Lee & Kirby: An Excised Page From FANTASTIC FOUR #31

I had written about this a little bit before, in the context of a broader review of this early issue of FANTASTIC FOUR:

WC: FANTASTIC FOUR #31

But creator Larry Lieber had held onto a discarded page from this story for all these years. I’d seen a bad photocopy of the page at the time I wrote that original piece–it had turned up among transcripts from one of the Marvel trials of that time–but the copy that I had was poor, with the artwork breaking up and Jack Kirby’s original border notes indecipherable. Just from context, i conjectured that the page may have indicated that the character being introduced here was not Sue and Johnny’s father Franklin Storm, as the finished story indicated, but rather instead some old beau of Sue’s As it happens, Larry is in the process of having portions of his collection auctioned off, and wouldn’t you know it, this discarded page was one of the listings. What’s more, there are far better scans of it that can enable us to make out some more information about it. So let’s take a closer look at it and see what we can see.

Above is the raw scan of the pages that appears at the Heritage Auction site. It’s already a much better copy than what I had to work with initially, but it’s still a bit difficult to completely decipher. Fortunately, rather than having to do the conversion work myself, Arlen Schumer took on the task of darkening up the piece for his own post on the subject, so it’s his version that you see below.

With this much better image of the page at hand, I’m willing to draw a couple of conclusions. The first of which is that this character is clearly intended to be the same Franklin Storm who appears in the rest of FANTASTIC FOUR #31. From Kirby’s border notes, it is clear that he intends for this to be Sue’s father (though at this point in the story, the reader isn’t meant to know that yet.) And in fact, this page, labeled as Page 6 here, slots smoothly into the issue as it was published. What’s more, FANTASTIC FOUR #31 was the first issue in which the printed length of the main story was reduced to 21 pages from 22, as had been the case on prior issues. So it seems clear that the need arose to cut one page from this story that Kirby had completed, and this was the one that Lee selected to be excised, reckoning that the story would still work without it. It does seem to slot in perfectly between Pages 5 and 6 of the published version.

As was becoming a regular part of their working relationship at this point, Kirby not only plotted and drew this page, but he also provided Lee with border notes to guide Stan in crafting the final dialogue for the page. The border notes give a clear insight as to his intent for this sequence. I’ve taken the liberty of deciphering as much of them as was possible below:

PANEL 1

YOU LOOK 20 YEARS YOUNGER ALREADY

YOU’RE SO CHARMING, DOCTOR

PANEL 2

SUE ENTERS. SEE DAD WORRYING OVER LARGE CHECK

PANEL 3

GIMME THAT!

WHO TOOK IT?

PANEL 4

ME–YOUR CONSCIENCE

PANEL 5

SUE–IT’S YOU–WHERE DID (something)

PANEL 6

GLADDASEEYA! I’VE BEEN IN JAIL

CAN’T SPOOF ME! YOU’RE UP TO YOUR OLD TRICKS! A STEP AHEAD OF THE COPS!

PANEL 7

FIRST SHOCKS BEGIN TO TREMBLE IN BUILDING

And there’s also a handwritten note from Stan Lee of the sort he’d sometimes write to himself after going over pages with Kirby as a reminder to himself as to what was going on in a certain sequence:

SHE DOESN’T REVEAL WHO HE IS–