Boy, will you look at that. Beautiful, no? Scans of covers and splash pages are going to be the exception in this weblog (except for books where the only Kirby art is the cover), since I think the heart of Kirby's work lies in the actual panel-to-panel story-telling, and because you can find scans of covers all over the place. But this cover is a particular favourite.
Figure it's best to start with one of the best, FANTASTIC FOUR #51. Inked by Joe Sinnott (cover and story), and right in the heart of the classic run of the book where in one year you saw Kirby introduce the Inhumans, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, the Black Panther, the Negative Zone and more.
This is considered by some to be the best of that run. I'd agree with them.
This is very much the ultimate Ben Grimm story, where we look into his relationship with the team and with Alicia, and his feelings about being the Thing. Ben is always the most fascinating member of the team, as well as the most visually interesting, so any story with a lot of Ben is going to be a good one.
Published June 1966
2 comments:
A lot of the other stories in the Marvel Masterworks FF volume that reprints this story aren't reproduced well, but thankfully this one looks great; which is good news for me, since it's the mai reason I bought the volume. I read it once in some hardcover comics anthology and I really do agree, it's one of Lee and Kirby's best.
I read this particular comic along with the Galactus trilogy in the same fench softcover edition (what we call here "Album"). Can you imagine how it is like to read issue 48 to 51 in a row at age 10 or 11? I fell in love with Kirby - I still have chicken skin just thinking of it - And "This Man, This monster" achieved what I believed couldn't be done. It somehow single handed outmatched that previous out of scale trilogy! Simply magic.
Thanks Jack,
Pascal.
Post a Comment