Here's another great tribute to Kirby's early Marvel / pre-Marvel monster stories and FF run.



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FF 347-349.

Story by Walt Simonson, art by Arthur Adams and Gracine Tanaka, and inks by Art Thibert

These three issues are tremendous fun, with a holy host of monsters who hadn't seen the light of day in about 30 years, until their cameo appearances in this three-part story.

The story centers on the Mole Man and his Monster Island, with the creature from FF # 1(Nov 1961), along with cameo appearances of other monsters from these pre-Marvel stories:

  • "Van Doom, The Man Who Created a Creature" in TALES TO ASTONISH 17(March 1961),
  • "What was X, the Thing That Lived?" from TALES TO ASTONISH 20 (June 1961),
    and
  • "Titan" from TALES OF SUSPENSE 28 (April 1962),

as well as several others I can't name offhand.

Also great was inclusion of the Skrulls, who took on the role of pre-Marvel brand bug-eyed alien invaders.
In a funny scene, instead of the bug-eyed Skrulls terrifying local Earth people, the Skrulls themselves have the crap scared out of them by the monsters on Monster Island. Some of the facial expressions of the Skrulls are priceless.

Simonson's inclusion of a recently-gray-again Hulk worked well in the early-Marvel/pre-Marvel feel of the story too, since Hulk was gray in his earliest 1962 appearances. Although Simonson isn't the one who made the change back to gray (it was Peter David and Todd McFarlane who turned Hulk gray again in INCREDIBLE HULK issues 330-344, if I recall, and Simonson just continued the gray Hulk for his appearances in FF)

Around the same time, Marvel released a collected trade titled MONSTER MASTERWORKS, that reprinted 18 of the pre-Marvel monster stories from the 1958-1963 pre-Marvel era. "Van Doom", "X, the Thing That Lived" and "Titan" are all reprinted in this volume, which came out within a few months of the Simonson/Adams/Thibert FF story, in 1990.

FF 347-349 were collected with nicer printing in THE NEW FANTASTIC FOUR: MONSTERS UNLEASHED trade paperback, in 1992.

And reprinted again in the recent X-MEN LEGENDS, VOL. 3: ARTHUR ADAMS trade paperback, collecting these FF issues along with all the X-Men annuals Arthur Adams did.

Highly recommended.

Simonson also did a number of FF issues where he did both story and pencils ( FF issues 337-341, 343-346, 350), that I think rank with Byrne's FF run, as the best FF since the Lee/Kirby run. These and Art Adams's story in 347-349 were collected again in the FANTASTIC FOUR VISIONARIES: SIMONSON trade collection.

Which complements Simonson's other outstanding tribute to Kirby's run in THOR (in issues 337-380).

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"This Man, This Wonder Boy..."