S1E1: Fantastic Four #1-4 - The Birth of the Marvel & MCU Revolution

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In this debut episode, I kick off Reading the Multiverse with Fantastic Four #1–4. The explosive start of Marvel’s Silver Age and the spark that would ignite the entire MCU. From the team’s chaotic origin to their first encounters with Skrulls and the Sub-Mariner, these early adventures set the tone for everything Marvel would become.

Stories Covered In This Episode

"The Fantastic Four" - Fantastic Four #1, written by Stan Lee, Penciled by Jack Kirby, Inked by George Klein & Christopher Rule, Color by Stan Goldberg, Lettered by Artie Simek

"The Fantastic Four Meet The Skrulls" - Fantastic Four #2, written by Stan Lee, Penciled by Jack Kirby, Inked by George Klein, Color by Stan Goldberg, Lettered by John Duffy

"The Menace of the Miracle Man" - Fantastic Four #3, written by Stan Lee, Penciled by Jack Kirby, Inked by Sal Brodsky, Color by Stan Goldberg, Lettered by Artie Simek

"The Coming Of... Sub-Mariner" - Fantastic Four #4, written by Stan Lee, Penciled by Jack Kirby, Inked by Sal Brodsky, Color by Stan Goldberg, Lettered by Artie Simek

Resources & Links Mentioned In This Episode:

• Join the Earth's Mightiest Nerds Discord Channel by signing up for the Earth's Mightiest Nerds Newsletter (completely free and I promise you won't be spammed!)
• Check out the podcast on YouTube
• Connect with Joe (musclesandthemultiverse) on Threads
• Connect with Joe (musclesandthemultiverse) on Instagram

Transcript

Joe: What's going on Marvelites? Welcome to Reading the Multiverse, a Marvel Comics journey presented by Earth's Mightiest Nerds. I am your host, Joe, and this is the first episode of this entire podcast. First of all, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Welcome. To the show, we are going to be reading together classic runs of Marvel Stories and we're starting with the Fantastic Four.

So this entire first season is going to consist of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's run of the Fantastic four where we go after this. I have some thoughts, but I may also leave that up to you, the listeners and or watchers if you're watching this on YouTube. With that being said, I am reading this all for the first time.

For the most part. I've read issues, uh, one through 36 or something like that for Fantastic Four, and I've read some much later runs, but grossly speaking, I'm still very much a newbie to most of these comics that we are gonna be reading. So we are going to be reading them together now. I am not reading them to you.

I am giving you summaries. Providing my commentary, thoughts and analysis on them. So this is going to be great, and this is ideal for someone who wants to dive a little bit more into the comics, especially if you're coming from the MCU, so you can kind of make those connections. And this is also really good for someone if you are, uh, just looking for some nostalgia and looking for a reread of these comics, especially if you've already read them or maybe you've never read them and you just don't have the time.

You can go ahead and just listen and join in on the fun. So we are gonna be on, obviously wherever you're listening to this, the podcast. We are also on YouTube as well, if you wanna watch or listen there. But let's dig in right into issue one of the Fantastic four. From August of 1961. We have Fantastic four.

Number one, the Fantastic Four, written by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby, inked by George Klein and Christopher Rule Colored by Stan Goldberg and lettered by Artie Sinek. We open up to see the words, the Fantastic four written in a cloud of smoke shot from a dark silhouette of a man who says it's the first time he's ever needed to use the signal and praise that it'll be his last.

We see our three of the four Fantastic four members pretty much drop what they're doing. To go to where that signal came from. Now Sue leaves a tea party and she turns invisible, although she didn't really need to turn invisible because she just plows through a whole group of people. Um, and Ben is in a disguise and he is going to get looking for some bigger clothes, and he gets one angry when they don't have anything for him because he's too big.

But then he also needs to leave and he gets really angry. And upset and breaks through the wall because the door isn't big enough for him, which makes me really wonder how did he even get in there in the first place? And as Johnny is headed towards that signal, we see that he ends up getting the military on his tail.

In fact, he has a nuclear missile locked onto him. That's where we see some stretchy arms come out of nowhere, grabs the missile, throws it into the water, and also saves Johnny because his flames started to peter out. And we learn that that happens to be Reed Richards, the man who actually shot the signal.

Now from there we go to a story regarding the Fantastic Fours origin. We learned that Reed has spent years designing and building a spaceship to beat the Russians into space. But Ben, his pilot, feels the ship isn't shielded enough from the harmful cosmic rays. Now, they probably wouldn't have gone into space if Sue did not call Ben a coward, to which he pretty much said.

No one calls me a coward. I will fly the ship no matter what happens. So the four of them go sneak onto the ship. They don't get clearance from anyone. And we also learn that Sue is the fiance to Reed Richards, and Johnny is the younger brother of Sue. Now, two of these four people are not, uh, qualified to be, uh, going into space one.

That doesn't sound like a very safe trip, and we already know that they're probably gonna get hit with cosmic rays that Ben is concerned about anyway. They go into space as expected, they get hit with the cosmic race and everyone starts to experience some sort of physical pain, including Ben, who has to stop, uh, pretty much piloting the ship and that causes the ship to come back down to Earth.

Luckily though, and I quote, the ship had an autopilot setting, which managed to guide the rocket in a rough but non-fatal landing. Thank goodness. After everyone comes out of the ship, we see everyone go through their transformations. As Sue turns invisible, Ben turns into the Rocklike figure. That is the thing Johnny Flames on.

And Reed is that super stretchy, Mr. Fantastic. And apparently they all had the same thought when they saw that they had these new powers, that they had to use them for the good of mankind. Thank goodness, because if they turned into villains, that would not be so good. Right. So that was part A of this first issue.

We get to part B where the Fantastic four meet the moleman. So we get back to the original reason why Reed fired that signal, and it's because all of the atomic power plants around the world have been caving into the earth. So they take their private jet, which first of all. Why does the Fantastic Four have a private jet?

What are they doing that they can afford to have a private jet? And we will see later on in some other issues of like why or not why, but like what are they doing that they have all this money? I just want to know. Anyway, they arrive to a possible location where all this is stemming from an island known as Monster Aisle.

Once they arrive at the island, Reed and Johnny get split up from Ben and Sue after a three-headed monster appears so. Johnny and Reed actually fall further into the island underground and when they wake up from their fall, they are, uh, in confronted by the moleman. And we learned his backstory and why he pretty much is underground and under monster aisle, and it's because everyone on the surface world was making fun of him for how he looked.

So he looked to get away, and when he went to the island, he fell underground, and as he fell, he became blinded, which then heightened his other senses, and he then also mastered the subterranean creatures. Eventually Sue and Ben find their counterparts and Moleman sends his monster army against them.

However, they're able to escape the island as they're coming out from underground and while they're doing so, Johnny traps the monsters inside the island. And as the Fantastic four are flying away, Moleman collapses the island in on itself as to avoid being bothered by anyone else in the future, and that is issue one of Fantastic four.

A pretty good opening issue. You can definitely tell that Stan and Jack are kind of just one, figuring out this team and what they want this comic to be. But you can also tell that they're kind of really feeling out each other and how they wanna tell this story. So that leads us into, uh, issue too. From September of 1961, the Fantastic four Meet the Skrulls from Outer Space, written by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby.

Inked by George Klein, colored by Stan Goldberg and lettered by John Duffy. We are presented with each member of the Fantastic Four doing a sinister act, and you're probably wondering why would they be doing this after they just promised that they would use their powers to help mankind. Well, we then see our four heroes talking to each other, learning the things that they did, and lo and behold, they are not our heroes.

They are four aliens, Skrulls, impersonating our heroes. That then takes us to where we see our real heroes, who happen to be in an isolated hunting lodge when they hear that the Fantastic four are being hunted for their crimes. What I find hilarious is that Ben is still kind of wearing a disguise even though he knows these people.

Um, and part of that has to do, I think with him just being ashamed of how he looks for the most part. So he is dealing with that emotional trauma and damage, but he still continues to be a very angry person. He gets so angry that Reed Sue and Johnny have to have a little powwow aside talking about him, of like what they're going to do with him on the team because they can't keep having this guy just throwing temper tantrums anyway.

As we turn the page, we find out that that isolated cabin isn't so isolated because it's surrounded by armed forces, which draws the Fantastic four out. They surrender and they each get put into their own special federal prison cells that are designed to stop them from escaping thanks to their powers.

Now, whoever designed these prison cells wasn't so smart because. Each of our four members gets out of their prison cells pretty easily and they happen to do so all at the same time, which again, very lucky for them. And it's very, uh, funny for the sheer fact that they were all able to escape it at the same time.

They steal a helicopter and they apparently get to one of their many secret hideouts of the Fantastic Four. Again. How do they have all this money to have all these secret hideouts? What is the federal, you know, army doing? What is the army doing that they can't stop these four people and, and get them to steal a helicopter, let alone they didn't, they couldn't like go track them anyway, I'm just pointing fun at some of this, this stuff.

So they there then discuss a plan that Johnny has go, that Johnny is going to sabotage a rocket launch that will hopefully bring out the Skrulls. Why this would work? I have no idea. They don't ever actually explain why this would work. Don't you think that all four Skrulls would be together and that they would, you know where each know where each one of them was?

Anyway, Johnny goes and sabotages this rocket launch and when he wants to leave, he gets picked up by Reed and Sue. But it happens to be read and sue. Being impersonated by the Skrulls.. So the Skrulls bring Johnny back to their hideout and they immediately learn that that's not the Skrull Johnny. It's the real Johnny.

And before they capture him, he's able to set off the fantastic flare, which alerts Reed, Sue and Ben read. Sue and Ben show up, and then they take the scrolls as prisoners. And then they need to figure out what they're going to do. So the Fantastic Four steals the scroll ship and their mothership is hovering above Earth.

So they go to their mothership and they're. They convinced the Skrulls on the mothership that it's too dangerous for them to invade earth, so the four of them will stay behind on earth to erase the entire existence of scrolls being there, and the rest of the scrolls can leave. So on the way back to earth though, their ship, of course, goes through the cosmic rays again, and Ben, who has already enough emotional damage.

He gets turned back into his normal self, but that doesn't last for very long. Just continuing to add to his overall trauma. But upon the arrival to Earth, that Fantastic four are surrounded by the police and the military. And we gotta talk about this for a second. We, this is some serious white privilege because they're surrounded.

And they're still being held for their crimes. But Reed convinces the chief that, Hey, why don't you come back to our apartment and I will prove to you that we are not guilty. In no other world will that ever happen, especially if you weren't white. So with that being said, the, he convinces them to go to their apartment.

They end up proving that they did not commit those crimes, that it was the aliens. And what they decide to do is that they get their name cleared, of course. And Reed says, well, we need to do something with these Skrulls. He hypnotizes them and tells them they're going to be cows and they're going to live out the rest of their life on earth as cows.

Now there is a a continuity error in this last little bit where there's only three Skrulls that get turned into cows, and we know that there was four. Now we are going to talk about this. Uh, just tap the mic. I'm sorry. Um, we are gonna talk about this fourth Skrull in a later issue at some point. I have no idea which one.

I believe it's in the sixties. I have not read it. It is going to be an interesting read and that's where we will find out about that fourth Skrull Now, this was a great issue, starts to get a little bit more wackier and I absolutely love that about these older, older Silver Age comics. Um, we get a huge introduction to the Skrulls.

Again, you can still kind of feel that Jack and Stan Lee are starting to figure out their kinda, how they're working together basically. So we are gonna get into issue three, but before we do, we have a word from our sponsors and our sponsor today is Cosmic Rays. And no, not the fudgy brownies with colorful candy coated chocolate pieces.

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Okay, that was a, that was a lovely sponsor, cosmic Rays. Go check them out. I get no kickback if you use that promo code. I hope you check it out though. Alright. From December of 1961, fantastic Four. Issue number three, the Menace of the Miracle Man, written by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby, inked by Sal Brodsky, colored by Stan Goldberg and lettered by Artie sek.

The Fantastic four are attending what appears to be a magic show featuring the miracle man. And even though our heroes don't seem to know who he is, he certainly points them out in front of everyone and says that his powers. Are way better than their puny powers. The miracle man then shows what he can do as he becomes a giant, he turns into a gas and even cuts through a large tree trunk with one finger.

This, of course, is more than enough to give our favorite thing a temper tantrum. He freaks out. And eventually punches the miracle man in the face, although it does absolutely nothing, which again sends Ben into a tizzy. Of course, after that, you would have to imagine the Fantastic four have to leave and we get a little glimpse of their new Fantastic Car, which was on the cover of this issue, which is basically their flying bathtub.

Um, and also we get a really cool cutaway, by the way of the Baxter Tower within this issue. So we get to see. Kind of, uh, a little cutaway diagram of all the different sections of the Baxter Tower for the Fantastic four. I actually really enjoy this cutaway. I think it's cool to see and like envision. So I know if you're listening to the audio podcast, you cannot obviously see this.

Go ahead and check that out, whether you have access to the comic on Marvel Unlimited physically, or a trade paperback, or you can come to the YouTube channel where this is also being put out, and you will see the cutaway diagram now. With all of this, we see that Reed basically becomes a, a somewhat of a fortune teller where he says The miracle man could be the person that could destroy the Fantastic Four, because we get a classic Zoom in on the face of an apparent good guy turned villain.

So we see Miracle Man and he basically, uh, is going to do a bad, bad thing. So we're back at the Baxter building. We take a little reprieve from that and we see Sue. That she has designed some costumes for the rest of the team. And as that is happening, Johnny is watching the premiere of the Monsters from Mars with a large monster display outside of the theater.

When he notices the Miracle Man do a hand gesture that makes the monster come to life. Reed then calls the police commissioner to let him know what's going on. And I hope he already knows because his troops were on the ground and uh, they had a bazooka and a submachine gun ready to attack that monster.

And not only that. The police commissioner had a handwritten note from The Miracle Man, which I quote says, I the miracle man declare war on the whole human race. I intend to conquer the earth. So the Fantastic Four hop into the fantastic car and they split up into four different directions so that they can find the monster faster.

Reed comes across him first and creates this net with his arms to stop the monster, but is spotted by the miracle man, which he picks up a loose brick from the street and immediately throws that reed and hits him in the head. I don't know about you, reader or listener, how many loose bricks you've seen on the street, but.

Never in my life. I don't think that I've seen one was like, let me throw it. Anyway, Reed is hurt and literally on the next panel, only minutes later, he's now in an office with the police commissioner getting berated for not doing a good enough job to stop this monster and miracle ma'am. Johnny Johnny is then able to catch up to the monster and light him on fire, and we learned that the, the monster was just plaster and wood, nothing more than that.

But the miracle man steals an atomic tank and drives away. But Sue was able to hop on the back without him noticing. So while Sue is on the chase and taking care of business, that of course leads us to see the rest of the three. Back at the Paxter Tower, they're getting a shower. Getting cleaned up and shaved, and who knows what else that they're doing.

I have no idea why they would do that or not Chase after Sue or the Miracle man. But anyway, so the Miracle Man took that atomic tank to a junkyard, and Sue is found by the Miracle Man's dog, and he then hypnotizes her to use the Ftaa Flare to get the rest of the team to find her. And when they show up, miracle Man is holding this enormous key, which of course turns into a machine gun.

He ends up shooting at Reed and the thing saves him. But then Miracle Man escapes in the atomic tank or train with Sue Johnny, Ben and Reed Hotwire car and chase after Miracle Man, but end up losing a tire on the way, which we see quite an inventive way that Reed uses his powers to become a wheel.

Johnny then flies ahead of the train, becomes so bright and blinds miracle man. And we learn that miracle man wasn't performing miracles at all. He was just hypnotizing everyone. Again, everyone apparently knows how to hypnotize. We've got Reed knowing how to hypnotize people. And now Miracle man, that's his whole shtick, hypnotizing people.

Anyway, Reed gives all the credit to Johnny for saving the day, and we have our third. Tantrum by the thing, this issue, because he doesn't think Johnny deserves any credit. And at this point Johnny says, you know what? I'm done with you. I'm tired of getting berated by the thing. I'm out and flies away this issue.

We are obviously getting. More and more wacky, and I absolutely love that about this. Again, you can still kinda see that they're trying to figure how things work between Stan and Jack for the most part, but I'm absolutely loving the way that we're building this up and it gets even wackier in the next issue.

Probably one of my favorites we're are talking about from February of 1962, fantastic four, issue number four, the coming of. Submariner Written by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby, inked By Sal Brodsky. Colored by Stan Goldberg and lettered by Artie Simek. This is the first Marvel age appearance of Namor the Submariner. But as we open up this issue, Johnny is gone, right? And we have Reed and Sue concerned about him and, well, Ben, he of course could care less and he sulks and throws a tantrum after Reed said it was his fault that Johnny is gone. I don't know about you, but knowing what we know regarding the thing now.

Where he is the, you know, ever love and blue-eyed thing and he has a lot of people love him. I just cannot stand the thing in these early fantastic four issues. He is basically like my 3-year-old daughter who just throws a tantrum and just destroys everything in her way while she's so upset. And that is exactly what the thing is.

And I just, obviously he's gonna change personality at some point. We'll see that I'm assuming. Uh, but man, I just cannot stand him. I cannot stand him. Anyway, the team goes looking for Johnny, and we get some really weird interactions from this team with the public. Sue, of course, goes invisible because she said that somehow will help her find Johnny better than Sue Storm.

That doesn't make any sense to me, but she doesn't really go along with being invisible because she goes into a diner, sits down and drinks a soda next to someone, and they notice that the soda is getting less and less and he, he gets freaked out. Um, Sue, if you're gonna be invisible, I would think you should probably try to like be a little bit more secretive anyway.

I don't know what Reed's doing. He literally grabs a guy riding on his motorcycle. He then also stops a helicopter and asks them like he's holding onto the helicopter. And he is. He's then asked them, where's Johnny? And then he also just pokes out of a train that's going along it's merry old way and asks those people like.

Clearly, Reed has no idea how to interact with people socially anyway. Ben actually has an actual hunch of where Johnny would be, and that is a car garage. But Ben, being Ben, you know, doesn't walk in and just be like, Hey, is Johnny here? Or just peers around? He walks. Through the wall, of course, he sees Johnny.

Now we're angry again because Johnny left the thing, then picks up a car and throws it, all of which, at some point, for whatever reason, Ben now turns back into his normal self. That's never explained. But while that's happening, Johnny then flies away. And he escapes to the Bowery, which wonderful word by Stan Lee, I had to actually look it up, which is a town, part of town typically known for cheap bars and hotels, typically consisting of working class and hopeless homeless people.

So there is your word of the day, you're, you're very welcome. Anyway, that's what we see pretty much in the following few pages, and Johnny picks up a comic of the Submariner who happens to be in the Bowery, but has amnesia and doesn't look like himself. He looks like a homeless man. So Johnny exposes the submariner after burning off his beard.

What a, what a wonderful and inventive way to do that. But this is the second time in this issue, which I think is pretty cool that they're kind of showcasing Johnny's powers and how precise he can be using his fire. The first one was in the car garage, um, and now this is the second one Anyway. After he does that, Namor still doesn't know that he's actually namor.

So Johnny picks him up and drops him into the sea where his clothes immediately blast off of his body. And of course, Namor still has his little speedo on and he remembers that he is namor the Submariner. So he goes back to Atlantis, but it is destroyed, which he blames on the humans. He then returns the land and says that Johnny has doomed all of the surface world.

Johnny then sets off the Fana. The Johnny then sets off the fantastiflare, and as the team finds, Johnny Namor is busy awakening a large giant from the ocean giganto. New York has to be evacuated and the thing has an idea of pulling a Jonah and going inside the monster, but with a nuclear bomb strapped to his back, which of course goes to plan.

And I can only imagine having a nuclear bomb go off inside of a monster named Giganto would also be terrible for New York City. Thank goodness people evacuated anyway. Mour is still around and he's about to summon more sea monsters with his little con shell, but Sue steals it, and when she turns visible again, Namor pretty much falls in love at first sight and proposes marriage.

To sue to save mankind. Sue actually agrees, however, the rest of the team says, well, we're not gonna let you do that. And Johnny creates this tornado which picks up namor and drops him back into the sea with Johnny once again. Saving the day. That is the end of issue four. And my goodness, let's talk about that is clearly the wackiest issue.

And I, again, I continue to love the wackiness that we're going to see. Um, and you can really start to feel that Stan and Jack are starting to kind of see how each other work with the, uh, see that they are starting to work a little bit better together at this point. And it's only going to continue to get better and better.

And man, we have, uh, some really great intros. Some villains that we've already seen in the MCU, right? Like we've got Amor, we've got the scrolls, we've got Moleman. Um, we haven't seen Miracle Man, although I believe he was mentioned at the end of Fantastic four first Steps. Regardless, we are going to be getting some really great introductions to more and vital characters.

In the next episode, we are gonna get Dr. Doom, a team up of Doom and Namor, and we're going to get another major villain and character that is vital to the Fantastic four. With that being said, if you're listening to this, take a second to rate the show, maybe write a review if you want to. Make sure you subscribe to it wherever you're listening to podcasts.

If you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you hit that like and subscribe button down below. Um, and make sure you hit that notification bell so you never miss another video and until the next video. Excels

man, I just really, the thing just annoys me this early thing. He, he's just gets so angry. All I can, whenever I read him, he's always getting angry. And he just reminds me of my daughter, like literally he might even be worse than my three-year-old daughter who still throws tantrums of course, but like, man, literally anything sets the thing off and I just can't, I can't stand it.