Sep. 27. Expanding on thoughts babbled out in our first podcast: Last night my comic of choice was Fantastic Four #39, 1965, by Lee and Kirby of course, in which the FF lose their powers due to a bomb set off by the Frightful Four in the previous issue. Led temporarily by Daredevil and lacking their superpowers, they are attacked by Dr. Doom, who has just been liberated by a court entertainer from Reed’s posthypnotic suggestion that he had beaten the FF on an earlier occasion. Fine, strong inking by an artist otherwise unknown to me—Frank Ray—who for my money was as good as Chic Stone, inker on the previous few issues (despite his obscurity—Ray doesn’t even rate a Wikipedia entry of his own).
In this comic I salute brash simplicity without pretensions. Here we have Dr. Doom in a pure state of roaring swaggering wickedness. Not too brooding, not too Deep, not too conflicted about his duty to Latveria or how his mommy didn’t love him enough or whatnot, just bad to the fuckin’ bone and out for payback. In fine form, Doom backhands his fawning hypnotist with his steel knuckles, barking: “Here is your reward! Be grateful I do not have you put to death for knowing how I have been tricked!” Plus, the tiresome notion that the FF need endless interpersonal complications between Reed and Sue to be interesting had yet, thank goodness, to be invented.
Doom being doomy. Kirby’s godlike talent for weird machinery is in full force. (Any other artist would have made those eyepieces half as complex, and symmetrical.)
Speaking of non-pretension, guest star Daredevil is the epitome of a non-cosmic superhero: blind guy with sharp hearing trounces crooks by dint of superior agility. As FF#37 puts it, he is “a sightless crusader, with no power save his own ultra-keen senses and amazing athletic prowess.” I have also just read Daredevil #3 (1964, Stan Lee, art by Joe Orlando and Vince Colletta)—more straight-up soul candy from the Silver Age, especially nice after the intriguing but terribly overinflated Infinity Gauntlet series (1991). Not only is the Universe as a whole not threatened in DD#3, the neighborhood as a whole is not threatened. Our villain, the almost pitiable Owl, claims to be plotting world takeover but does not present a credible threat to anybody except Daredevil’s cute secretary (with whom, as mild-mannered lawyer Matt Murdock, Daredevil carries on an adequate version of the Clark-Lois-Superman triangle). After having waded through the tiresome mosh of “cosmic deities” that burdens the Gauntlet series, this sort of thing is as welcome to me as hot coffee for a hangover. If you can’t tell a story about something small, you can’t tell a story. Grandiose is great sometimes, but in general it’s supposed to be a comic, not a cosmic.
Yet another inimitably hyperdynamic Kirby moment. (Nice ass, DD.)
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