Fantastic Four #28

Featuring: Fantastic Four
Release: April 9, 1964
Cover: July 1964
12 cents
Written by: Stan Lee (The leader!)
Drawn by: Jack Kirby (The king!)
Inked by: Chic Stone (The master!)
Lettered by: Art Simek (The letterer!)
22 pages

Stan’s been doing “clever credits” for a while now, giving all sorts of nicknames to the creators. This one happens to be Kirby’s most famous nickname. He is generally known today as Jack “King” Kirby. This is the first time we’ve seen the “king” nickname in our reading. Can’t confirm whether it’s been used anywhere else before. This project began 20 years into Jack’s rather prolific career.

We turn now to the story, where the Fantastic Four and X-Men meet for the first time. (Well, Human Torch and Iceman had already met…)

We begin with a statue of Thing that has been sculpted by the brilliant Alicia, working by touch alone.

Meanwhile, they are reading about the exploits of the X-Men in the paper. Sue and Reed list many villains the X-Men have defeated. I have any number of quibbles with this dialogue. We are only 5 issues into the X-Men, so they haven’t actually beaten that many villains, especially when Magneto has been the villain in three of those issues. They’ve foiled his plans, but not really defeated him. They pad the list by listing every member of Magneto’s Brotherhood separately, again despite never decisively defeating them. They list Blob, which is odd for a couple reasons. The X-Men attempted to recruit Blob, then battled him and wiped his memory when they refused. How would Invisible Woman know about this? If she did, why would she consider Blob the villain in that situation?

The only actual villain the X-Men legitimately defeated was the Vanisher, whom Sue doesn’t even list! Instead, she lists the Space Phantom, who was defeated by the Avengers, not the X-Men. But the number of superheroes has exploded in recent months, so I should forgive Sue for not being able to tell them all apart.

Two Fantastic Four villains team up: the Puppet Master and the Mad Thinker. The Thinker has better ideas for how to use Puppet Master’s clay, but still needs Puppet Master’s sculpting talents. With that clay, I feel any idiot could trivially defeat the Fantastic Four, and they go out of their way to make it hard. Of all possible victims, you choose somebody with a mind as powerful as Professor X? Professor X then tricks the X-Men into attacking the Fantastic Four.

We get a pretty good battle out of it.

Jean Grey accidentally destroy’s Alicia’s sculpture. That is very sad. It’s a great work of art she’d clearly put a lot of heart and effort into, now lost to the world. Thing’s response is to try to spank Jean. That doesn’t seem appropriate to me.

The idea of the Thinker is that he is supposed to plan for everything, but gets occasionally foiled by something truly impossible to predict, the x-factor. Last time, it involved the mailman. This time… it didn’t occur to him Beast may try to smash the Puppet Master’s puppet… even though that is the most obvious thing for a hero to try to do.

Here’s a cool page. All the heroes united against the Awesome Android.

We get a nice moral about the nature of science from Reed.

That’s the irony of science, Johnny! No invention is good or bad of itself! It’s only the use to which mankind puts it that really matters!

Reed Richards

Rating: ★★★☆☆, 56/100
Significance: ★★★★☆

I read this story in Fantastic Four Epic Collection vol. 2: The Master Plan of Dr. Doom. You can also find this story in Marvel Masterworks: Fantastic Four vol. 3. Or on Kindle.

Characters:

• Alicia
• Thing/Benjamin J. Grimm
• Invisible Girl/Sue Storm
• Human Torch/Johnny Storm
• Mr. Fantastic/Reed Richards
• Puppet Master
• (Mad) Thinker
• Awesome Android
• Professor X
• Marvel Girl
• Iceman
• Angel
• Cyclops
• Beast

Story notes:

• Alicia makes sculpture of the Thing.
• Newspaper claims to have first exclusive photos of the X-Men. X-Men headlines suggest a positive tone.
• Mr. Fantastic notes X-Men have become popular in a short time, suggesting he feels the Fantastic Four have been active far longer than the X-Men.
• Invisible Girl lists X-Men victories: Magneto, Space Phantom, Blob, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch. Mr. Fantastic adds Toad and Mastermind.
• Human Torch references battle with Iceman against Barracuda in Strange Tales #120. He refers to it as a “few months ago”. It was published two months earlier, but would make more sense if it had been only a few weeks ago, given the hectic nature of recent events and still-unresolved Hulk plot.
• Thinker has Puppet Master make Professor X puppet.
• Thinker figured out to the centimeter how much clay would be needed to overcome Professor X’s powers.
• Professor X still refers to the X-Men as students. This issue was published between X-Men #5 (which shows their final exam) and #6. Issue 7 features their graduation ceremony.
• Professor X pretends he’s learned the FF plan world domination and sends the X-Men to destroy them.
• X-men have a “late model jetcopter”.
• Cyclops somehow knows about the Thinker.
• Mr. Fantastic and Human Torch working on nose cone for Air Force.
• Cyclops opens attack with power beam.
• Cyclops can make widescreen force beam.
• Thing refers to Marvel Girl as “Chick”.
• Reed reminds Ben he holds a college degree or two.
• Professor X defeats Awesome Android.

#206 story in reading order
Next: Amazing Spider-Man #14
Previous: Strange Tales #122, Story B