Great to see the thread back!
It will come as no surprise that I have a different take on this issue
I agree. Not "a" great cover, but possibly "the" great cover. IIRC this is the only cover inked by Kirby himself, so we get the best idea of how he saw the team. Note that Reed looks just like Kirby (at the time). The wanted poster has often been imitated on other comics. I love the intense perspective, from extreme close up to the distant stars, and the theme of alienation: people tend to forget that the first year f the FF was not about happy families but the opposite. And note the contrast with DC comics, where the the public love the heroes. While we can try to blame the robot's hate ray it didn't have to try too hard, as we see from similar scenes in FF 2 and FF 9. I could go on and on about the importance of this cover.
The inhabitants of Planet X are older, wiser and have science 1,000 years beyond Earth. But they can't figure out how to blow up or divert an asteroid.
One close to the size of the planet itself. The energy needed for that task is phenomenal. This is the kind of realism I like: no doubt they could blow up the kind of asteroids they expect, but one the size of a planet? What kind of civilisation would be able to do that? Could we do that, even in another thousand years?
And unfortunately they can't evacuate because they only have two spaceships...because they've “never cared for space travel.” Ummmm...yeah.
Again, a touch of realism I really appreciate. A lot of very intelligent people feel that a focus on space flight is disastrous: we have to solve our political problems first rather than export destruction to other worlds far less suitable for human life. While sci fi fans always assume that technology goes in just one direction, it isn't so. Why didn't humans keep progressing at the same speed as the ancient Greeks? Why didn't we go back to the moon after the early 1970s? Why are our economic systems so absurd, three hundred years after Adam Smith told us how to fix things (just thought I'd throw that in there, as a fan of ground rents instead of taxation the madness of the human race never ceases to amaze me).
We also have the glaring fact that this planet is a dictatorship. What we see is the dictator's point of view: "my people do not want to leave, they are so happy here." Why would a dictator want his people to be able to freely leave? Pretty much every issue of the early FF is about American freedom versus other nation's dictatorships, and this is a prime example.
One of those spaceships is dispatched to Earth to fetch the FF...because Earth science which is a thousand years behind, can clearly save them.
Not earth science, but Reed Richards. They don't want a superior nation: that would be like Russia asking America to help with its grain shortages. But Reed has been studying a captured Skrull vessel for almost a year, and has shown himself to be superb at finding solutions with alien technology. Within a few months of getting hold of the skrull vessel its technology appeared in the Fantasticar, and the three Skrull costumes made superb unstable molecule suits (or so I argue on my site). Reed has shown himself to be a genius at quickly grasping new uses for alien tech. Given the tech on planet X, and the political gridlock of their own system, grabbing Reed is the quickest way to solve the problem. (The problem being that the dictator suddenly finds himself without a world to control)
they can't possibly ask for help...the only way to defeat a runaway asteroid is to get help via a wacky scheme.
The dictator uses force. That's how politics works. That's what Stalin would have done: "I have massive resources but need fresh thinking. I hear you're good at fresh thinking, so tell me what to do. You will help me now or your family dies."
Meanwhile the FF have been been summoned to Washington to attend a dinner in their honor. Only Reed seems to want to go as the others make up increasingly lame excuses for not going.
I love the political subtext of the early issues. Reed still isn't forgiven for taking and crashing that ship. Yet a lot of the public loves the team, and the establishment needs them. The invitation is not about pure hearted altruism from the state, it's an attempt at PR. Reed, the most confident and least socially aware, thinks it's a great opportunity. The others, more socially in touch, feel uncomfortable but don't know why. The team don't become truly ingratiated with the military industrial complex until issue 12 (after we see in issue 11 that they are far too famous not to embrace). The political subplot can be traced over the years and fascinates me.
Reed listens to them then treats them like the petulant children they are
Of course, we only ave Reed's version of events. The "unreliable narrator" is another fascinating theme in these early issues. If we step back and judge this only by actions (not words) we can see that the first two years of the FF are all about Reed gaining social dominanmce over the team. They start off as equals and through conflicts like this Reed infantalizes the others. This will come back to bite Reed very badly in later years.
We do learn that Ben can lift up a wall on a non-existent pivot and hide behind it without destroying the wall.
Another fascinating subplot is the gradual reveal of how superhero science works. The reason the wall does not collapse will be finally revealed in FF 249, with major implications for the nature of their powers and through that of their psychological inner worlds. E.g. Ben is a lot stronger than he realises, but the infantalizing makes him see himself as much weaker.
On Planet X we learn that they can control gravity...but can't stop an asteroid.
Another lovely realistic touch. To other comics, a gravity ray would be able to do anything, but in the real world the relative mass of the object makes all the difference.
The asteroid is also tearing the planet apart. I'm not an astrophysicist...or a geologist...but I'm pretty sure that in asteroid isn't causing as much havoc as we're seeing.
I love little details like this. The story is highly compressed, so we only get a simplifed version. The odds of a direct hit are far lower than a deadly near miss: the planetoid is probably caught in the gravitational clutches of planet X and the two bodies orbit each other in a death spiral for a few days (creating massive tidal forces on the crust), before finally hitting.
Or if I was a 9/11 conspiracy theorist type, I would follow the money and suggest an alternative explanation. Kurrgo experiments with gravity and clearly cares little for his people. I wonder if the gravitational problems, including the attraction of the other world, are a result of Kurrgo's experiments gone horribly wrong. Obviously he would not admit that. Or possibly he has other reasons for wanting to change planets, and Reed is merely the fall guy: the plan to shrink the people may have been there all along, and far from not having time to create an enlarging ray, Reed may have sabotaged it. One of the most important aspects of this story is the final frame, where we find that Reed is quite happy to lie when it suits him.
On balance though, I think Occam's razor says the death spiral theory is the most likely.
Of course the planet is completely breaking up and there is no provision for how the mini-folk are supposed to operate the ship...much less get five billion to the ship.
Their transport seems to be at the stage that Earth will be at in a hundred years: we will have self driving cars and pretty good AI, but relatively few space craft. A single self driving car (or self driving plane) could gather a hundred thousand shrunken folk.
Apparently it's better to rule over really small people than to rule over people your own size.
A wonderful symbol of the long term futility of oppression. An oppressed people are kept small: they cannot grow economically or culturally, but the dictator does not care as long as he is at the top of the pile. See every third world dictatorship ever. The FF is full of symbolism like this. As I mentioned before, almost every issue is a commentary on American freedom versus old world corruption. (And of course the irony that power corrupts, see Reed's need to dominate the others).
hopefully the residents of Planet X don't end up on a planet where they'll be prey.
Another great realistic touch. Most comics assumed that bigger was always better, but in the real world the most successful species are often the smallest. It's the megafauna that gets killed off, not the little guys who need fewer resources. Again, a commentary on the American idea that a nation of small individuals is more effective than a gigantic soviet style unified state with its monumental architecture and ability to do huge things very quickly (or so the world believed in 1962).
I'm going to complain about the art...and overall it's pretty awful. But a LOT of that is the figure work. There's some pretty cool stuff in the depiction of the destruction of the planet. But DAMN...the figure work, especially The Thing is awful.
Are we reading the same comic? I can see the argument against Sue (though I would defend her: fashions change), but the sci-fi landscapes, huge range of scenes, and Ben in particular, I find particularly impressive. I first read this issue in a large format (UK Marvel Annual 1973) so I suppose I was lucky to see it at close to the size and paper stock that it was drawn om. But the thrill of the sky chase (and details like strapping in first), and the descent into the alien city, and the final planetary upheavals... unforgettable. I suppose that's the point of art, everyone sees something different.
Did Reed use wide-spread Pym particles to make the reducing gas?
For reasons I won't go into here, I like to see the FF as a single self contained story. Shrinking is a major sub-plot over the years, and it all begins here. the Ovoids had a shrinking ray, and that led to Doom's advanced armor (allowing him to pack his previously ordinary armour with all kinds of devices). Shrinking is the key to entering subatomic and all its technological marvels, and the physics of shrinking is also the key to understanding how unstable molecules work and how they led to the other great invention, the subspace portal. I've been tracing those developments over the last few months and it's amazingly consistent. None of this is random, it all fits together, even though Stan and jack probably didn't realise it at the time.
Reed appears to be piloting the saucer back home. So the FF have an alien ship capable of interstellar travel. And they have seen gravity control and mobile telecommunications.
Indeed. Whenever Reed invents something amazing you can a look back a few issues and see that he is really using some device he picked up from aliens and adapted.
The plot…Ummmm...this may be the worst story of the burgeoning Marvel age.
Or possibly one of the best.
Grade for historic importance: D
Or if we include the Kirby inked cover, the first use of several major technologies (I didn't even mention most of them), political developments, key stages into Reed's character development, and much more, I would argue for A. But to be fair, I would argue that ALL the early FF issues score an A.
I wonder if this issue suffers from the Star Wars problem? If you've never seen anything like it, and see it in the cinema, Star Wars was one of the greatest movies ever. But if you've seen a ton of sci fi movies and then rent Star Wars it on DVD, it can be disappointing. I was lucky to read FF7 in large format, black and white on thick paper, before I had seen any of the sci-fi movies it references. But of you come to it from hundreds of sci fi comics and B movies I suppose the experience is different. But in my view we should not blame an idea just because it's often copied. That generally means it's a good idea, not a bad one.
For me, I will always remember my first Star Wars. And I will always remember the sense of awe when I closed this story and contemplated the vastness of the universe and how gravity rays might work. True, I was six years old at the time, but my admiration for this tale has only grown in the years since.
Of course, YMMV
