FANTASTIC FOUR, Vol. 1, No. 39 (Lee / Kirby; Marvel, 1965)

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Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review / memory / whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box09): Of all the "greats" in comics, Lee and Kirby's FANTASTIC FOUR (or, Kirby’s FANTASTIC FOUR with Stan Lee dialogue) has been something of a blindspot for the entirety of my collecting days and decades: I've read an issue here and there – the earliest issues, the greatest of the greats, No. 51 (This Man, This Monster), among others – and, in each case, doing so reminds me a.) how good the Fantastic Four can be, and, b.) to just buy that omnibus.

The more I've reacquainted myself with Marvel's 1960s output the more it's become clear that there are really only a handful of stories being told – the hero is a coward!? the hero(es) lose their powers! the hero quits!? the heroes fight each other! the heroes team up! the hero's life outside the mask impedes on the life in the mask! among others – under an overarching villain-of-the-month plot (the "filler" issues being largely nothing more than a villain-of-the-month): the brilliance of 1960s Marvel was in their ability to stack and transpose these plots to different characters and combinations of characters while keeping everything within the parameters of each character (even though everyone sounds like Stan Lee, FELLA! PAL!, the overlording Jobs in a bullpen of genius Wozniaks) and the nascent Marvel Universe as a whole: in this case, the FF lose their powers and team up with Daredevil (who had popped in to help the FF with their wills) to defeat Doctor Doom who, by the end of this issue (I've also got issue 40 in the boxes, so I might cheat and read ahead) has, after being de-hypnotized by a Latverian court hypnotist, learned the truth and is ready to (in what I'm sure will be his undoing) toy with the powerless FF before slaying them all once and for all and ensuring the world knows who did said slaying; a tree falling in the forest Doom is not.

While I wouldn't consider this to be among the greatest of the great FF adventures, it's nonetheless an idea-packed explosion of creation and drama that sings and thrills as only mid-60s Marvel could do. Will it spur me to finally devour the rest of the Lee / Kirby run? In theory, it absolutely should. In practice? TBD.

braingarden

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Efforts continue to free myself from the self-inflicted / half-a-lifetime prison of timers and timeblocks, relics of a former perceived need and identity piñata of inflexibility, and allow myself to work / write / make much as my wife toils in her garden for all hours of the summer day: by default. Make it, working / writing / making, like breath in meditation: it's what I do first thing, what I return to, my inhales, my exhales, one through ten, etc etc (note: I quit meditating long ago and have found that, since I started this process of time-freeing and making doing my work the default activity for the day, I no longer have a little voice telling me to consider meditating again).

Happiest when I spend my time doing things that are actually in my control because, as I've slowly learned, precious little is.

A long ways to go to parole myself from the mental constraints that will, undoubtedly endeavor to fuck me up but, on the best days, the days of assigning guilt for a failure to attain a set number of hours are over, what I do being nothing special – only what I do.

Superman Day at the World’s Fair, 03 july 1940

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Ray Middleton makes his debut as the first live action Superman (yes, yes, I know, see my notes below) on 03 July, 1940, appearing at +/- 1:20 in the video below. You can also spot DC owner Harry Donenfeld riding an elephant at 1:04 and Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel with DC co-founder Jack Liebowitz at 2:25.

As I seem to be in a “comment on an ages-old mystery” mood today, I’ll wade into the 83-year-old “was it Middleton or someone else in the suit” controversy and, while I have no conclusive evidence, I’m going with it being Middleton in the Super-suit: especially in the video, the facial structure /length looks similar to the picture of Middleton (Middleton is on the right in the second photo (source) below, taken the same day) and the nose bears a striking resemblance in both photographs below. And, while Superman’s hair is parted on the opposite side as Middleton’s, shifting the part from one side to the other could (again, I’ve no conclusive evidence, only a practical knowledge of how stage actors work) part of a performative effort to obfuscate Superman’s “secret identity,” given that Middleton doesn’t wear glasses and organizers would, indeed, want to give the kids a great show.

Nevermind that no one, to my knowledge, has come forward in the 83 years since that day to claim that it was them in the super-suit, something that seems far more of a stretch than an actor puffing up his chest and parting his hair in a different direction for a one-day-only performance.

That being said, I’m happy to be proven wrong and one day learn the real identity of the unknown and uncredited Superman, but we’ll consider these to be my two “it’s Middleton” cents thrown into the pot. Either way, what wonderful footage.