watcher interferes – Coke & Comics

Featuring: Watcher
Release: May 12, 1964
Cover: August 1964
12 cents
Story plot: Stan Lee
Script + art: Larry Lieber
Inking: Geo. Bell
Lettering: Art Simek
5 pages

This story makes me cringe a bit.

There have always been off-color jokes made about the character of the Watcher, suggesting a certain voyeurism to his character. After all, he watches. There seem to be no limits to what we can or will watch. Personal privacy is not a particular concern of his.

I have always taken such comments as jest and not a serious critique of the character of the Watcher, who, after all, is an impossibly advanced cosmic being, indistinguishable to us from a god.

But then we come to this story. Where he falls in love with a woman he is watching.

Featuring: Fantastic Four
Release: August 8, 1963
Cover: November 1963
12 cents
Written by: Stan Lee
Drawn by: Jack Kirby
Inked by: Dick Ayers
22 pages

“This proves that some form of life must exist in outer space!”

Reed.

You’ve fought the Skrulls twice. You’ve traveled to Planet X, and transported its population to another planet. You’ve met the Impossible Man and the Watcher. You’re about to meet the Watcher again this issue. You’ve seen the ruins of a lost civilization on the moon.

Plus, if you’ve been paying attention, you would have noted earth has been recently invaded by several other alien races, from the Toad Men to the Stone Men from Saturn.

Of course there’s some form of life in outer space!

Maybe I’m misinterpreting. Perhaps he’s not speaking of other worlds or moons or even spaceships, but within space itself.

Tag: watcher interferes

Tales of Suspense #56, Story B

Fantastic Four #20