I wrote my first letter to a comic book when I was 7.
I’d read the third issue of a new comic called Fantastic Four, and told the editor that I liked it a lot, but wished the team members wouldn’t bicker and fight each other so much.
I wanted them to be more like the oh-so-gentlemanly Justice League.
Stan Lee and Flo Steinberg sent me a nice thank-you note in reply, blue and about the size of a business card as I recall. I wish I’d had sense enough to keep it.
And I’m glad Stan had sense enough to ignore my suggestion.
In Fantastic Four 1 (Nov. 1961), Lee had originally intended the Thing to be “the heavy” of the FF. Embittered by his monstrous appearance, the Thing was to be a loose cannon, always in danger of turning on his partners and society. I suspect that his status would’ve been similar to the hero-villain role that the Sub-Mariner played with the FF when he emerged from his amnesia.
But the Thing evolved into the most popular member of the FF, a lovable, howling “baby” in a surrogate family that also included a father figure, a mother figure and a teenager.
That worked, but I was sorry to see that he also evolved into a rock-like being, though. I preferred the original, spookier-looking, dinosaur-skinned Thing.
The idea of a monstrous hero-villain was too good to waste, however, and Lee and Jack Kirby didn’t. They used it as the springboard for their second Marvel title, The Incredible Hulk (May 1962).
In 1961, the company that would be Marvel was so marginal that Stan Lee had to write his house ads for new titles in the page margins. This one’s from Journey into Mystery 77 (Nov. 1961), underneath the disguised ghost who has just protected his spectral kin from discovery in I Don't Believe in ... Ghosts!
Maybe the phantom was off to get his copy.
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