The Complete Fantastic Four.

This was it! This was the week, forty years ago, when, following a string of setbacks, cancellations and mergers, the once juggernautal Marvel UK decided to hit back with the launch of a brand new comic.

And what better way to do it than with the team who'd been there right at the start, in the very first issue of Mighty World of Marvel, all the way back in 1972?

In truth, there were probably much better ways of doing it, bearing in mind that the idea of the Complete Fantastic Four was to reprint an entire issue of the world's greatest comic every week.

Bearing in mind that, even in its previous form as a truncated back-up strip in various other mags, it had managed to draw ominously close to catching up with the original mag it was being reprinted from, it meant the venture was inherently doomed from the start.

The title only lasted thirty seven issues but, by the time of its last week, it was less than eighteen months behind its parent comic, meaning that, by my off-the-top-of-my-head calculations, had it lasted just another five months, it would have completely caught up with that parent mag, would have run out of material to reprint and would have been facing the chop no matter how successful it had been. It has to be said, it didn't seem like a lot of foresight had gone into this venture.

Then again, maybe Marvel UK could have done an Apeslayer on us and redrawn old Killraven stories as Fantastic Four tales. Old Skull redrawn as the Thing, Killraven as Reed Richards, Hawk as the Human Torch, Carmilla Frost as Sue Richards, Grok redrawn as Willie Lumpkin, M'Shulla as Alicia, the Martians as Skrulls? Let's face it, who wouldn't pay good money to see that?

As for the comic we actually got, I'd like to say it made a big impression on my life but I only ever saw two issues of it.

The first was issue #6 which reprinted the opening part of the Miracle Man's return. This was pleasing for me, as I already had the tale's second part in its original form and it was satisfying to finally read its first instalment.

By clear coincidence, its back-up strip featured their introductory meeting with the Miracle Man, a tale I always recalled with fondness from my first reading of it.

This does pose a mystery to me though because I also recall reading an issue of the The Complete FF whose back-up story was an early tale in which Doctor Doom gets inflatable dummies to follow the FF around for reasons that totally escape me. No doubt it was all part of a truly diabolical plot the like of which would take the world's breath away had the world known about it.

The trouble is, when I look at the covers of the mag's other issues, none of them ring a bell for me at all. So, which issue that was, I have no idea.

Anyway, with its inherently short life-span, the mag might not have proven to be Marvel UK's salvation but, in being a statement of intent about the company's determination to fight back against declining sales, market share and profitability, it has to be viewed as a title of some significance.

And, as it turned out, it wasn't to be the company's last stab at a comeback - because even more exciting news for UK Marvel lovers was just around the corner.

But what could that be?

What?

What?

The origin of the Fantastic Four - video review.

Yesterday may have been Pancake Day but today is an even more epoch-making one, as I upload my second video to Sheffield's 38th greatest living blog.

I must admit it was a troubled shoot, stricken by a temperamental star, noisy wildlife and lighting difficulties. But, like a trooper, I battled on and finished it.

So, here it is, a motion picture that's bound to go down in cinema history and be spoken of in the same breath as the likes of Tank Girl and Tommy Wiseau's The Room.

Because even a super-hero needs somewhere to live.

As I soar through the skies above Pitsmoor, people often say to me, "Steve! What the beeping beep are you beeping doing!?! I come down to Pitsmoor to take in a little of the local character that's made it so celebrated and, instead, I find myself startled by the sight of the 37th most popular blogger in Sheffield flying through the air like he's King of the Rocket Men or something!"

And I tell them, "Quiver, ordinary person. I'm currently in flight because I've decided that never again shall I leave the house by the front door. For, such methods are for the humdrum and the predictable. From now on, I shall always leave my house by firing myself from a cannon, like Ant-Man always did."

"But won't you die when you land?"

"No," I tell them. "Because, just like Ant-Man, I've arranged for a pair of flying ants to catch me and carry me off to lands hither and thither."

"Isn't there one slight flaw in that plan?"

"Not that I can think of."

"What about the fact that Ant-Man is the size of an ant and you're the size of a human being."

"I knew there was something I hadn't thought of."

But, of course, I'm not firing myself through the air for no reason. I'm doing it because I've always wanted to own two things in life.

One is a secret passage and the other is a secret headquarters.

Everyone knows that a super-hero's no kind of super-hero if he doesn't have a secret headquarters. Why, even Ant-Man has one. And therefore I've always wanted one.

But, of course, it's not that simple. There's the question of just what kind of secret headquarters a man should have.

Batman had a Batcave. Superman had his Fortress of Solitude. Peter Parker had his bedroom. And Daredevil had his flat. Nick Fury had his heli-carrier, Dr Strange had his Sanctum Sanctorum and, in his early days, Bruce Banner had an underground lab in the desert.

I must confess I've always had a liking for the Batcave. Who wouldn't want to slide down a pole to get to one's secret HQ? And who wouldn't want to be confronted by a giant penny when one got there?

On the other hand, I've never wanted a Fortress of Solitude, which, by its name, sounded a very unwelcoming place.

Then again, there was always the fact that Superman had to share it with Supergirl, Superhorse, Superdog, Supercat and Superchimp, not to mention the entire population of Kandor; making it possibly the least solitudinal residence in global history.

Like Peter Parker, I too have a bedroom - but that's hardly a secret. Most people do.

Unlike Daredevil, I don't have a flat.

But there's one secret HQ above all others that I've always wanted.

And that's the Fantastic Four's Baxter Building.

From the moment I saw Jack Kirby's first cutaway of the skyscraper, with its labs, cinema rooms, observatories, computer rooms, lecture rooms, conference rooms, map rooms and sundry rooms that could serve no noticeable purpose, I knew that was exactly the sort of place a man of my class deserved.

This could just be because my nan lived in a tower block and it didn't take much imagination to envisage it being turned into a replica of the FF's digs. Even now, I can't help feeling that tower block would have been so much better with a great big rocket silo incorporated. Why the council never thought to add one, I have no idea.

And the truth is that - just as I know there's still an outside chance I might be called up to play for England in Brazil later this year - even now, at my advanced age, I still have a vague notion in my head that, one day, I shall somehow yet get to own a headquarters just like the Baxter Building. Once I'm in it, I shall say portentous things and do mad experiments in Space-Time that regularly threaten the lives of the local populace.

Admittedly, the Baxter Building's not actually a secret headquarters, as the whole world knows about it. But, of course, if I owned it, it would be. For, my other inspiration in the headquarters stakes is The Shadow who, I believe, also operated from the higher reaches of a skyscraper but, unlike the FF, made good and sure to keep quiet about it.

Fantastic Four comics I have owned.

I must confess it's been an indecisive time for me.

First I was going to revolutionise blogging by trying to do a running commentary on the adventures of Gullivar Jones as seen in Marvel UK's Planet of the Apes and Marvel USA's Creatures on the Loose.

Not many words into that, I quickly realised that wasn't going to work.

Then I was going to review Dr Strange's descent into Lovecraftian nightmare, from the early days of Marvel Premiere.

But decided I couldn't be bothered.

So, in a shock development, here are the Fantastic Four comics I owned as a child.

It's the return of one of my favourite neglected villains, as Diablo hypnotises Crystal into thinking she's an Aztec goddess and sets her on our heroes.

I have to say Crystal looks decidedly lovely in this issue.

Diablo, sadly does not.

It's one of those extra-length comics Marvel briefly flirted with in the early 1970s, and so, in the back-up tale, Benjamin J Grimm finds himself in an alternate world and discovers things are different there.

The FF make their stand against apartheid.

I've not read this since I was nine. Does Klaw put in an appearance?

It's the return of another of my favourite neglected villains, as the Miracle Man gets slightly carried away with himself and decides to take over the world.

You can read my thoughts on this issue, right here.

The Hulk and the Thing team up to take on mankind.

Is this the one where the Hulk and Thing swap brains? Or was that another story?

I have a feeling this is the tale where the Thing reverts permanently to human form.

Galactus decides Counter-Earth would make a nice snack, and the High Evolutionary brings in the FF to try and stop him.

You can read my review of this issue, right here.

The FF are still trying to stop Galactus, and the space-robot Torgo makes his senses-shattering return.

Sue Richards, meanwhile, fulfills her usual role of being completely useless.

At last, it's the battle we all demanded - the High Evolutionary vs Galactus!

Meanwhile, in a feat of sanity-defying continuity, we see the return of a character possibly not many people were demanding to see the return of.

It's one of my favourites from this era, as the three remaining members of the Frightful Four hold auditions for a new member - in the Baxter Building itself.

Reed Richards is adrift in the Negative Zone.

Again!

You do feel that, by now, the Fantastic Four's other members should have thought of permanently tying a rope round Richards to stop him doing that.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the Thing has a bank job to foil.

It's the return of Klaw and the Molecule Man.

This has to be the best Fantastic Four comic I ever owned, as the forty page Lee/Kirby reprint sees the FF's first encounter with the Inhumans and the Great Refuge.

The Fantastic Four #1

Some people have too much lead in their pencil. Queen Elizabeth the 1st had too much in her face powder. No wonder she went mad and ended up sticking knives through the hands of serving girls who brought her the wrong things.

I can only conclude that Sue Storm's suffering from the same malady in Fantastic Four #1, judging by her behaviour in the inaugural issue of the world's greatest comic mag.

Ace pilot Benjamin J Grimm's minding his own business when Sue Storm nags him into helping her and her pipe-smoking boyfriend steal an unfinished space rocket.

In a bout of McCarthyite fervour, Sue's big beef is that if Americans don't get into space - right now - the commies might beat them to it. This would of course be a total disaster because, erm, er.

It quickly becomes clear that Ben Grimm is the group's nominated adult as he seems to be the only one with the sense to see the insanity of it all.

Still, suitably provoked, he goes along with it and they do what we've all tried to do and fly into space with the aid of a schoolboy.

Sadly, unlike Sue Storm's makeup, the spaceship's a bit short on the lead front, radiation gets in and it's not long before they're crashing into the ground and turning superhuman before going off to give the Mole Man a punch in the bracket.

Oddly, at no point does anyone try to arrest them for stealing a spaceship and at no point in future issues does anyone from the government ever raise this issue.

Your superior intellect is no
match for MY puny
weapons!

Apart from the lunacy of its stars, the thing that strikes you reading this tale now is how serious it is. Reed Richards initially casts an ominous figure, gravely summoning his colleagues to deal with their first challenge. The Thing is of course in his proto-Hulk mode and possibly a potentially bigger threat to humanity than the baddies are.

It also strikes you that it's clearly two separate stories stitched together, the first one introducing the FF and the second detailing their encounter with the Mole Man, and I wonder if the two halves had initially been planned for publication in separate issues before Stan Lee (under instruction from Martin Goodman?) decided to pull them together with the magical power of captions?

It has certain weaknesses, the main one being the uselessness of the Mole Man as a villain. When a man's main superpower is that he's got a stick, you know he's no Dr Doom.

But I don't care. I love it. With its not-totally-willing heroes, and dysfunctional-family vibe, even at this distance there's the sense of something epoch-making unfolding in front of your eyes and it serves as a perfect link between the monster mags Marvel had been doing up to that point and the super-hero mags they'd increasingly concentrate on from that point on.

Fantastic Four #45. The Inhumans make their debut: Part 2!

It's time to shake ourselves from our subterranean hideouts because I'm flinging myself head-first into part two of my favourite Fantastic Four tale of them all, as the FF finally get to meet the rest of the Inhumans.

Having survived the collapse of the building they were stood on at the end of last issue, our heroes manage to capture Dragon Man by the simple ploy of no longer trying to fight him, instead letting Sue use her feminine charms to keep him in line.

While the others try to work out what to do with the brute, the Torch goes for a walk, meets a mysterious girl called Crystal - who has superpowers - and is taken by her to an underground lair where he meets her family, who include Gorgon and Medusa.

Gorgon's none too pleased to see him and, with the aid of an Inhuman called Triton, tries to kill him but the Torch escapes and, signalled by him, the rest of the team descend on the site to deal with his would-be assassins.

But that's when the issue's great no-frills climax gives us the last-panel sight of a man known only as Black Bolt smashing through a brick wall to confront them. Now they're in for it!

Perhaps what's best about the issue is that, although it's packed with incident, including the resolution of last issue's cliffhanger, the scenes with Dragon Man, the introduction, one at a time, of the Inhumans, and even the first appearance of the group's flying motorbike, the tale doesn't neglect to fit in the all-important human drama, with the Thing ruminating woefully on how similar he is to Dragon Man, while the Torch fails to get a date with Dorrie Evans and suddenly finds himself someone new to lust after in the shape of Crystal.

The tale's still hopelessly confused and confusing in its portrayal of the Inhumans. It's still not clear whether they're good guys or bad guys, what their motives are or why Medusa - whose clearly now a prisoner of the others - was running from Gorgon.

It's interesting that, at this stage, it's still Medusa who seems most worried about the Torch's well-being while Crystal expresses no concern at all when the others try to kill him. Could it be that, even at this stage, the plan was for Medusa to become Johnny Storm's new love interest rather than her sister? That had certainly been hinted at the last time Medusa'd appeared as a member of the Frightful Four and it's questionable whether the plan had yet been changed.

Just as with last issue, the fact that none of its events make sense when subjected to any kind of scrutiny doesn't matter because the thing bowls along at a pace that stops you asking any awkward questions, and there're some nice subtle touches to the tale too, such as the way Jack Kirby blacks out the Torch's face at times in his early scenes with Crystal, in order to capture a sense of how threatening his presence is to her.

And how can you not love a comic that features the Invisible Girl tucking the sleeping Dragon Man into his bed?

Fantastic Four #44. At last - The Inhumans!

As I roam the deserted tenement blocks of Sheffield, that're earmarked for clearance, strange young women sitting on bits of rubble often ask me, "Steve, what's your favourite ever Fantastic Four story? Is it that one with Galactus, or that one where Dr Doom steals the Silver Surfer's powers?"

And I say, "No. It's the one where the FF first meet the Inhumans."

"Then you're like us!" They say. "Come with me to our underground lair where I can introduce you to my bizarre family and their paranoid ways!"

I say, "Thanks, luv, but I get enough of that at home."

That aside, it's all true. The first Inhumans story is indeed my favourite Fantastic Four tale of. And it all kicks off with the magnificent issue #44, surely as random and meaningless a comic as there's ever been.

Foolishly unexcited by Reed Richard's invention of the dishwasher, the Human Torch sets off in his sports car, looking for some action but gets more than he bargained for as he's hijacked by Medusa - still in her villainous phase.

Gun in hand, she forces him to help her flee a mysterious figure called Gorgon who likes kicking things. While the Torch and Medusa are chin-wagging, they bump into Dragon Man - freshly revived after his last appearance, and up for doing a King Kong with Medusa.

It all leads to a rooftop confrontation, involving the FF, Medusa, Gorgon and the Dragon Man, before Dragon Man abducts Sue, Gorgon abducts Medusa, and everyone else finds themselves trapped in a collapsing building.

There really is no rhyme or reason to this tale, it's carried along on a lunatic energy that sees ideas and actions flung into the pot for no purpose you can see. When Dragon Man suddenly appears by bursting out of the ground, you do wonder by what process this story was planned, and have to conclude it probably wasn't planned at all. Jack Kirby probably just made it up as he went along.

This feeling's especially strong if you've read later instalments. Given what we know about what happens in those, nothing that Medusa or Gorgon do or say in this issue makes any sense at all.

But who cares? What we're seeing is a strip approaching the peak of its creativity, one that means all sense and logic become irrelevant. It's pure escapism and it's great.

Fantastic Four #7. Kurrgo and Planet X.

Fasten up your seat belts, check your oxygen tank and hit that booster because it's time to dip once more into the 1972 Fleetway Marvel Annual, for the Fantastic Four's big day out in Space.

Confronted with the inevitable destruction of his world at the hands of a stray asteroid, Planet X's ruler, the beach-ball headed Kurrgo sends his own personal robot to Earth to turn mankind against the Fantastic Four so they'll consent to flee to Planet X where Kurrgo hopes Mr Fantastic'll be able to concoct a plan to save his world.

When they get there, Reed Richards, being Reed Richards, takes just hours to invent a potion to shrink the entire population of Planet X, so it can climb aboard the planet's only spare space ship and flee.

As they flee, Kurrgo - refusing to leave behind the potion that'll make him full-size again and thus leave him dwarfing his fellow X-ians - is left behind to die, a victim of his own megalomania.

One of the things that always strikes me about Marvel stories from this era is just how long they seem. For years I labelled under the misapprehension that this and the annual's other tales were much longer than later outings, but a quick check tells me it's only 22 pages long. So much does it cram in.

I complained in a recent post that Jack Kirby seemed to be basing his later Fantastic Four tales on whatever he'd seen most recently on TV - but clearly there was nothing new about that because, with its giant robot and its abducting of our heroes to a doomed world, it's pretty obvious this tale's inspired by the 1950s movies The Day the Earth Stood Still and This Island Earth. And it's great, filled with splash pages and divided into chapters, just to really add to that feeling of a 12 cent epic.

Kirby's depiction of Planet X - and its destruction - are great too. But I also love the earlier scenes on Earth, covering the FF's discomfort at having to attend an official dinner in their honour, and the squabbling and bickering that precede it. It's easy to see in these scenes the reason for Marvel's 1960s' success. Can you really imagine Batman, Superman and the Flash of this era fighting amongst themselves about having to attend a dinner engagement? Marvel's heroes simply had a life and a character that DC's more socially adept stars couldn't match.

Of course, in the end, it's a very silly tale. The idea that a super-advanced civilisation needs the scientific know-how of an Earth-man to solve their problem - and the idea that Reed Richards can knock up a shrinking potion in a few hours - is ludicrous. But then silliness is half the fun of a Silver Age comic book. And, if you don't want fun, why are you reading about people in spandex?

Fantastic Four #94. Dare you enter....?

Children. What a nuisance they can be, always getting in the way when you're trying to kick a super-villain in the nadgers.

Fortunately there're people in this world you can turn to, to look after your children while you're busy with such matters. And so it is that Marvel's answer to Mary Poppins - Agatha Harkness - makes her debut.

I've complained in the past that the last two years of Jack Kirby's tenure on the strip saw what for me was a marked decline in quality. But, in the interest of fairness, I should say that a quick glance at my battered old copy of Essential Fantastic Four Vol 5, suggests that, even during this period, there was a short-lived upturn, as that volume kicks off with The Prisoner-inspired Dr Doom tale before giving us the Thing's first encounter with Torgo and then this outing.

Admittedly, in between the Doc Doom and Torgo tales, there's a truly woeful Mole Man two-parter that makes no sense whatsoever but it's probably best we draw a veil over that one.

In Fantastic Four #94, Reed and Sue Richards decide that, as their lives are in constant danger, they should temporarily leave their baby Franklin with someone who can look after him.

That someone is Agatha Harkness who seems creepy and sinister enough on first appearance but, on closer inspection, turns out to be even more creepy and sinister.

To make matters worse, after God knows how many years' absence from the strip, the Frightful Four decide to make a comeback and attack the FF as they stay at Harkness's house.

The Thing, Mr Fantastic and the Human Torch are quickly taken out by the Frightful Four's sneak attack and deadly powers, while the Invisible Girl's defeated by their dramatic act of... ...locking her in her bedroom. No doubt the house promptly reverberated with cries of, "Help! Help! Let me out of my bedroom!" And to think people have accused Stan Lee and Jack Kirby of not being able to create empowered females.

Still, as General Thunderbolt Ross once remarked, the Invisible Girl was really only there to keep everyone's morale up by looking nice.

Fortunately, with the Fantastic Four helpless, Medusa's on hand to look nice tackle the villains, who've re-hired her without grasping she's the sister of sometime Fantastic Four member Crystal. Sadly, despite having a fair bit more spunk than Sue, Medusa turns out to not be much more use in a fight and is also captured.

This, of course, should mean our heroes are doomed. But the villains haven't counted on the presence of Agatha Harkness who promptly unleashes her sinister powers on them.

Given that later Jack Kirby FF tales frequently seemed to have been based on whatever it was he'd just watched on TV, I suspect this issue may have been inspired by the classic 1950s horror movie Night of the Demon. Like the villain in that movie, Agatha Harkness has a cat that turns into a much bigger cat, a big creepy house in the middle of nowhere, and a demon to set on those who offend her.

Another clear parallel is how the tale's ending leaves it noticeably ambiguous as to whether the supernatural threats the Frightfuls face in her home are real or just products of their imagination - exactly the same approach Night of the Demon director Jacques Tourneur tried to take with his film before the producers decided such ambiguity was bad for box office, and added a bunch of decidedly unambiguous shots of a giant demon.

What's great about this tale is how atypical it is for a Fantastic Four adventure. We're used to seeing the FF inhabit a world of super-science, of men in high-tech armour, of big machines, big planets, big people and even bigger concepts. Seeing them plunged into a world of the strange and supernatural - and a claustrophobic setting - is a welcome change of tone and, while Kirby's celebrated for his technology, the issue does remind us he was equally adept with the occult as with the pseudo-scientific.

Of course, not all's perfect. There is the question of how the Frightful Four knew about the secret passages in Harkness's house in order to use them for their attack and, while Agatha Harkness can clearly defend her latest charge, you do wonder at any parents who'd happily leave their child with someone so blatantly involved with dark forces.

But we all know this blog likes to be so hard-hitting that even Frank Miller daren't look at it for fear of its controversy, and so I'll say that, in my opinion, Fantastic Four #94 was Jack Kirby's last genuinely outstanding Fantastic Four tale.

But then again, what do I know? You may have other ideas. So, here's your chance to share them. What do you think was Jack Kirby's last outstanding FF tale?

Fifty Years Ago Today! November 1961.

It's no secret that one of the most popular features on this blog is the one where I post the covers of various old comics, in order to find out what our favourite Marvel heroes were up to exactly forty years ago. So popular is it that people who've never even heard of comics - or even of me - bang on my door at night demanding, "Steve, what were our favourite heroes up to exactly forty years ago?"

But now that fateful moment has arrived when it's actually possible for me to do the same for our favourite heroes fifty years ago.

Granted, right now that doesn't take much doing as, in November 1961, Marvel had just one super-hero comic out but, as time goes by, such a feature will no doubt enable us to see how the company grew and developed as the 1960s progressed.

The Mighty Marvel Age of Heroics kicks off with The Fantastic Four #1. And what a great cover it is. With just one image, Jack Kirby lets us see at a glance what our brand-new heroes are all about. Instantly we can see that Mr Fantastic can stretch like knicker elastic, the Human Torch can burst into flames and fly, the Thing is big and ugly and can crush cars, and that the Invisible Girl's completely useless.

One thing that's always baffled me about the cover though is that Reed Richards is shown stretching free of ropes whilst declaring, "It'll take more than ropes to keep Mr Fantastic out of action!" That may be true but who exactly has tried to tie him up? I assume it's not the monster - it's clearly only just arrived. And, besides, why would you waste time trying to tie people up if you were a giant monster?

I can only conclude that, the moment he saw a monster appear, Mr Fantastic tied himself up so he could demonstrate to it that ropes cannot hold him.

What a complete and total berk.

The Fantastic Four's all-time greatest villain. Poll results!

Flame off, team-mates. Clobbering time is well and truly over because the results are in from Steve Does Comics' breathless poll to discover the Fantastic Four's greatest villain of all time.

I could claim it was a close-run thing but the truth is that, to possibly no one's surprise but Diablo's, Dr Doom ran away with it, coming out on top with a crushing nine votes.

In second place was the Sub-Mariner, with just two votes, while Galactus had to settle for a mere one vote.

Not to be outdone, Hockey Stick Head matched Galactus stride-for-stride by also getting one vote, meaning Hockey Stick Head is officially the joint third-greatest Fantastic Four villain of all time.

No I don't know who he is either, and neither do Mr Google and Mr Wikipedia, but a good villain never let a small problem like non-existence get him down.

As always, thanks to everyone who voted.

Dr Doom	9 (69%)
Diablo	0 (0%)
Galactus	1 (7%)
Sub-Mariner	2 (15%)
The Impossible Man	0 (0%)
The Frightful Four	0 (0%)
Hockey Stick Head	1 (7%)
The Black Panther	0 (0%)
The Red Ghost and/or his apes	0 (0%)

The Fantastic Four's all-time greatest villain.

They say you can judge the quality of man by who his enemies are, which is bad news for some of us, as my deadliest enemy is the "Bossa Nova" setting of any Yamaha keyboard.

But the Fantastic Four are cut from a different cloth; a cloth of unstable molecules. You the public have already decided who Spider-Man's greatest enemy is, and now, in Steve Does Comics' endless quest to find the greatest super-villain of them all, it's time to take a look at Marvel's mightiest quartet.

There can't be many comics that've given us so many classic foes as the FF have. Why, just off the top of my head, I can name the likes of Dr Doom, Galactus, Annihilus, the Super-Skrull, Diablo, the Sentry, Ronan the Accuser, the Mad Thinker and, erm, Paste Pot Pete.

We also shouldn't forget such perennially under-appreciated foes as the Miracle Man, the Molecule Man and Psycho-Man. For that matter, I hear Willie Lumpkin was in the habit of bending Johnny Storm's hot-rod mags in half to get them through the letter box, leaving an unsightly crease in them. The vile so-and-so.

But don't let my ramblings influence you. Simply nominate your favourite Fantastic Four foe and, after a couple of days, I'll put your nominations in a poll. Then, at last, the world can vote for the Fantastic Four's greatest villain of them all.

Fantastic Four #21. Give hate a chance.

Hooray! This weekend sees the return of Dr Who, the show made famous by my other blog.

Will it be any good? Will it make sense? Will it disappear so completely up its own backside that it comes out the other end?

None of us can know.

What we do know is the first episode goes by the endearingly arresting title of Let's Kill Hitler.

This is ludicrous.

We all know there's only one set of people allowed to kill Hitler.

And that's the Fantastic Four.

It's late 1963 and there's trouble on the streets of New York. A character called the Hate-Monger's spreading a message of bigotry and intolerance. Apparently the authorities can do nothing because he's so far broken no laws.

Unamerican Sentiments?
Where's Joe McCarthy when you need him?

That doesn't stop the Fantastic Four from sticky-beaking at one of his rallies and, as sure as night follows day, within moments they're fighting amongst themselves, as the Hate-Monger fires his hate ray at them.

Fortunately, Nick Fury, now a colonel in the CIA, is at hand to trick them into going to the well-known republic of San Gusto whose government the Hate-Monger and his men are trying to depose.

Together Fury and the Fantastic Four defeat the villain by turning his own hate powers against him, causing his own men to shoot him dead. It's then that we get the dread revelation...

...The Hate-Monger was none other than Adolf Hitler!

"Feuhrer"?

You can't get away from it, it's a pretty silly tale. The idea that the authorities can't do anything to stop the Hate-Monger because he's broken no law - when he's conducting public rallies, complete with storm-troopers, inciting full-blown riots and public lynchings - makes me wonder just what kind of slack laws New York has in the world of the Fantastic Four. No wonder it needs super-heroes.

There's also the problem of it featuring Nick Fury.

Long-suffering readers'll know I've never been the biggest fan of Fury, and his appearance here - with both continuity-busting eyes intact - does nothing to change my mind as he announces his presence by beating up the Baxter Building security staff just because they won't let him go barging unannounced into the FF's headquarters.

But of course the story's pivotal weakness is the revelation that the Hate-Monger is Hitler; as silly a denouement as was ever seen in a Silver Age Marvel comic - and let's face it, silly Silver Age denouements were not exactly hens' teeth in Marvel comics. The fact that, in the very next panel, Stan Lee has Mr Fantastic fling in the caveat that it might not be the real Hitler but just a look-alike, suggests Lee realised they were venturing too liberally into the valley of the absurd, and I do wonder if the Hitler thing was Kirby's idea, inflicted on Lee as a fait accomplis, with Lee trying to write his way out of it through dialogue.

It also has to be said that George Bell's inking's not great, looking crude, rushed and slapdash. It's a bit of a shock to the system for those used to the clean and classic lines of Joe Sinnott.

But of course, there's always something to like in a Silver Age Fantastic Four tale and, on the upside, the Hate-Monger's costume, with its hints of the Inquisition and medieval torturers, is a great design. The Hate-Monger himself - apart from the Hitler thing - is a potentially great villain, which probably explains why he returned on numerous occasions, his guise adopted by various baddies, including at one point the Man-Beast.

Nick Fury, despite my general dislike of him, does at least show a fair amount of intelligence in the way he quickly realises the Fantastic Four's quarrelsome behaviour must be down to the villain, and in the way he subsequently manipulates them into tackling the revolutionary forces of San Gusto.

So, in the end, I don't think this can be regarded as a classic tale, coming well before the strip's peak era, when it was still aimed at a relatively naive and undemanding audience.

Still, at least with Hitler dead, it means Dr Who isn't going to have to worry about killing him after all. Meaning, no doubt, that Saturday's episode's going to consist mostly of The Doctor, Amy and Rory sitting around doing nothing. In other words, the show exactly as it would be if I were allowed to write it.

Heaven only knows why I'm not allowed to write it.

The Fantastic fifty for the Fantastic Four.

Apparently, it's the fiftieth anniversary of the very first appearance of the Fantastic Four, making Reed Richards approximately 95 years old but still as limber as ever - assuming Marvel haven't killed him off while I've not been looking.

Well, Steve Does Comics has never seen a kitten it couldn't hug, nor a bandwagon it couldn't leap on, so this is all the excuse I need to ramble on aimlessly about the book they called, "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine."

I first encountered the Fantastic Four in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man Annual #6 when they took on everyone's favourite web-headed wonder. What most impressed me about them was Reed Richards' ability to make his hands into giant ping pong paddles and the fact they didn't seek to make money from their powers.

My next encounter came in Mighty World of Marvel #4, in which we got the concluding part of their first battle with the Skrulls. Although I loved the Skrulls ending up thinking they were cattle, what most impressed me about that tale was I got the idea into my head that Benjamin J Grimm had three nostrils. From where I got this notion, I don't have a clue but it took many a long month of reading their adventures before I realised he didn't.

From that point on, the thrills came thick and fast as the FF took on Dr Doom and the Sub-Mariner, battled for control of their very limbs with the Puppet Master, encountered the Watcher and, erm, killed Hitler.

Other early highlights were their first encounter with Kurrgo: Master of Planet X, and their once having to be rescued from a crisis by Ant-Man, making Ant-Man officially the greatest hero in comics to my then tiny mind.

But it wasn't all plain sailing. Frankly, the Invisible Girl's uselessness in any crisis, leading to her getting kidnapped in what seemed like every issue, rankled with my youthful sensibilities so much I used to fill in her dots with a marker pen, so the bad guys could see her and kill her.

They never did.

There was also no denying that sometimes Mr Fantastic could be a bit of a jerk, with his constant ordering around of his team mates, especially his oft declaimed demand of his own wife; "Silence!" The Thing probably turned against his own team mates one time too many to be forgiven and the Torch never did seem to learn to think before flying off.

But of course, despite all this, the strip hit its peak in the mid 1960s with the wedding of Reed and Sue and then that astonishing sequence of stories where they first met the Inhumans, met Galactus, met the Black Panther, met the Negative Zone, met the Kree and came up against a Cosmic-Powered Dr Doom.

As I roam the streets of Sheffield, no one whatsoever asks me what my favourite Fantastic Four tale is.

That won't stop me from telling everyone.

It was the FF's first encounter with the Inhumans. I know popular consensus goes for the first Galactus tale but I've never been popular and it was the Inhumans' debut that really grabbed me, as our heroes discovered a a hidden race of super-beings running around New York.

In hindsight, the tale made no sense at all, with the Inhumans failing miserably to work out whether they were trying to get away from or to the Great Refuge. It didn't matter. The madness of the tale just swept you along.

Sadly, as the 1960s entered their late afternoon, a fed-up Jack Kirby started to put less effort into things and the quality and freshness of stories tailed off noticeably. Ideas got recycled, sometimes from the comic itself, sometimes from movies and TV shows.

But still, even amongst such derivative stuff, there was The Prisoner-inspired tale of the FF trapped in Latveria, and the Thing being taken to another world to fight Torgo the robot. The roots of these stories might've been obvious but that didn't make them any less effective. And, as a Hammer Horror fan, how could I not love our heroes' first encounter with Agatha Harkness, their very own Mary Poppins?

Jack Kirby left the strip in 1970 and, thanks to the likes of John Romita, John Buscema, Rich Buckler and George Perez, I still loved it all through the 1970s. I even enjoyed it when the Impossible Man reappeared - although replacing the Human Torch with H.E.R.B.I.E. the flying robot stretched even my patience.

Shortly after that period, I lost touch with the Fantastic Four, mostly because the UK reprints disappeared from the newsagents.

In the last reprint I read, Galactus was halfway through a fight with the Sphinx. I never did find out how that story ended.

But, despite my total ignorance of almost everything that's happened in the Fantastic Four since, I still retain my soft spot for them, the squabbling heroes who couldn't even muster a single secret identity between them. And if they each had their failings as human beings, I suppose that was what ultimately marked them out as human beings and therefore more interesting than the perfect heroes who'd preceded them.

Well, that's the bandwagon jumped on. All I need do now is find a kitten to hug.

But where will I find such a thing at this time of night?

Fantastic Four #98. The first men on the moon.

Just minutes to go before the next episode of Dr Who - the show made famous by my other blog - and, as that episode's seemingly built around the events of the first moon landing, what better time to look at a comic that was similarly inspired by Neil Armstrong's first step on that barren lump of rock?

Or is it barren?

If The Fantastic Four #98's to be believed, beneath that cratered surface lurks a menacing mass of something or other, just waiting to sabotage any attempt by man to set foot there.

Intercepting an alien message, Reed Richards quickly realises it must involve a plot by the Kree to wreck the upcoming moon shot. So, in a rerun of Fantastic Four #64, the FF - minus Sue who has to stay behind to mind the baby and help Alicia Masters look helpless and female - head for a mysterious island where they fight the Kree Sentry at the heart of it all. I'm still not sure if this is the same one they fought last time out or not. There're places where it seems it is and places where it seems it isn't. I suspect Jack Kirby intended it to be the same one and Stan Lee decided it couldn't be.

Either way, thanks to the Thing, they soon clobber it and then, despite its strength-sapping ways, clobber the Sentry's underground moon-landing-sabotage-machine TM. The moon shot's saved and Neil Armstrong gets to plant boot on dust. Interestingly, while he fluffed his, "One small step for a man," speech in real life, in the world of Marvel Comics, he gets it right.

You do wonder how much attention the Kree have been paying over the years. By the time this tale was published, the Fantastic Four'd already been to the Andromeda Galaxy and - even more impressively - the home world of Kurrgo, Lord of Planet X. So I suppose you can question why the Kree thought it so vital to sabotage NASA's relatively modest efforts. You also wonder why the FF seem to have totally forgotten they themselves have been to the moon more times than I've been to my local supermarket. Judging by this issue's evidence, the Russians also seem to have forgotten that the Red Ghost and his apes've been there too.

There's really not a lot to the tale. As I said earlier, with its, "The Fantastic Four go to an island and fight a Sentry before the island blows up," plotline, it's a straight retread of issue #64 but with the interesting revelation of a long-forgotten alien race removed. I also wonder why there's great play made of the fact the Sentry's island's designed to resemble the surface of the moon, when no reason for this design strategy is ever given or even hinted at.

Are they sure Jack Kirby was holding back?

Having said that, I do like the artwork. If the claims that have been made over the decades are true and, angry at Marvel's treatment of him, Jack Kirby was holding back in his last couple of years on the strip, it really doesn't show in his pencilling here, which is as obsessively detailed and dynamic as ever.

It's just the lack of new ideas, that disappoints, and the out-of-placeness of an issue dedicated to the real-life moon landing in a fictional world where space travel was commonplace. Given how exciting the first moon landing must've been at the time - and how heroic the crew must have seemed - I can understand why Kirby in particular would want to do his tribute but, in context of the comic, it really doesn't make much sense.

I also can't help wondering just what the Watcher made of having a menacing mass moving about under his home world.

But maybe he was too busy watching the moon landing on TV to notice.