BC: MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #64

Both my friend David Steckel and I were huge FANTASTIC FOUR fans–it was our favorite comic book series at the time we met, and one of the things that bonded us together. So in particular, it was issues of FANTASTIC FOUR and its reprint title MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS that we borrowed back and forth, broadening out our knowledge of stories past and just enjoying the things. I already owned the second half of the story reprinted in this issue of MGC, #64, but that didn’t make me any less interested in experiencing the set-up. And so at some point, I borrowed this issue from David.

What’s interesting is that David also owned the original printing of this story in FANTASTIC FOUR #82. It intrigued both of us that the cover had been completely redrawn for the reprint (by Joe Sinnott, not that we knew that at the time.) This fascinated us–why would Marvel do such a thing? As I was told in later years, this happened occasionally when either the stats for the original cover couldn’t be located, or a bunch of work was going to need to be done to the image to accommodate the larger MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS logo and the UPC code, or because there was a feeling among the editors of the day that the original cover looked too off-model from how the characters were being depicted at the time. I’d hazard a guess that it was that last one, in particular as it came to the face of the Thing, that made them go ahead and get Joe to do an updated version of this image. Did it sell any more comics? Who can say–but I kind of doubt it.

The other thing that was going on in MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS at this time was that two story pages from the original story were being cut for space. You see, by the mid-1970s, Marvel books were featuring stories that only ran 17 pages in length. By not having a letters page, MGC was able to stretch that to 18 pages. But the stories it was pulling from were all typically 20 pages long–so something had to go. This excising was done well enough that in many cases as a young reader I didn’t realize that something was missing, but it was always eye-opening to compare the reprint to the original and see exactly what had been left on the cutting room floor and conjecture as to why that. This cutting was another reason why reprints were considered “valueless” among my small group of peers. They were good to read, but they were never going to be worth money, a thing that we all obsessed over to a certain extent despite not having any particular intention of ever selling our comic books.

The story in this issue is a bit thin, to be honest, counting on action and jack Kirby’s ability to deliver it to make the experience seem a bit more substantial than it really is. And that’s not really any great surprise. At the time when this story was produced, Kirby was still smarting from having his creation the Silver Surfer wrested away from him to star in a new series that he wouldn’t be working on. He was looking for a way out of Marvel, and in the meantime, he had vowed not to give the company any more valuable characters like the Surfer. Jack still needed to earn a living, though, so this led to a series of stories that brought back a lot of already-established players for another go-around, and a greater reliance on splash pages and pages with a smaller panel count to them. The reduction of the size of the original art boards that were being used during this period was a factor in this change as well. These stories are all fine–I loved the hell out of them as a kid–but they aren’t truly on the same level as the best of the Lee/Kirby efforts on the book.

The story opens with Crystal, who in the previous issue had replaced Sue Richards as one of the Fantastic Four due to Sue being pregnant with her and Reed’s first child, declares that she needs to return to the homeland of her people, the Inhumans, to get official permission to remain as one of the team. Might have maybe wanted to take care of that before you accepted the gig, girl. Anyway, there’s a teleportation effect and Lockjaw, Crystal’s teleporting dog, appears, summoned to return her to the Great Refuge. But he doesn’t come alone. Carried in his teleportational wake is a horde of Alpha Primitives, the Inhumans’ servant drone race. I’m not entirely sure what Kirby was thinking of when he came up with them, but their presence in Inhuman society immediately casts a bit of a pallor over the Inhumans as good guys. Anyway, the Alpha Primitives immediately attack the FF, trying to carry Crystal off back to the Great Refuge (which is where she’s trying to go in the first place–bit of overkill here.)

Despite the Fantastic Four’s best efforts, Crystal ends up getting dragged away through the portal and vanishing. So Reed and the others mount up in one of the team’s rocket ships and head off towards the Great Refuge in the far-off Himalayas. Meanwhile, as Crystal appears back home, she’s confronted by a shocking sight: it isn’t the regal Black Bolt who occupies the throne of the Inhumans, but rather the malevolent Maximus the Mad–wearing what is possibly the most outlandish and impractical costume design Kirby ever attempted. Seriously, Maximus’ headpiece is the size of a small child on this splash page. Crystal learns that during her absence, Maximus staged yet another coup, overthrowing Black Bolt and imprisoning him and most of the rest of the Royal Family inside a Force Field Prison. All except Crystal’s sister Medusa, whom Maximus keeps chained up at the side of his throne as a living testament to his triumph.

While all of this is playing out, the Fantastic Four cover the distance to the Great Refuge in their rocket, then make their way into the city. But they get swept up into an underground chamber in which they are forced to face off with a guardian unit, a powerful android called Zorr. There’s a perfunctory fight scene–more perfunctory in this reprint due to the fact that pages have been cut out of it–but the end result is that the Thing, the Human Torch and Mister Fantastic are all trounced by Zorr and wind up as captives themselves.

Crystal and Maximus have watched the carnage on closed-circuit television, so she’s aware that the rest of the FF has gone down fighting. But when Crystal tries to turn her own elemental force against Maximus, she’s stymied by his own force-field. Maximus then drags Crystal along to show him what he proposed to do next–and it’s very much a Maximus-101 plan, a thing he’s tried before. He’s had his men build an enormous Hypno-Gun, with which he intends to put the entire population of the planet under his mental domination, and thus become the ruler of all. And that’s where this installment of the story is To Be Continued! If you’re interested in the wrap-up, I wrote about that issue of MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS some years ago here:

BHOC: MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #65