#Atlanteans count as a new alien species right? New alien species count: 1->2

[hautsreadsmarvel]

“The Fantastic Four” (1961, issue 4)

At the end of the previous volume, the Torch ran off because he was fed up with the Thing shitting on him. 

Spelling it thru is certainly a choice, and one I’ve decided to stick with for the remainder of this blog. Flashback panels having a wavy border to distinguish them is a nice touch. And is that… a primordial ad for the Hulk? I wonder what that could be?

There it is on the next page! What could they be talking about!?

Trans pride flag!Sue Storm forgets to relax her invisibility while searching for Johnny, causing another ghost scare. Starting to enjoy how this is just a consistent thing she does. The best pranksters succeed without even trying, truly.

So everybody knows this guy is the Torch, by the way. And he flames on in front of people he knows, so he knows they know. "Save this for future reference."

The Hulk - I mean the Thing - can have a little angst, as a treat. This one feels a little forced though.

I’m given to understand that Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner predates the Marvel Comics label, having been published in the 40s back when they were called Timely Comics. It’s funny to see Johnny read one of their own comics approximately twenty feet away from a guy who is totally not Namor, no way, jeez what even was on the cover of this issue ha ha

Wow, would you lookit that, that’d be Namor right on cue! Wait. Wait a gods-damned second. He can’t be.

He can’t be! But he is--! Are… are D&D elves aesthetically inspired by Namor? Or is that just a shared old-style idea of “inhuman beauty”, the high pronounced eyebrows and sharp, lengthy cheekbones? Or is it just that picture of Mialee in the Player’s Handbook that incidentally looks similar? Probably a mix of options 2 and 3. Namor turns out to be tough as nails, and elves in the earlier editions of D&D, well they certainly ain’t.

Meanwhile I really like this. Tons of people who still have no idea about capes, and so think they’re a hoax or fiction that’s been put in the wrong section of the library.

Sue does not know her own brother’s voice - you heard it here first. Johnny demonstrates for the first time his ability to reflexively “flame off” parts of his body that come into contact with others; we already saw him do a partial transformation when doing welding.

Namor meanwhile realizes that his undersea kingdom was demolished by an atomic weapons test (!!!!!!!) and he decides to defeat the surface world in retaliation. Also he’s kinda hunky : )

He unleashes “Giganto”, a mega-sized mix of whale and primate, to terrorize New York and it wrecks thru buildings once it makes landfall. Kind of surprised to see so much mass demolition this early into the comics. Anyways the Thing just requisitions a nuke (something the F4 can do, I guess), plunges into the beast, sets it off inside and makes it out safe. Namor beats all of them physically, but is obviously vanquished at the end. There is a notable moment in that fight, though, where when Namor spots Sue for the first time, he declaims that should she marry him, his feud w the surface world would be over. Gross!

This isn’t a bad issue. Namor’s fun cameo and promise to return set up a wider world, and he’s less one-dimensional than any of the villains so far. The Thing and Torch continue to provide the only real character of the quartet, though. The other two need to step up at some point.