Comic Book Review – Fantastic Four Epic Collection: The Master Plan of Doctor Doom

Fantastic Four Epic Collection: The Master Plan of Doctor Doom (2017)
Reprints Fantastic Four #19-32, Annual #1-2
Written by Stan Lee
Art by Jack Kirby

This collection continues laying the foundation of what the Marvel Universe would become. When Fantastic Four #19 was published in July of 1963, what did the rest of the Marvel Comics Universe look like? Amazing Spider-Man #5 just dropped, which pits him against Doctor Doom. Strange Tales spotlights the solo adventures of the Human Torch, with Doctor Strange making his debut as a back-up feature. Tales of Suspense is just a few issues into its Iron Man run, and he’s facing off against the Crimson Dynamo. Journey Into Mystery is about the ongoing adventures of The Mighty Thor. Nick Fury’s World War II-era stories are being told in his comic. Tales to Astonish continues its run of Ant-Man & The Wasp. The Avengers and The X-Men had their first issue debuts in July 1963. Beyond that, Marvel is still publishing plenty of romance and Western books from Millie the Model to Patsy Walker, The Rawhide Kid and The Two-Gun Kid. Captain America is still on ice somewhere in the Arctic Circle. In this next phase of Marvel, the cohesive shared universe begins to become a thing, and the Fantastic Four binds it all together.

The collection opens with Fantastic Four Annual #1, which positioned these yearly over-sized issues as a showcase for larger stories that the monthlies told. This 72-pager is about Namor sending Atlantis’s forces into a war with the surface world. The pencils by Kirby here have a grandeur and scope we haven’t gotten quite before; you can tell he’s excited to create & illustrate the alien designs of the Atlantean forces. The Four are on a cruise ship in the Atlantic when the attack goes down, and Namor takes them prisoner. The bizarre history of the ancient Atlanteans (Homo Mermanus) is told, and we get introduced to two allies turned foes of Namor’s, Dorma and Krang. A back-up story retells Spider-Man’s first meeting with the Four from their perspective. It was from his in the pages of his first issue. Spidey is also given a little corner on the cover, which tells us something. While The Fantastic Four was the premiere book in the Marvel line then, Stan Lee was aware of how quickly Spider-Man was gaining popularity. It will be soon that the wall-crawler gets guest spots all over the line to boost sales of lower-selling books.

Fantastic Four #19 sends the team back to ancient Egypt, where they encounter Rama-Tut. He’s a pharaoh revealed to be a time traveler from the distant future using the technology of his era to stand in for magic in the past. The Four go back in search of what appears to be a cure for blindness shown in the hieroglyphics, an attempt to help Alicia Masters have her sight restored. Rama-Tut’s origin shows him as some generic criminal from the future, but decades of retconning that follow make him a version of Kang the Conqueror and also possibly a relative of Reed Richards?

Issue 20 introduces The Molecule Man, a nameless laborer at the Acme Atomics Corporation blasted with atomic rays. While in our reality, this would just give you cancer and kill you, in the Marvel Universe, he is granted the ability to alter matter on the molecular level. This is an insanely overpowered ability, but because of the nature of these early stories, it doesn’t quite get explored to its full extent. I also want to say that Kirby’s design for Molecule Man is genuinely horrific. His lips are serrated like a knife, and it is a very unsettling face to have on your villain, which means it’s perfect.

Issue 21 has Nick Fury guest-starring, apparently old Army buddies with Reed. Fury needs help with the Hate-Monger, a masked public figure using populism to build up hatred in the country. He’s dressed like a purple KKK member, and when the mask is pulled off… it’s Adolf Hitler! Or a clone or double; the comic doesn’t really specify. My favorite part about this story is the comical idea that the CIA would be actively fighting against fascism in the United States and Central America rather than actively propping it up, which is how history actually played out. A weird melange of jingoistic rah-rah Americanism is being used to counter fascist rhetoric, which is entirely incoherent. I guess Lee & Kirby were the sorts that thought fascism and communism were the same things. Not surprised.

Issue 22 sees the return of the Mole Man. Issue 23 is another confrontation with Doctor Doom that ends with the villain seemingly defeated in a way he couldn’t escape…but we know better. I wasn’t a big fan of issue 24, where the Four tangle with what is a giant alien toddler. It feels like an incredibly overdone story in this era in all sorts of media. 

The Four tangle with the Hulk again in the pages of issue 25. It should be noted that the Hulk was a character struggling to find a place for himself in the Marvel Universe. His own series was canceled with its sixth issue in March 1963. He would be put on the Avengers when they debuted in July 1963, but by issue three was a foe rather than a friend. It would be October 1964 before he found a solid place as one of two regular features in Tales to Astonish. With issue 102, Astonish was retitled to the Incredible Hulk and finally became a regular fixture. The Hulk story continues into FF #26, where the Avengers guest star helping to fight the green giant. While Kirby is a deservedly beloved artist, his attempts to draw Hulk in these issues are awful. He is just one of those characters I don’t think Kirby knew what to do with. It should also be remembered that including the Avengers in this storyline was to try and boost sales of their book. The Fantastic Four was where you brought a character to get more readers interested in them.

That trend continues with issue 27, where Namor is back to fight the four again, but this time they get help from Doctor Strange. Strange only appears in his astral form, though. Most of the comic centers on the love triangle between Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, and Namor. In his editorial voice, Lee calls out complaints from fans who found Sue Storm to be a fairly pointless character in that she doesn’t do much other than disappear. He argues that she’s much more than that, but for a long while, she really wasn’t. It’s this issue where they push the development of her powers into creating invisible force fields around herself and others, a sort of low-level telekinesis. I also wondered why Reed wouldn’t say he loved her already other than to drag out the drama.

Issue 28 is another guest-star issue where the Four team up with the X-Men. They are also fighting a villain team-up, with The Mad Thinker and The Puppet Master joining forces. I reviewed the entirety of the first run of the X-Men on this site, and they are some of the most boring Marvel stories I have ever read. They were trying to be a combination of the Fantastic Four with the personal drama of Spider-Man while also doing their own thing, and it just never worked for me. By not working to find their own voice, handicapped by Stan Lee’s insistence on scripting every Marvel book, it all fell flat. Thank the gods for Chris Claremont.

Issue 29 sees the return of the Red Ghost, but the highlight of that one is its focus on The Thing. The best parts of many of these stories are the interpersonal dynamics between the family. They are also fairly repetitive, with some occasional growth. It is fun to watch The Thing and Torch constantly at each other’s throats. Issue 30 debuts the sorcery-based villain Diablo who continues to pop up occasionally but I never really thought worked in the pages of the Fantastic Four. The art by Kirby here is excellent, though; he draws some great Gothic castles and classic movie monster imagery, which makes it odd that his rendition of Hulk is so awkward-looking.

The gold at the end of the rainbow is Fantastic Four Annual #2, the best story in this collection. It is a massive and detailed telling of the origin of Doctor Doom. This was my first time reading it, and I imagine this was the moment Doom became a character people wanted to see a lot of. This is one of the best comic book origin stories ever told, beginning with Victor Von Doom as a child, introducing Latveria, and establishing how Doom became the ruler of this land. This is paired with a new story of the Four going up against Doom and Rama-Tut. The big reveal here is that Rama-Tut may be Doom from the future, having his mind erased. Doom puts the Four through the wringer in his castle full of traps and then appears to defeat his enemies in their own headquarters. This collection closes with issue 31 (The Mole Man resurfaces & another Avengers team-up) and issue 32, where the Four fight the Invincible Man, whose identity I guessed a couple pages into him showing up. That issue also introduces Sue & Johnny’s dad, which lets us go even deeper with the characters. Again, it’s the kind of story Marvel was great at telling.

Reading these older comics is like watching an athlete who is a master of the fundamentals. They may not wow you at every turn, but they are solid in their performance. When they do display excellence, it is a really amazing experience. Knowing my comics history as I do, I know it is the next batch of issues where Lee & Kirby hit their mark and take the Four to a new level of storytelling. We will get to that in time, but this is where we leave the first family of Marvel comics.