Fantastic Four 5

In this issue:

Prisoners of Doctor Doom!
23 pages :: Jack Kirby/Joe Sinnott
reprinted in Fantastic Four Annual 2, Bring On The Bad Guys, Marvel Masterworks, Marvel Milestone Edition

The debut of the diabolical Dr DOOM! Marvel's NUMERO UNO badguy! The FF's greatest foe, Victor Von Doom is a Dictator of a small country (Latveria), a scientific genius, a master of sorcery and a constant thorn in the side of the FF and every other hero he has run across since.

Why is Dr. Doom green as the Incredible Hulk on this cover? Could it be it was so early on the creators couldn't decide on a color for Doc Doom's armor? He has to be the best villian the FF ever had. Lets hope the movie out next year does him justice. I have my fingers crossed and hope they get it right. The only thing I really have to cling to as far as good FF material are the cartoons produced by Hana Barbera in 1967. They are the only ones that actually followed the stories and stayed true to Lee and Kirby.

That's the thing about the adaptions of movies is that Lee is so happy to get them out sometimes no creative control is involved. Look at any of the early Marvel movies on TV. They were basically hit and miss. Spider Man would have made a great series had it not been cancelled in 1978. I do believe they could have made it work for TV; though by todays standards it wouldn't be as good as what can be accomplished with CGI.

I'd like to see a real professional actor in the Doom role because it will make or brake the FF movie next year. Let's hope we are all proven wrong and it's a hit. I'd actually like to see more with Galactacus and Watcher and it would translate past it's sixties roots. I think the classic Lee/Kirby material can transend the period of the mid to late sixties and become another film classic on a Star Wars scale. …..if Lee has some measure of control and say so in the epic feature film.

My first Marvel superhero purchase! I remember when I was a kid buying my comics at a local candy store where they hung from the ceiling to prevent browsing. You had to ask the sometimes cranky proprietor to get them down with a hook. God forbid you should decide you didn't want it after it was brought down for you. So most of my selections were old favorites. The 9 year old takes a gamble. I'd never seen the FF before, so I was surprised to see it was #5. At that age, you're not aware of artists, inkers or the like but I was able to connect the art to those fabulous monster stories I loved. Within a week, I needed to write a story for homework and the young plagiarist found himself facing Doc Doom in Chicago's Field Museum. What's amazing is that after just that 1 issue, I bought just about every issue of FF until the early 100's. I don't think I'd been that loyal to any title before or since. Such was the power of the Lee/Kirby combination.

That cranky proprietor that had those comics hung from the ceilings sounds exactly like the crankyproprietor my brother and friends went to in the 1960s. You didn't happen to live in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, did you (or did every neighborhood have a guy like him?)

Nope, South Side of Chicago. I'm sure it was preferable to watching a bunch of young whippersnappers reading the merchandise off the soinner rack and not buying!

Lee & Kirby were on a roll here, weren't they? Costumes & secret skyscraper hideout in #3 (how can you have a “secret hideout” in a skyscraper?), #4 Sub-mariner back from the depths, and now enter Dr. Doom in #5.
How was the rest of the “comic book establishment” (especially DC) reacting at that time? They must have known that Marvel was coming on like firecrackers. Did they think this new upstart titles would burn themselves out?

Larry, Better late than never. That comic shop didn't happen to be near the corner of 111th and Western on Chicago's South Side, did it?

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