The World's Greatest Comic Magazine! By Jack Kirby!

Now that I've pretty much completed my collection of Steve Ditko's The Amazing Spider-Man, I'm going to focus my attention on Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four. I have a long way to go on this one, since Kirby wrote and illustrated a tad over 100 issues of FF. He created it in 1961 and wrote and penciled every single issue until #101, and one more issue after that. The Fantastic Four was his first stab at creating a superhero team for the nascent Marvel Comics. Later, he would create the Avengers and the X-Men, but that first time out of the gate he concocted the FF.

It is true that Kirby did not create the Human Torch. The teenaged hothead alter-ego of Johnny Storm was his, but the super powered hero was the brainchild of Carl Burgos. But, at that time, Martin Goodman wanted to exercise his claim on the character and so it's been said that he sent down word (through his nephew, the editor) that Kirby should include a character with the name "Human Torch". This Kirby did, teaming him with the learned Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic--akin to Plastic Man in abilities), Susan Storm (brother to Johnny Storm whose powers would cause her to be named the Invisible Girl), and Benjamin J. Grimm (also known as the Thing).

Kirby laid out a unique superhero team with the Fantastic Four. These guys were no Justice League of America. They were combative and argumentative and were alive with personal problems and faults. This was something new, and it was all Kirby.

I'm going to have a good time filling in the gaps in my collection.

America was really changing around Kirby as he wrote the stories for his comics. This tale was one of the last he would pen in his old style of writing. He was beginning to open up to the idea of the anti-hero and the outsider, and to the theme of revolution. Just around the corner was a rising tide that Kirby would incorporate into his Marvel Universe.

Kirby was hitting his stride as a power to be reckoned with in modern comics. Here he was introducing new characters at a tremendous pace. Alone, he was creating the basis for a company that became the powerhouse for the entire comic book industry. Nobody could compare to Kirby for sheer imaginative reach and his explosion of ingenuity and energy. The Inhumans would become an integral part of the Fantastic Four series for decades to come.