Best and Worst of the Complete Marvel Reading Order #5

Best and Worst of the Complete Marvel Reading Order #5

Best - 901: Fantastic Four Annual (1961) #6

Let me get the one problem with this story out of the way; Sue Richards doesn't appear enough in it.  Of course, she is literally in labor for most of it, so that's not that surprising.

But that really is the only problem.  Otherwise, this is Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four perfected.  The story is packed full of emotion, excitement and drama.  Annihilus makes his first appearance as the primary antagonist...

But the real drama arises because the guys of the FF have to find some kind of cure for Sue and baby, before the cosmic energy that infuses her kills them both.  It has pages like this...

And that's just a taste, Kirby outdoes himself drawing action in this, page after page of thrills.  And also, this...

51 years later, and I think that is still in the top 10 2 page splashes in the history of super-hero comics.  

Thankfully, *half century old spoiler alert*, they are successful in their quest...

I could go on and on about this one, I love it so much.  I literally choke up in places, it is so powerful for me.  If you only ever read one comic book printed between 1960 and 1970, I highly suggest it is this one.  

Worst - 900: Captain Marvel (1968) #6

Captain Marvel has only been going for 6 issues, and already it is meandering and repetitive.  There is supposed to be this tension between Mar-vell's status as a Kree agent, and his growing relationships with humanity, but really its just dull.  If Mar-vell's boss, Yon-Rogg, had been portrayed as someone actually competent, just alien and uncaring about humanity, then maybe it would have worked, but he is just portrayed as a petty tyrant, which in turn makes the Kree Empire itself seem petty.  

But the worst sin here is how poor Carol Danvers, in only her seventh appearance, is handled...

Seriously, did they just make Carol say "eeeek"?  Say what you want about retcons in general, but the transition over time of Carol Danvers from relatively meek damsel in distress to the bad-ass you see in the recent film and current comics is one of the best retcons Marvel ever did.  

As I mentioned earlier on the Avengers, Don Heck is also a big problem here.  I mean, consider this page...

Its just...goofy?  Think about how well Kirby would have drawn the same action.  Look at how the figures in the lower right are not reacting in the slightest to what should be a terrifying sight.  Big letters spelling BAWHOOM! and CRRRACKK! are not enough to make this page exciting.  

Many boring comics have been published by Marvel but its the distance between the potential it has versus the actual execution that puts this into the Worst.

Best - 926: Doctor Strange (1968) #176

Remember all that disrespect I gave Gene Colan in that last few posts?  Well, here is where I don't take it back, but give it some nuance. I think Gene Colan was good when two factors were present.  First he had to be interested in the subject matter.  He likes gloomy and gothic, he likes showing off weird panel shapes, he likes drawing characters and their expressions.  Second, he needs a good inker.

All those factors come together in this Doctor Strange story.  I mean, compare this page...

To that action art from Daredevil in my other posts.  Its hard to believe its even the same artist.  With Daredevil it was like he was absent mindedly doodling to fill page space.  Here he has put real thought and attention to detail into depicting the story.  

Or consider this page:

I had complained earlier that Colan couldn't be bothered to fill in the panels, but here that is not a problem at all.  Each panel is fully executed, a little irregularly shaped window into the world of the story.  (I wonder how much of this was actually filled in by Tom Palmer at the inking stage?)

The plot in this story is perfectly fine, the Sons of Satanish interesting and dangerous as villains, and Cleo (albeit in damsel-in-distress mode) is fun as an alien sorceress lots in NYC.  But its really Colan and Palmer on the art that elevate this story to 5 stars.

Worst - 931: Incredible Hulk (1962) #105; 932: Incredible Hulk (1962) #106; 933: Incredible Hulk (1962) #107; 934: Incredible Hulk (1962) #108  

This four story run of Incredible Hulk, all of them 1 star duds, is worth commenting on as a group, because they demonstrate the main problem with Hulk in these early stories; if you never let him stop fighting, never let him stop running, you eventually run out of interesting things to say and start spinning your wheels. 

It doesn't help that the art is awful.  Look at the figures in this panel from #107...

How is it that in a completely drawn medium those figures being thrown from the vehicle by the Hulk still look like stunt men doing very poorly planned and executed wire work in a very cheap Hong Kong film from 1981?  Its a problem throughout this section of Hulk, as neither Marie Severin nor Herb Trimpe seem to be able to get anything right in terms of believable character motion.  I mean...what the heck is going on here?

I can't tell if the Hulk is fighting the pink guy (whose name is, for reasons I simply cannot be bothered to go into, Missing Link) or if they are doing some particularly acrobatic Lindy Hop steps...

Oh, and the Mandarin shows up, so that we can make sure we get some racial stereotypes covered as well.  Why does the Mandarin show up?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  I just re-read it and I really can't figure it out. The plot of the Incredible Hulk at this point is like it was created by one of those only barely trained machine learning algorithms instead of actual human beings.