Marvel Masterworks: The Fantastic Four, Vol. 10

Marvel Masterworks: The Fantastic Four #10

by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby (Illustrator), John Romita Sr. (Illustrator)

Certifiably the Worlds Greatest Comic Collaboration, the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Fantastic Four run stands as one of the high-water marks in the history of the medium. The ten titanic years on the title laid the very foundation of the Marvel Universe, and birthed more amazing concepts and creative characters than perhaps any series before or since. In this tenth Masterworks volume, we celebrate the entire Lee/Kirby run with essays by critics, creators and luminaries in the field of comics.
But it just aint waxing nostalgic, True Believer! This is a Marvel comic, after all! Expect plenty of explosive action and family drama a-go-go as the FF build up to their 100th issue featuring everyone from Doc Doom to Dragon Man! Theyll also help mankind take one giant leap when the Krees robot Sentry tries to stop the Apollo 11 moon landing! Just for good measure, well throw in the uncanny Inhumans and Attilan, and the whole shebang comes to a head when the mutant menace, Magneto, teams up with Namor in a bid to conquer the worldNixon is not pleased!
Collecting FANTASTIC FOUR #94-104.

Genres: Comics, Superheroes, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Comic Book, Science Fiction, Classics

255 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber) was an American writer, editor, creator of comic book superheroes, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics.

With several artist co-creators, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor as a superhero, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, the Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scarlet Witch, The Inhumans, and many other characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. He subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.

Reviews

[Drew Canole · Rating 4 out of 5]

The final volume of Kirby on Fantastic Four!

Collecting FANTASTIC FOUR #94-104.

I'm just recapping the Kirby issues, which are 94-102, and 108 which Marvel (in a shitty move) published the month Kirby was launching his Fourth World series at DC.

Fantastic Four #94
The Frightful Four are back! Kirby and Stan really tried to make these guys one of the main bad-guys of the series, but I think they take a huge back seat to Galactus and Doctor Doom.

FF take the baby (Franklin Benjamin Richards!) upstate to a creepy house for a "child-rearing specialist" to look after the baby. They get attacked by the Frightful Four including Medusa. The specialist, Miss Harkness takes care of the kid and appears to be more powerful than she lets on.
Fantastic Four #95
A mysterious man with a monocle in NYC may be trying to start WWIII. Crystal wants to go back to the Inhumans and leaves Johnny. He's pretty pissed and at first refuses to help the FF with this Monocle guy, but ends up helping in the end.
Fantastic Four #96
The Mad Thinker is back.
Fantastic Four #97
This one is cool. I could see a young Mike Mignola checking out this issue as inspiration for Abe Sapien. Inked by Frank Giacoia, it has a rougher more minimalist style than other issues.

Fantastic Four #98
FF prevent disaster as the US moon landing commences. It's cool to see FF interact with real world events. Although also odd that they keep all this technology to themselves! Warren Ellis explores the ethics of this in his book Planetary.
Fantastic Four #99
Johnny breaks into the Inhumans city to "rescue" Crystal but she tells him to leave. The FF come in to help. In the end Crystal finally explains why she's staying there - to help Black Bolt with her micro-shock waves to keep his heart beating. So many superhero beat-ups could be prevented with a calm phone call!
Fantastic Four #100
The 100th anniversary issue! And an excuse to bring out all the bad-guys for an epic (still just 20 pages!) showdown.
Fantastic Four #101
Back in the Baxter Building. I actually love all the little slice-of-life scenes Kirby and Lee give us. It really helps humanize these characters. The Maggia attack the FF and go to drown them in the river, but Crystal breaks out and helps rescue the rest. Meanwhile Sue, still invisible, beats them up and there's a bit of a masked-man reveal at the end as the Door Man is revealed to be the Maggia leader Top Man.
Fantastic Four #102
Starring Sub-Mariner and Magneto. Ends on a cliff-hanger! The final Kirby issue.
Fantastic Four #108
This was a Kirby issue that Lee shelved deeming it impossible to dialogue. They hodge-podge it together with Buscema and Romita editing the panels. Published just to have another Kirby issue on the stands when Kirby published his Fourth World comics at DC.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jack Kirby's run on The Fantastic Four ended on a bit of a whimper. In 1970, Marvel responded to fans that had requested one-off stories instead of epics and gave them what they wanted. Even the hundredth issue is regular size and, while promising a bevy of supervillains, they are merely creations of the Puppet Master, continuing his collaboration with the Mad Thinker from the multi-parter in Captain Marvel #12, The Avengers #63, The Sub-Mariner #14, Captain Marvel #14, and The Avengers #64. That's not to say that there isn't good material in this volume. The introduction of Agatha Harkness is quite good, and like some issues of The Silver Surfer are prefigurative of the Marvel horror comics of the 1970, and any confusion one might have about Medusa reuniting with the Frightful Four is quickly resolved. Much too quickly resolved is Crystal's sudden departure from the group outraging Johnny only to result in a one-off story that shows that she was simply needed to keep her cousin, Black Bolt, alive until he could get a more permanent treatment for a previously undisclosed medical condition. While a reasonable choice on Crystal's part, it seems very anticlimactic, and I did have a better sense of Crystal's powers after reading his volume. She has two entries in the Marvel Universe Master Edition, but the second one just updates her costume, and the text is nearly identical to the incomplete entry of the earlier one. Still, there are effective moments, such as an alien who simply wants to get home creating trouble for the team with his efforts, and Ben being unenthused about the newly named Franklin Richards until learning that his middle name is Benjamin. I don't think Lee was terribly inspired by the single-issue format, since this volume ends with a three-parter (with John Romita emulating the Kirby style and managing to slightly elongate Namor's head a bit closer to the Golden Age style) in which Magneto, in his first conflict with the FF, convinces Namor to help him conquer New York City. The X-Men are nowhere to be found, although John Byrne would incorporate them into this story in X-Men: The Hidden Years vol. 2 , although Agatha Harkness's reference to how much she knows (197) I suspect may be about Franklin being a mutant. Perhaps by this point, they were seen as "box office poison," as their series had been canceled six months earlier, but Lee had a penchant for bringing back villains and having them tackle heroes with which they previously had not interacted. Topical references abound, including the unending conflict in the Middle East (Lee and Kirby, despite both being Jewish, wisely don't take a a side and just try to keep order in the United Nations), they save Neil Armstrong from a Kree weapon (ignoring the fact that they and the Red Ghost have been on the moon before him), and Tricia Nixon (though not shown) convinces her father that Reed Richards is worth trusting.

The end of the book is full of commentaries about the end of an era, Jack Kirby leaving the series after it's 102nd issue. Oddly, there is a reproduction of an earlier-submitted story published in a severely altered form in issue #108 that one wonders why they chose to print it here rather than the next volume for comparison. Maybe they do print it there for comparison and this was there for Kirby collectors who wouldn't want to buy the next volume. Finally, there is a useful two-page guide to characters an appearances through Kirby's entire run research by Sean Kleefeld. Lee's introduction is full of enthusiasm for the series having reached its hundredth issue, but disappointed by Kirby's departure from the series.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume represents the end of the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run on Fantastic Four, and it doesn't really make you pine for more from the classic duo.

What's here is decent enough, but it's never really inspired. The story that comes closest to the classic magic sees Namor and Magneto reluctantly teaming up to take over the Earth--and this arc is actually illustrated by John Romita Sr.!

Otherwise, we have the Human Torch tearing into Attilan like a jealous boyfriend, a half-baked "swamp creature" issue, and the Fantastic Four taking on the mob. The art is solid, the storytelling is capable, but I doubt many fans read these issues twice.

[Molly Lazer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh...it makes me so angry that the overall awesome Lee/Kirby run on FANTASTIC FOUR ended this way. With the exception of the issue with the monster in the lagoon, which was a lot of fun and had some interesting food for thought with its ultimately-not-a-villain, the stories in this volume are middling-to-bad, with issue #99 being easily the worst in the entire run. Johnny, being extremely pig-headed with his refusal to actually take a breath and listen to his girlfriend, serves as the villain for this issue. It served as a useful way of showing my five-year-olds, who read it with me, what happens when someone is just throwing a tantrum and not "being a good listener," but really, Johnny's sense of possession over Crystal in that issue is extremely disturbing.

Once again, the women in the book are left behind or relegated to being hostages. Reed is constantly ordering Sue and even Crystal to stay behind. Why? Because they need to take care of the baby? Because he doesn't want them to get hurt? Please. It's insulting. It takes quite a long time for Sue to be acknowledged to be as awesome and powerful as she is in the current books, but Lee and Kirby seemed to be on the way to doing this up to the point at which Sue got pregnant. Things went sharply downhill for her after that. Unfortunately, I have to agree with the letter writer in issue #11 who suggested that Sue is mainly window dressing during the Lee/Kirby run. Sure, we love her, but I just wish she had a LOT more to do.

* The "lost issue" is included in the copy of this Masterworks that I own. (Full Disclosure: I worked on this issue during my time at Marvel. It was an absolute honor to be able to work with Lee, Sinnott, Sotomayor, Artmonkeys, and Frenz to finish up the Lee/Kirby Run.) It's a nice diversion that ultimately doesn't make much sense and would have been better served as perhaps a two-issue story.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the Jack Kirby run on Fantastic Four comes to an end, there are plenty of good stories. It's not exceptional compared to the rest of the series, but they're still good overall. My favourite issues include #94 (the naming of Franklin, the introduction of Agatha Harkness and Ebony, and the return of the Frightful Four) and #100 (the Fantastic Four versus a 'greatest hits' of their villains). Jack Kirby's art continues to impress, and Lee has a lot of fun with writing the family dynamics whenever the cast argue about the baby. You get the sense when reading that most of this has been done before throughout the run, but then something new like the moon landing or the bizarre 1920s gangster era Skrull gladiator planet would come along and it would renew the fun all over again. Not every story in here is a winner, and it's long past the point of Fantastic Four being the great Silver Age title people celebrate it as, but as Marvel enters the 70s it's still a good read.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

End of an era.
Weird read, as you can feel Stan and Jack kind of running out of steam, but there is no sense Kirby is slacking, the art is still powerful and gorgeous.
This volume is full of cool ideas, but it also feels rushed. Lots of single issue stories with abrupt endings, where most of these feel like they should have been two parters.

Also a great mix of big stories and little ones, big action set pieces mixed with nice, small personal moments, the FF acting like a family.

Sad to be at the end, would have loved another hundred issues from Lee and Kirby, but glad they went out with a solid read like this.

[Alex Andrasik · Rating 2 out of 5]

The series is really flagging toward the end of Kirby's run. The half-assed moon landing issue, the Maggia takeover issue, the "lifelike automaton" imbroglio, the swamp creature, the Human Torch's weird rampage over Attilan...not great, not great. All that said, the three-part "Magneto and Namor against the world" story that closes this collection, and transitions from Kirby to Romita, is actually pretty strong. Ridiculous, but strong. I dunno, it's comics. I can just appreciate the fact that the villain and the antihero teamed up in a way that sprang from decent-level manipulation and the believable missteps of the heroes.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this volume Kirby is spending less time drawing giant, crazy machines and is focused more on detailed characters. It's less weird and feels a bit more personal. I don't know whether it's an improvement; it's just different.

Here we have another almost-war with the Sub-Mariner, another fight with the Puppet Master, and Magneto. Most interesting is Stan Lee trying to tap into the excitement of the historic moon landing and anything featuring Agatha Harkness. She is definitely out of place in this book. Better suited for a creepy title like Doctor Strange or Tomb of Dracula.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The real question is why hasn't any FF movie been about Ben being kidnapped by Skrulls and forced to fight in a galactic gladiator ring on a planet morphed to look like 1930's gangster New York City?

[Roger L. Boyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are the first Lee/Kirby stories I have read and overall I enjoyed these fun adventures. Having only read 2 issues of Fantastic Four post-Lee/Kirby I found the whole team and book itself quite enjoyable. Ben Grim was a standout with his bits of humour thrown in.

[Jdetrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

The end of the Lee/Kirby era, and you can tell that they were running out of steam. Plus, once Kirby leaves, you realize how much he brought to the title, as the last few issues in this collection are pretty painful.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gems include the debuts of Agatha Harkness & Ebony & the Monster from the Lost Lagoon, the return of Mad Thinker & the Kree, Johnny v. the Inhumans, the FF v. all the villains, the FF v. the Maggia, & Namor allying w/ Magneto

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

And the Kirby years come to an end.

[John Noll · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stans writing runs a little thin in this volume.

[Terry Sprouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

While “FFMM #10“ is not Stan and Jack at the top of their games, it’s still Stan and Jack, and that makes it worth reading.

Two of the stories that stand out to me are:

1) “The Return of the Frightful Four” (#94) with the dandy introduction of “child rearing specialist” and powerful witch, Agatha Harkness, is filled with action, humor, and high drama. Harkness proves herself more than a match for the evil forces that would threaten baby Franklin Richards.

2) “Bedlam in the Baxter Building” (#101) also gets high marks as an off-beat and entertaining story of the FF vs. the mob.

The artwork in all the stories that Kirby drew is high caliber (he didn’t draw the last two stories), but in some of the stories you can tell that Stan is not completely engaged. For example, in FF #99. Reed drives his flying saucer (with Ben and Sue) to rescue Johnny from the Inhumans. Bafflingly, at the beginning of FF# 100, Stan mistakenly writes that the FF were in a flying craft borrowed from Black Bolt.

Come on Stan, you used to edit every comic in the entire Marvel Universe with the expertise of the Puppet Master!

Nevertheless, the important thing is we get to see Stan and Jack together for the (almost) last time. Even Stan and Jack past their glory days is better than almost any other comic in its prime.

In order to savor these last few opus’ by Stan and Jack, I restricted myself to read only one story each week. That way, I could relish each story, and feel the exhilaration that I felt as a youngster, when I absolutely could not wait for the next issue to come out.

Adding sizzle to this FF compilation is the outstanding bonus material in the Appendix. We get first hand insight into the making of the FF through the eyes of:

1) Dick Ayers (inker of FF issues 6-20), who provides insight into the early workings of Marvel and prints a congratulatory letter he received from Stan;

2) Joe Sinnott (inker for FF issues 5, and 44-103), who discusses his collaboration with Jack and identifies his favorite Kirby FF drawings;

3) Roy Thomas (Stan’s successor as editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics), who reprints a review of FF#1 he wrote for his comic fanzine Alter Ego in 1961;

4) Mark Evanier (author of “Kirby: King of Comics”), relates two anecdotes about his old friend Jack Kirby, and;

5) Greg Theakston (comic historian), who puts a historical perspective on the rise and the fall of the “World’s Greatest Comic Book.”

These Appendix contributions were all enlightening and scintillating.

Make Mine Marvel!

Excelsior!

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume opens up with the naming of the baby: Franklin Benjamin Richards. Welcome to the family. But we’re also seeing the effect of Jack Kirby’s growing disappointment with working with Stan Lee, who was taking so much more of the credit than he deserved. To begin we meet Agatha Harkness for the first time and the Frightful Four make a surprising reappearance. And the first 8-issues of this volume, Kirby delivers some fast paced one-and-done stories. While these are fun, what’s missing now is the endless creativity of new characters and new concepts. Had Kirby run out of ideas? Hardly. Clearly, the working relationship between Stan and Jack was strained and perhaps (pure speculation on my part here) Jack was tired of creating character after and character only to have Stan take all, or at least most, of the credit for them. So Kirby delivered entertaining stories, but he was holding his boundless creativity at bay. Nonetheless, Kirby was still bringing in new characters: the witch Agatha Harkness, the terrorist and spy known as the Monocle and the “monster” from Lost Lagoon grace these issues, as well as the returning faces of the Mad Thinker, the Frightful Four, the Inhumans, the Puppet Master, a Kree Sentry and even a tribute to the Apollo 11 landing on the moon from the previous year. What was the final straw that drove a wedge between Stan and Jack? There are lots of answers. But in the end, the glory days were gone. This volume concludes with a three-part epic featuring the FF against Namor and Magneto, but Jack only contributed to the first issue, (John Romita Sr. provided the art for the last 2 portions of the story). It’s a bit of a melancholic ending, a bit of a disappointing conclusion to one of the single greatest runs by two of the giants of the industry. No big bang of an ending, just a sigh and a bit of whimper.

[Ed · Rating 2 out of 5]

In short, Kirby checks out and then walks out. Issue 94 is a hit, with Kirby introducing Agatha Harkness, a witch baby sitter who defeats the Frightful Four. It's fun, funny and one of the weirdest issues in the Lee/Kirby run. But after that, Kirby totally checks out. The run from 95 through 102 is filled with half-assed art and quarter-assed plotting. Issue 99 has some decent art, but the plot is baffling with the Human Torch basically acting like a villain. Issue 100 has a great cover, but manages to mix up the powers of the Puppet Master and the Mad Thinker. Issues 103 & 104 have art by John Romita and wrap up the plot line Kirby started in 102. They are very bad and very confusing.

[Troy-David Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a transition from the Kirby/ Lee run to Post-Kirby era.
We get some very good one-off stories involving the Frightful Four, the Mad Thinker, The Monster from the Lost Lagoon, the Inhumans, and the big 100th Issues, with an appearance of almost every major FF character at the time. The changing of the guard sees Jack Kirby’s art succeeded by John Romita’s work. I do not like when a change occurs mid-story (as it does here) but Romita’s art is above reproach so it works.
Good use of Magneto and Sub-Mariner. A time-stamp occurs in the appearance of President Nixon.
This is a very good volume; not as Epic as previous collections, but it is rock solid.

[Edward Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Frightful Four return and the Richards hire a nanny for baby Franklin. The gang travel to the moon, Torch falls in love, and all hell breaks loose! And when they get home, things turn from bad to worse! Plus there's a battle with at least as the FF turn 100 issues old. A must read filled with fun and frolics galore.

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Marvel Masterworks volumes are fantastic reprints of the early years of Marvel comics. A fantastic resource to allow these hard to find issues to be read by everyone. Very recommended to everyone and Highly recommended to any comic fan.