Galactus “Hunger”
By Nick Derington
2 « J'aime »
Il etait plus pointu encore à l epoque. Et ben en chef, j aimais beaucoup l idée lorsque je la découvrais à l epoque dans d autre série que les ff.
A Comic Book On Sale 60 Years Ago Today, August 10, 1965
FANTASTIC FOUR #44 represents the beginning of what most agree is the most fertile and accomplished period in the title’s history during the extended tenure of series creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. A missing element joins the project this issue as Joe Sinnott becomes the series’ regular inker, a position he’ll hold for more than a decade beyond the point where the other two have left the series. Sinnott’s slick work immediately plusses up the look of the book—it’s astounding to compare this issue to the prior one, inked by the notorious Vince Colletta (who inked this issue’s cover.) All of a sudden, it’s like Kirby’s work snaps into sharp focus. Fans had spoken highly of Sinnott’s previous issue inking the series, uncredited, in #5 some years earlier. But by this time, the Marvel books were selling well enough that Lee could afford to bring Joe on full time. This issue also begins to unravel the backstory of Madame Medusa, who had been introduced as a mysterious femme fatale as part of the Frightful Four a few issues earlier. It’s pretty clear that Kirby or Lee or both adjusted their thinking on the character as we got into this storyline, as Medusa suddenly became both eminently honorable and romantically attached—there was no more of her making lustful eyes at Reed Richards from here on out. This issue introduces Gorgon of the Inhumans and teases a much larger cast of characters, many of whom we’d meet in the following issue. From here, it was just one great creation after another, as Galactus and the Silver Surfer, Wyatt Wingfoot, the Black Panther and Klaw would all make their debuts in short order. Many of these characters were created with the intention of being part of a proposed expansion of the Marvel line mandated by publisher Martin Goodman to combat the perceived threat of Joe Simon taking over the adventure line at competing Harvey Publications. But Martin couldn’t get permission from his distributor to expand as he wanted to, and so the characters wound up being rolled out in the pages of FANTASTIC FOUR first and foremost. An Inhumans strip woudl be teased several times over the next few years. This book was also released during the brief time when, attempting to latch on to the Pop Art movement that was gathering headlines, Lee temporarily rebranded the organization as Marvel Pop Art Productions. This would prove to be an unpopular move and it only lasted for a couple of issues. But Lee was constantly looking for anything that would attract more notoriety and attention to his line of magazines, and he wasn’t above experimenting with them to figure out what worked.
