![\"FantasticFour2241980.jpg\"](\"\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2007\/03\/FantasticFour2241980.jpg\")
<\/p>\nPresumably because Marvel had just recovered from their nadir of 17-page comics a few months before, this issue of FF had a 17-page lead story and room for a few more pages. They responded to that with some interesting Kirby content, including the first ever printing of the originally planned cover to FF #3, which is a pretty cool little piece of history. A nice little action shot from the interior story and a demonstration of the powers of the members of the team in the little inset vignettes, while the actual published cover shows off the new costumes better. It was probably a good switch to make, especially at this early issues, setting the book apart from the monster comics which Marvel was publishing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But they had more pages to fill than that, so we also get the “Feature Page” on Mister Fantastic and what his powers are capable of from FF #16, a pin-up of the Invisible Girl in her section of the Fantasi-Car from FF #10 and two feature pages explaining the Torch’s powers from FF #8 and #9 (including his study of weather patterns to avoid rain). But oddly none of the available pin-up pages of the Thing were used. Poor Benjy…<\/p>\n
The pin-up\/feature pages are inked by Dick Ayers. The unused cover is also credited to Ayers here, but to Sol Brodsky in the Kirby Checklist. I think Brodsky seems more likely, though the printing here makes it hard to say with any confidence.<\/p>\n
Published 1980<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Presumably because Marvel had just recovered from their nadir of 17-page comics a few months before, this issue of FF had a 17-page lead story and room for a few more pages. They responded to that with some interesting Kirby content, including the first ever printing of the originally planned cover to FF #3, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genre","category-superhero"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}