Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jul 20, 2025 | 5 comments

Paul Kupperberg does FANTASTIC FOUR WEEK!

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It’s FANTASTIC FOUR WEEK! Because there’s a big ol’ movie coming out! Click here for the COMPLETE INDEX of columns and features! Flame on! — Dan

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By PAUL KUPPERBERG

While my heart belonged to DC Comics, I was, in reality, a polyamorous fan. Yes, I loved Superman and his Justice League of America colleagues first and foremost, but the truth is, I stepped out on them with practically every other publisher on the newsstands. Marvel, Charlton, Gold Key, Dell, Warren, Harvey, Archie, Tower Comics… When I was feeling particularly trashy, I was even known seek out a few Myron Fass black-and-white horror magazines to wallow in their cheesy awfulness.

I just loved comic books!

I was just 6 years old when Fantastic Four #1 hit the stands in August 1961, launching the Marvel Age, and I was still in my Robert Kanigher/Ross Andru/Mike Esposito Wonder Woman and Wayne Boring Superman phase, several years before my wanton newsstand ways revealed themselves with low-rent comics like Dell’s Super Heroes (January – June 1967), a comic drawn by Sal Trapani so bad, no writer has ever claimed credit for it, Archie’s mid-1960s Mighty Crusaders revival by Jerry Siegel and Paul Reinman, and Harvey’s Percival Pineapple, Fruitman (1969) by Hy Eisman.

Eventually, I added the Marvel titles to my reading list, but my budget was limited, so rather than give up buying any of my beloved comics, I would read the others on the sly from my older brother’s collection. I was forbidden on pain of being made even more miserable than Alan usually made me from touching his comics, but my addiction made me take the risk, and I was able to keep up with Stan, Jack, Steve, Don, Roy, and the rest of the Bullpen without busting my budget.

Back issues were another, well… issue. Once I started collecting, my goal was to go back and fill in issues of titles before I started buying them, most of them DC, like Justice League of America, Showcase, The Flash, Action Comics, and The Brave and the Bold. But I did pick up some older Marvels, especially Tales of Suspense, which co-featured Captain America (my favorite Marvel character) and Iron Man, and, because the line-up included Cap and was a lot like my beloved JLA but with more arguing, The Avengers.

I don’t remember the details all these years later, but I acquired Fantastic Four #1 through a trade with my friend Steve, worth about $20 at the time. I’d found copies of FF #2, #4, and #5 in a Brooklyn junk shop on Clarkson Avenue for cheap, so I decided to start collecting the rest of the run, which was then up to around Issue #70.

By June 29, 1968, I had managed to accumulate the first six issues of Fantastic Four, which I proudly posed with for a snapshot on the day of my Bar Mitzvah. I know the date because that was the only time I ever wore those clothes.

(The reenactment of that display was taken on June 11, 2025, 18 days shy of exactly 57 years later, with Marvel’s modern Facsimile Editions taking the place of the original comics. And, if given the choice, I’d rather have my youth back than the comics.)

Alas, all those treasures are long gone, sold off to fund the chase of yet a different title; I shared a small bedroom with two brothers, so space was limited, and I often had to unload one series to make room in my bookcase for the new. But I never stopped reading FF, which, by this time had hit its stride and was living up to its hype as the cover blurbed “World’s Greatest Comic Magazine.” For me, the book really took off around the 40th issue, Stan and Jack (or Jack and Stan, I don’t wanna argue!) firing on all cylinders, introducing characters and storylines that are still paying dividends and anchoring major motion pictures nearly 60 years later.

Here then, MY 13 FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT THE FIRST SIX ISSUES OF FANTASTIC FOUR: 

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1. Not Just Another Superhero Comic. Just to be clear, the Fantastic Four didn’t start out as a “superhero” comic. It was a monster comic. Same with the original 1962 run of The Incredible Hulk. The Hulk was Frankenstein, it was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it was Invaders from Mars, but it wasn’t superheroes. Even when publisher Martin Goodwin asked Stan for something to compete with DC’s JLA, he and Jack (or Jack and he, I’m serious, I don’t wanna argue this, OK?) came up with a team that was anything but conventionally superheroic . If anything, the set-up and menace were built on the elements of 1950s horror and science fiction films, as if the creators were deliberately avoiding superhero tropes like costumes… and heroic stoicism!

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2. The Mole Man. Readers never felt empathy for Lex Luthor or Brainiac, but Stan and Jack/Jack and Stan realized that villains are human too and created the first sympathetic bad guy I remember encountering in comics.

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3. The Skrulls. A race of shape-shifting aliens invades Earth in FF #2! What can possibly stop them from conquering us all? Clippings from Atlas monster comic books purporting to be Earth’s most powerful warriors, that’s what! Spoiler: Back then, comics were still for kids!

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4. Moo! Surrendered Skrulls are put out to pasture.

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5. “The Greatest Comic Magazine in the World!!” FF #3 is where it all starts to come together. It’s the first appearance of the team in costume…

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6. Gadgets Galore! …and we’re treated not only to the introduction of the “air-powered Fantasticar” but to a cut-away diagram of the Baxter Building headquarters, as well…

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7. Miracle Man. …which are put into service battling… John Carradine? At least a super-hypnotist who looks like he was modeled on the old monster movie and character actor.

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8. Pathos! Superheroes were supposed to smile and be happy-go-lucky. The Fantastic Four weren’t happy, and a lot was made in these early stories about the uncertainty of the permanence of Ben Grimm’s transformation into the Thing, as in this scene from FF #4.

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9. The Sub-Mariner. We didn’t know it at the time, but the resurrection of Timely Golden Age star Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner was a momentous event, the first thread tying the heroes of yesterday with the new, still untitled “Marvel” Universe.

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10. Doctor Doom. The FF’s greatest foe, and one of the greatest villains ever created for comics, makes his debut in #5, and promptly cleans their clocks.

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11. The Fantastic Four Are Sent Back in Time and Fight Pirates. ‘Nuff said!

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12. Doctor Doom and Sub-Mariner. When one bad guy just won’t do!

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13. Doctor Doom Launches the Baxter Building into Outer Space! One small step for super-villains, one giant leap for Manhattan real estate!

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If Fantastic Four: First Steps delivers even half the excitement of these classic first six issues, it will be a win!

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MORE

— The Complete FANTASTIC FOUR WEEK INDEX of Columns and Features. Click here.

— Boy, THE HUMAN TORCH and SPIDER-MAN Have No Sense of Decorum. Click here.

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PAUL KUPPERBERG was a Silver Age fan who grew up to become a Bronze Age comic book creator, writer of Superman, the Doom Patrol, and Green Lantern, creator of Arion Lord of Atlantis, Checkmate, and Takion, and slayer of Aquababy, Archie, and Vigilante. He is the Harvey and Eisner Award nominated writer of Archie Comics’ Life with Archie, and his YA novel Kevin was nominated for a GLAAD media award and won a Scribe Award from the IAMTW. Check out his new memoir, Panel by Panel: My Comic Book Life. 

Website: https://www.paulkupperberg.net/

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