I decided it was about time to reread the classics. Fantastic Four #11, to be exact.
In this scene the FF are reading from the mailbag. (Ben has, once again, been temporarily turned human by one of Reed’s serums. It won’t last.)
What is Reed going to say, you wonder? Well, wait no longer, loyal Marvelite! Just click and read under the fold! ‘Nuff said!
Discuss. Possibly while sipping the beverage of your choice from a vintage Invisible Girl Slurpee cup. “I fight by the side of the Fantastic Four!”
In the rest of the issue the FF fight the Impossible Man, who is trying to troll the human race, by getting everyone to ignore him.
{ 16 comments }
John Jackson 05.07.17 at 1:19 pm
I actually remember this issue. In the panels that follow Reed recounts for the reader all the things Sue has done to help the team. Reed does. Because Sue can’t obviously speak for herself.
John Holbo 05.07.17 at 1:20 pm
Yep!
Sally Quinn 05.07.17 at 4:09 pm
Oooh. This contrasts so glaringly with Madame Assistant Undersecretary of Executive Administration (The Expanse), who doesn’t hesitate to speak for herself, “I f**ing saved this planet!”
perfectlyGoodInk 05.07.17 at 4:33 pm
Pretty snarky of them to turn reader critique of how the writers were not using the character to her full potential into an attack on the poor character herself.
Antoni Jaume 05.07.17 at 5:29 pm
Curious, I remember reading it when teenage or maybe twelve, and thinking that it was not really a good defence for women. Exceedingly passive as a life role, in my perception. In fact even before reading the words, I guessed it would be these specific comic images sequence.
Donald Pruden, Jr. a/k/a The Enemy Combatant 05.07.17 at 8:16 pm
Once again — we have the damsel in distress rescued by our male heroes! Two of them!
Three, if you include Lincoln who is called in as back-up.
@perfectlyGoodInk: excellent analysis, ‘yo! Quite the deflection, indeed. One could say that the writers took that more personally than Sue, given the numerous times she saved the guys’ butts.
Gareth Wilson 05.07.17 at 8:38 pm
I’ll grant you Sue wasn’t the best character at first. But giving her a new power she could use to violently attack people was a cheat. They should have made her a more active character, while keeping the same passive power.
Guy Harris 05.08.17 at 2:36 am
Gareth Wilson:
To be fair, the force field could also be used to defend. She may have gotten more aggressive with it over time.
And, yes, according to Wikipedia, at least, that showed up in issue 22, about a year after the issue being shown above. I don’t know whether they did that in response to letters like the ones being claimed to have been sent by readers.
Alan White 05.08.17 at 4:00 am
Loved my Marvel books way back when, but of course they reflected the pre-feminist and transitional views of women as important enough not to be ignored but still endowed with ironic Ralph-Ellison-like-powers and called “The Invisible Girl” as opposed to “The Human Torch” (instead of “Flame-Boy”–he was still a youngster after all). Then again the present popular DC series on TV right now is not “Superwoman”, despite the fact we have an obviously 20-something superhero and not a pre-teen. Still, even back then I had this strong reader’s view that Susan Storm was a full member of the team and really resented this idea that she was some kind of Fantastic Four fifth-wheel. But I was more of a Spidey fan–of a guy just a little older than I was as a high-schooler himself, yet still not called “Spider-Boy”. Must have been because he premiered in Amazing Adult Fantasies # 15.
And Ant-Man was still so-called even though he had the tiniest of hands. Talk about Tales to Astonish! Bad!
Gareth Wilson 05.08.17 at 6:20 am
The TV Supergirl was named that by a 50-year-old female journalist who still refers to herself as a girl, and strongly defended the name when Kara herself objected to it. That sounds reasonably plausible to me. Especially since the journalist probably just wanted the name to fit easily in a headline.
Ben 05.08.17 at 4:00 pm
Somewhere (I forget where) there’s an argument making the case for FF being the Great American Novel that rests primarily on Sue’s changing dynamic within the group
John Holbo 05.08.17 at 4:13 pm
“FF being the Great American Novel that rests primarily on Sue’s changing dynamic within the group”
I would read that novel. Sadly, I don’t believe it’s been written. I do feel that the parody value of Sue Storm has not yet been fully exploited in the vast multiverse of superhero parodies out there. She’s a unique character. This weird mix of ‘harrumph, I’m going shopping!’ and ‘oh, Reed, I’m so frightened’ and a couple other notes she hits.
Guy Harris 05.08.17 at 5:08 pm
Ben:
Would this be it?
Ben 05.08.17 at 9:47 pm
Yuhp! Have to admire that guy’s work ethic, if not his arguments or web design aesthetic
John Holbo 05.09.17 at 12:45 am
Great Caesar’s Ghost, that’s a website!
Alan White 05.09.17 at 2:24 am
Thank you Guy Harris! Mr. Tolworthy’s site is nothing less than a tribute to the kind of profound passion about extended narrative that is almost unheard of these days. The question of its coherence in reflecting the march of the last few decades is undercut by the incoherence of that march itself. Honestly, did anyone seriously think just twelve months ago that the intellectually dinged sexual-assaulting child-tyrant Trump would be President? Now THAT is profound incoherence that won’t translate easily into any comic book worth a damn.
I have to say that Marvel books were generally a formative positive stimulation for me, with realistically flawed but virtuously inclined characters, stories scientifically grounded in that rapidly moving technological milieu, and as socially progressive as the times allowed. I may be near retirement, but in some ways I still inhabit the Marvel universe of my childhood by longing for its big-picture idealism.
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