than checkers — As by the third issue the series was popular enough that Marvel decided to play chicken with its distribution overlords.

With The Four out in the open as superheroes—Jack and Stan went on to build their run on the Fantastic Four into the World’s Greatest… Monster Magazine.

(Liner Notes after image…)

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LINER NOTES:

-The connections to those monster comics and horror monsters, in general, are a bit more than just a concept I hung the video around—

The Thing was clearly, at least in part, Kirby saying “Hey what if one of these monsters was on our side”. Human Torch was an effort to requisition the original Torch (who was more of a science experiment monster in his own right). Originally Invisible woman was going to be a permanently invisible set of floating clothes like H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man. And Reed is Kurt Vonnegut’s nightmare— a mad scientist convinced he was on the side of good.

- A lot of Kirby and Lee’s ideas would go through iterations before cooling into a solid state. There was a ginger Kirby Thor before Thor and even a monster named THORR THE UNBELIEVABLE for example.

-The un-indoctrinated knock Kirby about his (Nic Cage voice:) “mega abstraction” — but those proto-Marvel Westerns reveal that city slicker could really draw horses:

-It might surprise you all but I generally prefer a more library approach to the books in my life, which makes digital reading kind of perfect. But this Christmas I was gifted the Taschen books Marvel Library edition of The Fantastic Four, which really is some first-class book reading. 

In fact, in compiling images for this week’s Drawl episode— it became really noticeable how much the line art can sometimes suffer in Marvel’s recreated editions of those old comics. Fortunately for us all, Tom Breevort shared the black-and-white stats of the original art. 

-I hope it’s obvious but—I’m not really in the business of promoting Marvel or DC. Honestly, I don’t even think the conditions and companies that made the comics I’m talking about really exist anymore. But hey, life is change.

I’m more interested in the creators or the insights into the culture of creation. If you pay close attention there’s some pretty strong medicine crushed up in the apple sauce.

Anyways, that’s it for now. Hope y’all have a great weekend. 

More soon… 

-j