Marvel Monday: Ouch! My Science!

Look, I get it. Science and comic books are like oil and water. Comics are a world where FTL is easily attainable, where radiation may as well be magic, and Nuclear Bombs Are Minor Inconveniences.

But sometimes the suspension of disbelief is snapped so completely that you have to wonder what kind of drugs the writers were on. This being July of 1962, I'm going to guess LSD. Welcome to Marvel Monday.

This is almost entirely unlike the actual cover. There was no disco in 1962.

So this one has got to be good, right? The first appearance of perhaps the most iconic Fantastic Four villain of all time! This will surely be one for the ages, right?

Well, perhaps, as long as you are talking about the golden age of pirates. As always, you can get a more straightforward synopsis over at the Marvel Wiki.

The comic starts with Doctor Doom, the man in the iron mask, playing with figures of the Fantastic Four on a chessboard. Clearly they're not chess pieces, since they are far too large for the board. It looks like Doctor Doom just got 12" figures and glued them to bases. That, plus his stuffed vulture and his books with titles like "Demons" and "Science and Sorcery" make me think he's not so much a villain as a nerd who's just a little too much into his Vampire LARP. You know the type.

Dear Thor! All our military secrets are laid bare!
This "Lee" and "Kirby" are the greatest threat to
democracy the world has ever known!

Cut to the Baxter Building, where Johnny Storm is reading The Incredible Hulk #1 with amazement, and...

Okay, what? It sort of makes sense for certain comic books to exist in-universe. Presumably Namor's exploits in WWII were fairly well-known. But the Incredible Hulk? Even if we allow some sort of time lapse so that the events of Hulk #1 are not contemporaneous, no one save Bruce Banner and Rick Jones know that Banner is the Hulk. Yet Johnny is clearly holding Hulk #1, which shows Bruce Banner transforming into the Hulk on the cover. Was there no enterprising, comic-reading youth who called up Thunderbolt Ross and said, "Hey, do you have a problem with a big monster called the Hulk? I think he might be Doctor Bruce Banner. Do you have a guy by that name around? Oh you do? He's a great guy, it's not his fault, but he totally turns into the Hulk at night. Yeah, it's a side-effect of your top-secret Gamma Bomb test. Is there a reward for this information?"

For my own sanity, there are only two possible explanations. Either the comic books in-universe are not the same as the comic books we read in the real world... or they ARE the same, and they are only loosely inspired by in-universe events. Which would solve a lot of continuity problems, I suppose.

Why are they still in uniform? Is it all they wear now?

Anyway, Johnny's exploration of America's latest military fiasco is interrupted by a predictable brawl between Human Torch and Thing, which begins tearing apart their living quarters. This almost leads to an actual revelation by Reed Richards.

Thank Thor they are attacked by Doctor Doom, and don't actually have to have a moment of character development or anything terrible like that!

Doctor Doom throws a net over the Baxter Building. You know, their skyscraper base. I'm not sure what he was hoping to accomplish there. I mean, it's not like the skyscraper is going anywhere.

The net is made of asbestos, so maybe he wanted to give everyone cancer? The asbestos means Johnny can't burn through it, and it's also electrically charged so Thing can't tear through it. I'm pretty sure asbestos is an electrical insulator, so that's a bit of science Lee and Kirby never bothered looking up. I know it was the 60s, but didn't the Marvel offices have an encyclopedia set or something?

But who is this strange iron-masked figure who is... I guess threatening them by... trapping them temporarily in their building?

Well it turns out he's Reed Richards' old chum from college, Victor Von Doom. That's right, his name was actually Victor Von Doom.

What sort of college is this that they need a
specific policy banning necromancy?

But hey, you know, we shouldn't discriminate against him just because of his name. I'm sure he was a perfectly sweet guy and all...

Oh. So he was literally worshiping demons and stuff, and performing forbidden necromancy experiments, and blowing up laboratories, and generally making it incredibly obvious that he was an insane and evil person.

Which, obviously, led to his expulsion from the University. And absolutely no other consequences, despite him causing a massive explosion that horribly disfigured his face and killed who knows how many students.

And rather than, you know, getting this obviously disturbed person mental help, they just let him trot off to Tibet seeking further secrets of dark magic and forgot all about him.

Which brings up an important point: Doctor Doom is not a doctor! He was expelled! He's a phony! A big fat phony!

So Doom demands that Sue be given to him as a hostage, to which Sue immediately agrees. Now let's recap. All Doom has done is throw a net over the Baxter Building. He has menaced no one. He has caused no death or destruction. He has simply trapped the Fantastic Four in their own building. Furthermore, if you gave Thing a pair of rubber gloves he could easily tear the net apart without getting shocked. This is not a crisis.

I think Sue just gets off on being captured all the time. First she was willing to marry Namor, now she eagerly runs to Doom.

Doom triumphantly declares that since Sue is his hostage, the Fantastic Four will be helpless to resist his orders to... board his plane. Which is actually a helicopter, but that is less important than the fact that he's essentially broken down "come aboard my plane" into a series of needlessly complicated steps.

If I close my eyes, I can imagine it's
Namor behind that mask!

So he traps the Fantastic Four in a cage and activates the rockets on his helicopter... which I am fairly certain is not built to fly under rocket power... and gets them to his castle where Sue can finally openly admit her love of bondage.

So rather than jump the obviously crazy person with their bona fide superpowers, the Fantastic Four just sit there as Doom explains he's going to send them back in time to steal Blackbeard's Treasure. Because of course he is.

Why? Why go to all this trouble? Why kidnap the Fantastic Four when you could easily hire mooks to do this for you? Granted, it's not like the Fantastic Four are heroic, but they do tend to have short tempers when they're jerked around. At what point did any of this seem like a good plan, when you could probably get trained archaeologists or tomb robbers to do it just for the adventure and historical experience?

I suppose Doom is an insane genius with the emphasis on the insane.

He apparently wants Blackbeard's Treasure because, unbeknownst to our protagonists, they are actually the gems of Merlin which will give him phenomenal cosmic power or some such.

Who is the mysterious stranger?

So the three men go back in time while Sue plays hostage against their good behavior, and Thing soon discovers he likes it there, because apparently all the pirates are so blind from bad grog that they cannot tell he's a monster as long as he wears a fake beard and an eyepatch.

They are drugged and shanghaied onto a pirate ship, but once they awaken at sea Thing busts out of the hold. Before they can take vengeance on the pirates, however, their ship comes under attack by another ship. Thinking this might be Blackbeard, Thing rallies the pirates, and with their superpowers Thing, Mr. Fantastic, and Human Torch quickly capture the ship.

Then the pirates praise Thing as the "Black Bearded One", and they realize the truth: Thing was Blackbeard all along! Despite Thing only being in the past for 48 hours, and the actual Blackbeard having a career that spanned over two years. And despite Thing's life having nothing in common with the historical Blackbeard. And despite this making no goddamn sense whatsoever.

Showing an amazing degree of lucidity considering his past record, Reed decides that if Doom wants Blackbeard's treasure, he probably should not get it. So he distributes the treasure among the men, and fills the chest with iron chains to simulate the weight.

But then Thing decides that he likes being a fearsome pirate, and he will stay! Because Thing is a villain, as I've been saying all along. He would rather be looting, pillaging, and murdering with the scum of the earth than be forced to live in polite society. He's really just a sociopath.

And to prove it, he captures Reed and Johnny, tosses them in a longboat, and sends them of to die.

Luckily, this makes the writers angry, and so they decide to wreck "Blackbeard's" ship with a tornado just because. With his dreams of becoming an evil pirate destroyed, Thing rejoins the other two and they are teleported back to the present.

Imagine if that was flesh. Squelch.

As Doom discovers the heavy chains, Thing murders him, only to discover that he was a robot the whole time! Which does not change the fact that Thing tried to murder him. Look at how hard he hit the Doom-Bot. That is a killing blow. Thing is still a psychopath.

The real Doom decides to suffocate them by draining all the oxygen from the room, but he forgot about Sue. Apparently no longer in full bondage, but rather only in a pair of rope-cuffs, and absolutely nothing to bind her feet, Sue lightly taps against a console which causes it to explode with extreme violence in Doom's face.

That seems to be a design flaw. I can only assume he uses the same contractor who makes the consoles for Voyager.

So Sue frees them... which means Sue has actually been competent? It must be a fluke. Anyway, they then proceed to make all scientists everywhere cry. Reed Richards and a loose boulder suddenly have more anchoring power than a stone wall! Extreme heat fuses water into glass! Johnny Storm can fall from at least half a mile up and catch himself on a branch by his arms right before he hits the ground with no ill effects!

This is not how science works, Marvel!

This is really basic stuff, Marvel. You should know better. Lee and Kirby should have had an encyclopedia. The important thing is Doom escapes, Sue is rescued, and Thing is still a raving psycho.

Compared to this plot, the Incredible Hulk looks tame. You can check it out at the Marvel Wiki.

Better than Mole Men I suppose.

The issue starts strong, with the Hulk rampaging through a town that can't really decide if it in 1960s Americana or in an 1860s cowboy story. Either way, we see that the plucky Rick Jones has stuck with the Hulk, and tries, with some limited success, to dissuade the Hulk from his destructive rampage.

Oh yes. And the Hulk is green in this issue. As he should be. He's still far more articulate than "Hulk Smash!" though.

He had one of the greatest theme songs ever.

And then the comic takes a turn. A sinister alien spacecraft approaches Earth! The Toad Men have arrived! And as we can guess, there's only one green hero who can defeat an army of evil toad aliens!

But since the brave heroes of S.P.A.C.E. are otherwise occupied, I guess this job is left up to the Hulk.

The Toad Men use "Invincible Magnetic Powers" to attack the Earth, but it quickly becomes apparent that Lee and Kirby take the Insane Clown Posse policy toward magnets.

The horror... guys in fedoras should not do the worm...

The fact that the Toads are using magnets to fly their ship would not be so bad, but they also use a "magnetic mind-detector" to find the most intelligent brain on the planet (Bruce Banner, natch), magnetic power to pin humans to walls (despite humans not being magnetic), magnetic ray guns to... fire rays at people, and threaten to use magnets to blast chunks of cities off of earth, to empty the oceans, and to force people to dance badly.

Banner hulks out on the Toad ship, and then Thunderbolt Ross manages to shoot it down with Earth's missile supply. But when they find Bruce Banner aboard, they assume he's betrayed humanity. Because Thunderbolt really hates Bruce Banner for reasons that are probably totally unrelated to Bruce trying to bang his daughter.

That night, Bruce becomes Hulk again and bursts out of jail, then kidnaps Betty Ross, which ends with him almost killing Rick, before daylight makes him Banner again.

No one can predict what their effect
would be! We literally have no idea
what could happen! It might destroy
the universe! But who cares? Science!

Oh yes, and while all that was going on, the Toad Armada was preparing to launch an attack on earth. Luckily Bruce Banner is there to point his Gamma Ray gun at the alien horde which... reverses their magnetism somehow and flings them into space.

Really? Really, comic?

We do get some good character development in this one. I especially love that Bruce is building a Hulk-proof vault, where he wants Rick to imprison him each night. Bruce, unlike the Fantastic Four, is a hero, and does whatever he must to safeguard humanity.

But on the whole, the stupid far outweighs the smart. Thunderbolt Ross says that even though Bruce saved Earth, he still suspects he and the Hulk might be somehow connected. To which the reader can only say... yeah! Duh! You mean like how you arrested Bruce and threw him in jail, only for Hulk to bust out of jail? Or how Hulk kidnapped your daughter, only for her to be found with Bruce? Yes, I know in comics a mere pair of glasses counts as a disguise, but this is ridiculous.

But worst of all about both of these comics are the egregious scientific errors. Yes, I know, it's a comic and scientific errors are expected, but with both of these comics barely a page goes by that there's not some horrific mangling of the laws of nature. I know Lee's style tends more toward the fantastic than the realistic, but you need to provide your reader with at least some groundwork. This stuff is bad even by 60s standards.

Mathematical Fallacies Are Fun!