Startling Discovery!

Spider-Man

The Thing

Actually the same character!

Hard luck hero whose sense of responsibility is far greater than even the great power he received in a radiation accident: an accident that on the one hand gave him the power to challenge gods and on the other turned him into a freak feared and shunned by the rest of society.

Orphaned as a child and raised in the outer boroughs of New York by his kind but poor Aunt and Uncle, he grew up to with surprisingly low self-esteem, given to DEEP self-pitying at the smallest set back, but hides his morose-ness behind a cavalier attitude towards the cosmic weirdness that surrounds him and witty banter with even his most deadly foes.

That pretty much sums up both characters there, doesn't it?

But they look different, you might say! Spider-Man is... and while the Thing is made of.... True! But the way they vary in design are precisely the ways they mirror the artists who designed them!

The Thing is stocky, strong, pugnacious and (originally) short... like Jack Kirby!



Spider-Man is lean, intellectual, and (originally) be-speckled... like Steve Ditko!



Which I guess just goes to show: writing yourself as the super-hero of your own story?

Not a new thing.

And somedays, you CAN get rid of a bomb!

(If I had a scanner, I'd scanner in the evening...)

Thanks to the suggestion of Philip Looney, I picked up the Essential Fantastic Four, v. 3 last Thursday at my regular stop to Midtown Comics.

I'm having a blast, but it's slow going. They wrote 'em dense in the old days. Not a lot actually happens (the Inhumans plot, which I'm still in the middle of, moves at an Ellis-ian pace,) but it's still a slog to get through all that verbiage. Everybody talks. And talks. And talks.

But when the action kicks in, hoo boy! It's not like I'm the first person to say this, but wow, Kirby is just awesome. The wedding issue (which I now see as the proto-type for EVERY superhero slugfest) is just a bacchanalia of absurdity, villain beaten by hero beaten by new villain beaten by new hero beaten by new new villain.

The best moment, BY FAR, is the rise of Attuma from the depths, complete with an entire Atlantean fleet. Kirby takes an entire page to ratchet up the dread, making sure you, the reader, know that these guys mean business, and Stan, the Man, Lee's over-over the top narration tells you that it... IS... ON!

Turn the page.

The entire fleet is wiped out in three panels when Daredevil drives an armed ATOMIC BOMB into the ocean. The best part about it is that it's a COMPLETE ACCIDENT. He didn't even SEE the fleet (of course), he was just trying to get rid of the bomb!.

I couldn't go on. I was laughing too hard. I literally dropped the book (on to my foot, which hurt cause it's a thick tome, but I didn't stop laughing.)

When was the last time you saw an entire invading army wiped out because a blind man carelessly threw an atomic bomb into the ocean?

I tell you, it's GLORIOUS.