By Stan Lee (w,e); Jack Kirby (p); Chic Stone (i) & Artie Simek (l)
The crisp bold line at the top of the cover reads "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine!" and for four or five years, it was true.
This issue marks the beginning of the greatest sequence of issues in superhero comics history. The standard of excellence established by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby on this peak era has never been matched. This is the issue where the Fantastic Four first meets Medusa the Inhuman, as a member of the team's newest, truest rivals, the Frightful Four. As plots and subplots develop, Medusa leads to the discovery of the Inhumans, which leads into Silver Surfer and the Galactus saga, which leads to Wakanda and the Black Panther, all three of which, it's worth pointing out have been or are being developed for the silver screen. The reign of excellence continued for another 50 issues after that, but this particular period is the one everybody remembers. This is where it started really cooking.
Medusa's First Appearance.
Jack Kirby transcends the medium of comics. Even non-comic book fans have come across his creations if not his artwork, there's just no getting around it. All comic fans know what Kirby hands are, what a Kirby crackle looks like and what Kirby-esque feels like. He's the greatest storyteller in superhero comics, this run on Fantastic Four is his finest hour and this issue begins his absolute pinnacle. Though he'd been Fantastic Four artist since issue #1, it took him about two years to truly find his voice on the book. There's no shame in it, it was a new series with a new approach to characters at what was essentially an all-new publisher (of superhero comics). It wasn't until around about this issue or just a couple issues before it that The Thing really starts to look like The Thing the way we remember him today. He'd gone through several "drafts" of doughy, craggy and angular before Kirby finally settled on the distinctive look he still carries to this day. Kirby's trademark Manhattan backgrounds started to look like Kirby backgrounds, detailed with clean lines (see bottom left corner of cover image above). It seemed that after three years of playing wait-and-see, it was safe to consider Fantastic Four a success and therefore, something to invest the full power of his talent into.
The Frightful Four.
In this story we meet the Frightful Four, a motley crew of chagrined and defeated villains from F.F. member Human Torch's solo adventures in Strange Tales magazine, opportunistic crooks and a mysterious new female baddie on the scene. Attention to detail in the continuity between issues is something that Marvel fans have always loved about the publisher, they were the first to take it seriously. One of the joys of reading Marvel comics was watching characters develop over the course of years and eventually, generations. When I was very, very young there was a comic called Marvel Saga which retold the whole history of Marvel Comics from the 1960's, issue by issue, including this one. So it took me years, decades even to trust Medusa as the heroine she has become. She was just so thoroughly evil in her early appearances. I guess first impressions really are important. I mean, she ran with a group called the Frightful Four, they knew who and what they were, they were the bad guys and proud of it. Strangely, Frightful Four member Sandman would go through a similar switch in allegiance, albeit much later.
After the Frightful Four crash the Fantastic Four's headquarters, the Baxter Building, a battle royal ensues. The action is intense, the wide-angle staging is classic Kirby and the bad guys nearly win. In the grand early Marvel style, only an incredible effort saves Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny from certain death, when they turn the tables the bad guys, they escape cleanly to return but two issues later and three issues after that for what would be the team's greatest story yet up to that point. The Thing, feeling depressed about his appearance quits the team and ends up a member of the Frightful Four. The fact that his conversion continues for more than one issue is a perfect example of what made Marvel great in those early years, readers truly didn't know what to expect, but the seeds had been planted for them expect any changes to be long term.
WHAT ELSE WERE THE KIDS UP TO BACK THEN?
After being blown away by Stan and Jack the hipper of British audiences didn't walk, but ran to pick up the debut album of a band that were to the Rolling Stones, what the Rolling Stones were to the Beatles in terms of raunchiness:
THE PRETTY THINGS - SELF-TITLED
If you have the world's most impressive memory or something close to it, you'll notice that both albums from 1965 featured in Comics Suck! so far (the first was The Zombies 'Begin Here') have kicked off with a cover of the Bo Diddley classic "Roadrunner". The difference is The Zombies album landed on shelves then sunk like a stone in their home territory while The Pretties debut placed a tidy #6 on the album chart.
Pretty Things on tour in New Zealand 1965 [Source]
I have an idea of why that may be. By the end of 1964 The Rolling Stones had established themselves as a dominant force in British music. Blues guitar standout Eric Clapton and his band The Yardbirds were making a name for themselves with a "heavier", rawer style of pop music, their seminal "For Your Love" was also released this month (more on that on a future edition). The world of British pop music was beginning to cycle in a gravitationally challenged direction. The Zombies, as high quality as their album was, represented old news. Those early Beatles, Gerry & The Pacemakers and Dave Clark Five sounds were so last year's scene.
For one shining, brilliant moment the rough and ready Pretty Things were on the cutting edge.
But they would never enjoy the same level of chart success in their careers again. Unlike most of their early peers however, they're still going. It was only two years ago that they appeared at the massive Roadburn Festival. Listen to the album above and re-discover why buzz remains so high for this band 50 years on.
But after devouring the Fantastic Four and Pretty Things it was time for some real gone retinal input, it was time for Die, Die My Darling.
I know the title from the Metallica song, which was a cover of a Misfits song, which was taken from this movie. Actually, the film was originally titled Fanatic in the UK, but given the campier title for the U.S. audience. The film was part of Hammer Films seeming monopoly on British horror of the time (Amicus was only just emerging and Tigon was years away from appearing on the scene). It was directed by Silvio Narizzano and starred Tallulah Bankhead in an unforgettable performance as the fantical Mrs. Trefoile buffeted and abetted by the equally wonderful performance of Stefanie Powers as Patricia Carroll. It also co-stars a young Donald Sutherland (that's two 1965 films in a row co-starring Sutherland, including the Amicus Productions's Dr. Terror's House of Horrors from last month) as the simple-minded Joseph.
In it, Patricia visits the mother of her now deceased former boyfriend (Steven Trefoile) against her current fiancee's wishes. Upon arrival she finds Mrs. Trefoile to be a critical, dogmatic tyrant. Mrs. Trefoile does her best to "correct" Ms. Carroll's behavior because she considers her to be Steven's wife and can't stand the thought of his memory being tainted. When Patricia has finally had enough and decides to leave, Mrs. Trefoile produces a gun and locks her in the attic.
It's an excellent film that captured the zeitgeist of the times swiftly a-changing and inter-generational tension, although it can be a tad preachy in its own right. You can watch it in all its over-zealous glory below:
"The Origin of the Mandarin"
By Stan Lee (w, e); Don Heck (p); Dick Ayers (i) & Sam Rosen (l)
Before he became a cinematic punching bag played by Ben Kingsley (wha..?), the Mandarin was Iron Man's deadliest foe. A petty tyrant without title, a descendant of Genghis Khan who stumbled upon ten rings of terrible power. This is the story that tells how the Mandarin found those rings and helped to establish the buck-toothed (as drawn by Don Heck) post-WWII Asian stereotype as one of the top shelf villains in the nascent Marvel universe.
Stan Lee, in one of his famous and wonderful asides on the story's splashpage (in the Mighty Marvel Manner!) wrote: "Note: This tale was specially produced by mighty Marvel in answer to more than 500 requests for Mandy's origin!" Lee, Heck and company delivered and then some. Raised as a peasant, though of noble blood the young Mandarin travels to the dreaded Valley of Spirits against the dire warnings of his fellow peasants. His arrogance is already in fine form at such a young age: "Ignorant peasant! Know you that the Mandarin fears nothing!" There he finds the fossilized remains of an ancient dragon.
Startled, the Mandarin falls into a thickly forested valley where he discovers an awesome secret. It turns out the dragon wasn't a dragon at all, but Axon-Karr a Makluan who came to earth centuries ago in a spaceship. Mandy discovers the ship was fueled by ... ten powerful and conveniently human sized rings. He quickly dons the rings and proceeds to conquer the peasantry in his village.
Stan Lee displays his unceasing sense of fun by pointing out the obvious when Iron Man says to himself: "First, there's the problem of finding that imitation Fu Manchu!" and then two panels later, "that's one of the hazards of being a lone-wolf type of adventurer! After a while, you begin to talk to yourself!"
Stan Lee states it plainly: The Mandarin was the "yellow peril" embodied in a petty tyrant using advanced and unfamiliar technology to subjugate a complacent populace. This fear was borne of the cold war, the fear that foreign powers may surpass American weapons advancements secretly and under cover of iron curtained darkness to use them in a sneak attack.
It was a fear the British had felt some 50 years earlier and immortalized by British pulp author Sax Rhomer in the form of the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. It's no coincidence that The Mandarin was invented and popularized at a time when the character of Fu Manchu was experiencing a resurgence in popularity of his own. In August of 1965 Hallam Productions (UK) and Constantin Film (DE) would release The Face of Fu Manchu, directed by Don Sharp and starring the immortal Christopher Lee in the titular role. The film was a mild success, but enough of one to spawn four sequels.
"Break-Out in Cell Block 10!"
By Stan Lee (w, e); Jack Kirby (p); Chic Stone (i) & Artie Simek (l)
In the second story, Captain America goes back in time to the same plot scenario from issue #60. It seems prolific production doesn't always lead to the most dynamic stories. As in issue #60, Cap thinks he's putting on a demonstration of his battle prowess, in this case for a prison warden. Little does he know he's really battling a cell block full of escaping prisoners, huh-ho!
"By the way," Cap says to the warden, "if I dind't know better, I'd swear these guns had been firing live ammo!"
To his credit, Stan Lee, did make mention of the similarities on the story's splash page: "Remember ish #60 when Cap thought he was giving a physical demonstration and didn't suspect he was really fighting a bunch of assassins? Well, some guys always learn the hard way!" If nothing else, it's proof of Stan Lee's method of writing during the "Marvel Age", that is, let the artist do all the work. If and when Lee caught them repeating themselves, point it out! With Lee's wry sense of observation, he could always make it look like the House of Ideas knew what it was doing. Really, Kirby was just drawing page after page of brawling because that's what he felt like doing. Stan Lee was famous for submitting plots to his artists that consisted of a single sentence on a post-it note: "Spider-Man fights Electro". It was up to Kirby or Steve Ditko or Don Heck to create not just the pacing and layout but also the plot itself. Kirby and Ditko mastered the technique in seemingly never-ending epics that would stretch for a year or longer. In this early Captain America story (just the third solo segment starring the Star Spangled Avenger), Kirby's just enjoying himself and getting his legs under him. Just four issues later, he would re-introduce his own creation from the Golden Age, the Red Skull and his new weapon, the Cosmic Cube. Fans of the Marvel film universe will be familiar with this, no doubt.
WHAT ELSE WERE THE KIDS UP TO BACK THEN?
After reading this issue and having a good snicker, the comics loving youth of England no doubt hit up the local record store and noticed this long-playing gem:
THE ZOMBIES - BEGIN HERE
Representing the harder edge of the wimpier side of the British Invasion, there was a brief period that The Zombies enjoyed sustained chart action. This album was released at the crest of their wave. With "Tell Her No" spinning incessantly on pop radio and reaching #6 on the Billboard chart, Decca Records released The Zombies debut full-length album titled 'Begin Here'. Ironically, this was the beginning of the end for the group.
The album didn't fare as well as expected, hitting only #39 on Billboard's album charts, this at a time when 7" singles dominated record sales and albums were still seen as something of an overpriced novelty. It didn't register at all on the charts back home in the UK. There no telling today why that was. It's a great record, surprisingly tough in places for the normally silky-smooth quintet, while maintaining their signature pop sound. Essentially it gave record buying audiences what they might have come to expect by then: a mixed bag of cover songs and group compositions but it provides a solid listen from needle drop to run-off groove. Considering what the band and label might have expected given their success in the singles market, the album was a colossal flop.
The Zombies trucked on, releasing 10 more singles at home and abroad over the next two and a half years. All of them flopped, only one, "I Want You Back Again" charted at #95 on Billboard. It was the first single release after the album and it was the last time the record buying public at large was caught thinking about them. The band broke up in late 1967.
But that's not the end of the story.
True to their name, The Zombies had a second life when new label CBS Records posthumously released their second and final album, 'Odessey & Oracle', It's one of my all-time favorites, I recommend anybody with just an inkling for 1960's pop records should drop what they're doing and go listen to it. Anyway, The Zombies hadn't been a thing for over a year, but that didn't stop their newly released single "Time of the Season" from rising, and rising, and rising in the charts all the way to #3, making it the second biggest hit single of their careers after "She's Not There" which was famously covered by the band Santana in the 1970's. [Sharp intake of breath] So in Spring of 1969 the band re-formed and released two more singles. Both of them flopped. The group disbanded and some of the members formed the progressively inclined Argent, who you might remember from the song, "Hold Your Head Up".
But in spite of all that, The Zombies's legacy is intact. "Time of the Season" is a classic, highly regarded in a wide-range of music circles, from classic rock fans to DJs, one of whom recently sampled the memorable bassline to score a hit pop single. The fact that the band's name so closely resembles the shape of their careers is skin-crawlingly eerie to me.
So, after the youth of Britain were finished devouring the latest imported issue of Tales of Suspense and utterly ignoring The Zombies new record, they found time to hit the cinema where they surely watched Amicus Productions'sDr. Terror's House of Horroranthology film. And you can too, right here, right now. Enjoy and thanks for reading:
PS: don't mind the subtitles, the film is in English. It was directed by Freddie Francis and stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. You can find out more about it at this location.
FIGHTING AMERICAN #6 (Prize Comics)
By Joe Simon & Jack Kirby
Before there was Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, there was Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.
They created the first 10 issues of the original Captain America Comics. Each issue features multiple stories and they're all excellent. After Simon and Kirby left the book, the series spiraled downward in terms of quality. The series would limp on for another 7 years before being rebranded Captain America's Weird Tales to appeal to fans of the new horror craze that was sweeping the nation. It would finally be cancelled after two issues.
Those first ten original issues remain legendary, however. From there on the team continued to create new interesting characters with unusual depth for the Golden Age era (roughly 1935-1956), including Manhunter, Boy Commandos and the Newsboy Legion. Later, Kirby would help revive Green Arrow for DC Comics and co-create the Challengers of the Unknown, fore-runners to the Fantastic Four before returning to the company that he had co-created Captain America for. But before returning, there were a few twists in the road.
Fighting American was Simon & Kirby's response to Marvel Comics (then called Atlas) revamping of the Captain America title in 1954. It was a way to show Atlas how the character was supposed to be done. Fighting American and his young sidekick Speedboy (because all fightin' heroes had young sidekicks in the Golden Age) were a two-man anti-communist army with no superhero powers ... per se. F.A. did have enhanced abilities, much like that "other" star-spangled hero the team had invented 13 years earlier, and he would use this prowess to beguile communist forces in America. But by issue #2, Simon and Kirby were disgusted by the tenor of anti-communist sentiment in the McCarthy hearings, especially once the House Select Committee started targeting comic books. From that point forward Fighting American became a parody.
The first story in this issue, "Deadly Doolittle" is a fast moving crime caper. A well-put-together blonde named Marilyn Biltrite approaches Johnny Flagg aka Fighting American in his civilian guise, plants a wet one on him ... and also a handful of stolen diamonds. When a pair of crooks catch up with her to retrieve the diamonds, Fighting American shows up to punch some face and save the damsel. It turns out Ms. Biltrite is a maid at old man Munneybelt's mansion and took the diamonds before the crooks could. It's a fun story with little social commentary.
I mentioned earlier that Fighting American was Simon & Kirby's response to Atlas Comics revamping of Captain America, well that's not speculation. The middle story of this issue is a reprint of Fighting American's origin from issue 1 which was basically a re-telling of Captain America's origin, right down to a scrawny soldier volunteering to be used as a guinea pig for an experimental serum. One can't help but think that in today's heartless, corporate world, the company would have sued Simon & Kirby for plagiarising their own idea.
The third story in this issue however, is a different animal altogether (before Justice League of America debuted in 1960, it was rare for comic books to feature single full-length stories). In "Super-Khakalovitch ... Boy 'Has-Been'!" we're introduced to the raggedy titular villain of the piece. We first encounter him posed in a Russian cossack dance while leaping through the air, big toe protruding through a hole in his smelly sock. He shouts, "Fools! I am inwincible!" as he bounds over the heads of Fighting American and Speedboy who plug their noses in olfactory disgust as Speedboy says, "Boy! Is he strong!!" In the 10-page story Super-Khakalovitch is sent to America by his Soviet handlers for reasons unspecified and falls in love with American cars. He is defeated when soviet spies (who are "everywhere! Watch everybody ... even Super-Khakalovitch") sensing his betrayal decide to give him a bath with a fire hose, thus eliminating his super-smelliness. The now de-powered Khakalovitch decides to settle in the U.S., with the blessing of Fighting American, of course. Low-brow stuff, and buckets of fun. And not just fun, it holds up as a parody of funnybook heroes and propaganda techniques in media to this day.
This was the penultimate issue of the original Fighting American series. When Kirby returned to the company that would be known as Marvel Comics, he would go on to bigger things, Joe Simon died in 2011 at the age of 98 and remains relatively obscure outside the cloistered world of comic book fanaticism, although his legendary status within that world is assured. The creative team would revive Fighting American for a single issue published by Harvey Comics in October 1966. The giant-size edition featured new stories and reprints.
WHAT ELSE WERE THE KIDS UP TO BACK THEN?
After reading this issue and having a good snicker, the anti-communist youth of America no doubt hit the jukebox at the local malt shoppe and spun this little record:
Or maybe not. Rock & Roll wouldn't enter the American consciousness on a large scale until at least a month later. Elvis released five flop singles on Sun Records before breaking through on RCA a year after Rock & Roll hit the big time. Ask me his best stuff was recorded for Sun. It was raw, rugged jive music with a country flair, just the way Rock & Roll was intended. Hell, Elvis was Punk Rock in February 1955.
After they were all hopped up on Fighting American comics, Elvis and sodas, those now restless teen-agers almost certainly went to the local movie house and caught this barn-burner of a film:
The original The Fast and The Furious was one of director/producer Roger Corman's earliest successes and it only encouraged him to keep going. He's still going strong to this day!
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