Unstability: Reading Kirby & Lee's Fantastic Four #1

Given that this week would be Jack Kirby’s ninety-seventh birthday, and that I’m about to go into heavy re-writing on a novel whose working title, Unstable Molecules, is taken from one of the brilliantly science-y concepts that came out of Kirby and Lee’s original run on the Fantastic Four, which I’ve shamefully never read, I figured it was time to delve into the source material. Plus it’s a good way to stretch the writing part of my brain a bit. So here goes.

The Fantastic Four #1

So many exclamation points! So many!!

Note the definite article, which sticks around until issue #16. I'm not sure I have anything to say about it just yet, but, you know, note it.

If you’re a comic book fan, it’s impossible not to come to these issues with a lot of baggage. Much of it centered on the Lee vs. Kirby issue, which is to comics what Lennon vs. McCartney or Jagger vs. Richards is to music.

Let’s put it out there right off: along with most folks, I’m in Kamp Kirby. Not because Stan Lee comes off as a huckster (he does) or because the prose and dialogue that he claims credit for is six kinds of unbearable (it is), but because of this:

The incredible Human TorchHands.

That’s the cover of Challengers of the Unknown #3 from 1958, written and drawn by Jack Kirby. For decades, Stan Lee has made the claim that the idea for the Fantastic Four, a group of intrepid space explorers who are buffeted with cosmic rays and hideously transformed, sprang from his fertile imagination. But this issue by Kirby, five years previous, features intrepid space explorers who are buffeted with cosmic rays and hideously transformed. Just saying.

Structurally, Fantastic Four #1 is a twenty-four page comic divided into three chapters, the first of which is sub-divided into intro and flashback. I admit, I am a little obsessed with the comic’s opening line of prose, which gets echoed in Gravity’s Rainbow’s opening line, “A screaming comes across the sky.” But that’s because I’m a jerk.

The three awesome words are "The Fantastic Four". By the way.

The next panel introduces Reed as a shadowy figure with a gun, one we’d likely assume is the villain of the piece. He very well might be, depending on how you look at it. More later.

Nothing menacing here at all. Nope.

Oh, and we should note that the first issue doesn’t take place in New York City, but in a DC-style New York City stand-in, Central City. I’m interested to see when they make the switch, since the mythology of the Four is deeply connected to New York.

Do we need to get into the gender politics of making invisibility a woman's superpower in 1961, or can I assume?

Sue Storm gets brought on stage next with a bit of physical comedy. Check out the timing on this panel. From the stunned expression of the figure on the far left, the folks recovering in the middle of the panel, and the two men falling at the panel’s right or present side. It’s a great bit of pacing by Kirby.

This is, no joke, The Thing lamenting a lack of Big and Tall stores in New York.

Next, we have the real hero of the first issue, Ben Grimm, the Thing, who is pure Kirby monster material: monstrous in the classical sense of being out of sync or size with the rest of the world. He gets introduced in a sort of Invisible Man get up, including shades. This brings up issues of visibility that run through the storyline of the character (Ben ends up finding love with a blind woman) and of course parallels him with the Invisible Woman. But it also highlights an initial problem with the way the character is drawn. Throughout the first few issues, we never see Ben Grimm's eyes, and I'd argue that it's not until Kirby starts drawing Ben's baby blues that the character takes on the deeply human aspects that put him at the heart of the comic and tie him most closely to Kirby as an artist.

Over the course of two pages, the Thing tears up streets, wrecks a car, and is fired on by police. Like Reed, he’s given a villain’s entrance. But while Reed’s is, initially, just visual, Ben’s is more narrative. His actions are destructive and he’s full of contempt for the people he encounters.

Finally, Johnny Storm shows up, bursting into flames and melting some planes. At least he feels bad about it.

"My bad."

On to the origin flashback! Over the protests of pilot Ben Grimm and his fear of cosmic rays, the Four go blasting into space. Ben because he’s the pilot. Reed because science. Sue because she’s Reed’s fiancé. And Johnny because he’s Sue’s brother, and you should always take your teenage soon-to-be-brother-in-law on all of your space expeditions.

There’s a lot that’s unclear here, of course, because things move pretty quickly. It seems the space mission is military in some way, because the Four sneak onto the base and blast off. But Reed’s connection with the mission is never made clear. Even the “Reed is a scientist” assumption is just that at this point. Most importantly, they must beat the commies into space. So they go past the ONE GUARD on duty and essentially steal a space rocket. Well done, Four!

"If only we'd seen this coming!"

Of course, they are immediately blasted with cosmic rays. Which make a sound I imagine is a lot like an active Geiger counter, and calls to mind a classic Calvin & Hobbes strip.

The sounds of science.

Cosmic rays are the sine qua non of Marvel science-y concepts. The bulk of the Marvel Age is irradiated and mutated, and it’s good to note here the difference between American and Japanese attitudes toward radiation. In Japanese film, radiation introduces (or, more aptly reintroduces, awakes or recalls) the purely monstrous. In American comic books, radiation can induce monstrosity as well as heroism.

"I am unsubtle symbolism! RAAARRGH!"

In choosing “cosmic rays”, Lee and Kirby opt for something that is placed permanently outside of understanding, and is science-y while remaining separate from the science of actual radiation. The elements of the unknowable and, maybe more importantly, the elements of chance, have chafed modern writers of some of these characters, who have tried with varying degrees of success to introduce more intentional or spiritual elements into the characters’ origins (most notably, Mark Waid’s Speed Force accounting for the lightning strike with chemical dousing that creates The Flash, and JM Strazynski’s Spider-Totem, about which the less said the better).

It’s interesting, for me at least, to pause here and imagine a world of superhero comics that didn’t arise at a moment of obsession with atomic science. What if superheroes began forty years earlier when spiritualism was at its cultural peak? I’ve tried (again, with varying degrees of success) to come up with a set of Marvel analogues that get their powers from encounters with ancient gods and myths and totems rather than “science”. It certainly works better in a book about the power of stories and storytelling, but there’s something about superheroes having science-y origins that gives them a sense of newness. They don’t draw their power from older stories, and there’s something vital, if particularly American and mid-twentieth century, about that.

Now that they’ve been irradiated, the Four’s powers kick in. And here comes the amazing twist that drives the dynamic of this comic for decades. Reed, Sue and Johnny are all hideously transformed, but they retain a human base state to which they can revert, while Ben is permanently disfigured. Jonathan Hickman will pick up on this idea of base state pretty brilliantly sixty years later, but there are more immediate results.

"I only casually endangered the lives of my friends and loved ones. So back off!"

It’s tough not to read this as a Lee vs. Kirby moment. As the series progresses, The Thing becomes more obviously a stand-in for Kirby, while Reed retains unquestioned control over the group. And maybe there’s part of me that wants to imagine Kirby and Lee mediating their creative disputes through those two characters. This line of thinking makes these two panels all the more cringe-inducing.

"Everyone, on three: Reed sucks. One, two..."

Here’s my favorite of several articles on why Reed Richards is a dick, but those panels kind of sum it up. Total dick move, Reed.

All right, this is taking more space than I’d intended. So, tomorrow, on to the second half of the first issue. Excelsior!