Script: Stan Lee
Art: Jack Kirby
Inking: Dick Ayers
Lettering: Art Simek
You may be the monarch of nation with the military might to wipe humanity off the map. You may be one of the Allied Force's greatest allies in World War 2. You may be the first mutant. But you do not get between a stretchy-bodied scientist and his girl.
It's great to see Reed cut loose in this issue. He lets his emotions out when Sue is in danger, overriding Ben and Johnny and driving the team forward to effect her rescue. And in this panel, he cuts loose with his body, abandoning anything approaching a standard bipedal form to become terrible being designed only to entrap his enemy.
I strongly doubt this was an influence, but I can see this echoed in the current issues of Ultimate Comics Ultimates (or whatever the series is called) where Reed is the main nemesis.
Check out our coverage of Fantastic Four #14 on our twelfth episode: HYPNOFISH!!!
[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/ffcast/FF_Episode_12.mp3]