April 1963: A Ghost in Space

The space race was on, and citizens had understandable apprehensions about what technology might bring. 

In December 1962, the month before Fantastic Four 13 went on the stands, the U.S.’s robotic probe Mariner 2 flew by Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from another planet. 

Two months before that, human civilization had stood right at the brink of destruction in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Fantastic Four 13 (April 1963) felt different, as if it were introducing permanent new elements in its storytelling. 

The members of Marvel’s first super-team were explorers from the start, so it seemed natural that their feature might open itself up into the infinite. And this issue piled on the wonders — a totalitarian mirror image of the FF, a dead civilization on the Moon, an omnipotent overseer from who knows where. 

It was as if the House of Ideas might never run out of them. 

For example, what might a Russian Fantastic Four be like during the Cold War?

Well, artistically working that theme, writer/editor Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby reasoned that a secretive, totalitarian society might produce a team consisting of a single ruthless genius and three apes that would be perfect to serve as his super-powered slaves.

“The Blue Area of the Moon, with an atmosphere all its own, is seen to house the remains of a long-dead civilization,” observed comics historian Don Alsafi. “Most notably, however, the FF first meet The Watcher, member of an immeasurably long-lived race that has been witnessing and recording the myriad pockets of the universe for eons, sworn never to interfere.”

With Steve Ditko inking Kirby, the art conveys a sense of real awe not often seen in comic books. 

After all, the Watcher might be regarded as a variation on the theme of the cosmic Guardians that writer John Broome had introduced to DC’s Green Lantern title. But where artist Gil Kane was elegantly lyrical, Kirby was provocatively portentous.