{"id":4206,"date":"2017-06-07T22:00:33","date_gmt":"2017-06-08T02:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/?p=4206"},"modified":"2017-06-08T00:24:12","modified_gmt":"2017-06-08T04:24:12","slug":"the-mad-menace-of-the-macabre-mole-man-k018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/archives\/4206","title":{"rendered":"“The Mad Menace Of The Macabre Mole Man” (k018)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“The Mad Menace Of The Macabre Mole Man” is a 21-page Jack Kirby story from\u00a0FANTASTIC FOUR #31 [1964], inked by Chic Stone.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The original FF villain, the Mole Man, returns for a third go-round, this time sinking whole city blocks out of New York to his subterranean domain. While the rest of the FF go to investigate, Sue sees a photo of an escaped convict and goes to the police station. The block she\u2019s on is sunk by the Mole Man and she\u2019s taken hostage, and the rest of the team have to rescue her, including a brief side-track of having to keep the Avengers from interfering (as the \u201cMarvel Universe\u201d concept became more common in this era).<\/p>\n

The FF escape, only Sue somehow gets injured in an explosion, and only one doctor can save her. It turns out to be the fugitive whose photo Sue was looking at earlier, who it turns out is Franklin Storm, father of Sue and Johnny, believed by most people to be dead. He\u2019s able to save Sue, and we\u2019re promised more on him next issue.<\/p>\n

FF was a pretty good book at this point, just on the verge of a big leap in quality to the peak material. I especially like how Kirby was drawing the tech stuff at this time, like the scooters the Mole Man\u2019s army uses, and Reed\u2019s various devices.<\/p>\n

Chic Stone inks the cover and story, a few issues into his run as FF inker. While I love Stone\u2019s Thor and X-Men work of the period, his FF didn\u2019t quite work quite as much for me (although he was better than the regular inkers right before and after him). For some reason his FF just doesn\u2019t seem as bold as those other book. The big problem is how Ben Grimm looks in here. Seems a bit sparse, cartoony, without the texture that Sinnott would be bringing a year later, although he’s close to that in a few close-ups. Actually, ignoring how he inks Ben, most of the rest looks pretty decent.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.comics.org\/issue\/18694\/#140898
\nMARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #23 [1969]
\nMARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #29 [1970]
\nMARVEL MASTERWORKS #21 [1992]
\nESSENTIAL FANTASTIC FOUR #2 [1999]
\nFANTASTIC FOUR OMNIBUS #2 [2007]
\nMARVEL MASTERWORKS – THE FANTASTIC FOUR #4 [2010]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The Mad Menace Of The Macabre Mole Man” is a 21-page Jack Kirby story from\u00a0FANTASTIC FOUR #31 [1964], inked by Chic Stone. The original FF villain, the Mole Man, returns for a third go-round, this time sinking whole city blocks out of New York to his subterranean domain. While the rest of the FF go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-k100"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206","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=4206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4209,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206\/revisions\/4209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}