Review of
Fantastic Four (1961) #1
Published:
November 1961
Avg User Rating:
(3.67)
Fantastic Four Volume 1, Issue 1, is perhaps a work that might deserve a high rating simply by nature of its importance to the comic landscape, being the start of the world of Merry Marvel as we now know it. Whilst I'm not the kind of person to give something importance simply by nature of its own existence, this early issue is still some truly solid comic book work.
I will admit that I've never been someone who has been keen on Stan Lee as a writer, and he's definitely the weaker aspect of this early story. To no one's surprise who knows how the guy was in real life, he is very much a showman, and that causes a lot of the dialogue, and especially narration to feel a bit awkward and unwieldy.
However, luckily for us, this work is also from Jack Kirby, and even in this early issue, we can see a lot of Kirby's tendencies, especially his love of giant monsters, start to play through. In fact, in many ways, this feels like a natural evolution of the monsters comics Marvel was publishing in the years prior to (To the point that some of the panels make it feel as if the Fantastic Four are being crowded out of their own comic by the monsters, which does a great job of expressing the size of such creatures.)
There's a very human touch to the work, with the lack of costumes and the more scientific bent of the origins playing well to grounding the characters in our real world (especially compared to the more mythic figures over at DC). There's also a more horrific bent to the characters, with their original discovery of their powers feeling more akin to body horror than a grand superhero origin.
I will admit that I've never been someone who has been keen on Stan Lee as a writer, and he's definitely the weaker aspect of this early story. To no one's surprise who knows how the guy was in real life, he is very much a showman, and that causes a lot of the dialogue, and especially narration to feel a bit awkward and unwieldy.
However, luckily for us, this work is also from Jack Kirby, and even in this early issue, we can see a lot of Kirby's tendencies, especially his love of giant monsters, start to play through. In fact, in many ways, this feels like a natural evolution of the monsters comics Marvel was publishing in the years prior to (To the point that some of the panels make it feel as if the Fantastic Four are being crowded out of their own comic by the monsters, which does a great job of expressing the size of such creatures.)
There's a very human touch to the work, with the lack of costumes and the more scientific bent of the origins playing well to grounding the characters in our real world (especially compared to the more mythic figures over at DC). There's also a more horrific bent to the characters, with their original discovery of their powers feeling more akin to body horror than a grand superhero origin.
