Watcher – Page 3 – Coke & Comics

Tales of Suspense #50, Story C

Journey’s End!

Featuring: Watcher
Release: November 12, 1963
Cover: February 1964
12 cents
Story plot: Stan Lee
Script + art: Larry Lieber
Inking: S. Brodsky
Lettering: Art Simek
5 pages

The Watcher tells a tale of the distant future, the 21st century.

Wilbur Weems is a shy space pilot, teased by everybody for his general wimpiness. Having no friends or family or much of anything, he volunteers for an apparent suicide mission to investigate a cosmic dust cloud.

Tales of Suspense #49, Story B

The Saga of the Sneepers!

Featuring: The Watcher
Release: October 8, 1963
Cover: January 1964
12 cents
Story plot: Stan Lee
Script and art: Larry Lieber
Inking: G. Bell
5 pages

“The Saga of the Sneepers” is the type of story that’s occupied this title since before Iron Man showed up, and has continued to exist in the form of backups to the main Iron Man stories. The difference between this and the ones we’ve opted not to read is that the Watcher is narrating it. That is the format of the first of these “Tales of the Watcher” stories.

The same format showed up this month in Tales to Astonish with “The Wonderful Wasp Tells a Tale“. The Watcher seems a more natural narrator of science fiction tales than the Wasp. The Wasp seems like she should be living adventures. The Watcher is forbidden to interfere in events, so narrating the events he observes is a more sensible use for the character than what he’s done in his two Fantastic Four appearances: interfering in events.

A notable difference between the two is that Wasp was presumably spinning a fictional story about the future to entertain, whereas the Watcher is narrating actual events. So the Sneepers are an actual alien race within the Marvel Universe; the Wobbows likely are not.

Fantastic Four #20

The Mysterious Molecule Man!

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.

Fantastic Four #13

He is sworn to watch, but never interfere…

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.