Five 10-page reprints from TALES TO ASTONISH #70 – #74 (1965) in this issue. The first is Kirby pencils inked by Mike Esposito (as Mickey Demeo).

“To Live Again” opens with the army raiding the Leader’s lair, where they had found Bruce Banner with a bullet in the head. Rick Jones manages to get Banner’s body out to his secret lab, and gives him a dose of gamma rays to change him to the Hulk.

This time he retains Banner’s intellect as the Hulk, and realizes that the bullet will kill him if he changes back. Meanwhile, the Leader unleashes a 500-foot tall “humanoid” on the army, and the Hulk goes to get a final look at Betty (and I have to say, security at that army base sucked, as no one sees a big green man hanging around). The Hulk and the army both attack the humanoid, which repels them, and the army pull out the “Sunday Punch Missile”, a wonderful Kirby designed weapon.

The rest are Kirby layouts, with some combination of Esposito and/or Bob Powell doing finishing. They look pretty nice, both men are long established professionals probably just working on Kirby’s layouts to get a feel for how Marvel liked their comics done, and to get some extra plotting out of Kirby.

“Like a Beast at Bay”, Esposito finishes, features the defeat of the humanoid, the Hulk giving Rick artificial respiration and the army’s siege of Banner’s hidden lab. I like how the Hulk side of his personality comes and goes depending on the circumstances in this run.

“Within the Monster Dwells a Man”, Esposito again. The Hulk gets taken to the Leader’s headquarters in Italy, where the Leader tries to recruit him with arguements of gamma solidarity. The Hulk doesn’t go for it and battles more humanoids, and feels himself reverting to Banner, which would kill him.

“Another World, Another Foe”, Bob Powell finishes the pencils on this one, with Esposito doing the inking (uncredited), which has the Leader remove the bullet from the Hulk’s brain and gives him another gamma dose, possibly leaving him in Hulk form forever (and if you believe that…). The Hulk agrees to work for him in gratitude, and the Leader reveals that he has been observing the Watcher on the moon and on his homeworld, and sends the Hulk to get a particular device from the Watcher. The Hulk is sent off, where he encounters no resistance from the Watcher, who doesn’t interfere, but is confronted by an alien lizard after the same device. Some nice imaginative alien creatures and devices in the Watcher’s world.

“The Wisdom of the Watcher”, Powell/Esposito over Kirby layouts again, with Esposito credited this time (well, credited as Demeo). The big battle issue, with the Hulk against the alien on a barren world where the Watcher sends them to battle. Good fight, very action filled. The Hulk wins, of course, and the Watcher lets him take the Ultimate Machine, a repository of all knowledge. The Leader puts it on and it appears to kill him (and if you believe that… In fact, the reprint editor even adds a note that the Leader is still around).

There are two pin-up pages between stories. One has the Hulk and Thing battling, taking the Kirby/Roussos figure from the first page of FF #26, the other showing various panels of the Hulk’s transformations to and from Banner from various issues.

Published 1971

One of Marvel’s reprint initiatives in the first half of the 1990s was the occasional “Milestone Edition”, complete cover-to-cover (except for the CAPTAIN AMERICA #1 edition) reprints of various key books. Naturally FF #1 (1961) was among them.

First of all, none of the ads are very interesting. All the usual comic ads of the period, no house ads. Just so you know.

The cover is the usual altered version that appears in most reprints, with only three by-standers on the streets instead of five. It remains a great cover.

Presumably everyone is familiar with the story, which as always has a few problems as it would be a few issues before Kirby really figured out the characters and where he wanted to go with this. Among the odd things that I always forget until I re-read it is that the FF were in “Central City” for the first issue, not New York. I also always get surprised at how destructive they are in this first issue, with Sue pushing people out of the way and scaring a cab driver, Ben destroying a store’s doorway, two streets and a car and Johnny burning his way out of his car and destroying a plane when they respond to Reed’s signal.

That introduction is followed by the origin flashback, of course, which is my favourite part of the issue. While it doesn’t make much sense when you think about it too much, Kirby’s art is excellent in this sequence, full of panels that have become classics.

Their first adventure, against the Mole Man, follows in the second half of the issue. It’s a satisfactory enough story, mostly highlighted by the creatures of Monster Isle. Overall this is what you’d expect from a first issue of the era of a company with an uncertain future, a bit rough around the edges compared to the later work but with a lot of energy and hints of what would soon make it such a revolutionary book.

The inker is, of course, one of the mysteries of the ages. George Klein seems to be the top contender among people who are familiar with other inking of the period, but that’s far from certain.

Published 1991

This is from a bit of an odd point in Thor history. The previous storyline, featuring Galactus, had wound up heavily modified (with several unused pages later showing up in portfolios and fanzines), and the original intention was for Thor to team-up with Galactus to fight the Thermal Man, who had been terrorizing New York while Thor’s fellow Asgardians tried to hold him back. This change in the status quo for Galactus was apparently not what Marvel wanted, so the story was changed.

This goes a long way to explaining why Kirby’s last year on the book was a bit bland compared to the earlier work. Still a lot of great artwork, but the storytelling was much less ambitious. I’d guess that the behind-the-scenes stuff regarding this storyline was part of the reason he took the DC contract a year later.

Anyway, as published, in “The Thunder God and the Thermal Man” Thor returns to New York to find it deserted, and finds Balder and the Warriors Three still reeling from their battle with the Thermal Man, who is then making short work of the US Army.

Thor briefly switches to Dr. Blake to help an injured soldier, and when they’re in danger Karnilla rescues the other Asgardians due to her love of Balder, earning Loki’s scorn. Thor finally unleashes the full power of the storm to sweep the Thermal Man out to sea and up to the frozen north, where I guess he still is to this day.

While the story is a bit weak, the art is pretty powerful. This is Bill Everett’s first issue of this run (he’d inked a single issue a few years earlier, and the Kirby Checklist has him with an uncredited assist to Klein in the previous issue), and it looks very nice for the most part. A few rough spots, but he’d quickly be up to speed and doing some great inking.

Kirby’s original cover for this was rejected (see TJKC #14 / COLLECTED JKC #3 for it), and replaced with a Romita/Verpoorten job.

Published 1969

The series continued with Kirby doing just plotting for the interior story. He did draw the cover, as inked by Mike Royer. Pretty decent looking, although of course Kirby’s never at his best drawing other people’s designs.

The story pretty much has three of the villains sent out with enhanced powers the previous issues failing, thanks to some teamwork on behalf of the heroes, and being taken away at their moment of defeat by those mysterious tubes with the “boom” sound effect. That leaves Brainiac and his attack on Wonder Woman at Paradise Island set up on the final page for next issue. Gonzales/Marcos are still trying a bit too hard to add surface elements of Kirby’s style to their art. The writing wasn’t bad, but it had some odd references to the then-current continuity (Flash’s murder trial, Batman leaving the JLA).

Published 1984

This story opens up with a flashback to a combat ritual some years ago in Wakanda, where the ruling Panther took on various challengers in hand-to-hand combat. A brilliant two-page spread highlights that battle.

Following the flashback, we get two storylines. T’Challa is flying back to Wakanda when he rescues two men who turn out to be gangsters. They cause his helicopter to crash and T’Challa finds himself stranded in North Africa with the surviving gangster, Scarpa. Meanwhile, in Wakanda, the regent N’Gassi gathers together some other members of the royal family to battle Jakarra, now mutating to monstrous form by exposure to Vibranium. They’re all uncertain of their ability to help, but rise to the challenge when Jakarra attacks, and resolve to defeat him.

An entertaining start to the “Black Musketeers” storyline in the title. I especially like the background scenes given for T’Challa’s history.

Published 1978

This issue reprints FANTASTIC FOUR #90 (1969), inked by Joe Sinnott. The story opens with the wrap-up to the previous issue, where the FF have captured the Moleman in the house they’d planned to move into. Reed lets the Moleman escape, explaining that “It’s a strange paradoxical world we live in. A man can be arrested for illegal parking, but there’s actually no law against trying to conquer the planet”. Ben then goes back to town. Meanwhile, a skrull lands in the country, intent on capturing the Thing.

In town, Ben deals with some of his many fans when the skrull finds him.

Disguising himself as Reed, the skrull fools Ben into going out to his ship in the country, knocks him out and takes him as a slave for the “great games”.

A nice transition issue between major storylines. The Moleman story finishing up wasn’t that good, although it had its moments, including a few scenes this issue. The “Thing Enslaved” story that begins in here has a slow start, but would turn out to be the highlight of Kirby’s final year on the book.

The reprint is only 18 pages, knocking two out of the original. Those pages mostly dealt with the FF calling and checking in with Alicia and the as-yet-unnamed Franklin. Nice character bits, it’s a shame the reprint didn’t have room for them.

Published 1977

The new story in this issue featured the Watcher, so the reprint in the back went back to the introduction of the Watcher in FANTASTIC FOUR #13 (1963), a 22-page story inked by Steve Ditko.

In this story, Reed re-news his determination to beat the reds to the moon (and Roy Thomas helpfully points out this was before the mid-1970s detente), and discovers a new energy source from a meteorite sample. Planning to go alone, Ben convinces him otherwise.

I love these kinds of scenes, Ben stuffing Reed in a giant tube until he agrees to take them all on the mission.

Leaving exactly when the FF do is Ivan Kragoff, Russian scientist, who is going to the moon with a trio of trained apes. He’s also going with no shielding on this ship, hoping to replicate the FF’s cosmic ray experience from back in #1 and get powers. That actually works, and he and the apes get a variety of powers. The FF reach the moon first (with a glorious 1/2 page shot of the long dead city in the Blue Area), and face off against Kragoff, now known as the Red Ghost, and encounter the Watcher, who would of course become an important part of the FF mythos in later years. It’s almost surprising what a throw-away concept he is in this first story.

As usual at this point in FF history, the story is pretty creative, gradually getting better and more complex. The art is wonderful, with lots of innovative ideas and clever bits of storytelling thrown in. Ditko inks over Kirby are always interesting to see (this in one of just a handful of examples on the super-hero books). He brings a lot of his own texture to it, but seems to be very faithful to the pencils as well.

Published 1974