Fantastic Four #1

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Cover Date: November 1961

Plot Overview: A mysterious man stands in a window and fires a flare gun into the air. The flare reads Fantastic Four. A woman sees the signal and turns invisible and tries to catch a cab. The cab driver freaks out and drives away. A man in a trench coat sees the signal and reveals himself to be a monster of stone. Everyone around him freaks out and panic follows. A younger man sees the signal and bursts into flames and takes to the sky. The military responds and fires a missile at the flaming man. The mystery man stretches and saves the flaming man from the missile and then catches him from falling as his flames went out. He greets them all and explains they have a fearful task to complete.

The book flashes back as Reed Richards and Ben Grimm argue about taking a risky space flight. Ben is against the flight as they don't know the risks of cosmic rays. Sue Storm points out that they have to beat the Commies into space. She also calls Ben a coward and in a fit of anger he agrees to fly the spacecraft.

They take flight and to their dismay the cosmic rays have a greater effect than they thought. Ben can no longer fly and the ship is forced to land with the help of the auto-pilot. As they stumble out, Sue turns invisible to their shock. Reed and Ben start argue and Ben suddenly turns into a monster made of rock. Ben goes to attack Reed but Reed suddenly becomes elastic and subdues Ben. Johnny bursts into flames shortly afterwards and realizes that he can fly in this state. They now realize that they're the strongest humans on earth and they vow to use their powers to fight for the good of humanity. They become the Fantastic Four with the code names of Mr. Fantastic, the Thing, Invisible Girl and the Human Torch.

Back in the present Reed shows the group pictures of nuclear facilities around the world. The reactors have been swallowed into the ground. No one knows the cause of these cave-ins but Reed predicts another one is about to happen.

We change scenes to French controlled Africa. A nuclear reactor is swallowed into the earth and a giant monster climbs to the surface. French soldiers fire on the monster to no effect. The monster crushes several cannons until a mystery man orders it to stop.

We return to the Fantastic Four as Reed has discovered Monster Isle is the center of all the cave-ins. They fly to the island and Sue is attacked by a three headed monster. She turns invisible and Reed uses his powers to hurl it into the sea. A cave-in sucks Reed and Johnny into the ground and they are blinded by a brilliant light. They wake up in special suits and the Moleman introduces himself to them.

Back on the surface another monster attacks Sue and the Thing fights the creature off. In the underworld the Moleman explains how he was shunned by the surface world and how he ended up here. He explains losing his sight and learning how to control the creatures of the underworld. He demonstrates his power by besting Reed or Johnny, the comic doesn't say, at combat. Sue and Ben arrive and the Moleman summons the giant monster from earlier in the book. Johnny distracts the creature while the Fantastic Four flee the island. The Moleman destroys the island with an explosion. The book ends with the FF wondering if they'll ever see the Moleman again.

My Take: This was a solid debut for the Fantastic Four. The book had a nice flow to it and it wasn't as wordy as books from that time period can be. The characters are a little flat but character development was a novel concept at the time. Reed and Ben got the majority of the screen time to build an adversarial relationship between them. I liked the fact that they were running around without costumes because they were so new to the superhero thing at the time.

This book had a lot of content crammed in. You got the origin of the FF and they took on a villain. This would've taken 4 or 5 issues to tell in today's world.

I'd give the book ***1/2 out of *****

Notes: This is the first appearance for Mr. Fantastic, Thing, Invisible Girl, Human Torch and the Moleman. Note that the Johnny Storm Human Torch is not the Golden Age Human Torch. The Golden Age Human Torch was an android and he'll return much later on for Marvel. This also didn't feature New York, they lived in a fictional city called Central City. It should be interesting to see when this switches over to being New York.

Next: Fantastic Four #2.

Posted in: Fantastic Four,Human Torch,Moleman,Reed Richards,Sue Richards,Thing