Featuring: Fantastic Four
Release: August 11, 1964
Cover: November 1964
12 cents
Story by: Stan Lee who has never been more dramatic!
Illustrations by: Jack Kirby who has never been more thrilling!
Inking by: Chic Stone who has never been more realistic!
Lettering by: S. Rosen who has never been more than an hour late!
21 pages
| Previous | #269 | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Tales to Astonish #62, Story B | Reading order | X-Men #8 |
| Fantastic Four #31 | Fantastic Four | Fantastic Four #33 |
Kirby continues his experimental depictions of outer space, using a collage of art and photos.
That’s not a great reprint. Let’s see the cleaned-up digital version:
Normally, I’m concerned about spoilers. There is a mystery here regarding the Invincible Man. But the clues make it so clear to anybody who’s been following along. A being is trapped in a volcano on an island. We remember who got trapped in a volcano. That being seems to have the power to change his shape? C’mon. And we know exactly what planet is in the 5th quadrant of the Andromeda Galaxy. Once we see Invincible Man has the powers of the entire Fantastic Four, that just seals it. No real mystery here.
We learn the origins of Sue and Johnny. When they were young, their mother died in a car accident. Their father, who had been a respected surgeon, fell into depression and gambling. He accidentally killed a loan shark’s goon during a struggle and was sentenced to 20 years for manslaughter.
Visiting their father in prison, Sue and Johnny learn Dr. Storm has gained superpowers and is now the evil Invincible Man.
The Fantastic Four fail against a foe who seems to have all their powers, in part because Sue and Johnny struggle to fight their own father.
The public turns against our heroes as quickly as usual.
Of course, we learn it’s Super Skrull impersonating Dr. Storm. The real Dr. Storm has been transported the Skrull Homeworld.
The Skrulls send Dr. Storm back to Earth with a bomb attached to his chest; he turns to save the Fantastic Four and take the full blast himself.
Dr. Franklin Storm dies a hero.
Not a lot of death in these stories, but there have been some notable ones now. The heroes tend to save the day and make it out alive. The most notable exception of course is Captain America’s sidekick, Bucky, killed by Zemo on their last mission at the end of World War II. Sgt. Fury lost Junior Juniper in combat. Spider-Man’s girlfriend lost her brother, Bennett Brant. Those have been the most notable deaths, after everyone who died in the various origin stories to motivate our heroes. Uncle Ben, Battling Jack Murdock, Yinsen…
As I mentioned last issue, very few characters have living biological parents that we’ve met. Fantastic Four went 30 issues without feeling the need to explain why Johnny’s guardian seemed to be his older sister. We finally met their father just last issue… and now he’s gone.
The nitty gritty
Unfortunately, the details of Sue’s past are nearly impossible to reconcile with the details of the foursome’s pasts we learned in Fantastic Four #11.
Recall some facts:
- Reed and Sue lived next door to each other as kids. Reed had a crush on her then.
- Reed joined World War II after finishing college.
- While at war, Reed thought of Sue, whom he describes as “the girl I had left behind”.
- Reed was a Major fighting in Italy in 1943 (see Sgt. Fury #3).
- The current Fantastic Four adventures take place in the early 1960s.
- Johnny is currently in his senior year of high school; he was a junior when he first got his powers.
- Reed did not recognize a picture of Sue’s father, despite being his neighbor and daughter’s boyfriend (Fantastic Four #31).
What we see now is a picture of Sue and Johnny the night their mother died. Neither seems to be an adult, and Johnny is not a small child. There seem to be less than 10 years of age separating them.
Sue has always seemed to be Johnny’s guardian. Her father’s arrest may have taken place some time after her mother’s death. It’s possible she was old enough to take legal guardianship of Johnny at that time.
The math to make this all add up is basically impossible. We need Reed to be a college graduate and army major in 1943, having romantic thoughts about Sue, with her being old enough so that’s not creepy. But we also need Johnny to be a junior in high school circa 1961, with no more than a decade age gap between Sue and Johnny.
It’s easiest to start with Johnny’s age. He must have been born circa 1945 based on his high school age. So it must have been at least 1953 when his mother died. But if Sue was, say, 17 in that picture, then she’s only 7 in 1943, which doesn’t fit with Reed’s “girl I left behind” remarks. I’d want her to be at least 15 by 1943, so at least 25 in that picture. Which is clearly not the intent.
Something has to give; the facts are inconsistent. I think the easiest thing is just to pretend we misinterpreted Reed’s remarks about Sue from FF#11. Let there be an age gap between Reed and Sue. Let him have known her when she was very young, but have the romantic thoughts come in later, in the 1950s.
Let’s stretch the age gap between Sue and Johnny to 12 years. How far apart could Sue and Reed be and still count as “kids together”. Let’s say 11 years.
Then on the day of the fateful space flight, let’s say Johnny was 16, Sue was 28, Reed was 39 , and Ben 41. Doesn’t fit all the clues and still puts an awkward age gap between Reed and Sue, but it’s the best I can do to fit most of the data together. We are now reading stories around 2 years after that space flight.
I don’t blame Stan for these inconsistencies, of course. Gödel proved that any sufficiently complex system of facts will have either gaps or inconsistencies.
Rating: ★★★½, 62/100
Significance: ★★★★☆
Scans are taken from a reprint in Marvel’s Greatest Comics #24 (1969).
I read this story in Fantastic Four Epic Collection vol. 2: The Master Plan of Dr. Doom. The last story in that collection. Happy to finally put it back on the shelf.
You can also find this story on Kindle.
Characters:
- Invisible Girl/Sue Storm
- Thing/Ben Grimm
- Mr. Fantastic/Reed Richards
- Human Torch/Johnny Storm
- Super-Skrull/Franklin Storm/Invincible Man
- Alicia
- Dr. Franklin Storm
- Mary Storm
- Skrull King
Story notes:
- Reed created device to turn Ben human by altering the micro-electric waves of his body; side effect– amnesia.
- Sue’s father’s full name revealed: Dr. Franklin Storm.
- Skrull homeworld in fifth quadrant of Andromeda Galaxy.
- After Mary Storm dies in car accident, Franklin Storm blamed himself. He fell into gambling, got in trouble with a loan shark, got into a fight with an enforcer, and the enforcer was killed by a gun in the struggle. Dr. Storm jailed for manslaughter.
| Previous | #269 | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Tales to Astonish #62, Story B | Reading order | X-Men #8 |
| Fantastic Four #31 | Fantastic Four | Fantastic Four #33 |
The reason you’re struggling so much with the detail about Sue’s past is because you’re largely reading reprints and thus missing out of explanations given on letter pages and the like. Stan actually already answered all your questions regarding the characters’ ages on the letter page in Fantastic Four #11 – at that point (roughly one year prior to the events of this comic), Johnny was “just seventeen”, Reed and Ben were in “their late thirties” (with a note mentioning that they graduated college at a very young age) and Sue was “in her twenties”, meaning there’s presumably 12-13 years separating Reed and Sue.
Oh, and one other thing you’re not accounting for – the meaning of the word “kid”. “Teenager” was not a word in common use until the mid 40s, a man Reed’s age would never have thought of himself as anything but “a kid/child” and “an adult”. I’m not super familiar with the general usage of these words at the time, and when someone would go from being a “kid” to “an adult”, but it’ abolutely believable than Reed still considered himself a kid up until at least the point when he graduated college, especially considering he did so at a young age.
Agreed. It’s the only explanation that fits. Brotherly affection morphed into romantic affection across decades.
Good point about the letter page comment. But I’m really struggling because of the contradictions within the text. Even within Fantastic Four #11. You’re right Stan claims in the letters page that Reed is a decade older than Sue. But in FF #11 itself, he notes he was already in love with her when he went off to World War II 20 years earlier.
Also a fine point. I certainly don’t know the vernacular of the time. Maybe Reed called himself a kid at 18. But by the letters page comment you mention and other evidence, he’s a decade older than her. Whatever kid means, if he has a crush on her as a kid, I’d like to see a tighter age gap.
I don’t actually think he ever claimed to explicitly have been in love with her at the time, FF11 has him say she was “always in his thoughts”, “the girl he left behind” and “it’s always been (her)”.
While the most likely answer is that it just straight out didn’t occur to Stan that a girl in her twenties and a man in his late thirties can’t have been childhood sweethearts due to the massive age gap, nothing in the text straight out says late teenager Reed DIDN’T just think of 7-8 year old Sue as a little sister and that this eventually blossomed into love once she grew older. I believe several later writers went for that angle.