FANTASTIC FOUR #29: Sixties Silliness, Soap Opera, Sexism, Seuss, and Yet Another Way to Circumvent the Prime Directive

Published: August, 1964

It starts on Yancy Street, but ends on the moon! In between, we get a little bit of everything we’ve learned to expect from the Fantastic Four.

SOAP OPERA AND COMEDY
We’re 29 issues in, and all familiar with the format: before morphing into an adventure story, we always start with an “at home” segment that involves a good dose of comedy and soap opera. On Yancy Street, the FF are pelted with rotten vegetables. As Reed twists to avoid a particularly loathsome head of cabbage, Torch muses, “If Spider-Man ever learns about this, I’ll never hear the end of it!”

Fleeing the scene, the FF shake off their embarrassment by deciding one of their super-villain enemies must have orchestrated this Yancy Street attack. How amusing that their egos think up such a good excuse! Of course, they happen to be right, but at the moment the possibility is introduced, they don’t know that, and neither do we. Johnny even goes so far as to wonder if the Avengers put them up to it… “for kicks.” At this point, they’re really grasping at straws.

But before we can get to the bottom of the Yancy Street melee, Thing makes a big announcement: he’s planning to break up with Alicia. “It ain’t fair for a slob like ME to waste that doll’s time!” Immediately, Alicia walks in and announces that she is not good enough for Ben. “I can’t let you waste your life with me…just out of…pity!!”

Well, you can guess how all this turns out. They both realize they’re being foolish, and within one panel go from “Let’s break up” to “Let’s stay together forever!”

Sue is touched by their “sweet talk” and mentions that she wishes “a certain scientific genius would learn a little.” Reed’s immediate response: “Hmm! I think it’s time we turned to OTHER matters now!” So, it seems our Mr. Fantastic is not so fantastic at subtly changing the topic from love to….anything else. My! He does have a lot to learn!

ACTUAL VILLAINS
This comedy and soap opera is the best part, but I also like the way the “real” story is eventually introduced. Back on Yancy Street, the four run into a gorilla…then a baboon. Hmmm….is that deja vu I’m feeling? Could it be we’re working our way up to an encore performance by….the Red Ghost?

Yes! We are! And there he is, on the bottom of page nine, calling his apes “My pretties!” and looking vaguely reminiscent of LOTR’s Gollum. Nine pages in, and behold! We finally have an actual villain.

The story picks up rapidly from there. Red Ghost kidnaps the four and drops them on the moon. They make their way to the Watcher’s abode, but R.G. and his three apes are not far behind. Fighting and mayhem ensue, until the villain is pushed into a Matter Transmitter, disappearing into a Mel Brook’s High Anxiety spiral. The apes escape in their spaceship.

WATCH THIS!
All’s well that ends well? Not so fast, my friend! There’s still this one teensy problem of the FF stranded on the moon with no means of returning to earth. Of course, of all the places on the moon they could have landed, they were dropped off not far from the magnificent home of the all-powerful Watcher. Yes, the serene toga-ed one makes an appearance in this story as well, but remember: above all else, he is not allowed to interfere.

Except when he does, of course, which is just about every time we see him. This time, he reasons his way around to the most outrageously convenient loophole yet. Apparently, the Watcher is free to do whatever he pleases in order to insure his own privacy. That’s a good enough reason to change the course of history, right?

With that in mind, the Watcher tells the FF to close their eyes, snap their heels together and repeat, “There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home!” then instantly transports them there. I don’t know about you, but considering that without this action, the FF may have been stranded on the moon forever (or at least a few weeks or so, until Reed figured out how to configure a spaceship out of moon dust, twine and any other available natural resources), I call this “Interference” with a capital “I.” The “I” is for the Watcher saying, “I really don’t want to have to deal with any of these folks, so I’ll just make up some excuse and whisk them away!”

So now we’ve left the moon, but I’m sure this is not the last we’ll see of the Watcher. He’ll certainly be back again, continuously preaching non-interference as he butts his nose into everybody else’s business.

KEEP YOUR ENEMIES CLOSER
I also feel certain Red Ghost will somehow return from his spiraling adventure to the other side of the galaxy. And when that happens, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the apes are still assisting him. The last time we saw this dysfunctional family, the three primates, hungry and freshly escaped from imprisonment, had turned on the Red Ghost, holding him with a paralysis ray as they stared at him with eyes “gleaming with hatred—with vengeance!”

Obviously something changed, because at the beginning of this story, the apes are once again completely chummy and on board with anything the Red Ghost requires of them. How did they go from eyes gleaming with hatred and vengeance to “What next, boss?” Now that’s a story I’d like to hear! But perhaps it’s only being told at Marvel’s Upper Level Management Seminars for Super-Villains as “When Minions Behave Like Apes: How to Handle Unruly Henchmen.”

I have to wonder, though, how long this love fest is likely to last. Due to the effect of cosmic rays, the baboon is a shape-shifter, the gorilla possesses increased strength and intelligence, and the orangutan controls magnetic rays. What’s more, Red Ghost reveals that his ship “works on magnetic power and can be controlled ONLY by my orangutan.”

Two problems with that statement: first, only one source of power? Shouldn’t he have a backup plan? But more importantly, Red Ghost, with his meager ability to walk through walls, should realize he needs to be very, very careful about how he treats his minions. Should the Apes ever decide to mutiny, the Red Ghost would surely prove no match for their combined powers. If I were Red Ghost, I wouldn’t waste any time instituting a strong policy of “Unlimited bananas for all!”

NOW LISTEN TO ME, HONEY….
One more thing, and then I must go. This struck me as a typical bit of sixties sexism: When the four are thrust out of the Red Ghost’s spaceship, the narrator informs us that “The quick-thinking Mr. Fantastic” has told Sue to use her force field to protect them from succumbing to the airlessness of space.

Well, all I have to say is “Thank goodness Mr. Fantastic had his thinking cap on!” Because even though Sue is the guardian of this incredible superpower, without the quick thinking of Mr. Fantastic, she wouldn’t have the first idea what to do with it.

Sigh…

Of course I understand what this is all about. Reed is our smart guy, so every time the story needs someone to be smart, his word balloon gets filled. This is all about making Reed look good—not making Sue look bad. However, in addition to making Reed look smart, it also makes him look like a domineering control freak who doesn’t trust anybody else to know that two plus two equals four.

I’m looking forward to the day the narrator says, “Realizing the danger, Sue immediately threw her invisible force field around them.” I wonder…how long will I have to wait for that?

BUT IS IT ART?
Oh, wait! Actually, I’m not done yet! The title of this post promises one more thing, and I’m not one to break a promise. I can’t leave without first making note of the Watcher’s unknown object from a remote galaxy. He tells us that even after centuries of study, he has no idea what it is. Are you kidding? I understood immediately. It’s obviously an objet d’art from the planet Seuss!

This is, after all, the sixties. If the Watcher spent less time interfering, and more time actually watching (or at least reading), surely he would have figured this out as well.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
After a story like this, I feel pretty good about my ability to figure out what’s likely to happen next in the Marvel Universe. It’s no surprise that Thing and Alicia stay together, that Red Ghost returns, that Reed looks for any excuse to avoid dealing with his emotions. There’s a level of comfort in being able to predict the “surprises” that are not surprises at all. But I go back to my previous observation: “This is, after all, the sixties.” And the early sixties, at that.

I expect we’ll need to get further into the era of social shake-up (Viet Nam, Woodstock, Women’s Lib, Black Power) before Marvel dares to show us the mutiny of the apes, a self-actualized Reed Richards, or a girl who exercises her power, whether super or natural, without assistance from the menfolk, and with no predisposition to be either silent or coy regarding her own fantastic abilities.