The Fantastic Four Versus the Red Ghost and His Indescribable Super-Apes!/Menace on the Moon!/The Watcher Appears/Duel in the Dead City!
Featuring: Fantastic Four
Release: January 3, 1963
Cover: April 1963
12 cents
Story: Stan Lee
Art: Jack Kirby
Inking: S. Ditko
22 pages
I read this story in Fantastic Four Omnibus vol. 1.
The great Steve Ditko provides inks for Kirby’s pencils. We last saw this legendary combination in Incredible Hulk #2.
This issue is the first to get to the heart of what I think the Fantastic Four should be about: exploration of the wondrous; an adventure into the imagination. Kirby is famed for his creativity, but this is the first issue where he’s really letting it flex. This issue is bursting with ideas, many tangential to the main story. The FF head to the moon, learn the blue area has a breathable atmosphere, find the ruins of an ancient civilization, battle a super-villain and his super-apes, and meet the enigmatic Watcher. Plus glimpses of the past and future, and of the destruction of a world. That’s a comic bursting with ideas.
