Storytime of Greatness: Fantastic Four #51

In honor of the king, who would've been 99 today, lets read This Man This Monster, one of the greatest marvel comics ever done.

Other urls found in this thread:

zak-site.com/Great-American-Novel/index.html
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

...

...

>This Man.. This Monster!
Fuck yeah. This issue through the next like dozen or so issues are among my favorites of Marvel ongoing.

I totally approve. Good work user

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

Clobbering time bump

...

...

I really miss them.

...

...

...

Do you have the omnis OP? There'ye ever so worth it.

...

Not yet. The prices are too much in Argentina. But i'll get them some day.

From zak-site.com/Great-American-Novel/index.html
>While the Galactus trilogy is the usual reference when people talk of powerful comics, "this Man This Monster" is the one people refer to when asked for a personal favorite. This is the one that most often tops the polls It is both a tiny, personal story, and the whole cosmic narrative in a nutshell.
>FF51 is often considered to be a small scale story, after the gigantic cosmic Galactus story. The thinking is, "how can we do a bigger story than Galactus? We can't. So we'll do a small personal story instead."

>Great literature: in praise of Stan Lee
>I credit Jack Kirby for the plots, but sometimes Stan's dialog is just perfect, and better than anything Jack wrote. (Other times I feel that Stan detracted from Jack's superior ideas, but on balance I think he added more than he took). This is exhibit "A", thought he previous issue comes close. People who say Stan Lee cannot write natural language need to read the first few pages. Anyone who has been depressed will recognize the language style: cold and matter-of-fact. The unnamed scientists tries to sound important (in keeping with his self image), but Ben's dialog with him, and later with Reed, is just beautiful. My favorite line? "You sure come on strong, mister." It's the perfect line. There are nine frames on that page, but you can hear the pauses, and the tone, better than if they were spelled out over ten pages.
>Great literature: Ben's tragedy
>The worst part of being Ben is his lack of control. he grew uop as a self made man, a man who came from the streets to succeed in every area, and since meeting Reed he lost control of his life, uisually to Reed. Even here it is Reed who (inadvertently) causes him to lose being the Thing again. As son as ben is normal all he wants is to propose to Alicia, and the very moment when he knocks on the door he changes back. This is at first a comedic moment, but is really a tragedy of the most heartbreaking kind, an absolute triumph of writing.

>Real science: why mesons?
>Reed is building a portal to subspace, so he asks Ben (actually the impostor) to move a meson particle smasher. This is some real world science.
>Mesons are the key to detecting time dilation.
>So if Reed Richards is studying faster than light travel, his first step is to understand particles that approach the speed of light and experience time slowing and space compressing. Hence Reed needs to study mesons!

>Other points to note:
>Contrasts:
>We see Reed both at his best and his worst. At his best, the greatest hero of all. And at his worst, an obsessive who keeps secrets from his wife (treating her like a naughty infant), and is angry when she finds out. And he doesn't even recognize his best friend.
>Great American Novel:
>This is a story of the American Dream: it's about how Reed got that way through hard work and sacrifice.
>A single story:
>Ben's depression follows naturally from the previous issue. This is all a single story.
>Stan Lee as the scientist?>The always superb Wait, What podcast makes many interesting observations (seriously, you have to listen to it), including, that the unnamed scientist works as a reference to Stan Lee. Kirby is like Reed (as I argue elsewhere), and Lee feels he is better, but comes to respect him. However, by this time Kirby was more like Ben: frustrated and could never get a break.
>Another mirror:
>The fake Ben is a mirror of Reed: though he chose Ben's form his goal was the same as Reeds, to be number one, to be Mister Fantastic. Note the superb cover, where the fake Ben must decide his true self, and then turn the page to the splash page, where the real Ben must decide his true self.
>Intuition:
>Sue intuition is as important as Reed's heightened intelligence, but is usually ignored.
>Confidence:
>When Ben is in conflict with Reed the original strength and confidence come back. He is only depressed and child-like when held back by Reed.

>Intelligence:
>"Reed Richards, Buy genius! Haw! Watta laugh!" Sums up Reed: Although he is world renowned as the greatest genius ever in certain areas, he is often wrong in other areas. it is true that all of Reed's greatest discoveries come from alien technology, and here we see that the other scientist can do what Reed cannot: he can cure Ben. The Thinker (as Santini) could do the same. but in this issue we learn that Reed, despite being overblown, sexist, socially weak and harmlful to his friends, nevertheless is a pure hearted hero of the greatest kind: he genuinely and sincerely cares and would do anything for others. Reed is a truly three dimensional character.
>Collage:
>There us a story that "initially Jack wanted the Negative Zone to be done in all-collage. Stan probably overruled this, and necessity being the mother of invention, Kirby/Sinnott turned in stunning work depicting this parallel universe full of crackle and smolder." (source)
>The radical cube:
>"Rog Phillips in The Cube Root of Conquest (1948) proposes that we co- exist along with other universes in space, but are separated in time. These universes are separated from one another along a 3-dimensional time continuum which are in the 'imaginary' direction from normal 3-dimensional space. Travel to these parallel worlds requires solving a cubic equation, whose roots give the proper time-like shift to enter these worlds." And in 1940 Robert Heinlein's short story '...and He Built a Crooked House' followed the misadventures of a California architect who built his house to resemble the projection in 3-dimensional space of a 4-dimensional hypercube; a shape identified in the story as a 'tesseract'. (source) Kirby often followed pop culture and science fiction, so was perhaps aware of this. Note his idea for the Cosmic Cube, that in later years was referred to as "the tesseract".

Hope you enjoyed it. Three more pages of ads and we're done.

...

...

Some nice Homages

...

...

>There was an attempt

Oh, I drew this with Liefeld style for college.

I agree.

...

Page 8?!!?!?!?!
That tears it!!!

Aw-- blast it. Let's continue the collage crazyness.

Ad-less aventure.

...

...

...

...

...

I fucking love this one. It might be my favorite of the annuals aside from the Wedding.

...

The Wedding wasn't that great for me. I mean it had great scenes and art but the overall story is really pointless and the fights are kind of dull (robots if i remember correctly).

...

...

...

...

No, it's not robots, it's every character ever fighting because of Dr Dooms psycho ray.

...

Crys and Johnny are my OTP.

Oh, yeah. I mixed it up with issue 100, maybe? Still, it was all a show for the fans. Entretaining, but compared to epic sagas like this one it falls a bit short.

...

...

...

...

Well, I gotta giant box of old comics when I was about 10- a reprint of it was my introduction to Marvel, really.
I was like, "who are all these guys? I must know!"

...

...

...

...

I cant think of a modern artist who has the balls to do 100 issues of a regular series AND the annuals without other artist's help. Erik Larsen doesn't count because he still can't publish the comic in time. If you get 12 issues by the same artist in modern Marvel it's a rarity.

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

Yep

...

...

>This is the big one. The 28 year story is built on Reed not putting his family first, and that central dilemma, is embodied by Franklin. Franklin also represent the next generation: the potential of mankind, and so much more.

>The classic
>Karl Disley writes about FF annual 6:
>"Everything about this book is glorious...the thrilling ride into the Negative Zone, the debuts of both Franklin and Annihilus...back in the early 80s, a pregnant friend of mine was reading this self-same issue while she was in labor -62 hours! Don't worry, she had plenty of time for it to arrive - and listened to Nat King Cole's 'Let There Be Love' on her record player while waiting for her daughter to appear. Every time I read this comic and see that banner headline 'Let There Be..Life!' it always , always reminds me of Nat King Cole's song which she [and the rest of us waiting] were hearing."

>"The dimension spanning puzzle"
>FF140 begins to unravel the secret of Franklin's powers: a "dimension spanning puzzle" that Annihilus begins to understand.
>The cosmic control rod has vast power, gives immortality, and is controlled by thought. Franklin combines this with Reed's physical and mental stretching and Sue's control of energy fields (if 400 is canon then Sue's power has Celestial implications). Together these allow him to dominate galaxies. Galaxies? Really? Do readers have any concept of how big galaxies are? FF Annual 23 explains how scale is all relative and not necessarily the barrier we think it is. The key is knowing how to control external energy, not in having that energy inside your body. Reed's power is all about manipulating and Sue's is all about hiding, revealing and controlling energy fields..

>Franklin's power
>Franklin gains his power from his parents plus the cosmic control rod. Franklin regulates cosmic power, thus acting as a gateway to alternate realities. For more about his powers, click here.
>From this point on (1968), time for the characters begins to stretch and do weird things. It gradually becomes clear that Franklin is behind it all. Eventually the entire Marvel Universe will merge with Franklin's private universe and leave reality entirely. And thus the drugs motif comes full circle.

>The historical zeitgeist
>This reflects the American zeitgeist. This is 1968, the year of student rebellions. before the 1960s culture was more focused on the older generation. Now it's youth culture and everything has to be young. The child is is taking control.
>The 1968 cultural zeitgeist
>The movie Yellow Submarine was released in June 1968, around the same time that this annual was finishing being prepared, so Kirby would have been aware of the the general themes from pre-release publicity.
>"After a leap through the distortion area and a double-page Kirby photo collage, the men encounter wave after wave of obstacles. Their tour is akin to the animated movie Beatles Yellow Submarine, a fantasy fraught with villainous Blue Meanies, Apple Bonkers, Butterfly Stompers, Flying Glove and Countdown Clown. Annihilus, the last great villain of the FF Sixties, employs a green bat scavenger, giant boot, gyro-saw, sonic sponge, flying gun ship, negato-gun and the Borers – green-scaled diggers with C-clamp choppers 'who only live to track… and tear…' They are all a part of what the splash page promises: a 'movie-length epic' of 'way-out wonderment'." (Robert Papetti, "Fantastic Four In The Silver Age Sixties: A Tribute")

>The Great American Novel
>The storytelling here is superb:
>"By 1968 the team of Lee/Kirby/Sinnott had reached its zenith, moving from one epic to another in the regular monthly Fantastic Four book – it was certainly deserving of its hype as The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine. And then along came the Annual for that year. I’ve read this story 3-4 times; the first time was only 5 years ago or so. But each time I re-read it, the scope of it, the grandeur, the characterization – this was truly a piece of literature that stretched the bounds of comic book fare of its day. The creators really outdid themselves with this issue – in my mind, it’s a story like 'Let There Be… Life!' that really separated The House of Ideas from the Distinguished Competition. The opening scene is just classic Lee/Kirby angst. I am amazed, particularly in reading the FF, how well Stan and Jack worked together. To think that around this time they were not on the best of terms, separated by many miles, and could turn out a scene like the opening 2 ½ pages. Blows my mind how well the pictures and >words mesh." - Doug in "Two Girls, A Guy, and Some Comics"

>Of particular note is Annihilus, and the beautiful ending.
>"Franklin’s birth represents the first time (to my knowledge, anyway) that a mainstream comic book couple went through a pregnancy and had a child in anything even remotely resembled 'real time.' Oh, sure, there was Aquaman and Mera, but Aquababy was conceived and born in the space of a single issue! Another example of Marvel’s realistic handling of its characters, which was ground-breaking in the ‘60s." - Sharon, "Two Guys..."

>Reed's technology:
>Why the negative zone?
>Franklin was conceived in FF64-65, just after Reed was trapped in the Negative zone (FF 61-63). That issue draws attention to FF56, where Reed studied one of the life forms that can survive extreme conditions: it lives in the area where matter and antimatter collide and release vast amounts of energy. After that Reed developed an energy dampening device that came in useful for Blastaar. Now he needs a more sophisticated energy dampening device, so he needs to go back to the Negative Zone to find something like the creature, but more advanced. When he sees the cosmic control rod, he knows that will do the job.

>Other points to note:
>What is the exact danger?
>Why is the radiation dangerous? Radiation in the blood is nearly always dangerous. This is just realism.
>The Scavenger
>Why does the scavenger instantly find Reed? Isn't it a bit unlikely that Annihilus would instantly find Reed, a man he does not know, even before Reed had fully left the distortion zone? FF183 reveals that this was built from the Thinker's android that Reed tossed into the negative zone: it was designed to home in on Reed.