Suggestions From The Long Box- Fantastic Four #2 (1962)

I've got a storage space filled with nothing but comic boxes. When I'm bored out of my skull, or I just want to read something I haven't read in a while, I reach into one of those long boxes and pull out a random comic. This week, I pulled out an oldie but a goodie. The book I'm about to suggest to you is, in my honest opinion, proof that Stan Lee has a twisted sense of justice.

The book I pulled was the classic Fantastic Four #2. In 1962, Fantastic Four was the newest thing. Issue #1 was an out-of-this-world origin story and people loved it, but readers still didn't know what to expect from the fantastic first family of super heroes. Issue #2 introduced the troublesome Skrulls, taking the forms of Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben, and causing all kinds of chaos and disorder. Right away, the Fantastic Four was blamed and they had to go into hiding.

There was something exciting about Jack Kirby's artwork on old issues of Fantastic Four. Ben Grimm as the Thing was more monstrous than he is in modern comics. He had less a humanoid shape and looked more like an orange clump of living earth grimacing at its own pain and misfortune. Kirby's Skrulls were also monstrous. They were green toad-like creatures with wide open eyes and long pointed ears and could change shape into anything they desired. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had yet again created some wonderful monsters the comic reading world would love forever.

When I finished reading Fantastic Four #2, I caught myself laughing at the thought that the heroes were actually monsters as well as the alien invaders. Forget about the Thing's hideous rocky form or the Human Torch's fiery body. When the FF finally caught the alien pests, rather than sending them back home to form a larger invading army, Reed Richards forced them to take the shape of dairy cows and hypnotized them into believing that they really were grass munching bovine. Now that's a monstrous thing to do. That punishment continued to have an impact on the Marvel Universe for decades to come. It's also the reason I love this book so much.

I am suggesting this book for any Fantastic Four or Stan Lee and Jack Kirby fan, or any fan of classic comics. Very well written, classically illustrated, and colored in that Marvel four color style. Fantastic Four #2 is the first attempt of an advertising campaign for “happy cows.”