Some history of an early Fantastic Four issue's story and of Lee/Kirby, that may have unfortunately been exploited for political propaganda

A writer for City News in Canberra, Australia, tells about the 51st issue of Fantastic Four, but there's suggestions this item was written as a stealth political statement. First, here's something he tells about team leader Mr. Fantastic:

The thing is, nestled among those treasures, and appearing in Australian newsagencies in early August 1966, at exactly the same time I first appeared too, was the little known number 51.

It’s worth a small fraction of the others and is a lame and ordinary 20-page story introducing a villain (the evil scientist Ricardo Jones) who was so uninteresting that he dies at the end of the story and was never seen again.

From the moment I first read it, it is my favourite comic book of all time and I read it about once a year, whenever my wife rereads Pride and Prejudice. It’s got fewer bonnets but more explosions so, you know, swings and roundabouts.

The story is simple. In every issue since number 1, Reed Richards, famed scientist and the leader of the FF, promises but fails to cure his best buddy Ben Grimm from being a monster made from rocks, known as The Thing.

I think a moment must be taken to point out that Mr. Fantastic didn't promise or practice curing the Thing in virtually every issue at the time, and certainly not within 2-3 decades of its debut, so why is this being exaggerated? That the writer seems to be putting down the story despite suggestions to the contrary is also galling. Here's more:

The story begins with Ben being so frustrated at never getting cured that he falls in with the Evil Scientist, who is jealous of Reed’s fame and fortune.

The scientist successfully turns Ben back into a normal man. Ben races to his girlfriend’s house to show off his normality and finally propose. Evil scientist is turned into the rock monster himself and impersonates The Thing, his plan being to destroy the hated rock-star scientist Reed Richards. [...]

Classic comics melodrama demands that when the evil bloke dies, Ben, about to propose to his girlfriend in his handsome human body, instantly turns back into the ugly Thing and fails to pop the question. Alicia, we know, doesn’t care what he looks like and loves him for him, but he never sees it.

When I was 11, life was often hard. I read that comic 20 times and felt such shame that I related more to the evil scientist than to Reed and Ben, our heroes.

I understood his loneliness and anger so much better than their easy success, belonging and having a best friend. I loved the redemption that could be gained from a single act.

Kindness to me is finding all those people who are behaving like the evil scientist, blaming everything for things they cannot grasp, and showing them all the love and respect we can, to open their own hearts.

People who have undergone unfair treatment, fear, and despair and seek recognition or refuge in our modern Australia – people who’ve been here for six years or 60,000 – there’s plenty here who need our love today more than ever.

But is there room for people who follow bad ideologies/religions and commit terrible crimes stemming from that? I get this strange feeling this was written as a form of apologia for Islam's entrance into Oz, and if it was meant for that purpose, that's very disturbing, considering all the damage that occurred in decades since till now. It's also disturbingly worrisome how the columnist implies he's sympathetic to people who commit crimes, and raises another troubling issue - there seem to be quite a few people like these who created a situation that got worse over the years where they pivot to loving the villains more, presumably because heroes are "boring"?!? That's practically what led to Hollywood glamorizing crime. Just what are people like these thinking? Is this how they thank Lee/Kirby for all their hard work? And just what "easy success" did Reed and Ben have? Considering the former failed several times to fully restore the latter to his human form for long, that's not exactly what I'd call success. Also, Reed had fallouts with wife Susan Storm, and while they did eventually mend fences, the whole notion everything was rosy in the FF's series up to the early 2000s is colossally exaggerated by these propagandists. Also, opening your heart to somebody who could follow an ideology built upon evil and oppression is naive and dangerous.

The above column, unfortunately, led to another one that appears to have been written even more noticeably for said apologia goals. First though:

How much of the resultant work was Lee and how much was Kirby, is a furiously debated topic in comic book circles. But what is clear is that it needed both of them to make it special.

Sadly, as the years passed, Lee would claim sole credit for the Fantastic Four, framing Kirby as simply an artist-for-hire. Kirby was deeply hurt and eventually left Marvel for DC. Fantastic Four continued under Lee and other artists, but the spark was gone.

And this is little more than another subtle putdown, when they make it sound like Kirby was the only artist who ever gave it energy. What about John Buscema, John Byrne, Walt Simonson, Carlos Pacheco and goodness knows what other artists were involved up to the turn of the century? Anybody who's going to minimize the impact of FF the way both columnists have done is not writing these history pieces altruistically. I think it's a shame Lee and Kirby fell apart, but what the writer says in regards to the entertainment value going forward is still no excuse. And now, here's another clue this article was meant more for propaganda purposes:

Like Lennon and McCartney, the creative rift between Lee and Kirby was never fully resolved before their deaths. Which brings us back to Antonio’s characteristic question about kindness. How should two big egos work together?

While healthy to have, egos should never be left untempered. We know this since Renaissance times when the cloistered cathedrals of Europe interacted, often turbulently, with the polymathic Islamic world.

Gee, this sounds an awful lot like somebody's trying to make the Islamic world look far better in every way, at the expense of say, the Israeli world's innovations. Naturally, he never gets into what innovations or polymathism the Muslim world allegedly produced, when more honest research would make clear that's not literally the case. And is he implying the Christian church wrongly attacked the Islamic world, but not the other way around? Wow, this practically obscures persecution of Christians in Nigeria. The columnist should be ashamed. Towards the end of the City News column, here's what's additionally fishy:

I was 16 and saw a classifieds ad for “a box of Marvel comics”. Travelling by train to Strathfield, I walked several blocks to be met by a guy who explained that his uncle (a single man) had died and that they were selling his house contents.

What emerged were, not one, but several boxes of comics – a complete run of Fantastic Four from issue 22 to 116, plus other ’60s Marvel titles, all in excellent condition.

I can’t remember exactly what I paid – perhaps $100, which was a lot for a 16-year-old at the time – but I do remember the crazed, Joker-like, grin on my face as I shoved a fistful of $20 notes into the seller’s hand. It took two arduous trips to get them home and they’ve been with me ever since.

When I look at them now, I like to imagine that dead uncle smiling at me from above, pleased that his collection is still being loved and read, rather than sealed in a vault, awaiting a Sotheby’s sale. Some pretty strange teamwork, that’s for sure, but the world works better with strange teams.

Which is in no way a segue to my normal political milieu, to cheekily encourage a Greens/Liberals partnership. Mind you…

Ah, how fascinating. Sounds like this must be some stealth leftist propaganda as well, which only dampens the impact of the comics segment even more. And begs the question - was this article intended as comics nostalgia, or as political propaganda?

Some so-called historians sure know how to exploit the creations of people they may not like and insult everbody's intellect, all for the sake of advancing their ambiguous political goals. With the worst part being when they're not willing to be clear and state their exact beliefs. Such people, as a result, have no business commenting on comics history.