Fantastic Four #73 [1968] – The Flames of Battle

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I kind of wish I could be more enthusiastic about this issue, which features the FF in battle against Daredevil, Thor and Spider-Man, following up on a story that had just appeared in DAREDEVIL where Doctor Doom briefly switched bodies with Daredevil. DD is back in his own body and goes to warn the FF, but they think it’s still Doom. DD recruits Spider-Man and Thor to help hiim, but of course the FF think they’re imposters as well.

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It’s pretty much just a lot of fighting, very well drawn fighting, but pretty empty from then on until Sue shows up and clears everything up. This might have made a better middle of an epic story if it had some sort of set-up and resolutioin in the FF book itself, instead of batting clean-up to an issue of DD.

Joe Sinnott inks the cover and 20-page story, with some of the Spidey bits having John Romita’s hand in as well.

Published 1968

4 thoughts on “Fantastic Four #73 [1968] – The Flames of Battle

  1. david morris

    This story also features a very odd piece of storytelling. Page six,panel two Jack has Daredevil kick the Thing over and Stan produces some awkward dialogue about a never seen nerve ray to explain how this would be possible. It would be cool to see pencilled notes for this sequence to see what Jack was thinking, as I can’t begin to guess.

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  2. Shane Foley

    I can’t get enthusiastic about it either. In fact I think it’s one of the worst Kirby FFs ever. The sub-plot of Reed and Sue resigning is forgotten, the Torch is so dumb he crashes into a water tank ( what? It was hidden behind Spiderman’s body?) and Kirby’s art is the lightest its ever been. It had none of the interest that earlier cross-overs had. To me this is the issue that signalled that Jack was losing interest.

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  3. patrick ford

    Since this is a tie in with an issue of Daredevil which Kirby was not involved in, and because Kirby was likely pretty unhappy with how Lee had been tampering with his plots I have to wonder if this issue might have signaled a kind of showdown between Lee and Kirby? It seems very possible Kirby told Lee something like “Alright, then you write the next issue.”

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