Fantastic Four #4

 "One side, woman! I got me an idea!"

It's weird to think that this is the Sub-Mariner's first Silver Age appearance... yet his last Golden Age appearance was only in 1955, seven years previously. But it's amusing to think how Marvel opted for nostalgia at such an early point. Indeed, it did that with the character of the Human Torch, and it's amusing to see how the cover has the modern Torch without a face, much like his 1939 predecessor.

Anyway, we begin in the FF's "secret skyscraper hideout", and once again I look forward to an explanation of how they can afford this, as well as such gadgets as the Fantast-car which, we now learn, can split up into four individual parts. Nice. And events follow on from the end of last issue, but Torch is missing, having flounced out after a dramatic argy-bargy with the Thing- and, yet again, it's striking how much real vitriol there is between the two of them at this stage. This is more than just banter, and it seems the Torch genuinely intended to leave the FF for good,

Anyway, it's Ben who finally finds Johnny, but Johnny gets away when the Thing (very) briefly turns human again, a nice little running sub-plot... and, beneath the panels, we get questions like "What is the Hulk?", a very nice teaser for a new comic which will be arriving very soon.

By an incredible coincidence, the hotel Johnny ends up in happens to be the one containing a bearded, amnesiac Sub-Mariner. And it's Johnny who deliberately restores his memory by, er, dropping him in the sea, as though that was certain to work. It does, though... and Namor finds out that his kingdom has been destroyed by (what else?) atomic experiments, so it's time to destroy humanity... with a massive monster which is called Giganto, because of course it is. Yet again Marvel's existing monster genre bleeds into the new stuff.

But the best bit is where, I kid you not, the Thing straps an actual nuke to his back, lets Giganto swallow him, dumps the bomb and escapes through the monster's gob, which is a whole other level of bonkers. And then the threat is basically resolved by the fact that Namor suddenly fancies Sue... and wants to marry her. Well, that escalated quickly, and now the Torch can apparently create tornadoes somehow because the plot requires it...

This issue is magnificently bonkers.