Chris Coke

Fantastic Four #37

Behold! A Distant Star!

Featuring: Fantastic Four
Release: January 12, 1965
Cover: April 1965
12 cents
Written by Marvel’s inimitable Stan Lee!
Drawn by Marvel’s unmatchable Jack Kirby!
Inked by Marvel’s impeccable Chic Stone!
Lettered by Marvel’s unbearable Artie Simek!
20 pages

Previous	#319	Next
Strange Tales #131	Reading order	Amazing Spider-Man #23
Fantastic Four #36	Fantastic Four	Fantastic Four #38

We haven’t seen a cover quite like this one yet. The FF are far in the background, their drawings somewhat ill-defined. They appear to be on an alien planet, stepping out of a landing module. Closer to the foreground are two ominous, perhaps alien, figures. We only see the lower part of their bodies from the back. So they’re the focus but not the focus. The actual foreground is some type of rock wall, and we’re just viewing the action through a hole in that rock. The rock becomes a background to the issue’s title logo; the artwork up to this point has almost entirely avoided interfering with that logo. And we have a cool title, with a very classical sci/fi feel. “Behold! A Distant Star!”

Wedding preparations are continually running through the background of these stories now. Two issues back, Sue and Reed got engaged. Last issue was the engagement party. Now it’s time for the rehearsal dinner. In typical FF style, they’ll just make a quick jaunt to the far side of the galaxy.

Ben and Johnny are trying on their tuxedos. Reed’s new invention accidentally destroys Johnny’s tuxedo. Presumably it’s cheaper to buy two tuxedos than to try to make one from unstable molecules.

Strange Tales #131

The Bouncing Ball of Doom!

Featuring: Human Torch and Thing
Release: January 12, 1965
Cover: April 1965
12 cents
Story by: Stan (Prolific) Lee
Illustrations by: Bob (Terrific) Powell
Delineation by: Dick (Specific) Ayers
Lettering by: S. (Hieroglyphic) Rosen
12 pages

Previous	#318	Next
Tales of Suspense #64, Story B	Reading order	Fantastic Four #37
Strange Tales #130, Story B	Strange Tales	Strange Tales #131, Story B
Captain America Comics #1, Story C	Prelude

Continuing through the Human Torch stories in Strange Tales while saving the Dr. Strange stories for much later.

Why is the story titled the “Bouncing Ball of Doom”? Because the Thinker’s plan involves a bouncing ball.

Huh.

How many Human Torch stories do we still have to read?

I must emphasize that the Dr. Strange story is one of the single greatest Marvel stories of all time, yet the Bouncing Ball of Doom is what gets spotlighted on the cover.

PRELUDE: Captain America Comics #1, Story C

Captain America and the Chess-Board of Death

Featuring: Captain America
Release: December 20, 1940
Cover: March 1941
10 cents
By: Joe Simon and Jack Kirby
16 pages

Previous		Next
Tales of Suspense #64, Story B	Reading order	Strange Tales #131

We just read the modern retelling of the first two stories from Captain America Comics #1. We’ll soon read the modern retelling of the fourth story. These modern retellings will skip the third story, so we may as well read it now.

There’s also a text story, and stories featuring Tuk and Hurricane, but I’m not incentivized to read those at present.

This story is most notable for introducing us to the Sergeant overseeing Private Rogers at Camp Lehigh. The Sergeant is never impressed by the bumbling private, and will often give him a hard time. We will learn in issue 4 that his name is Sgt. Duffy.

The villain in this story is a Nazi spy named Rathcone. He plans out his strategies with pieces on a chessboard and communicates his strategies to his agents, all of whom have numbers, but some of whom also have nicknames like the Strangler. These plans involve assassinating a number of high ranking American military officials.

Tales of Suspense #64, Story B

Among Us, Wreckers Dwell!

Featuring: Captain America
Release: January 12, 1965
Cover: April 1965
12 cents
Writer: Stan Lee
Illustrator: Jack Kirby
Delineator: Frank Ray
Letterer: S. Rosen
10 pages

Previous	#317	Next
	Prelude	Captain America Comics #1, Story C
Tales of Suspense #64	Reading order	Strange Tales #131
Tales of Suspense #64	Tales of Suspense	Tales of Suspense #65

This is an extremely close retelling of the second story from Captain America Comics #1, which we covered back when Captain America first returned in Avengers #4.

The original story is most notable for being Captain America’s first case and for introducing Betty Ross.

I see I didn’t go into great detail on the plot in that post, writing this:

The story of the comic doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. I can’t begin to try to explain it and I’m not sure it’s worth considering all the many ways in which it makes no sense. Suffice it to say they stop the bad guys.

We’ll delve deeper here.

Last issue was a close retelling of the first story from Captain America Comics #1, which was the story of Captain America’s origin. Next issue will be a retelling of Captain America’s first battle against Red Skull from the same issue. It makes sense why one might want to revisit those two stories. And then there’s this one.

The original stories are by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Joe Simon’s name should probably have been in the credits of this comic, as it’s based so closely on his original story. The plot owes more to Simon than many of the comics Stan Lee claims “plot” credit on owe to Stan.

My issue with the original is that I didn’t really understand what Sando and Omar brought to the scheme. There were Nazi saboteurs in America successfully blowing things up. Why have a member of your crew go onstage and warn people about the attacks in advance by pretending to be psychic? The comic didn’t really try to explain.

Let’s compare the new one to the original. The first thing we will notice is the new one fits into very regular grid patterns that make it easy to crop out groups of panels. The original felt bound by no such structure, so the croppings will all be imperfect.

Looking to the opening splash pages, the crystal ball image is very close. The changes fit Kirby’s more dramatized style and generally make a more modern splash page. Omar is a little less freakish in the new one. The biggest loss is Sando, whose fingers had an unusual positioning in the original, almost suggesting his role as puppeteer. Kirby opted for a more standard-for-Kirby dramatized positioning.

The modern comic claims to be “introducing” Sando and Omar. This seems blatantly false, as they were obviously introduced 25 years earlier.

Tales of Suspense #64

Hawkeye and the New Black Widow Strike Again!

Featuring: Iron Man
Release: January 12, 1965
Cover: April 1965
12 cents
Powerful script by: Stan Lee
Poignant art by: Don Heck
Punchy inking by: Chic Stone
Polite lettering by: Sam Rosen
Plenty of kibitzing by: The Bullpen Gang!
12 pages

Previous	#316	Next
X-Men #10	Reading order	Tales of Suspense #64, Story B
Tales of Suspense #63, Story B	Tales of Suspense	Tales of Suspense #64, Story B

What is this “Bullpen” they refer to?

We just met the “new” Giant-Man. It was really just Giant-Man with a new outfit and gizmo. Similarly, the “new” Black Widow is just the Black Widow with some new gimmicks.

These gimmicks make her more formidable, but still no match for Iron Man.

She can now climb walls and fire a line of suction-tipped nylon, a web of sorts. She is a spider-themed heroine, so it makes sense her gimmicks will have hints of Spider-Man.

We also see the first hints of a possible road to redemption for Black Widow. She has decided she wishes to stop being evil and tells Khrushchev this to his face. He shows her that her parents are his prisoners, and they will be killed unless she cooperates. That Khrushchev is a villain, indeed.

X-Men #10

The Coming of… Ka-Zar!

Featuring: X-Men
Release: January 5, 1965
Cover: March 1965
12 cents
Writer: Stan Lee
Artist: Jack Kirby
Inker: Chic Stone
Letterer: S.Rosen
20 pages

Previous	#315	Next
Tales to Astonish #66	Reading order	Tales of Suspense #64
X-Men #9	X-Men	X-Men #11
Marvel Comics #1, Story F	Prelude

Stronger than mastodon! Stronger than giant boar! Mighty is Ka-Zar! Lord of Jungle!

The cover claims this comic is introducing Ka-Zar. It’s unclear if that’s true when we just met a Ka-Zar in our last post, introduced almost 30 years earlier.

Same guy? No evidence otherwise, except that he’s somehow moved from the Congo to Antarctica.

I’m so glad they tell us how to pronounce his name. It’s the bane of comics reading. Nobody tells you how to pronounce the names. You think you’re an expert in this stuff, then along comes a movie and you’ve been pronouncing names wrong for decades, and everyone looks at you like an idiot. But now we know: “Kay-Sar”.

My buddy Brian just polled on Twitter about how people pronounced his name when they first read it, and I was forced to admit that I was saying “Kay-Zar” in my head in my ignorant youth. Perhaps if I’d known more German then, I would have different ideas about pronouncing that ‘Z’.

PRELUDE: Marvel Comics #1, Story F

Adventures of Ka-Zar the Great

Featuring: Ka-Zar
Release: August 31, 1939
Cover: October 1939
10 cents
Credits: Ben Thompson
From the famous character created by: Bob Byrd
12 pages

Previous		Next
Tales to Astonish #66	Reading order	X-Men #10

“From the famous character created by Bob Byrd”… I don’t think Ka-Zar was actually yet famous.

Marvel Comics #1 is the comic that started it all. We’ve been slowly reading through its 68 pages. We read the first story, the introduction of the Human Torch, right in the beginning, to coincide with the introduction of the new Human Torch. We soon after read the Sub-Mariner story to prepare for Namor’s return to the modern Marvel Universe in Fantastic Four #4. We took X-Men #1 as an excuse to read the Angel story, despite there being no real connection between that Angel and the Angel of the X-Men.

What’s left to read? The inside front cover has some gags.

There’s a Western story that introduces the Masked Raider. I don’t know if we’ll find an excuse to read it.

There’s a one-off jungle story called “Jungle Terror”.

A one-off text story about racing called “Burning Rubber”.

And this, the story of Ka-Zar.

Unlike the other tales which are (more or less) original concepts, Ka-Zar is adapted from prose stories.

He was introduced in his own magazine, Ka-Zar #1 (1936), and written by none other than Martin Goodman (under the pen name Bob Byrd), who was also the publisher, and remains the publisher of Marvel in 1965.

We’ve already met Ka-Zar when we read Human Torch #5. We saw he rode an elephant and generally worked with the animals to defend Africa from Sub-Mariner’s war upon the Earth.

The character bears at least some similarity to the Tarzan character of Edgar Rice Burroughs (down to the letters in the name). He was neither the first nor the second nor the last character to bear such a resemblance.

Marvel Comics #1 retells the origin of Ka-Zar from the original prose story.

Tales to Astonish #66

The Menace of Madam Macabre

Featuring: Giant-Man and Wasp
Release: January 5, 1965
Cover: April 1965
12 cents
Story: Smilin’ Stan Lee
Art: Beamin’ Bobby Powell
Inking: Friendly Frankie Ray
Lettering: Sunny ol’ Sherigail
12 pages

Previous	#314 *(≈ 100 𝜋)**	Next
	Prelude	Marvel Comics #1, Story F
Tales to Astonish #65	Reading order	X-Men #10
Tales to Astonish #65, Story B	Tales to Astonish	Tales to Astonish #66, Story B

The Giant-Man tale is hogging most of the cover real estate.

Wasp doesn’t seem to be recognized as a co-lead for the second issue in a row. This is just described as a Giant-Man story. The covers have long since omitted her name.

Yes, we are falling farther and farther behind in our Hulk reading.

As before, it’s not actually a new Giant-Man. He just has a new hat.

Madam Macabre is an evil analogue to Giant-Man, with the power to make things shrink or grow. Not knowing she is evil, Giant-Man considers partnering with her, until he learns she thinks they can rule the world together.

Tales to Astonish #65

Presenting the New Giant-Man

Featuring: Giant-Man and Wasp
Release: December 10, 1964
Cover: March 1965
12 cents
Writer: Stan Lee
Illustrator: Bob Powell
Inked by: Don Heck
Lettering by: Sherigail
12 pages

Previous	#313	Next
Fantastic Four #36	Reading order	Tales to Astonish #66
Tales to Astonish #64, Story B	Tales to Astonish	Tales to Astonish #65, Story B

The cover boasts of a new Giant-Man. They just mean a new costume, one which will not prove enduring. The corner box has already been updated with the new look.

We met Bob Powell in Strange Tales #130. He’s taking over two titles this month.

We met Sherigail the letterer once before in issue 55. Various websites, including Marvel’s official site, misattribute the lettering of Sherigail. Nel Yomtov had been kind enough to reach out and let me know that Sherigail is a pseudonym for Morrie Kuramoto.

We’re getting ahead with the Giant-Man/Wasp stories and behind with the Hulk stories in this title. We’ll catch up to the Hulk stories eventually.

Fantastic Four #36

The Frightful Four!

Featuring: Fantastic Four
Release: December 10, 1964
Cover: March 1965
12 cents
Proudly produced by: Smilin’ Stan Lee and Jolly Jack Kirby
Inked by: Chic Stone
Lettered by: Artie Simek
21 pages

Previous	#312	Next
Avengers #14	Reading order	Tales to Astonish #65
Fantastic Four #35	Fantastic Four	Fantastic Four #37

The main credits are shared between Stan and Jack without specifying who did what.

Fantastic Four has been one of the best of these Marvel superhero titles since the start, but it’s regarded as one of the best comic series ever, which hasn’t yet been obvious. The series gets better at some point. It can be hard to pinpoint the exact point of transition. We noted issue 29 when Kirby started using photo collages as a step toward greatness. The introduction of the Frightful Four in this issue also suggests we are well down the path. Particularly the mysterious Madam Medusa.

Sue and Reed announced their engagement last issue. They’ve now made a public announcement, and the press is excited, underscoring their celebrity status. There will be a big engagement party this issue.

Also, I think Sue’s gotten a haircut. Her hair definitely seems shorter.