Regular readers of this blog will recall how, three months ago, we celebrated “Marvel Milestone Month” in honor of four long-running Marvel series all having hit significant numerical markers in May, 1976.  Today, we’ll be looking at yet another comic that signified a notable Marvel milestone of that year, coming out as it did on the fifteenth anniversary of the launch of the Fantastic Four title back in August, 1961 — although, as best as I’ve been able to determine, no one took much notice of that fact at the time. 

As Roy Thomas writes in his 2014 introduction to Marvel Masterworks — The Fantastic Four, Vol. 17:

I wish I could tell you that in 1976 artist George Pérez and I planned FF #176 as an anniversary celebration of “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” marking a decade and a half on the nation’s newsstands.  But we considered it just one more monthly issue — except that, by my lights, and those of quite a few other people since, it wasn’t.

Thomas goes on to note with some pride that Fantastic Four #176 has gone on to “become one of the most-reprinted issues of FF after the [Stan] Lee/ [Jack] Kirby era.”  While your humble blogger can’t claim to have thoroughly fact-checked this assertion, the Grand Comics Database does indicate that the story has been reprinted some fifteen times… which seems pretty darn respectable for a regular issue of an ongoing series that doesn’t feature any major “key” events, such as the debut (or death) of a popular character.  And speaking just for myself, this is the one issue of Fantastic Four published in the back half of the Seventies that I’ve always known I would write about, assuming the blog ever got this far.

So what’s so special about this one?  Well, if you’re altogether unfamiliar with it, you can get a hint from a close examination of the issue’s cover by Jack Kirby, Joe Sinnott, and John Romita.  For more details, however, you’re going to have to wait just a bit, as it’s been more than a minute since we last looked in on the FF, and there have been goings-on both “in-universe” and behind the scenes that it behooves us to touch on at least briefly before jumping into our main event.

First, let’s catch up on the changes on the creative side of things since our last Fantastic Four post, which was all the way back in June, 2024, and concerned issue #150 (another milestone, incidentally).  As you may recall, at that time the series was being written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Rich Buckler, both of whom had been at those jobs for a while.  Conway would depart the gig following #152; after a handful of issues scripted by Tony Isabella and Len Wein, Roy Thomas then came on board as both writer and editor, resuming a role he’d previously held for a short stint back in 1972.  Buckler, on the other hand, hung around longer, but ultimately did bow out with #163, and was succeeded by George Pérez.  It’s thus the Thomas-Pérez team, joined by perennial FF inker/finisher Joe Sinnott, that we’ll find in place for issue #176 — although it should be noted that several other talents had done some pinch-hitting over the most recent run of issues, including Buckler and John Buscema filling in on art, and Bill Mantlo doing the same on script.

Now, for the stories themselves.  Looking back again to FF #150, you may remember that that issue saw the marital reconciliation of Reed and Sue Storm Richards following a fraught period of separation; despite that development, Sue’s temporary replacement, Medusa of the Inhumans, continued to serve with the team through #159, at which point the Invisible Girl returned to full-time active duty.  Otherwise, the only major development affecting the team’s membership during this period was one involving Ben Grimm, the Thing.

In FF #167, the latest confrontation between the Thing and his old sparring partner the Hulk — which had already taken a surprising turn by having the two heavy-hitters decide to stop pounding on each other and team up, for a change — ended with an even more startling twist, as prolonged exposure to the Hulk’s gamma-irradiated bod had an unanticipated effect on Ben, causing him to revert to his normal human self.  You’d think that after almost fifteen years of moaning about looking like a monster, the guy would be celebrating the good news — but instead, he almost immediately caught a really bad case of the sulks when, in the very next issue, Reed hired Luke Cage, Power Man to replace him on the team’s roster.  Thankfully for the mopey Ben, this turned out to be merely a temporary arrangement, meant to last only until Mister Fantastic could finish building his oldest friend a “Thing suit” — an exoskeleton that, when worn, would give Ben back most of the strength and durability he’d enjoyed as his old rocky self.  First donning the suit in issue #170, Ben was on hand and ready to go for the kickoff of the title’s next big storyline in #171; continuing through FF #175, this arc led directly into our main topic of discussion today, so we’ll be spending a little time with it before turning to #176.

The Big Bad for this five-parter was Galactus, Devourer of Worlds, returning to our solar system intent on chowing down on one of its planets for what even in 1976 felt like the umpteenth time.  There was an interesting wrinkle on this particular occasion, however, as the planet the Big G had selected to sate his appetite wasn’t our own Earth, but rather Counter-Earth — the more-or-less exact replica of our world that had been created by the nigh-omnipotent entity who called himself the High Evolutionary.  Introduced by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane back in the first “Warlock” story in Marvel Premiere #1 (Apr., 1972), Counter-Earth had been pretty much out of sight and out of mind ever since its “savior”, Adam Warlock, left it to go gallivanting across the cosmos at the end of Hulk #178 (Aug., 1974).  Evidently, Thomas had decided that if neither Warlock’s most recent chronicler, Jim Starlin, nor anyone else was going to make use of his co-creation, he might as well do so himself.

Summoned to Counter-Earth by the HE to help fight off Galactus, the FF were offered two alternatives by their old foe; they could find another suitable planet whose inhabitants would willingly (and unanimously) agree to be consumed by Galactus, or they could pick an equally suitable inhabited planet they themselves wouldn’t mind letting him eat.  The latter option was essentially a non-starter, and though the team gamely gave the former a try, their efforts seemed doomed… that is, until the climactic scenes of #175. wherein the Invisible Girl came through with a planet whose populace were indeed ready and willing to be devoured.  Taking these accommodating folks up on their offer before they could change their minds, Galactus proceeded to drain the planet dry — only to have an extremely negative physical reaction.  As the FF and HE watched on the latter’s viewscreen, the purple planet-eater screamed in agony, then collapsed; in the end, he was only saved from extinction by the High Evolutionary’s technology, which transformed Galactus into pure inorganic energy… perhaps forever!

This was the second appearance of the Impossible Man, whose only previous outing had been all the way back in 1962’s FF #10.  In that Lee-Kirby classic, the comical-looking alien from the planet Poppup had journeyed to Earth for a fun vacation — but though he was completely without malice, his particular notion of “fun”, lack of impulse control, and formidable shape-shifting powers had combined to make him an inadvertent menace.  In the end, Mister Fantastic had managed to trick the Impossible Man into changing his holiday plans by getting everyone in New York City to ignore the antics of their strange visitor, thereby causing him to become bored enough to leave our planet… forever!  (Now where have I heard that before?)

I’m sure it went right over my nineteen-year-old self’s head in 1976, but the one-two of “Good Lord!” and “Choke!” in that last panel is a not-so-subtle tribute to EC Comics — the 1950s publisher whose twist-ending short stories often ended with one or more characters making those same exclamations.

Anyway, after bidding farewell to the High Evolutionary and his right-hand man super-evolved ape, Gorr the Golden Gorilla, the FF boarded HE’s spaceship for the return ride home.  Accompanying them — whether they liked it or not — was the Impossible Man.

En route, Ben Grimm began to feel unwell.  Thinking it might help, he took off the helmet of his suit, prompting a comment from the team’s new hanger-on: “I always thought orange was your natural color.”  “It useta be, pal,” Ben begins to explain, “but not any more.”

Once the transformation had begun, the rest went all to quickly.  Within moments, Ben Grimm had once more become the one and only, genuine, original Thing — and his exoskeleton, shattered by the expansion of Ben’s once-more truly rocky physique, lay in ruins.

And that brings us at long last to Fantastic Four #176 — and the return of George Pérez on pencils and Joe Sinnott on inks (following John Buscema’s handling of both jobs in the previous issue) — just in time for them to show everyone they knew at Marvel Comics how good they were at drawing their likenesses… though maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself, here.  Ahem.

Reed recalls how, while the FF were battling Galactus on Counter-Earth, the world-eater had struck Ben with a powerful energy bolt.  Though the bolt had seemed to do no harm at the time, it’s clear now that its effect was only delayed until the team were on the ship heading home, at which point “Ben suddenly burst out of the exo-skeleton… like a butterfly coming out of its cocoon!”

Perhaps Ben’s teammates seem a little callous in their attitude that Ben should just get over it, already — but in their defense, his incessant moping in the first issues immediately following his “cure”, when he seemed a lot more bummed out about being sidelined as a superhero than enthused about the opportunity to begin a new, normal life with Alicia, had become pretty grating.

As to the implication that he’s come back as a bigger, stronger Thing, I think we can chalk that up mostly to Roy Thomas not wanting it to seem as though the entire plotline had been entirely without consequence, and that the team was now returning to the same old status quo.  That said, I don’t think much was ever made of the Thing’s “upgrade”, story-wise — I’m not sure it was ever even mentioned again, following Thomas’ run — so, for all practical purposes, it really was a return to the status quo.  (Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that.)

“…hit the Lake near the 60’s…”

“…from the Zoo to Morningside Heights!”

For a guy who’d just moved to Los Angeles, Roy Thomas was sure being liberal with the New York City geographical references.  Was he feeling homesick, already?

Johnny Storm hesitates to leap into the Lake, worrying that he’s too winded to hold his breath long enough to reach the submerged spaceship.  But it turns out that he had no need to fret, as his sister Sue was able to enclose the vessel in a force-bubble before it hit the water, and it swiftly bobs back up to the surface, all occupants unharmed.  Within a minute or two, the weary team — and their uninvited guest — are exiting the park…

I guess it stands to reason that even with all the superpeople slugfests, alien invasions, and other extraordinary events that have occurred in the Marvel-Earth version of New York over the years, there might still be at least one wiseguy who refuses to believe any of it until he’s seen it with his own eyes.  It’s an amusing idea, at any rate.

Per a text piece Thomas wrote for FF #176’s letters page concerning this story’s genesis, the scene above was one of the earliest ideas he had for it — “mainly because I’ve always wished I could do that to somebody who edged into the crosswalk at a stoplight.”  While one can certainly understand the cathartic appeal of such wish-fulfillment writing, this does seem a little excessive a reaction on Ben’s part — and the kind of thing that could make a reader more sympathetic to the ordinary citizens of the Marvel Universe on those infrequent occasions we see them call for the authorities to rein in these so-called heroes just a little.  On the other hand, I may well be taking this story a good bit more seriously than its creators intended… so, moving on…

If only for the specificity of that “Conjure” T-shirt, I’d wager that June and her unnamed companion are based on some real-life personages then known to either Roy Thomas or George Pérez, or both… but I have no idea who that might be.  Anyone else care to speculate?

Your humble blogger doubts that many –if any — readers of this blog need for me to identify the four gentlemen pictured in the last panel above; but, just to be on the safe side, from left to right we have George Pérez, Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, and Jack Kirby — a quartet of comics creators who, as noted by Thomas in his Marvel Masterworks intro, “in Real Life were never in the same room at the same time”, but whose appearance together here seems altogether fitting:  the two men who’d originated Fantastic Four, side-by-side with their then-current heirs.

For those unfamiliar with it, the conceit that, in the fictional world we call the Marvel Universe, a company named Marvel Comics publishes licensed adaptations of the true adventures of the FF and other superheroes goes all the way back to Fantastic Four #10 (Jan., 1963) — just as indicated in “Rascally” Roy’s footnote, above.  (Although that’s just talking about “modern” — i.e., post FF #1 — Marvel continuity; in fact, depending on how one views the canonicity of the comics published by Marvel [then known as Timely] during the Golden Age, it can be argued that the Stan Lee of Marvel-Earth started hobnobbing with costumed super-people as early as 1941.)  Ever since then, fictional doppelgängers of Marvel staffers and freelancers have shown up every so often in the publisher’s comics… although this longstanding tradition may soon face some novel challenges, given the recent announcement that Marvel Comics will soon be moving its offices and attendant personnel to Burbank, CA, while its star characters like the FF, Spider-Man, Daredevil, etc., will presumably remain based in the Big Apple — thus making it a little harder for members of the two groups to cross paths.

But, we digress.   Let’s return now to our story, picking up right where we’d so rudely interrupted that preeminent idea-man, Jack “King” Kirby, just as he was about to share his latest brainstorm…

According to Roy Thomas’ Masterworks introduction, negative fan reaction to the Impossible Man’s debut in FF #11 was the chief reason the character hadn’t appeared again since:

As a reader, I loved that story, which reminded me of a 1950s science-fiction novel, Martian[s], Go Home! by Frederick Pohl.  I wrote and told Stan so, only to be advised that he was unfamiliar with that book.

 

So, naturally, when in the early ’70s I became one of the first post-Lee FF scribes, I wanted to bring back the Impossible Man.  But I’d known, ever since coming to work for Stan, that in ’62 there’d been an outpouring of letters from fans who absolutely hated that yarn and never wanted to see Impy again!  Stan took them seriously and wouldn’t let me use him in a story.

 

By 1976, however, Stan was more willing to accept the judgment of his writers and editors (and I was both), so George and I plowed ahead…

Evidently, the idea of Impy using his shape-changing powers to mimic aspects of Marvel’s heroes wasn’t part of Roy Thomas’ original plot for the issue.  As he explained in the issue’s “The Story Behind the Story” text piece:

…as I was plotting the tale… [production manager] John Verpoorten and [art director John] Romita informed me that if I wanted Jack “King” Kirby to pencil the cover for F.F. # 176, I’d better give him a coast-to-coast phone-call right away and describe a cover scene to him…

 

So I called Jack.  Yes, he said, he vaguely remembered the Impossible Man.  The thin green guy with the pinhead, right?  I said right.  And here’s the important part: I asked Jack to have Impy, on the cover, using some of the gimmicks George and I had planned for the interior, such as hosing the Human Torch and hammering the Thing.

 

But, as Jazzy Johnny Romita always said: “Jack at his worst is better than most guys at their best!”

 

And not only is Jack seldom at his worst — but on this cover, he was definitely at his best!

 

A few days later, I got this strange penciled cover in the mail which was just what I’d asked, except that Impy was blasting the F.F. with hands shaped like Iron Man’s glove and Thor’s magic hammer!  And there was even a note suggesting he could have shaped a fist like Captain America’s shield!  Immediately I saw Jack’s reasoning: this was the Marvel Comics office, right?  So why not have him using Marvel-type gimmicks?

 

Ten minutes later I was on the phone describing the cover to George, and we instantly decided (since George was just beginning to draw the last half of the book) to utilize Jack’s ideas…

That’s Marvel writer/editor Marv Wolfman coming into frame in the third from last panel above — while the legs extending into the panel from the other side apparently belong to his then-wife Michele, who happens to have been the colorist for this very issue.

As for “Jumbo” John Verpoorten, he was of course a longtime inker at Marvel, as well as its production manager — and while he never did any credited work on Jack Kirby’s adaptation/continuation of 2001: A Space Odyssey, he had recently embellished Kirby’s pencils on the first four issues of The Eternals, and had a couple of Captain America jobs with the King coming up soon after this, as well.  (Sadly, Verpoorten wouldn’t have too many more opportunities to appear on-panel following this story, as he would suddenly and unexpectedly pass away just a year and a half later, in December, 1977.)

George Pérez’s graphic storytelling is just great throughout this whole story, using varying page layouts and camera angles to keep things visually interesting without ever sacrificing clarity, and also maintaining a breakneck pace that still leaves room for every gag to land.

In the first panel above, “Marie” can only be legendary penciller, colorist, and production staffer Marie Severin — an artist whose gift for likenesses had seen her pulled in on various occasions (sometimes credited, sometimes not) to keep Stan, Jack, et al “on model” for their cameos.  (It’s an indirect testament to the talents of George Pérez and Joe Sinnott that one doesn’t miss “Mirthful” Marie’s touch in this story… well, not much, anyway.)  Meanwhile, “Jim” might be either Jim Shooter or Jim Salicrup, both of whom were on staff at Marvel at this time.

The second panel includes a great visual gag regarding the high turnover in the editor-in-chief position at Marvel since Stan Lee’s promotion to publisher in 1972.  Back in 1976, certain aspects of the joke likely went over the heads of virtually everyone who wasn’t actually then working for Marvel — since, to the best of my knowledge, Roy Thomas’ last-minute decision not to return to the job following Marv Wolfman’s departure (indicated here by the crossed-out “ROY THO” on the door) hadn’t been reported in the fan press of the time.

For what it’s worth, Archie Goodwin had been introduced as the new Marvel EIC with the preceding adjective “amiable” by no less a personage than Stan Lee himself in his “Stan’s Soapbox” column published one month earlier.  On the other hand, whatever anonymous person had welcomed Goodwin back to Marvel in a “Marvel Bullpen Bulletin” published about a year before that had called him “Artful Archie”, so you can see why the poor guy might be confused.

In the first panel above, we meet both Marvel art director John Romita and writer/editor Len Wein, the latter of whom was at this juncture responsible for The Amazing Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, and The Mighty Thor… but who’d also be adding Fantastic Four to his slate in about eight months.

“Gerry” is of course Gerry Conway, who’d preceded Thomas as the writer of Fantastic Four — and who’d both gone to work for DC Comics and returned to Marvel in the months since then.

“Roger” is another character for whom more than one real-world model is possible.  He could be either Roger Slifer, who’d come to work for Marvel in 1974, or Roger Stern, who’d joined the House of Ideas earlier in 1976.  I’ll leave it to someone with more knowledge of how either of those guys might have been wearing his hair back then to speculate as to which identification is the more likely.

“Marvel Comics hasn’t got time to waste on silly-looking characters!”  This Howard the Duck-centered gag carries an extra level of irony for those who’ve read Thomas’ Masterworks intro, in which he confesses that “the readers’ earlier [negative] response to Impy was the major reason I forced poor Steve Gerber to ‘kill off’ Howard at the end of his debut in a ‘Man-Thing’ tale — not my smartest move ever”

And thus ends an issue of Fantastic Four which, whether you consider it a milestone or not, remains a pretty special one, half a century later.

It’s worth noting that — contrary to Thomas’ assurance in that last panel that “offbeat time is over!” — the light-hearted spirit of FF #176 actually continued into the following issue, as the Frightful Four’s auditions for a new member was played largely for laughs, with applicants that included Captain Ultra (an impressively powerful figure who utterly collapsed in the presence of a struck match) and the Texas Twister (an over-the-top cowboy parody).  Also turning up for the occasion, albeit under false pretenses, were a former Frightful, Thundra the Femizon, as well as another female adventurer, Tigra the Were-Woman — both of whom (along with the Impossible Man) would end up hanging around as supporting characters for a while.  But the winning applicant for the supervillain team gig ultimately turned out to be none of the above — rather, it was the Reed Richards of Counter-Earth, who’d inadvertently stowed away on the High Evolutonary’s spaceship, unseen, back in #175.

In his previous appearances in Warlock, this version of Reed had been portrayed as a good guy — at least when not in the mutated form of his alter ego, the Brute.  But an accidental bump on the noggin had turned him rotten, at least temporarily, and he contrived to dispose of “our” Reed, secretly trapping him in the Negative Zone (what, again?) while taking his place as the leader of the FF — and as the husband of Sue.  Those developments (the latter one in particular) had some dark, even creepy implications — too dark and creepy for the more freewheeling mood of issues #176 and #177 to be reasonably sustained.  Still, everything worked out all right in the end (though not before some additional strife involving Annihilus and the Mad Thinker had gone down), and following a last-minute reverse heel-turn by Counter-Reed, the one true Mister Fantastic was restored to his rightful place in the closing scenes of FF #183.

By the time that issue went into production, however, the Roy Thomas-George Pérez era of Fantastic Four had already sputtered out.  The two creators were being spelled by Gerry Conway and Ron Wilson, respectively, as early as FF #179, after which missed deadlines forced #180 to carry an unscheduled reprint of #101.  Thomas returned briefly for #181, but after that bowed out completely; ultimately, the plotlines he and Pérez had initiated were wrapped up in #182-183: two issues that required the efforts of seven, count ’em, seven writers — plotters Len Wein, Archie Goodwin, Jim Shooter, Rogers Slifer and Stern, and Ralph Macchio, plus scripter Bill Mantlo — as well as two artists, Sal Buscema and Joe Sinnott — to be brought to completion.

Happily, things settled down somewhat after that, as Len Wein took the reins as writer/editor, Pérez returned as penciller, and Sinnott stayed put on inks.  Under their management, the saga of the Fantastic Four would continue — and, naturally, we’ll be checking in on the team’s future adventures here on this blog… though whether or not that’ll happen prior to their next bona fide numerical milestone, Fantastic Four #200, only time will tell.