Tag: cure for blindness

Strange Tales #115

The Sandman Strikes!

Featuring: Human Torch
Release: September 10, 1963
Cover: December 1963
12 cents
Written by: Stan Lee
Drawn by: Dick Ayers
13 pages

Stan really doesn’t know what he has. Strange Tales #115 includes one of Marvel’s all-time greatest stories, yet the cover shows not a hint of that. It focuses entirely on a mediocre Human Torch tale.

We get another villain crossover. We haven’t seen too many yet. Dr. Doom has shown up in the pages of Spider-Man. That’s pretty much the only one unless you want to count Loki showing up in the Avengers.

But now, Spider-Man’s foe Sandman will menace the Human Torch. Spider-Man himself might pop in to say hello. (Actually, he’ll pop in to express that he’s upset Human Torch took on his villain.)

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Fantastic Four #19

Prisoners of the Pharaoh!

Featuring: Fantastic Four
Release: July 9, 1963
Cover: October 1963
12 cents
Written by: Stan Lee
Drawn by: Jack Kirby
Inking: Dick Ayers
22 pages

This bears some resemblance to the Iron Man story where he traveled to Ancient Egypt to battle a time-traveling Pharaoh (Pharoah?). Of course, this is much better.

Mr. Fantastic deduces from some museum hieroglyphs that blindness had once been cured in Ancient Egypt. So the Fantastic Four return to the castle where they first met Dr. Doom, where we find his time machine has just been sitting there this whole time. They use the machine to travel to a time when Egypt was ruled by Rama-Tut, who came from the future. Similar to Zarrko, Rama-Tut has been bored with the peace of his time and craved adventure.

I feel like you should have gone back for this equipment before now…

Attempting to reflect on what future comics will do with this story hurts my brain. There will be contradictions and explanations. Rama-Tut will be connected to several other time-traveling characters. And they’ll further explore this moment in history to learn Apocalypse, Dr. Strange, and the Avengers are lurking around behind the scenes. We’ll spend no more time on such reflections until we need to.

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