Collecting the FANTASTIC FOUR from the sixties.....

Jack Kirby's run on the Fantastic Four is legendary; he came up with some truly incredible stories and concepts for the book, but was aided by some really wonderful inkers on his run, including the two men I am naming in this article.

As I get older, I find Chic Stone's inks on the Fantastic Four to be more appealing to me. I started reading the FF through a reprint mag called Marvel's Greatest Comics, picking it up at a time when they were reprinting F.F. 69, which was inked by Joe Sinnott...

...to me, this was a great story to read, and from a period of the Fantastic Four that I would later collect as an adult. The storyline is probably the best Mad Thinker story ever, and a really intense one at that.

Whenever I would pick up a reprint or earlier issue of FF, I would often see Chic Stone's inks over Jack Kirby and find that he and Joe Sinnott had two definitely different styles of inking. In the issue below, the Fantastic Four get beaten, yes, beaten by Frightful Four in their second appearance in the book. Chic's ink work is fairly awesome....

Chic's inks was a bit more minimalist than I expected; it was good, clean, and classic, but very much different from Joe's run on the flagship Marvel title.

As I grew older, I appreciated both styles of inking, and there is a certain innocence and simplicity to Chic's work that makes it seem very sixties in its look. When Joe took over the inks, the FF got a real serious look to it, going first into the lost realm of the Inhumans and then into the cosmic odyssey of the first Galactus Trilogy......

Joe's inks gave the book a sort of grandeur unmatched at the time, with an incredible amount of detail and a powerful special effects budget that, if filmed, could only be reproduced on film by the best digital effects artists. 

The composition of the panels in the first Galactus story is incredible, and Joe really gets to push himself into some of his greatest work ever....

If you have the opportunity to read any of the classic FF from the 1960s, either in reprint or original form, I don't think you will be disappointed. There are so many good points to start at. I am gonna post a few more covers for those of you who want to look up a good era to start reading or collecting at. There are so many good places to start that I cannot list them all in one article, but here are a few favorites:

The story that started the Marvel Age of Comics......

The first Watcher story, which includes also the Red Ghost and the mysterious Blue Area of the moon. Inked by Steve Ditko, of Spider-man fame......

Not the first outing for the Thing vs. the Hulk, but one of the best, and this two part story guest-stars The Avengers.

This one issue story asks the question: what would the Thing do if he thought the Silver Surfer was trying to steal his girlfriend? 

A truly awesome story, built on a misunderstanding, that draws Spider-man and a slightly under powered Thor to the side of Daredevil who is clearly in a lot of trouble with Fantastic Four.

Postscript : For those of you who care about such things, Joe Sinnott has a Facebook page, so anyone who wants to add him and give him some love for his great work, please look him up. Joe inked the F.F. after Jack left, making many an artist look better than they actually were. 

THE STRANGE TALE OF CAPTAIN AMERICA 216 ....

The comic book pictured above, Captain America 216, 
is was not a new comic, even when it first came out. 
Oh, the cover was new, and very exciting and it sold the book to me, even though i soon discovered it was actually a reprint.  Marvel did this a lot in the 70's, whenever they did not meet the deadline for the regular book, they found a decent or obscure reprint to pop in there.

 The reprint in question is from a Silver Age Strange Tales starring The Human Torch. Since I had not read the original, I was not too disappointed with the reprinted story, even if the Captain America was not the real Cap. Turns out, it was the Torch's old nemesis, the Acrobat.

This appearance, or non-appearance of Cap pre-dates his return in the Avenger's fourth issue. Apparently Stan and Jack were selling people on the idea, before actually bringing the real one back. A pretty good idea, but somewhat confusing to people wanting to collect old Captain America books. Cap also showed up again, fighting Iron Man in Tales of Suspense, only this time it was not the Torch's whats his name nobody criminal. This time, it was The Chameleon, Spidey's old nemesis in the red, white, and blues.

All of this is good and well, as it helped reignite interest in Cap. Strangely enough, Captain America debuted in the very next issue of Tales of Suspense, and yes, its the real one, the one The Avengers fished out of the frozen waters of the north. If you are looking to buy Cap's first re-appearance start with Avengers 4. If you are looking for Cap's first new solo strip since the Golden Age, that starts in Tales of Suspense 59.

For those who read or collect comics from the Silver Age, you really won't be disappointed with Marvel's cliffhanger superhero serials Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense, or Tale to Astonish.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Strange Tales:
Doctor Strange starts out in this book, ends up sharing space with the Torch for a while, until Nick Fury starts in issue 135. Torch had a good run, and his appearance in Strange Tales could be really called Fantastic Four 2.0, as the Sue, The Thing, and Reed are frequent guest-stars.

Tales of Suspense:
Iron Man started in this book, and gets some real company when Captain America shows up in issue 59. Now the book gets really cool, as Jack Kirby does most of the artwork on the Cap series, including several issues past the title's name change with issue 100.

Tales to Astonish:
The title says it all. Ant-man starts out in this book, ends up becoming Giant-Man, and is later joined in issue 60 by The Incredible Hulk and is replaced by the Sub-mariner in issue 70. This book runs up to issue 100, changing its name in the next issue to The Incredible Hulk in issue 101.

All of these books are highly entertaining and very collectible, both in the original form, and in bound volumes offered by Marvel in their Masterworks series.

COMIC BOOK GUYS WILL GET THIS POST RIGHT AWAY.....

There is feeling a comic book guy gets when he finds a book. There is a smell to old comic books that is intoxicating. A piece of a olfactory memory in pulp paper. A once lost treasure that makes you feel like jumping up and down like a child. Its like finding a time machine that can take you back to when you were that child.   It is satisfaction without work or romance;  the sexless sex of the innocent mind, discovering a new world outside the parameters of the real world... 

Sure, pulp wood paper tended to yellow more from age, but if you found a copy of Fantastic Four 13 in your grandma's attic, would you turn your nose up and throw it way, because its not fine quality white paper with a card stock cover?

Only if you were a complete fool.....

I have been fortunate to have made a true online friend in the internet age. My friend, Richard and I both met on Yahoo and Ebay, when we were trying to make a buck on old comics, and improve our own collections. We sold stuff to each other. He is great guy to buy from sell to, but in real life, he's really just a great guy. You see, Richard and I are respectively ten years apart, with him being older, and somewhat more literate. I wax poetical on here about comics, but Richard is a real life writer of books and newspapers; he paints with words. Now, long after Yahoo Auctions turned to dirt, and Ebay saunters toward its declining years, Richard and I are still in constant contact. Our love for comics is one of the ties that binds us together. 

Together, we are living fans representing the Silver and Bronze Age of comics. He is probably the best friend I have right now, even though, we have never actually met in person.

The morale of this story? Comic Books bring people together.