All right, let’s get cracking with their self-titled debut album Issue #1: The Fantastic Four. And I won’t lie, it’s a hell of a solid first issue of any comic, though it has a number of oddities to anyone familiar with present-day Marvel. For instance, Ben Grimm isn’t a lovable grump, he’s just a bitter monster, also way too formal. He talks like Captain Holt. Furthermore, the story doesn’t take place in New York, the FF are based in Central City. Probably not related to the one that Barry Allen lives in and I suppose you could interpret that as being a weirdly-worded description of the Center of New York City, but regardless… Stan and Jack aren’t trying to establish a Marvel Universe just yet (that comes incredibly soon, though), so it’s just A City.

And one day, over the skies of Center City, a huge flare explodes, spelling out The Fantastic Four, which eventually changes into a giant flaming 4. And this is the first issue of the comic, so nobody has ever seen a giant flaming Four appear in the skies, and the Baxter Building is not currently world-famous, so the sight of a giant flaming numeral causes a big of a panic in the city. Except among three people who know what this symbol means, and they converge on the unassuming apartment building it lies under. Naturally, these would be the Fantastic Four, and they decide to show off their powers on their way to the Baxter Building; Ben complains furiously that the world is too small for someone as big as him as he throws off his disguise, flattens a car and smashes his way into the sewer system so he can pass unnoticed (police officers also shoot at him because he is a giant rock man smashing property), Johnny turns into a human rocket and flies over the city, causing such a panic that the mayor calls the National Guard and authorizes a nuclear strike over New York City in order to kill him (!!!!!), Reed uses his super-stretchy powers and brilliant intellect to grab the warhead and defuse it in midair and… Sue freaks out a cab driver by paying her fare while invisible.

It will be years before Sue gets any cool powers, and decades before she’s awesome as opposed to an embarrassment. Though I suspect that’s another thing to lay on Stans feet. Dude did/could not write women well.

As they meet in Reed Richards’ apartment, we’re given the teams origins;

A few other notes that have been retconned away since this issue; Reed was trying to beat the Russians in the Space Race and figured the best way to do that was to sneak on to his rocket in the middle of the night BEFORE those Commies could launch their own rocket, and while Sue would eventually be made a brilliant MIT grad and physics researcher who was an assistant to Reed, here she had no reason to be on the rocket except that she’s his fiance.

No one has ever bothered to explain why Johnny was there.

The reason Reed has called the team together is because a global crisis has emerged that would require the four of them; all around the world mysterious fissures have opened up and buried nuclear power plants deep underground, and Reed has traced all the tremors paths to one place; MONSTER ISLAND.. Honestly unsure if that’s supposed to be related to the Godzilla one.

The FF head to Monster Island in their private jet, and quickly find out how Monster Island got its name; volcanic features make it look like a snarling monster-head.

Also; it’s crawling with Kaiju.

After killing one giant monster (some kind of a Dog-hydra thing), the island is suddenly struck by a tremor and the team is separated; Reed and Johnny are buried deep underground and pass out, while Sue and Ben are left on their own on the surface being menaced by the islands other denizens.

Underground, Reed and Johnny wake up to find themselves wearing protective garments, and in the presense of the underground king, The Moleman! A guy I could never really take seriously as a villain. Not because he doesn’t pose a threat (he does have a trained army of kaiju monsters and is a god-figure to a subterranean race of troglodytes, even if he isn’t physically imposing), but just because he’s just so dang sympathetic. Harvey Elder (not Hans, as I always thought, and keep wanting to write) was a little guy who was constantly mocked and called The Mole Man because of his big nose, tiny eyes and love of spelunking, so, in a fit of depression he decides to travel to the center of the Earth and live in seclusion. Fortunately, he finds an entire underground civilization which quickly reverses him as a God, because hes limited faculties are all so much greater then their own and he finally finds acceptance and respect amongst the Moleoids (as he calls them).

Buuuuuut first he’s going to get some revenge on the surface world real quick. You know, destroy every power plant in the world and then release a Kaiju army on a defenseless population, that sort of thing.

Fortunately, Ben and Sue wind up in the Mole Mans throne room by sheer chance right then, just after Moleman illustrates that he’s adapted so well to underground life that his reflexes have become superhuman (okay…) and a quick fight against one of his guard-creatures breaks out. But before the fight can progress too far, Johnny uses the heat from his Torch-form to burn an escape tunnel from the throne-room to the surface, letting the Four escape with their lives.

Also, either burning a hole through miles of solid rock or a failsafe plan of the Mole Mans when he realizes his plan can’t proceed now that it’s been revealed, the volcano over Monster Island erupts, resealing the entrance to Subterrania forever.

Or until the next time Mole Man shows up, at least.