Monday, October 22, 2007

Certain Common Themes in the early Fantastic Four

For the past few months I've been reading old Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Fantastic Four comic books to my daughter. I was glad to share one of the crown jewels of American literature with Gwendolyn but I noticed certain, shall I say, recurrent themes in these stories. In order to make sure I wasn't just imagining them I decided to make a chart of how often certain things occured. Please click on the chart below, it's a bit easier to read that way.
We can see how the classic Jack Kirby splash page of a crazy Reed Richards machine doesn't show up for quite awhile. Notice how the early themes of Ben transforming back to human form and his fights with Johnny slowly fade away. Reed is always there to catch a falling Human Torch until the FF's change of direction with issue #30. And Stan and Jack never got tired of a final panel of the whole team or the word "Bah!"

Well, enjoy. God know I wasted plenty of time on this.

2 comments:

Marie Javins said...

Maybe you should consult for my comic book company.

Brett said...

I love working in comics! But I just gave you a road map to success and immortality.