I Really Should Read This 5: Fantastic Four Epic Collection 5 (issues 68-87), by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee

Fantastic Four Epic Collection 5 (issues 68-87), by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee

late 60's

I've been doing a read through of the Kirby/Lee FF run since summer. These are 400 page collections that read like they're 800 pages thanks to Stan Lee just forcing himself onto every page*. The first issues I read, I could only read half an issue at a time, they simply made me tired, but there was something enjoyable to them. The more I read, the more I got with it and now can read two issues at a time. I think if you culled half the text from any given issue, they would be so much better. Lee has flair, but there's just too much of it.

They look great though. The art in this era is inked by Joe Sinnott, who was the Kirby inker I liked most before getting turned onto Mike Royer. The bold, chunky lines are beautiful.

As stories, the ideas are great, but these were meant for kids, and they weren't meant to be reread by adults 50 years after the fact. An issue has a ton of stuff thrown at the wall, page after page, and a tidy resolution or cliffhanger at the end. Once I got that, I could just enjoy the ride, not looking for a traditional story.

I have one more collection to read to finish off this run. I'm going to wait a month or two to get to it, but it's been really enjoyable to read the run of comics that built the Marvel universe, that made Lee and Kirby into legendary creators, and inspired the artists that inspired me as a kid, like Walt Simonson and John Byrne.

*It's very well-known among comics readers, but not so much among the general public the writing style that made Stan Lee the face of comics in America until the day he died was this: he made a pitch to the artist, like, Doom catches the Fantastic Four and takes away their powers! Then the artist went home and drew 20 pages to tell that story. All subplots, character work, design, 'acting' etc was done by the artist. They gave the pages to Stan, and he scripted it, usually over scripting, explaining exactly what readers could already see, and finally slapped his own name down first in the credits. He was the publisher's nephew. That's how he 'wrote' 10-20 comics a month.