Fantastic Four: 1964

Part Four: 1964

Let's take a moment and note two things about the above: 1) Please pardon my crude disfigurements to the panels. This was the best of hours of work. You'd think I'd have accepted that I'm not much for designing by now. And 2) that hand-to-chin pin-up of Sue is something. I'm not sure exactly what, but something. That vintage 60s pad background is awesome, though.

Marvel was still blowing up in 1964. Sales continued to rise, though they would not overtake DC/ National until the end of the decade. For a comprehensive breakdown, see here. (Great site all around, by the by.)

All of this meant that Stan and Jack were terrifically overworked, and it shows in this stretch of stories from '64. Neither the art nor the writing is all that remarkable. Lots of repeat-plots and motifs, and Kirby continued to be paired with inkers (Chic Stone for the most part, this time around) who don't do much for him.

He added in the odd experimentation here and there. 

But, it pains me to say, it's Stan's plotting and verbiage that's the real slog in '64. Too little variation of plot or dialogue, too many villains returning to try the same thing they tried in '63 or earlier, and too much intra-team squabbling. 

Although, I confess, this panel amused me.

Even the Yancy St. stuff, which has been a consistent pleasure for me, felt tired this time around.

So yeah, Stan phoned it on in '64. At least on FF; elsewhere (The Avengers, Spider-Man) he did better. All is not lost, though. Starting in 1965 the stories in FF take a quantum leap forward, not just for the magazine but for the industry. Knowing what's around the corner made these stories almost seem like misdirections. 

1. STRANGE TALES

I figure I probably ought to start covering the contemporaneous solo-FF adventures published in Strange Tales, written by Stan Lee and penciled (with one exception: Kirby, for issue 120) by Dick Ayers.  

They're okay. No big whup. The Human Torch fights the Puppetmaster, the Eel, this guy:

Also the Wizard, the Rabble Rouser (a retread of the Hate Monger), officially-worst-named-villain-ever Paste-Pot-Pete (later the Trapster), the Beetle, and a boatload of terrorists, dispatched with the assistance of X-guest star Iceman.

Later, Reed pretends to be a super villain to teach Johnny and Ben a lesson on teamwork and family.

Johnny's extracurricular life is fleshed out a little bit, though not by much. Mostly, we see him keep breaking dates with his girl Doris Evans on account of superhero business.  

And the return of original Human Torch creator Carl Burgos. Which is kind of cool - or would be had Marvel not been gone to such lengths to screw him over only a few years later. (Stan looks a lot like Bob Hope in this panel, incidentally.)

The real treat of these Strange Tales issues are the back-ups with: 

Which leads me to my next order of business:

2. WE HAVE UPDATED OUR POLICY

It's been fun to take note of the peripheral coming together of the Marvel Universe in the last few posts. But to avoid that terminal condition known round the Dog Star bullpen as "post bloat," I'm going to limit further discussion only to what happens in the Fantastic Four magazine.  

And Strange Tales. Which means technically - I mean, I say technically, like it's some UN regulation and not some arbitrary condition I'm setting for myself - I could cover the Doctor Strange back-ups in depth. But, outside of appearing in the same magazine as some FF solo adventures, do they have any real connection to the FF's adventures in the 60s? Not really.

So, witness my restraint as I manage not to mention:  

Not going to spend any time on the awesome Ditko art. Nope. Nor the Realm of Nightmare, nor the Crimson Circle of Cytorrak, nor the Hoary Hands (nor the Hoary Hosts!) of Hoggoth, nor the blinding lights of the Eternal Vishanti, nor the all-seeing Eye of Agamotto, and definitely not the Seven Rings of Raggadorr.

Sorry, Doc.

Exceptions will be made for when the Marvel Universe comes to FF itself, of course, such as was the case with the Hulk and the Avengers in 2 issues (#25 and #26): 

or the X-Men in FF #28.

Doctor Strange appears in #27, as well. Good year for cross-overs. (For Stan, every year was a good year for crossovers. "The more the merrier, true believer!")

I'm also going to switch to just listing those future authors and artists who had letters published in the FF mailbag rather than cutting and pasting the letters themselves. This year's lucky winners: Dave Cockrum, Don Glut, and more from Mike Friedrich and George RR Martin. 

3.

aka YOU FOOLS!

Doom's appearance in FF #23, where he bestows super-powers on three criminals to attack the FF as his proxies, isn't all that great, but the annual this year is a real treat:

Doctor Doom's origin story is as full-on goth as the character deserves. His mother was a witch; she was burned alive. His father was a gypsy healer at the beckoned call of the Baron of the kingdom of Latveria. When he fails to heal the Baron's wife, he and a young Doom go into hiding, but Doom, Sr. dies from exposure. Doom swears eternal vengeance. He educates himself in the ways of science and magic and begins to punk the Latverian nobility:

First of the Doombots that will similarly vex the FF over the years.

Tales of his prowess reach the ears of "the dean of Science at State University," who travels to Latveria to recruit him. He accepts, but he has trouble making friends:

I wish I could get away with Doom's personality. I imagine it would be no fun for anyone else, but man.

As we saw elsewhere, eventually he is expelled for his unapologetic and unstable experiments with the Dark Arts, which leave him facially disfigured. Undeterred, he takes to the mountains to further train with a sect of monks hidden away from the world before returning to Latveria to take his rightful place as sovereign head of state.

Let the world beware, indeed.

The annual ends with the original tale, "The Final Victory of Doctor Doom," where Doom is saved by Rama Tet out in space, his (possible) future descendant. He returns to Earth and, challenges Reed to an Encephalo-gun mano-y-mano after the FF accept a suspicious invite to an official Latverian state function.

Good stuff.

4. THE MOLE MAN 

I'm getting irritated everytime they bring back the Mole Man. Although everytime I see the character's name I think of the pertinent "And that's how we created the Mole Man" routine from "Roger, the Stan Lee Experience" link NSFW - not sure if that link is the pertinent skit, actually, having some YouTube issues *- so I guess the chuckle is worth something. Anyway, the characters two appearances in 1964 are surrounded by some fun moments, such as when a parade of concerned/ outraged citizens and city officials take the FF to task for their significant disruptions and threats to public safety. 

* It isn't. Ah well, you get the idea.  

The situation leads Reed to look around for a private island the team can buy to get out of everyone's hair. And thus they walk right into the Mole Man's trap.

And herein lies my main problem with the Mole Man: he seems an awful lot more powerful than he should be, doesn't he? When we first met him back in FF #1, he was stealing whole nuclear reactors. Next he was tunneling up through Manhattan bedrock and stealing buildings, then threatening civilization with giant earthquakes. Here he's creating artificial islands - no big whup, there, I mean, China's doing the same thing in the South China Sea as I type these words. But the Mole Man's doing it with full-on replicas of city skylines and with otherwordly (you might even call them "Kirby-esque") machines and an army of Deviant construction workers. 

Think for a minute about what is required to do any of these things. I mean, why is anyone with this sort of power at his command wasting time with these schemes in the first place? I know it's a silly question to pose of a Silver Age comic villain, but I can't help wondering with each new demonstration of his power. What's wrong with this guy?

5. DOC STORM

There's a multi-issue soap opera about the return of the Super Skrull and the sudden re-appearance in Sue and Johnny's lives of their surgeon father, who went to prison for manslaughter years ago and then disappeared.

Don't get too attached, though, kids.

There's much more to the story, of course, but the long and short of it is: a father whom we've never heard of dramatically re-appears, then sacrifices himself for the good of the magazine. No pesky Dad figure hanging around to bother Sue and Johnny in future issues. They've already got Reed for that. But we'll get to that in the "Reed's Kind of a Dick" section.

7. MEANWHILE, NAMOR GETS HORNY

Like some water-breathing wing-footed Howard Hughes, Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner bugs the bedrooms of the woman he's interested in -

and then:

Ya been Cosby'd, surface dweller!

His schemes fail, and Sue breaks up with him for good. Well, "for good." We'll see.

Like all narcissists, he can't see how his behavior affects others. It's always him him him.

6.

REED AND SUE

Byrne made such a big deal - or maybe it was my Marvel-reading buddies who made such a big deal - of Sue's "expanded" powers in the 80s that I thought it was something new. But nope - as early as 1964, Sue was extending her invisibility to others as well as creating force fields. I guess Byrne just made a point of re-emphasizing it.

All of this delights the more Onan-ish elements of her fan base.

And speaking of Onan, Reed brings a little something to the table himself.

6.5 Demonstrations of Irony in Nomenclature

Several dick-ish moments from Mr. Fantastic this year. Let's start with:  

Granted that's not actually Reed, okay, so it's a bit of a cheat. Just the tip of the iceberg, though:

In case you don't feel like enlarging the above, here we see (clockwise from top l): 1) "You're not a fool - merely a female!" 2) "Why waste time on chicks, Doom?" (Awkward.) 3) "Keeping chicks in a calculated state of indecision is easier than slapping them around." (Maybe that's not a linear interpretation. But trust me, it's what he's getting at.) And 4) "Check out the name-tag! It's MISTER FANTASTIC. It's in the bloody name, chickface!"

~

Yeah, so like I said, not the best year in FF history. Two quick endnotes:

- Issue 24 may have inspired Star Trek's Season One gem "Squire of Gothos." Same sort of deal.

- And issue 30 features the first appearance of Diablo, an alchemist from 9th century Saragossa who has various pacts with the devil, vampires, and other evil spirits. I always liked this character. He was under-used during my window of Marvel reading.

The issue he came onto my radar.

That's all for this time. Next time, things get FFin'-real: Joe Sinnott! The Inhumans! Reed and Sue get married! More aliens! Better Doom! Daredevil! And even the Frightful Four! See you then.

The Twilight Zone: The Odyssey of Flight 33

"You're riding on a jet airliner en route from London to New York. You're at 35,000 feet atop an overcast and roughly fifty-five minutes from Idlewild Airport."

"The plane is going too fast, and there is nothing within the realm of knowledge or at least logic to explain it." 

"Unbeknownst to passenger and crew, this airplane is heading into an uncharted region well off the beaten track of commercial travelers..."

Today let's have a look at one of the three stories that later inspired Stephen King to write "The Langoliers." (The others, in my estimation, are The Outer Limits episodes "The Probe" and "The Premonition." I keep thinking I should blog up more original Outer Limits episodes. Maybe it'll happen. If only there was an alliterative day of the week for them.) 

"Odyssey" is a fairly straightforward sci-fi imagining, largely void of any deeper concerns about human psychology. As mentioned here:

"When Serling produced an episode like "Mirror Image," "The After Hours," or "The Odyssey of Flight 33," he was simply trying to scare the audience. That isn't to say these episodes or ones like them aren't complex or that Serling wrote none of his concerns into these scripts. Serling was often successful at finding a middle ground between his plot driven thrillers and his Bradburyesque offerings of introspection and/or whimsical fantasy which became the foundation of the show. With "The Odyssey of Flight 33," Serling became enamored with portraying the world of air travel in a strictly accurate and technically sound manner. In the time after the episode aired, Robert Serling (his brother, a professional aviation writer) was to boast that the episode was, and remains, one of the most technically accurate offerings ever filmed on the subject of air travel."

The Plot: Global 33, the aforementioned jet airliner bound from London to New York, catches a sudden and strong tail wind ("one lulu of a jetstream") that propels the aircraft faster and faster until it exceeds speeds of 3000 knots. (Incredibly, neither the fuselage nor the engines are damaged.) They lose all radio and radar contact ("No soap. I can't raise anyone"), and the flight crew struggles to figure out what's happened. 

Captain Farver (John Anderson, who starred in just about everything) decides to take the plane below the cloud cover - a dangerous maneuver as he'll be cutting through multiple other flight paths. But it's their only choice - "sooner or later we're going to have to find a landmark and go VFR."

Once below, they see Manhattan exactly where it should be, but not the Manhattan they know.

"There's the east river. There's the Hudson River. That's Staten Island. We've got all the topographical clues we need. The problem seems to be the real estate and eight million people are missing." 

That's not the only problem. The crew on the other side of the cockpit, unable to trust the evidence of their own senses, ask Captain Farver to verify what they see below. He does:

"What in the name of everything that's holy is going on?!"

The Captain suggests that maybe it wasn't just a lulu of a jetstream; maybe they've come, somehow, back in time. Running low on fuel, he makes the decision to ascend to the same spot and go back along the same trajectory, hoping to rocket forward in time.

Before we go on: it's cool to see a brontosaurus out the window and everything -

In fact, here it is again. (At $2500 for a handful of seconds, it's the most expensive shot in TZ history.)

but I don't believe any sauropods have been found near Manhattan. Doesn't mean they couldn't have been there, of course, in the Twilight Zone or otherwise, nor does it really matter, I'm just saying: maybe an American Mastodon (a likelier thing to see out the window) would have visually communicated the idea of "hey, we're way back in dinosaur times" just as effectively. 

They go back through the barrier -

and the crew is delighted to see the recognizable buildings of New York below. And while the Navigation Officer cannot raise Idlewild Airport on the radio, he's able to raise someone who claims to represent the CAA (an organization Captain Farver helpfully tells us was the predecessor to the FAA) at LaGuardia* that clears them to land. But upon their further descent, the crew members recognize the unmistakable buildings of the New York World's Fair, an event which happened in 1939. They realize they've come forward in time - but not forward enough. 

* LaGuardia wasn't so-named at the time of the NY World's Fair in our reality, but as with the sauropods in Manhattan, it's all good. Twilight Zone, bro.

Again from Twilight Zone Vortex: "At this point, Captain Farver decides to let the passengers in on the dire situation and makes an announcement on the final course of the aircraft. Dangerously low on fuel, Global 33 ascends a final time to pass back through the sound barrier in the hopes of emerging in its own time."  

"A Global jet airliner, en route from London to New York on an uneventful afternoon in the year 1961, but now reported overdue and missing, and searched for on land, sea, and air by anguished human beings, fearful of what they'll find."

"But you and I know where she is. You and I know what's happened. So if some moment, any moment, you hear the sound of jet engines flying atop the overcast - engines that sound searching and lost - engines that sound desperate - shoot up a flare or do something. That would be Global 33 trying to get home - from The Twilight Zone."

I love the whole "So keep watching the skies..." implication of Serling's wrap-up, there, and how the episode ends with the fate of Global 33 unknown. Shades of both the Mary Celeste (though I guess that was more of a ghost ship with the crew missing, so its TZ counterpart is more something like "The Arrival" and not this ep) and the Bermuda Triangle.

Visually - outside the dinosaur shot and the stock footage of the World's Fair and New York - there's not much to this episode. There's only so many angles you can film the cockpit, after all:

The only other set is the rest of the plane, of which we see the flight attendants' station and back with the passengers.: 

Flight attendants Played by Nancy Rennick and Beverly Brown.

There's an exchange between a RAF Group Captain (the chap nearest the window, left of frame, above right) and the chatty lady beside him. I'm not exactly sure why it's left in the script, since neither of the characters do anything else in the episode. I suppose it's just to make the passengers seem more real, which is accomplished, but I thought perhaps the characer would do something more. Possibly burst into the cockpit and commandeer the controls or something. Perhaps if it was an hour-long episode and not just a half-hour.

Speaking of, as mentioned, the story kind of runs into the end of the episode. I can see that sort of unresolved ending being a sticking point for some, but I liked it. 

Anderson does his usual good job, as does Lt. Stiles from "Balance of Terror" (aka Paul Comi), who manages not to blame the time vortex on a Vulcan fifth column.

While we're here, two TV vets Sandy Kenyon and Wayne Heffley play the navigator and the 2nd officer, respectively. Harp McGuire, unpictured, plays the flight engineer.

Good stuff. Of the handful of Twilight Zone episodes involving an aviation mystery (not counting anything with astronauts, or Shatner), probably my favorite. 

~

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