This was the second of the three issues of MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS that I bought out of the big bin of comics at my local drug store, having enjoyed the first trio of FANTASTIC FOUR issues that I had read. During this period, Marvel maintained a full line of reprint books, serving up the stories from years previous on the regular. It gave the company a cheap way of putting more books on the stands (and more quarters into their pockets) while helping to reinforce the notion that all of these older stories still mattered to whatever new tales were being spun out in the new books.
Despite the fact that they’re featured prominently on the cover (which was the original image used on this story when it was first published years earlier) neither Sue nor Crystal is in this issue of MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS> That’s because their pages were the ones that were excised in order to fit what had been a 20 page story into a package that now had room for only 18 story pages.
This particular issue is a bit of a tour-de-force for artist and plotter Jack Kirby, who devotes several pages to expansive visuals of his wonderful machinery and technology. (One might argue too many pages, honestly–there’s a splash page of a micro-verse cityscape that feels as though Jack is just vamping to get his way through the issue.) This stuff looked nothing like any futuristic hardware that I had encountered in DC Comics or anywhere else–it was simultaneously a million years beyond me, yet it all looked plausible, as though it would truly function.
Kirby’s rendition of the characters wasn’t quite as soft and cuddly as that of George Perez, who had illustrated most of the other issues of the title I’d as-yet read. Kirby’s Fantastic Four was more solid, more granite-like, and his Thing was more expressive. There’s a trick that Kirby does all throughout his work in which a few seconds of time pass in a panel between its left side and its right side, so that when you read it, there’s more of a sense of motion and action. Kirby did this instinctively, and nobody else has every quite been able to capture the effect with such regularity.
Sadly, it was during the making of this story that Kirby found out about the new SILVER SURFER series that Stan was going to be launching with John Buscema, and the origin story that would be featured in the first issue. Kirby had been building up to revealing his own origin of the Surfer, and so this knocked the creative wind out of his sails–he had lost creative control over a character that he had created, and so he determined not to create anything new for Marvel going forward, and began to look around for other opportunities to ply his trade elsewhere. A great shame.
This issue opens with Reed, Ben and Johnny still in Sub-Atomica, where they remained last issue in order to track down their nemesis Psycho-Man, who dwells there. But Psycho-Man sees them coming, draws them into his stronghold, and then attempts to destroy them utilizing a number of different artificial super-powered bodies. Meanwhile, the Silver Surfer has re-enlarged himself and heads off into space to find alternative sustenance for his former master Galactus so that the big guy won’t consume the planet Earth. These plot threads play out in tandem, though the Surfer-Galactus one feels like tying up loose ends more than anything else.
The Fantastic Trio pulverize a number of different Psycho-Man bodies as they journey deeper and deeper into his domain, while the Surfer chases an errant meteor which collides with another celestial body to create the perfect energy-charged meal for his master. And eventually, tired of all the games, Psycho-Man confronts the FF in person, in his most unstoppable form yet. but Reed, Ben and Johnny collapse his headquarters on top of him, pinning Psycho-Man within the rubble.
And the battle ends with a unique twist, when Reed tells Psycho-Man about the threat posed by Galactus–a threat that will annihilate not only the Earth but also his sub-atomic realm at the same time. Probing Reed’s mind and sensing Galactus for himself, Psycho-Man returns the FF to their full size, the battle between them unresolved for the moment. And I still had the following issue yet to read–which I moved into directly.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 