Fantastic Four#25

Fantastic Four #25

Apr 1964 · Marvel

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★ Key event — Hulk

About this Issue

Fantastic Four #25 delivered what fans had been clamoring for since the truncated skirmish in FF #12: a full-scale, no-holds-barred clash between Marvel's two most powerful bruisers, the Hulk and the Thing, fought across the streets and waterways of New York City. The battle was so enormous it couldn't be contained in a single issue, spilling into FF #26 and bringing the Avengers along for what was, at that point, Marvel's most ambitious inter-title crossover — a story threading directly through Avengers #3–5 and establishing that the shared Marvel Universe was now a single, tightly interlocked narrative ecosystem rather than a loose collection of titles. The issue also permanently defined the emotional template for every Hulk-vs.-Thing rematch that followed: the Hulk is flat-out stronger, but Ben Grimm's stubborn, self-sacrificing courage keeps him swinging long after any rational fighter would quit. On top of its action-storytelling merits, the issue produced an accidental continuity landmark when Stan Lee referred to Bruce Banner as 'Bob Banner,' a gaffe that, once flagged by a reader in a later letters column, Lee retroactively canonized as 'Robert Bruce Banner,' the hero's full name ever since.

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History

The issue was written by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby, inked by George Roussos (credited in the indicia as 'G. Bell'), and lettered by Sam Rosen, with Lee also serving as editor — the same tight-knit bullpen producing nearly the entire Marvel line simultaneously in early 1964. Kirby was at this moment drawing not only Fantastic Four but also The Avengers, X-Men, and other titles concurrently, a production pace that colleagues later reflected gave his work an occasionally rushed energy; one artifact of that pace is a single notorious panel in this issue in which Kirby drew the face of Marvel's production manager Sol Brodsky onto the Hulk mid-battle, an in-joke that somehow made it past editorial and into the printed book. The issue was released with a January 10, 1964 on-sale date carrying an April 1964 cover date, placing it squarely in the most fertile period of the Lee-Kirby collaboration.

Trivia · 7 facts

Written by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby, inked by George Roussos (credited as 'G. Bell'), and lettered by Sam Rosen; Stan Lee also served as editor.
Presents the first dedicated, extended solo battle between the Hulk and the Thing; their earlier meeting in FF #12 ended almost immediately when the Hulk was knocked unconscious by a third party before the fight could develop.
The story is also the third Avengers crossover in Marvel's publishing history and features the second Silver Age appearance of the newly revived Captain America (who had debuted in Avengers #4 the same month).
The battle overflows into FF #26 and then resolves in Avengers #5, making issues #25–26 the centerpiece of Marvel's largest coordinated inter-title storyline to date — a narrative that could not be fully understood by reading only one title.
A scripting error in this issue — Lee referred to Bruce Banner as 'Bob Banner' — prompted a reader letter that Lee answered by establishing the character's full legal name as Robert Bruce Banner, a retcon that became official Marvel continuity.
In one panel, Jack Kirby drew the face of Marvel bullpen production manager Sol Brodsky onto the Hulk; the image went to print unchanged, making it a curious piece of Silver Age ephemera noted by collectors and historians.
The story has been reprinted numerous times, including in Fantastic Four Annual #4 (1966), a Marvel Treasury Edition, the Incredible Hulk Epic Collection Vol. 1, the Fantastic Four Epic Collection Vol. 2, the Mighty Marvel Masterworks: Fantastic Four Vol. 3 (2023), and the Fantastic Four Penguin Classics Marvel Collection (2023).