Fantastic Four #14

Featuring: Fantastic Four
Release: February 12, 1963
Cover: May 1963
12 cents
Script: Stan Lee
Art: Jack Kirby
Inking: Dick Ayers
22 pages

I read this story in Fantastic Four Omnibus vol. 1.

Kirby got a fill-in for almost every book he draws in the last couple months… except for this one. This is clearly his baby in a way the others are not. That is also evident in the fact that Lee does all the scripts. That the Human Torch, Thor, Ant-Man, and Iron Man stories have rotating scripters and fill-in artists tells you where they fall on the totem pole compared to Fantastic Four.

I’ve struggled some (actually, for years going on decades) with the question of what order to read these stories in. I’m not alone. Marvel has published indices dedicated to chronology. The Marvel Chronology Project has painstakingly ordered the events of each characters’ lives to make sense. The Complete Marvel Reading Order is focused on what makes the “best” read, which includes keeping stories together.

So far, I’ve mostly focused on release date, catalogued in Mike’s Amazing World. Going in order by date has yielded several insights. I can see when Kirby suddenly had lots of fill-in artists take over. I can see cool facts, like that Thor, Ant-Man, and Spider-Man were all introduced the same day. It’s added a lot to my understanding of the context of these stories to go in time order.

Since most issues have been self-contained and there’s been minimal crossover, there’s been no reason to go in anything but date order. But the stories will become increasingly complex. And it might be nice to read single story-arcs together to appreciate them best.

I did some light fudging last time. Fantastic Four #13 was released January 3, yet I chose to read it after two comics released January 10. Similarly, this comic was released on February 12, but I am reading it before two comics released on February 5. That is because issue 14 picks up right where #13 ended, with the FF still not back from the moon. This will become more common, that the ending of one story will lead into the beginning of the next, and I won’t always be able to place such stories together. But this was easy enough to do.

As an example of something lost in the shuffle if I don’t go in strictly chronological order… this is the first issue we see something pretty cool. There’s a new logo added to the cover, with the word “Marvel” appearing for the first time. I’ve been calling this the “Marvel Age”, and now we see why. This line of titles is officially taking the name “Marvel”! But it didn’t actually begin here. It began last week with Strange Tales and Journey Into Mystery. We’ll read those next.

The next thing to discuss is the notion of continuity. Should the story make sense across issues? Across issues within a title? Across titles?

So far, the stories often barely make sense within an issue, so expecting more may be pushing it. For example, within Fantastic Four #11, we learn Johnny used to watch Ben play football; we also learn Ben played football in college before World War II. This doesn’t make sense. Across his own series, Thor’s story barely makes sense. Sometimes as Thor he talks about Thor in the third person and only knows what he learned about mythology in high school, and sometimes he talks like he is Thor and even remembers his own childhood as Thor. We learned that Ant-Man isn’t loud enough to be heard by other people when ant-sized, then we learned that he was. Across titles, it gets even worse; we see that Human Torch guarded his secret identity in Strange Tales, but not in Fantastic Four.

Consistency is a lot to expect from a creative team who shows no interest in delivering such. But I’m going to keep demanding it anyway.

That brings us to this issue, contrasted with the ending of issue 8. Puppet Master fell out of a window. At the time I presumed it was to his death. What should be clear is that his stepdaughter knows whether he is alive or not. The Fantastic Four should be able to tell the difference between a dead man on the ground, and a live one. Even if there was some initial confusion, you would not expect Alicia to lose track of his body. If people thought he was dead, they would presumably have buried him and noticed if his body was lost.

So either he died in that fall, or people should know he is still alive.

Instead, we learn that he did not die, but everybody thought he did. Even his stepdaughter thought he was dead (and is strangely cold toward him). How? He didn’t fall into an abyss or a river. He fell onto the street. Why would she lose track of the body?

How much mental energy should be spent reflecting on such discrepancies?

The Fantastic Four get a heroes welcome as they return from the moon. That would make a lot of sense except for issue 7. They’ve been to another planet already! This seems less exciting in comparison.

The comics are getting more clear on the status of Reed/Sue/Namor. She called Reed her fiancée in the first issue, implying (at least to my understanding of the word) they were already engaged. But there has been no further evidence of that. They have a romantic but rocky relationship. Reed loves her and wants her commitment, but she is torn between him and Namor. This has all been pretty murky up to this point, but has become increasingly explicit.

Sub-Mariner controls all manner of sea-life, including some odd ones: the mento-fish can sense and transmit thoughts anywhere on earth; the hypno-fish can fly in air and hypnotize people (is that really even a fish, then??); a giant undersea porcupine shoots tendrils; a giant clam puts out chloroform vapors which put victims to sleep; a giant octopus; a flame-eater; dagger-needle coral; deep-sea fungus that spreads on contact with any living thing, engulfing what it touches; a plant that releases deadly gas.

I have no idea why this argument ends with Thing deciding to take Alicia on a dangerous undersea mission. I have no idea why Reed thought this was okay and natural. Well, maybe I have some idea. Reed thought it was cool to take his girlfriend and her kid brother into space, after all.

What’s odd is that Reed doesn’t seem to have any idea how to find Namor. His plan seems to be to search the ocean until he finds him. Now, I know that Stan knows how big the ocean is. Namor has been looking for his people this whole time. So how does Reed expect to find Namor without any clue to go on? Well, anyway, he does find Namor.

The Puppet Master’s plan would have worked perfectly if he hadn’t followed along in the Navy surplus submarine. Not even sure how he got the Navy sub. I hope it involved his puppet powers somehow, and that the Navy just doesn’t loan this out, like they would in the 1966 Batman film.

Puppet Master was able to control Namor just fine from his home base. So he didn’t really need to be there under the sea. It was all about enjoying his revenge. We see here a pretty typical motive progression. Originally, he wanted wealth and power. But when the Fantastic Four stopped him, his motive has transferred to revenge. He’d be better off just going straight for the wealth and power again.

And then his reaction when the giant octopus heads for him is odd. It’s too late too change course, but not too late to try to carve an octopus puppet, even though that carving requires him to first change into his radiation suit.

Rating: ★★★☆☆, 54/100
Significance: ★★★☆☆

Characters:

• Ben Grimm/Thing
• Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic
• Susan “Sue” Storm/Invisible Girl
• Johnny Storm/Human Torch
• Golden Angel
• Puppet Master
• Prince Namor/Sub-Mariner
• Alicia

Story notes:

• Reference to Red Ghost and events of issue 13
• Returning from moon adventures in issue 13 as story opens
• Two Mr. Fantastic fan clubs; the girls go wild for him.
• “Clayville Chapter” of Mr. Fantastic Fan Club
• Reporter notes scene being transmitted to every part of globe by Telestar. Perhaps he means Telstar?
• Golden Angel challenges Thing to wrestling match
• Sue offered lifetime Hollywood contract and spot promoting deodarant
• Human Torch creates vacuum out of whirling warm air
• Mr. Fantastic sends report to NASA about rocket fuel
• “Roving eye” TV apparatus
• Sue focused TV on bottom of sea, but turned it off as Reed approached.
• Reed’s thoughts refer to Sue as girl he loves
• Puppet Master had been in sanitorium
• Everybody thought Puppet Master was dead
• Puppet Master refers to battles against Mole Man, Skrulls and Dr. Doom
• Namor continues search for his people; he finds evidence of shelters indicating they’d been at that location within the last decade
• Puppet Master has a small surplus Navy one-man sub
• FF have a private pier
• Thing parks Fantasticar at Midtown parking lot. He is on his way to see Alicia. She must live in Midtown
• Admiral Sawyer lent FF experimental bathyscaph (I also had to look that word up)
• Torch goes white hot to vaporize water allowing him to swim while flaming; similar to trick pulled in his last battle against Sub-Mariner
• Namor slippery as an eel
• Alicia senses Puppet Master’s influence
• “flex-o-gen packet”

#59 story in reading order
Next: Journey Into Mystery #91
Previous: Fantastic Four #13