Script: Stan Lee
Art: Jack Kirby
Inking: Dick Ayers
Lettering: Art Simek
Today's post highlights one of the classic moves for a character with a stretchy body - The Human Catapult!It's a shame that Kirby's working in his early FF art style, with many panels crammed onto the page. The clarity and detail that would become a signature of his artwork just doesn't get the space it deserves here. The first panel of Reed stretching out suffers particularly. One can imagine how Kirby might have depicted this five years down the road, with a lovely close-up of Reed's tortured face as he pushes his elastic powers to the absolute limit, his rubbery limbs straining and stretching behind him. Here, you can barely make out his arms wrapping around one of the trees.
Still, it's a nice move, and the smaller scale of Reed in these panels helps sell the giant Colossus that he is fighting here (believing it initially to be a robot constructed by Namor for the film that he is directing. And that has to be one of sillier sentences I've ever written!). Not sure how Reed managed to keep the rock in the air whilst he was stretching backwards, though...
Check out our coverage of Fantastic Four #9 on our seventh episode: S(&)M Studios
[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/ffcast/FF_Episode_7.mp3]