Peak Marvel? In 1964, I’d have said that happened when Fantastic Four 25 hit the newsstands in January.
Looking back now, I wasn’t wrong.
I find it hard to describe just how exciting that issue and the subsequent one were to readers. The sheer convergence of storylines felt like a breakthrough in suspenseful superhero melodrama by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby.
In ordinary comics, you knew that the headline hero would win and the villain would lose. That’s what the villains were there for, after all. But here you had two protagonists — the Thing and the Hulk — who’d each starred in their own titles. Who could predict the outcome of a fight like that?
The Fantastic Four had fought the Hulk before, back in issue 12 (March 1963). But this time three members of the team were hors de combat, and the Thing was left to carry on protecting Manhattan on his own.
The odds were long. Readers had been clamoring for a matchup between Marvel’s two super-strong superstars, but face-to-face, the Thing was clearly smaller and weaker.
And although he’d clearly gone bad, readers still had sympathy for the tortured Hulk. Reader interest kept getting ratcheted up.
So how do you top a book-length slugfest between the Thing and the Hulk? By dragging in Marvel’s new superhero team, the Avengers, for a massive melee in the next issue.
“When (the FF) attempt to stop the Green Goliath, he makes mincemeat out of them, leaving only the Thing left to continue the battle,” recalled comics historian Dan Greenfield. “But the Hulk’s former teammates, the Avengers, have been on his trail as well. However they don’t mesh well with the FF and a melee ensues — allowing the Hulk to escape. Stan’s scripts do well to juggle the multiple characters and their distinct personalities.”
That splash panel — with a massive, seemingly unbeatable Hulk looming over the plucky-but-outmatched Thing — lives vividly in my memory to this day.
