Human Torch

Marvel Two-in-One #2 (March, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As we covered here back in August, the twelfth — and final — issue of Marvel Feature ended with Benjamin J. Grimm (aka the Thing), stranded in a desert in the American Southwest.  But we Marvel Comics readers of 1973 had no need to worry over the fate of our rocky orange hero, since just two months later, the narrative of Ben’s travails picked right up in Marvel Two-in-One #1 — the first issue of a brand-new title devoted to the “Thing Team-Up” series premise that had made its debut in Marvel Feature #11.

With the new title came a (mostly) new creative team; for, while longtime Fantastic Four inker Joe Sinnott soldiered on, making sure that Aunt Petunia’a favorite nephew remained reliably on-model, the series was now being written by Steve Gerber and pencilled by Gil Kane.  Gerber and Kane faithfully picked up the threads left behind by previous storytellers Mike Friedrich and Jim Starlin, having Ben Grimm finally reach civilization and buy a bus ticket home to New York — only to exchange it for one for Florida, after catching sight of a news story regarding a certain muck-encrusted mockery of a man who’d been sighted shambling about the Sunshine State’s swampy Everglades.  “Like it ain’t bad enuff just bein’ the Thing –!” Ben complained aloud to an uncaring universe.  “This bug-eyed mudball’s gotta come along and rip off my name!”  Read More

Fantastic Four #141 (December, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Hard times at the Baxter Building.  Bleak House.  Heartbreak Hotel.  Is life not ironic?  If nothing else?  As Annihilus remarked back in issue #140.  Love and work had come between the Fantastic Four, America’s greatest superheroes.  For almost a year — a year in real time, a year in Paul Hood’s whirlpool teens, but a few days, no more, in the motionless, imperceptible time of Marvel comics — Sue Richards, née Storm, the Invisible Girl, had been estranged from her husband, Reed Richards.  With Franklin, their mysteriously equipped son, she was in seclusion in the country.  She would return only when Reed learned to understand the obligations of family, those paramount bonds that lay beneath the surface of his work.  In her stead, the Medusa had joined the Fantastic Four.  Medusa: Tibetan-born Inhuman and cousin of Johnny Storm’s paramour, Crystal, the Elemental…

The mood in the Baxter Building was grim.  Besides the Richards’s marital problems, Crystal had recently chosen to marry Quicksilver instead of Johnny Storm.  Sue was worried about Franklin’s trances; Reed was worried about Sue; Johnny was worried about Crystal; Ben Grimm was worried about himself.

It was a good period for readers of the F.F….

— from Rick Moody’s 1994 novel The Ice Storm.

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Hero for Hire #9 (May, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In March, 1972, Marvel Comics published the first issue of Hero for Hire.  The new comic’s titular star, Luke Cage, wasn’t Marvel’s first Black superhero (that distinction belonged to the Black Panther, who debuted in 1966), or even its first Black American superhero (that would be the Falcon, whose first appearance came in 1969).  But he was the first Black superhero to star in his very own comics title — not just from Marvel, but from any major American company — and that made the release of Hero for Hire #1 a milestone.

According to Roy Thomas, the initiative to create Luke Cage came from Stan Lee, who was then on the verge of ascending from his longtime role as Marvel’s editor-in-chief to become its publisher — and who was determined to diversify Marvel’s line on a number of levels, one of which was race.  Taking obvious inspiration from the “blaxpoitation” trend in early 1970s American cinema, Lee and Thomas worked with writer Archie Goodwin and artist John Romita to conceptualize and design the new hero, before bringing two more artists on board — George Tuska and Billy Graham. (the latter being the only Black person among this assortment of talents) — to craft the first issue’s story with Goodwin.  Read More

Fantastic Four #131 (February, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Readers of our Avengers #105 post back in July may recall how that issue’s plot — the first from the title’s brand new writer, Steve Englehart — concerned the team’s search for their missing member Quicksilver, who’d disappeared towards the end of the previous issue.  Following the inconclusive resolution to their efforts in that tale, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes would continue their quest for the mutant speedster for months to come.  But, surprisingly — well, it surprised me, back in November, 1972 — when Pietro Maximoff was finally “found”, it didn’t happen in the pages of Avengers; instead, Quicksilver resurfaced in, of all things, an issue of Fantastic Four — which, as it happened, was the new super-team scripting gig of Roy Thomas, the man who’d written Avengers for the last five-plus years prior to Englehart taking over, and thus the guy who’d launched the whole “where is Pietro?” mystery in the first place.  From a creative standpoint, it made a certain kind of sense that Thomas would be the one to ultimately wrap things up; but in terms of the ongoing mega-story of the Marvel Universe, it seemed to come out of nowhere.  How did Quicksilver ever manage to end up in the Himalayan homeland of the Inhumans, the Great Refuge?  And why the heck was he fighting the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch, Johnny Storm? Read More

Avengers #97 (March, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

I’m not sure exactly what my fourteen-year-old self was expecting to see on the cover of Avengers #97 when it first turned up in the spinner rack, back in December, 1971; nevertheless, I’m pretty confident that Gil Kane and Bill Everett’s illustration highlighting Captain America, the original Human Torch, and the Sub-Mariner — plus four other guys I didn’t recognize — wasn’t anywhere near it.  I mean, it was a great image, but aside from Cap, none of those characters were Avengers.  And “Rick Jones Conquers the Universe!”?  OK, that last bit wasn’t so unexpected — it had been pretty clear from the latter scenes of the preceding issue that Rick was going to play an important role in the conclusion of the Kree-Skrull War.  But still — where the heck were the Avengers?   Or the Kree or the Skrulls, for that matter? Read More

Avengers #95 (January, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In October, 1971, Avengers #95 brought us what might be the most unusual installment yet in the ongoing epic of the Kree-Skrull War.  From one perspective, concerned primarily with the progress of the war and the Avengers’ role in it, it could quite reasonably be deemed the least consequential chapter in the entire saga.  From a different point of view, however — namely, that of the Inhumans — it might be the most significant of all.

That’s because Roy Thomas and Neal Adams took advantage of the opportunity Avengers offered not only to wrap up the story they’d begun telling in their most recent previous collaboration — the “Inhumans” strip in Amazing Adventures — but also to deepen the Inhumans’ mythos; especially that part of it wrapped up in the personal histories of the two royal brothers, Black Bolt and Maximus, whose animus had been the driver of most of the narratives Marvel Comics had produced concerning that hidden race ever since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced them back in 1965. Read More

Fantastic Four #116 (November, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When we last checked in with the Fantastic Four, the team was dealing with the aftermath of the temporarily deranged Thing’s rampage through Manhattan in FF #111, and subsequent rumble with the Hulk in issue #112 — a battle which had apparently left Ben Grimm no longer among the living.  As revealed in the following month’s #113, however, Ben wasn’t completely dead, and Reed Richards (aka Mister Fantastic) was ultimately able not only to resuscitate his old friend, but reverse the ill effects of Reed’s attempt to cure him back in #107, restoring Bashful Benjy to his old irascible (but not antisocial) self.

Notwithstanding that good news, the FF still had some major problems with which to contend.  Public opinion had turned strongly against them over recent events, to the extent that there was a warrant out for their arrest; plus, their landlord at the Baxter Building was trying to throw them out of their headquarters.  But most urgent of all was a surprise visit from an old friend, whose coming was teased throughout the first thirteen pages of the story by a bright light in the sky that drew steadily closer and closer until, at last, it entered in through the FF’s window, and revealed itself as… the Watcher!  Read More

Avengers #93 (November, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

If there’s a single comic book that best exemplifies the potential of the all-new, 48-page format which Marvel Comics rolled out to great fanfare in August, 1971 (or, as we’ve christened it on this blog, Giant-Size Marvel Month), it surely must be the subject of today’s post: Avengers #93, featuring the 34-page story “This Beachhead Earth” — which, in addition to being the mid-point of the extended storyline known as the Kree-Skrull War, was also the first installment of a short but superlative run on the series by the creative team of scripter Roy Thomas, penciller Neal Adams, and inker Tom Palmer.

And if any set of classic comics exemplifies just how contentious two talented creators can become over the issue of who deserves the credit for which aspects of their storied collaboration, it’s the same short Avengers run by Thomas, Adams, and Palmer. Read More

Fantastic Four #112 (July, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

You always remember your first.

(Your first Hulk vs. Thing slugfest, that is.  Why, what did you think I meant?)

Technically, I suppose FF #112’s “Battle of the Behemoths!”, crafted by the regular Fantastic Four creative team of scripter Stan Lee, penciller John Buscema, and inker Joe Sinnott, wasn’t really my first experience seeing these two Marvel Comics heavy hitters go at it.  Rather, that would have come several months earlier, courtesy of  Marvel’s Greatest Comics #29 (Dec., 1970), which reprinted the characters’ very first meeting from FF #12 (Mar., 1963); the problem there, however, was that that story (a production of Lee, Jack Kirby, and Dick Ayers) was actually a bit of a bust, at least as far as Thing-Hulk dust-ups went.  The two bruisers didn’t actually encounter each other until page 17 of a 23-page story, and in the three page fight scene that followed, ol’ Jade Jaws took on the entire Fantastic Four, not just Bashful Benjy Grimm.  While both big guys got in some licks, the scene ultimately wasn’t very satisfying as a one-on-one match.

Also contributing to making this story less than a slam-dunk for my thirteen-year-old self was its age — or, more accurately, what its age signified in terms of the development of the characters, both visually and personality-wise.  This was a decidedly different Hulk than the one I was familiar with — among other things, this guy spoke in the first person, and he wore purple trunks, rather than the tastefully torn trousers of the same hue that I was used to seeing him in — while this Thing was a lumpier and more belligerent fellow than the hero I was accustomed to, as well.  Read More

Fantastic Four #108 (March, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In December, 1970, after four months of whetting fans’ appetites with Jack Kirby’s first three issues of Jimmy Olsen, DC Comics at last published the debut issues of two brand new titles by Kirby, Forever People and New Gods.

And in that same month, Marvel Comics published Fantastic Four #108, containing the very last new work by Kirby for that title, some six months after the last issue fully drawn by the artist had shipped.

Some fans are of the opinion that the concurrence of these events was not coincidental; that either because Marvel wanted to capitalize on the publicity surrounding Kirby’s new DC titles, or because the company wanted to steal a bit of Kirby and/or DC’s thunder concerning their launch, or perhaps for some other reason entirely, Marvel purposefully contrived for this issue — a patchwork put together months after Kirby’s departure from the House of Ideas, featuring a combination of his pencilled art with additional work by John Buscema and John Romita, all inked by Joe Sinnott and scripted by Stan Lee — to reach spinner racks around the same time as the debut issues of the King’s highly anticipated new projects.  Read More