Invisible Girl

Fantastic Four #150 (September, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

A week ago, we took a look at Avengers #127 (Sep., 1974), the first half of a two-part crossover story set to conclude in the comic book that’s the main subject of the present post.  But while Fantastic Four #150 does in fact pick up immediately from the cliffhanger ending that closed out its predecessor, we’re going to be taking a somewhat circuitous route today to get to the splash page of “Ultron-7:He’ll Rule the World!”.  Why?  Well, as regular readers of this blog will surely recall, our Avengers #127 post promised that this follow-up would provide an explanation for that issue’s depiction of a happily reunited Reed and Sue Richards, who’d been very much on the outs the last time we’d encountered them in this space.  So that’s where we’ll begin.  Read More

Avengers #127 (September, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Following their close-shave victory over the mad Titan Thanos in Avengers #125 and Captain Marvel #33, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes barely got a breather before they were beset by the newly teamed super-villains Klaw and Solarr in Avengers #126.  This was a one-off story, and frankly not one of the Assemblers’ most memorable adventures — although it did mark a couple of significant changes in the team’s active roster worth noting before we proceed to the main topic of today’s post.

The most obvious and expected one of these was the departure of Captain America, who, after all, had just renounced his costumed identity over in issue #176 of his own series — a series which, like Avengers, was written by Steve Englehart.  But the leave-taking of the Black Panther was arguably just as necessary, and probably overdue.  Ever since the second installment of T’Challa’s new solo feature, published in Jungle Action #6 almost a year earlier, writer Don McGregor and his artistic collaborators (primarily Rich Buckler, Gil Kane, and Billy Graham) had been chronicling a dense, ambitious, multi-part epic, “Panther’s Rage”, which took place entirely within the hero’s African kingdom of Wakanda.  After a time, it simply stretched reader credulity to the breaking point to have the Panther continue to appear every month with the New York-based Avengers — especially since it seemed unlikely that McGregor’s storyline was going to be wrapping up any time soon.  (For the record, the final full chapter of the epic would see print just over a year later, in Jungle Action #17, with an “Epilogue” following two months later in #18; alas, your humble blogger didn’t have the good sense to pick up this run of comics back in the day, so you won’t be reading too much more about “Panther’s Rage” on this blog, regretfully.)  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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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

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

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

Fantastic Four #103 (October, 1970)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As was discussed in last month’s post on Fantastic Four #102, that issue — featuring the final collaboration of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby on the title — also included a “Stan’s Soapbox” column informing Marvel Comics’ readers that Kirby was departing not just from FF, but from Marvel as a whole.  Though I didn’t mention this fact in the earlier post, the same Marvel Bullpen Bulletins text page that featured that announcement also included a relatively lengthy biography of John Romita — a creator who’d been a Marvel mainstay since 1966, and had been either the full penciller or the layout artist for Marvel’s other top title, Amazing Spider-Man, for most of that period.  By this time, then, he could hardly have been thought to be an unfamiliar figure to most regular Marvel readers; nevertheless, editor-in-chief Lee seemed to think it was a good idea to introduce (or re-introduce) Romita to the publisher’s True Believers in the wake of Kirby’s abrupt (and unexpected) exodus. Read More

Fantastic Four #102 (September, 1970)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Jack Kirby was leaving Marvel for DC.

It was the comics industry story of 1970 — and if you were a hip, well-connected fan who subscribed to Don and Maggie Thompson’s newszine Newfangles, you learned about it not all that long after the industry pros did, in March:

If, on the other hand, you were just a run-of-the-mill, solitary comics-reading twelve-year-old like yours truly, you probably had no idea that this was happening until June, when you perused the Bullpen Bulletins page that ran in all Marvel’s comics cover-dated September, 1970 (including Fantastic Four #102), and read the stunning news in Stan Lee’s “Soapbox” column:  Read More

Amazing Adventures #1 (August, 1970)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As I’ve previously related on this blog, I didn’t start buying Marvel comics on a regular basis until January, 1968 (though I’d bought my very first such issue almost half a year earlier, in August, ’67); therefore, I pretty much completely missed the era of Marvel’s original “split” books, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, and Tales of Suspense. Indeed, the month I became a full-fledged Marvelite was the very same month that Marvel rolled out Captain America and the Hulk in their brand-new solo titles, with Iron Man, Sub-Mariner, Doctor Strange, and Nick Fury soon to follow.  It was a near miss, for sure; but it was a miss, all the same.

Still, even if I hadn’t experienced the old split book format firsthand, I knew what it was.  So, I doubt I was more than mildly surprised (if that) to see Marvel bringing it back after an absence of more than two years with the premiere issues of Amazing Adventures and Astonishing Tales, both released in May, 1970.  Read More