FANTASTIC FOUR #5 (1962) by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
Let’s look at the cover.
Is it a classic? I don’t know. It doesn’t really stand out from the standards of the time and a couple of things have always bothered me.
First, what’s up with the coloring of Doctor Doom?
Second, what’s up with whatever pose the Thing is doing?
But you have to love Mister Fantastic talking about how he doesn’t have air to breathe, while still talking.
We open on a page that pretty much tells you most of what you really need to know about Doom: playing chess with other people and talking to himself, about himself.
His mask still needs some work, though, and why doesn’t Doctor Doom have a pet vulture anymore?
Check out his taste in books: the surprisingly vague “Demons” and the surprisingly specific “Science and sorcery”.
After this teaser we open in New York City, of course because this is Marvel, at the Baxter Building where the Human Torch is reading… a Hulk comic?
I’d make a joke about Marvel having their shared universe this early, but the Thing calls the Hulk “a comic book monster”… weird.
Then the lights go out and man, what a beautiful panel.
Jack Kirby was the master of bombastic action and larger-than-life scenes, but he could pull off moody panels when he needed to.
Of course it’s not just a blackout: someone just traps the entire building in a net and it’s none other than Doctor Doom himself, piloting a… is that a helicopter with a shark face? Maybe that’s what the Fox movies were lacking.
Mister Fantastic recognizes him by his voice, though I question how many people named “Doom” he actually knows, and we get the good doctor’s origin story. It will eventually be expanded into probably one of the most complex origin stories for a supervillain, but you have to love how fast Silver Age comics could get all the information out: we only need five panels for the origin!
Sure there’s tons of stuff they won’t tell until future issues, but you get: black magic, a forbidden science experiment and his disfigurement.
The Fantastic Four try to escape, but the net is electrified.
Doctor Doom asks the Invisible Girl to surrender herself as a hostage, though I’m not sure why, since he pretty much has the entire team hostage at this moment.
They fly to his castle, which we’ll eventually learn is not in his home country of Latveria but on the mountains of the state of New York… yes in Marvel Comics there’s an European castle there, just go with it…
And he makes his demands while threatening the team with his pet tiger.
This panel is cool but it raises so many questions.
One, why doesn’t Doctor Doom have a pet tiger anymore?
Two, what is the tiger going to do to a guy who controls fire?
Three, what’s it going to do to the Thing?
Four, what’s it going to do to Mister Fantastic?
Five, come on, that’s the best way to keep the Invisible Girl hostage? Sigh.
But the crazy has just started: Doctor Doom reveals that he’s created a time machine and he wants to send the Fantastic Four back in time to steal a treasure from Blackbeard
Some villains take years before they come up with insanely off-the-wall plans; Doctor Doom’s FIRST plan is to use a time machine to steal magical treasure from pirates.
They agree, because the last Pirates of the Caribbean movies haven’t been invented yet, and we have the first glimpse of one of Doom’s signature traits: he will always keep his word.
This is also of course the first appearance of Doom’s time platform, which is shown as just a big yellow panel.
Once in the past they decide to disguise themselves and conveniently find a couple of pirates that have stolen a bunch of clothes.
Mister Fantastic even disguises the Thing with an eyepatch and… fake beard and fake hair? Are we sure they stole from pirates and not from cosplayers?
Anyway they get drugged almost immediately by other pirates, giving us this great page. The Fantastic Four… I mean Three escape pretty quickly.
Love the panel with Mister Fantastic punching a pirate.
As insane as this premise is, who wouldn’t watch a Fantastic Four reboot where they’re fighting pirates?
And where the Thing is hailed as Blackbeard?
No, seriously, it turns out that he IS Blackbeard: this time travel stuff has apparently inspired the legend. And they even find the treasure that Doctor Doom wanted!
What’s more, Mister Fantastic decides to do something that Doctor Doom will do countless times in the future: keep his word to the letter, fulfilling the promise to deliver the treasure chest but not the treasure it contains.
You’d think this would be the moment to return to the present, but since this is the Silver Age there’s time for another plot: the Thing deciding to stay in the past, since the pirates don’t consider him a freak and actually respect him.
He orders his men to take the Fantastic Four… I mean Fantastic Two prisoners, they actually DO (and it’s surprisingly easy!)
BUT there’s suddenly a tornado that throws them out of the ship!
If it sounds like I’m skipping, I’m really not: this issue does not waste any time!
Speaking of time, Doctor Doom decides that the 48 hours he gave the heroes before they could return have passed, and pulls them back into the present. I’m not so sure they’ve been in the past for so long, but then again I have no idea how Doom would be able to tell, so whatever.
And the Time Platform is shown working like it will in all future issues: it’s certainly a unique design.
Doom is ready to open the chest, revealing that the treasure would’ve made him invincible.
The Torch wonders if Namor the Sub-Mariner will ever find the treasure, which you’d think would come up in the next issues. While we’ll meet Namor in Doom’s next appearance, as far as I know the treasure has never been discussed again since 1962.
(EDIT: it was, in a Dazzler issue of all places!!!)
Doom finds he’s been tricked and we get yet another Doom first: his first Doombot!
He’s reenacting the cover, but the Invisible Girl FINALLY does something useful and causes an explosion which takes Doom out for a while.
The heroes escape from the fortress, with the Human Torch using his heat to… boil the water… into “a glass-like substance”.
Okay he actually says “boil the water away” and fuse the ground, but I swear I read that he was boiling the water into glass.
He surrounds the castle with fire, but Doctor Doom manages to escape with his jet-pack.
And so we end the issue with the Fantastic Four winning the battle but not the war: Doom’s plan has been foiled, but they haven’t put a finger on him. Expect to see quite a lot of that, guys.
There’s a lot to unpack here. Doctor Doom isn’t the complex villain he will become, but he’s immediately set apart from the standard bad guy of the time: he’s still more Doctor Evil than Darth Vader, and yet he’s already a larger-than-life menace that keeps the heroes on their toes the entire time.
He’s a disfigured black magic evil scientist with a time machine and robots, who wants to take over the world and always keeps his word. What more do you want? A pet vulture, of course.
Historical significance: 8/10
First appearance of Doctor Doom and his time machine. Pretty much nothing else from the story will be used again… except some minor uses for the castle in America. Which is sad: no more Doom tiger, Doom vulture or Doom shark-faced helicopter.
Doom significance: 7/10
For the first time he faces Reed after he becomes Doctor Doom, you’d expect a more significant interaction. Sadly, they barely talk to each other.
Silver Age-ness: 9/10
Oh boy. “Reed’s friend from university sends the Fantastic Four back in time to steal a magic pirate treasure. He threatens the team with robots and his pet tiger” is almost peak Silver Age-ness for Marvel.
Does it stand the test of time? 5/10
Like I said, Doom is still a pretty straightforward villain and the plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Keeping the Invisible Girl hostage while the rest of the team goes on an adventure hasn’t aged particularly well.
It was a Doombot all along: For the first time ever!
Doom always keeps his word: We’re not told explicitly, but Reed expects he will. I’m still counting it.
Take over the world: Doom’s first attempt… sort of. He wants to become invincible and… and that’s it. I’m counting it, but just barely.
Destroy the FF: Surprisingly avoided! Doom doesn’t care much for the team, he just wants Blackbeard’s treasure.
Crazy tech: In addition to the quintessential Doom creations, the time machine and the Doombots, we get an electrified net that can knock out the Thing, a jetpack and of course the star of this issue: the shark-faced helicopter.
