Hi anons, let try out a new type of storytime. As most probably know, the Marvel Universe proper debuted in August 1961 with the release of Fantastic Four #1... but that was of course not the only comic book Marvel was publishing at the time.
During the 1950s, Marvel, then known as "Timely" or "Atlas" (they didn't really market their books under a specific label and had a ton of different publishing labels) was publishing an absolute ton of titles, but in 1957 Martin Goodman in his infinite wisdom decided it would be a good idea to shut down his distribution company and have his books distributed by American News Distribution instead. American News Distribution went bankrupt very soon after signing their deal with Marvel, and a scrambling Goodman had to settle for having his books distributed by the DC Comics-owned Independent News instead. Independent News limited Marvel to only 8 comics a month, so Goodman ended up canceling pretty much his entire line of comics and change the few titles he had left to bimonthly books so he'd at least get 16 different titles on the shelves. This is known as the Atlas Implosion and was a pretty significant milestone in Marvel history.
In 1960, Goodman eventually managed to talk his way into getting 10 books a months, and in 1961 he had just managed to argue forth an increase to 11, which in actuality ended up being alternating months of 10 and 12 books each. August 1961 was the first of these 12-book months, and one of the new bimonthly books he added to his lineup was of course Fantastic Four.
But why don't we take a look at EVERYTHING he was publishing at the time? These 10 and 12 book months are pretty easy to split up into 5 and 6 books per thread, so this time we'll check out the remaining August 1962 books.
Previous threads August 1961, part 1 August 1961, part 2 September 1961, part 1 September 1961, part 2 October 1961, part 1 October 1961, part 2 November 1961, part 1 November 1961, part 2 December 1961, part 1 December 1961, part 2 January 1962, part 1 January 1962, part 2 February 1962, part 1 February 1962, part 2 March 1962, part 1 March 1962, part 2 April 1962, part 1 April 1962, part 2 May 1962, part 1 May 1962, part 2 June 1962, part 1 June 1962, part 2 July 1962, part 1 July 1962, part 2 August 1962, part 1
Luis Flores
The remaining 6 August 1962 books were all published August 9th, and are the same 6 titles we're used to getting the second week of even-numbered months:
I like how Stan is really building Ben as a sympathetic character here.
Johnny is a dick.
Henry Gomez
We're back to 23 pages of story with this issue, as Stan supplements the letter page with this special feature on Johnny, explaining various questions readers have asked: How does his clothes work, how can he grab things while flamed on, and how much control does he have over his flame. I don't THINK this page reveals anything the FF and Strange Tales haven't already established.
That's the main problem with writing stupidly overpowered villains, they need to use their powers in really dumb ways to make it possible for them to lose.
Here's our letter page, where the readers have the following to say: *There's still disagreement over the name Mr Fantastic *The book is so good you can't throw it away *The realism and characterization is great, and so is the humor, the costumes, the Fantasticar, the hideout and the lack of secret identities *Sue should NOT be thrown out of the team *Ben should not be able to tranform back to human. *Other companies are making Mr. Fantastic ripoff characters *The FF book isn't just for boys *There should be less "black magic" *The characters should stop called Ben "Thing" (and Stan explain the reason they do is because he thinks readers might be confused by the Ben name... though he does have Ben himself complain about this in this very issue too) *Reed should stop saying he won't let something happen.
We've already seen Stan take the westerns in a more fantastic direction, with Kid Colt battling a circus and Rawhide Kid a hypnotist. Let's see how far he's willing to take it.
