Kirk G:
"It's only recently that someone pointed out here in Captain Comic's land, that Avengers #3 &4, and FF #25 & 26 form a long continued story of "The Hulk in NY"."
"Captain America Joins The Avengers" was (after FF ANNUAL #3) my first real exposure to Cap. At the end, he asks Rick Jones to be his partner, and Rick thinks about, what will The Hulk think?
Little did I know the answer came out a couple weeks later!! It took me at least 15 years (maybe more) before I was able to read that 2-part FF story.
The "epilogue" of sorts was in AVENGERS #5, Hulk's last appearance in the book for ages, when he shows up right at the end, saves the day, then disappears. I'm not entirely sure, but I may have read both of these first when the original Masterworks volumes came out.
Hey, isn't there a general "F.F." thread around here yet? : )
Well, there is now!
You need to be a member of Captain Comics to add comments!
Replies
No, actually... I didn't buy it, and it wasn't new. I got it from my BARBER. He probably got it from the store right across the street who had 2nd-hand comics (ones with half or all the covers missing). You know how it is. You're sitting in the barber's, waiting to get your hair cut. He's got magazines to read. Including comics "for the kiddies" (as Charles Schulz once put it-- heh). Well, that was one BIG comic. I forget how far I got into it, but somehow, something made me mention I wasn't finished with it. I think-- maybe-- I actually wanted to stay there until i was done reading. He said, "Ehh, it's okay-- TAKE it!" And that's how I got my 1st Marvel!
This was at least a couple months after the FANTASTIC FOUR cartoon debuted in Sep'67. Which means it was around 2 years old by then. Reed & Sue were always married on the TV show. The comic featured the wedding. The reprints in the back were from before they got married! So right there, you've got my introduction to "evolving continuity".
I had-- probably-- seen Captain America (maybe) and Iron Man (DEFINITELY) on the earlier tv cartoons, but never watched them regular, and remember just about nothing about them. It's very possible I saw "Prince Triton" (Mike Road) on the FF cartoon before seeing "Prince Namor" in the back of FF ANNUAL #3.
Shortly after, from the store across the street, I got AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #55-- "Doc Ock Wins!" Wow. Intense. Every panel pin-up worthy. POWERFUL action scenes! Doc Ock-- the MOST DANGEROUS supervillain ever!!! And... aw, nuts. A CLIFFHANGER. And that bane of TV shows-- AMNESIA!!!
The most astonishing thing is... about a month or two later... somehow... AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #56 turned up in the same store. And I got it!! Wow. Only... that one ended on a cliffhanger, TOO!! Son of a BITCH!
And it took me 8 years to get ASM #57... incredibly.. from the SAME store. This one had NO cover. I wondered, had the thing been sitting in a warehouse for 8 years or something? (And this one ended on a cliffhanger, TOO!!! Grrrrrr....)
(continued from here)
I did get FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #4... as a back-issue... so I do have that Hulk-Avengers 2-parter as a reprint in there. But, I couldn't tell you WHEN I bought it. Could have been the late 70's... anytime in the 80's... or in the mid-late 90's when I started buying more back-issues again (usually 1 or 2 at a time, as the prices had gone up).
Oh, that makes so much more sense now. Cause until recently, with Essentials and Masterworks, that would have been the only place to have found it... other than the originals.
PS: While trying to call up the GCBD to get an image of FF Annual #4, I was unsuccessful, and my edit time window expired. I had tried flipping over to Google Images and searching for "Fantastic Four Annual" images, and did find one. When I clicked on it to find what website it was from, I found it was some sort of Marvel Database, and there were extensive fields for entry about the issue in question. I was a little annoyed that they had listed the data and comments as if the reprint of FF #25 had been original material, and I wanted to correct that. Then I saw that there was NO entry under Trivia, or Significance or a category that should have been FLAGGED that this FF Annual #4 was a seminal/key Marvel book with signficance that would resound far down the halls of Marvel over the years due to development's in The Avengers...the vision...Avengers Forever...and more... but I COULDN"T GET INTO THE DAMN WEBSITE NOR REGISTER. I WAS MAJORLY FRUSTRATED!
Who would run a database that would welcome info and entries, and then make it impossible to join or open it?
Henry R. Kujawa said:
Kirk, I am still deeply frustrated that, after spending 2-1/2 years upgrading & expanding Nick Simon's Silver Age Marvel website, the damn thing went DOWN a month after I lost my last job. I was doing everything I cold to make it BETTER than the GCD (at least, in so far as the material the site covered).
One of the things was links to reprints, and, at the other end, chronological reprints of the different series. It go so I was putting much more time into upgrading the site design than I was restoring old covers!
Many Marvel comics can be read online by subscribers at the digital section of Marvel's website. Archie's website likewise has a digital section for subscribers.
Yes, but if the material is under copyright I think we shouldn't expect to read it for free. Access to Marvel's online library seems to be still quite cheap, but I'm not a member there so I could be missing something.
From Masterworks... enjoy.
There are multiple problems with John Romita's FF issues. On top of them not being his characters, and the story being ABOMINABLY bad, it turns out that Romita being inked by John Verpoorten really looked like CRAP. Which is odd, as Romita is terrific, and Verpoorten is terrific, but together, they were AWFUL. This happened because the editor (who apparently had a panic attack that affected his judgement) yanked Joe Sinnott off the book for 2 months to ink Neal Adams on THOR (there's a big "WTF?????" moment if there ever was one). Seeing as Neal Adams' generally has crude, rough, scratchy lines in his art, wouldn't good old reliable Vince Colletta have been a better fit, especially since Vince was already inking THOR anyway? (Or did Adams threaten violence on anyone who would assign Colletta to butcher his art?) Note, when Joe Sinnott returned 2 months later, Romita-Sinnott looked 10 TIMES BETTER than Romita-Verpoorten.
But the stories STILL SUCKED.
When John Buscema took over, the stories STILL SUCKED. And now, it was as if the entire cast of a TV show had been recast between episodes. Not one member of the cast looked or "acted" like they should have. The faces, the facial expressions, and the body language, ALL WRONG. Frankly, I have the SAME problem on AVENGERS, though I know most fans get very loud and angry at the suggestion of this. When Buscema replaced Don Heck, ALL the characters looked "wrong". None of them were ever the same again. Some might say this was a good thing. But for one to appreciate it, one really has to work hard at forgetting ALL the issues that came before.
Come to think of it, that's sort of like Romita replacing Ditko.
To me, the stories on F.F. didn't get better until you had the team of Roy Thomas & Rich Buckler in place. That's Roy's 2ND run on the book, mind you. His 1st run SUCKED, BAD. What came as a shock to me, on re-reading the run was, when Gerry Conway replaced Roy Thomas... it was an improvement. I feel sure this was the ONLY time in Conway's career this could ever be said to be true. (Comics were a better place when Conway became a full-time television writer.)
You forgot the Stupendous Sixth Annual....you know, the one that doesn't star the entire Four, and even shows Crystal on the cover, even though she couldn't be there..,.due to the...you know...kid!
On a more serious note, the sixth annual feels more like a joint Inhumans/Black Panther try-out than an FF adventure.
Robin Olsen said:
The Sentry Sinister
Somehow, I always prefer the version that actually saw print... with the view of the back of the Sentry facing the FF attacking. But as I recall, the Human Torch isn't actually there on the island with them, is he? It's just Reed, Ben, Sue and some scientist explorer that they rescue, right?
I would guess that the printed version was chosen as a result of a long-standing pattern of layout, where Stan (or whoever) didn't thing we should see the heroes attacking from behind, but prefered seeing the heroes' faces and the villian or antagonist's back or ass. I guess that makes sense, but some of the rejected covers really don't look all that bad to me.
Also, the printed version of FF #64 also gives a much stronger impression of the massive SIZE of the Sentry, and he just looks all the more threatening to my eye.
Henry R. Kujawa said:
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
-
5
of 7 Next