FANTASTIC FOUR #3 (1961)
by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby
Now the villain retrospective is fully into the Marvel age. I won’t be covering many of the more famous villains, because most of them are already in a recognizable form… I’ll mostly focus on the oddballs. And the Miracle Man is definitely an oddball for the earliest Fantastic Four villains.
Issue #1 had Mole Man, #2 had the alien Skrulls, while #4 will re-introduce Namor and obviously #5 will have Doctor Doom.
So Miracle Man being as early as #3 is… weird.
Almost as weird as the Human Torch having TWO left hands on the cover.
We begin with the Fantastic Four being in the audience for Miracle Man’s magician act.
Look how dorky Johnny Storm was!!!
Miracle Man is shown to be incredibly overpowered.
Although since this is VERY early in the team’s career it’s not that hard to be more powerful.
If THAT gets the Thing mad, just wait until he meets the Hulk or Thor.
This is also the first appearance of the first Fantasticar, affectionately known as the “flying bathtub” for obvious reasons…
…as well as the first diagram of the Baxter Building. I always loved these!
Crazy to think Reed Richards has a functioning ICBM in New York City. At the height of the Cold War too!!!
It was the standard at the time to divide stories into sub-chapters (not just at Marvel), something I never really understood.
It’s a chance for Kirby to go crazy on his monster designs, illustrating a movie prop. Also note the topical presence of the Bijou Theater, which I’ve seen referenced as the one demolished in 1982 (don’t quote me on that).
Adding to the various reasons this is a milestone issue, it’s the first time the Fantastic Four get their costumes!!!
Notice Susan’s costume has heels; she’ll drop those soon enough (I never even noticed she had heels until this review). The Thing’s costume won’t even make it until the end of THIS story.
Miracle Man is spotted by the cameras near the theater, so when the prop monster comes alive (and then promptly vanishes) it makes sense for them to think he’s the bad guy… Mole Man was considered dead at this point, and the Skrulls were turned into cows (don’t ask).
For a stage performer you’d think Miracle Man would be more theatrical announcing his plans for world domination.
The Thing not being as strong as he’ll eventually become is one thing. But Mr. Fantastic being taken down by a brick is just wrong.
The rest of the team tries to tackle the monster. Jack Kirby isn’t at his best in these early stories, but just look at that perspective! That’s great stuff!
Told you the suit would not survive.
The Human Torch is the only hero to do something legitimately cool…
…but only up to a point. Also if this was Strange Tales I’ll bet that would be liquid asbestos.
Will the Invisible Girl get to do something useful this issue?
Of course not. She won’t be useful until she gets her force field.
While she was being useless, the rest of the Fantastic Four… try not to be shocked… got into a fight and one of the members left.
Having hypnotized Invisible Girl into calling her team, Miracle Man threatens the Fantastic Two with… a giant key.
Well it’s just a machine gun, but… WHY!? Even leaving aside the idea of a gun being able to hurt the Thing, couldn’t he just hypnotize them too!?
Case in point: while the Thing feels the bullet, it’s not like this was going to stop him.
Miracle Man escapes taking Invisible Girl hostage (COME ON!!!), and since this is taking place at an exhibition it’s time for something we rarely get to see: a Fantastic Four race scene.
In fact it might just be the ONLY Fantastic Four race scene.
Which is a shame because it’s a lot of fun. Although notice Reed Richards cannot shut up even when he’s a tire!!!
They catch up with Miracle Man and force him to snap Invisible Girl out of her hypnotic stage.
And of course it turns out that Miracle Man couldn’t possibly be THAT powerful, otherwise why would ne need to steal in the first place?
Still doesn’t explain the giant key. WTF was up with that!?
And so we end with the Human Torch leaving the team. It’s very rarely mentioned, but THIS is the reason why he bumps into Namor the very next issue.
Bonus: in addition to having the first use of costumes and the flying bathtub, this is also majorly important because it’s the very first Marvel letters page!
The letters page is not afraid to publish criticism…
…and poke fun at themselves. Sol Brodksy, who inked this issue (and will later become a Marvel executive) has a letter which is actually an advertisement for the other comics being published.
As you see, these early letters are addressed to “the Editor”; in the future they will address Stan Lee directly. He points out from the very beginning that the letters are quite different from those published at DC Comics, and he’s mostly right.
He will also strike a far more friendly tone with the answers, whereas at DC Mort Weisinger was almost adversarial in his responses.
Historical significance: 9/10
Entirely disconnected from of Miracle Man, obviously.
Silver Age-ness: 6/10
Even on the Marvel scale and this early, it’s pretty low.
Does it stand the test of time? 6/10
This is an extremely tough call. Lee & Kirby are still trying to see what fits and what doesn’t, and the Fantastic Four have a long way to go. It’s still a very enjoyable story, the villain’s gimmick is not entirely predictable (he obviously isn’t really near-omnipotent, but he could’ve had legitimate magic powers) and the adversarial dynamic between heroes still holds up… but there are problems.
Invisible Girl is entirely useless, both the Human Torch and the Thing come up as way too fickle, and despite his potential… Miracle Man is still kind of lame, isn’t he?
How close is this to the modern character? 7/10
Miracle Man’s claim to fame is being a super-early Fantastic Four villain… and even then, even calling him a B-list villain would be overstating his importance.
He has a cool name, but even as far as super-hypnotists go he’s not particularly impressive.
His original look didn’t help, considering how generic it was. He did get a slight improvement in his following appearance, but nothing to make him stand out.
He even got real magical powers, but that ALSO makes him stand out less!!!
That’s far from his worst costume, though. Just look at his appearances against Hellstrom!!!
Like a lot of D-list villains, he was unceremoniously killed by the Scourge in 1985.
And he stayed dead until his resurrection in 2009, because obviously we couldn’t just drop this loser.
