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A Forgotten Gem: Fantastic Four # 25-6 (Apr. and May, 1964) |
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Written by Commander Benson
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Friday, 19 October 2007 |
 “The Hulk Vs. the Thing”/”The Avengers Take Over!”
Editor and writer: Stan Lee Art: Jack Kirby (pencils), George Bell (inks)
My original title for this week’s article was “The Battles of the Century”. I had intended to cover the notable clashes of the Silver Age. First on my list of one-on-one battles to review was the epic contest between the Thing and the Hulk, one which stretched across two issues and climaxed with the Emerald Behemoth squaring off against the combined might of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers.
But when I dug out my copies of Fantastic Four # 25 and 26 and re-read that classic combo, for the first time in some thirty-five years, it rapidly became clear that this was a tale that deserved a column of its own, as a true forgotten gem, indeed.
 A fight is the crux of all comic-book stories. Hero against villain. Americans against the Nazis. Earthlings versus aliens. You can dress the plots up with elabourate twists or sharp characterisation, but it still boils down to a fight. The fans know this. Take a look at any comics-related forum and see how many threads there are marked “________ vs. ________”. Perhaps the purest comic-book story consists of a single brawl between two super-powered heavyweights. For fans of this kind of story, you won’t find any tale better done than “The Hulk Vs. the Thing”.
Ben Grimm tangled with the Hulk many times over the years, both before and after, but none of those stories came close to the gripping, edge-of-your-seat drama of Fantastic Four # 25-6.
The nuts and bolts of the tale are simple enough to describe. It opens with a short scene at the FF’s headquarters in the
Baxter
Building
, as the Thing rejects an attempt by Reed Richards to return him to his human form. It’s a quick bit to establish the fact that the Thing is afraid that Alicia Masters will lose her love for him if he is plain Ben Grimm. Primarily though, it sets up the transition to the events which will eventually land the Thing in the fight of his life. The Invisible Girl reads to the others a newspaper account of the Avengers’ battle with the Hulk and the Sub-Mariner (which took place in The Avengers # 3 [Jan., 1964]).
Dissolve to
New Mexico
, where the Avengers are hot on the trail of the Hulk, following his damage-strewn wake. Ol’ Jade-jaws, after a brief reversion to Bruce Banner (mistakenly called “Bob Banner” by Stan throughout), takes refuge in Banner’s secret underground lab. At this early stage, he is still the brutish, thug-like Hulk, rather than the simple-minded, childlike-unless-angered version which became the standard. Determined to remain the Hulk permanently, he destroys the intricate gamma-powered equipment which had been used to change him to Banner and back.
Seeking to rid himself of every trace of Banner, the Hulk empties the pockets of his trousers. Among Banner’s articles, he finds a newspaper clipping announcing that Captain America has taken his place with the Avengers. Noting Rick Jones’s absence, the Hulk concludes that both the boy and the Avengers have deserted him. Enraged at their “betrayal”, the Green Goliath launches himself toward
New York
, in hundred-mile leaps, to destroy the Avengers.
A day later, at the
Baxter
Building
, Mr. Fantastic succumbs to the effects of rare viruses with which he was experimenting. He lapses into a coma. Johnny Storm zooms off in the Fantasti-car to bring back a doctor for Reed just as the Hulk arrives in the Big Apple and starts tearing up everything in sight. Johnny attempts to stop the rampaging monster, but fails, as the Hulk viciously retaliates.
 The city is in a panic. The police begin an evacuation of
Manhattan
and news cameras broadcast the Hulk’s battering of the Human Torch. Seeing the Torch’s peril on television, Ben and Sue rush to his aid. Sue’s force field protects Johnny from further injury, but the incredible pressure the Hulk applies to her force field places so much strain on the Invisible Girl that she passes out.
With Reed Richards comatose, Johnny severely injured, and Sue unconscious, it is up to the Thing to stop the raging Hulk.
Like charging bulls, they slam into each other. The Hulk’s juggernaut-like might pitted against the Thing’s lesser strength, but keener reflexes and agility. At first, their relative strengths and weaknesses balance out, as their battle wages back and forth. Ben’s wisecracks needle the Hulk, making him even angrier, and gradually, the Green Goliath gains the advantage. This is one of the earliest indications -- perhaps the first -- that the madder the Hulk gets, the stronger he gets. One caption, more or less, states it plainly: “His incredible strength seems to increase during the strain of combat!”
Through superior tactics, Ben manages to stave off the Hulk and with a supreme super-human effort, manages to ensnare his green-skinned opponent by wrapping him in a suspension cable torn from the
Washington
Bridge
. Ben’s great strength is rapidly fading, while the enraged Hulk is getting stronger by the minute. With a tremendous flex of his muscles, the Hulk shatters the cable and wades into the Thing with a terrible fury. Ben caves under the withering attack, and the Hulk, gripped in a berserker rage, turns to face the terrified citizens of
New York
.
The Army blasts the Hulk with rifle fire and rockets from hand-held launchers. Greenskin shrugs it off and bears down on the troops. On nothing more than determination, the Thing throws himself into the Hulk before the brutish goliath can annihilate the soliders. “It’s amazing!” cries one G.I. “The Thing must be fighting on sheer courage alone!”
Just when it looks like it is all over for Ben, the rest of the Fantastic Four have recovered enough to come to his aid. Their efforts manage, barely, to drive the Hulk off.
 Cunningly, Ol’ Jade-jaws has ducked into
New York
’s subway system and makes his way, underground, to the
Avengers
Mansion
. Bursting into the townhouse, the Hulk finds the Avengers and Rick Jones. The Emerald Behemoth focuses his anger on Rick and, before the super-heroes can get their act together, he seizes the boy and crashes through a wall.
Both the Avengers and the regrouped Fantastic Four corner the Hulk with his captive. Both groups claim jurisdiction over the threat of the green-skinned brute. Neither team bows out, and they wind up inadvertently fouling their respective efforts against the Hulk. Mocking their ineptness, the Hulk leaps to the top of a partially completed skyscraper, with Rick in tow.
The FF and the Avengers come to an understanding and coördinate an attack on the Hulk before he can harm Rick Jones. Despite the best combined efforts of nine super-heroes, the best they can manage against the Hulk is a stalemate. As the Hulk prepares to yet again attack, the Ant-Man commands a horde of ants to swarm over their foe. While the Hulk is plagued by the itching ants, Rick Jones thrusts a gamma-ray treated capsule into Greenskin’s mouth.
To get the ants off of him, the Hulk flees into the near-by
Hudson River
. The exhausted super-heroes give up the fight. What they don’t see is the unconscious figure of Bruce Banner float to the surface and drift away.
At the forefront, “The Hulk Vs. the Thing” is one long brawl, marked by violence, trickery, grit, and even some humour. (Think John Wayne and Victor McLaughlin’s donnybrook in The Quiet
Man.
) But it is what’s behind the forefront which elevates this tale into a true gem.
One of the aspects rarely seen in a Hulk story is the effects of one of his rampages on the public at large. Outside of including a few panels showing some fleeing bystanders, the Hulk’s battles always seemed to happen in a vacuum. But here, we see the full force and effect on a city terrorised by the Hulk. Citizens reacted in varying degrees of horror, some scattering in wild panic, others rooted to the spot by fear. We see city authorities responding, setting up barricades, directing an evacuation, marshalling first-aid stations. The military, when called in, are shown as more than just gun-crazy soldiers. We witness the planning, the weighing of options, the discussion over how much force can be brought to bear against the Hulk without causing more death and destruction than the menace they have been called to defeat.
 The effect of these interludes -- and this occurred to me during my re-reading last night -- is a cinematic one. It gives “The Hulk Vs. the Thing” the feeling of a superior B-movie from the 1950’s, not that far removed from a minor classic like Them! Stan Lee’s script accurately portrayed a city as it would respond if such a menace as the Hulk and such heroes as the Thing existed. Nothing is incidental. The television coverage directly engages the Fantastic Four in the threat. The damage is not simply decorative; it provides additional dangers or adds to the tactics applied by the combatants.
Another huge plus was the tight unification of the various sub-plots that had been running through several Marvel titles at the time. This was the benefit of having Stan Lee write virtually everything Marvel put out then. DC’s titles were collected into minor fiefdoms: Weisinger’s Superman family titles. Schwartz’s The Flash, Green Lantern, and The Atom. Schiff’s Bat-titles. While each editor’s titles tended to show consistency, there was very little continuity across editorial boundries.
But over at Marvel, Stan’s personal hand in everything created the strong sense of a connected universe. Sub-plots in one hero’s series carried over if the hero appeared in another’s title. And so many of those threads wended through “The Hulk Vs. the Thing”. The incident which provided the impetus for the Hulk’s rampage on
New York
came from his discovery of the events that took place in The Avengers # 4, which themselves were a continuation of The Avengers # 3. The Hulk’s destruction of Bruce Banner’s secret underground lab wrapped up a loose end left over from his first, cancelled series.
Another change which resulted from the cancellation of the first Hulk series was the transfer of supporting character Rick Jones to The Avengers. Rather than having no impact on the mythos of the Hulk, we see the Green Goliath actually reacting to such a thing, even if he misinterpreted it. And it gave a chance for Rick to display his conflicted loyalties, between those to the Hulk and those to the Avengers. Rick’s presence in the story even afforded Stan the opportunity to make a reference to Bucky Barnes, thereby tickling an FF reader’s interest in Captain
America
and The Avengers.
The Hulk’s precipitous departure from the ranks of the Avengers in issue # 2 of their series makes it easy to dismiss his Avengers membership as a mere technicality. But, as FF 25-6 makes clear, the Hulk had an emotional investment in his rôle as an Avenger; he is angered that the team replaced him with Captain
America
and looks on it as an abandonment. His dialogue with Cap during the battle at the top of the skyscraper makes it clear that Jade-jaws resents the Star-Spangled Avenger taking his place. This look into the Hulk’s personality would be a natural carry-over from the events subsequent to his quitting the Avengers; what is impressive and mildly surprising is that we see this carry-over in Fantastic Four.
One of Stan Lee’s strengths as a writer was his ear for humourous dialogue. Offhand, his only equal in writing truly funny lines was Arnold Drake. The lines he gave Ben during his battle not only hit that right note necessary for comics-dialogue humour, but it underscored the Thing’s courage. It invests Ben with a true sense of valour. His determination and refusal to quit come across as genuine human qualities, rather than just because it’s in the script. As a character, it is Ben Grimm’s finest hour.
As for the art, I am not as big of a Jack Kirby booster as most; I’ve always found his depiction of human anatomy as . . . shall we say . . . too stylised. But there is no denying the raw dynamism and punch in his renderings. For this kind of story, no-one could present it visually better than Kirby. Every panel of the fight has movement, power, impact.
If someone were to ask me what the big deal was about the early Marvel Age of Comics, these are the two issues I would show them.
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