Fantastic Four #36

History

The issue was produced by the regular Lee–Kirby machine in late 1964, going on sale December 10, 1964 with a March 1965 cover date. Stan Lee scripted over Jack Kirby's pencils, with Chic Stone on inks and Artie Simek on letters — the same core team that had been steadily escalating the book's ambition through the preceding year. Credits in the issue are unusually spare, listed simply as Stan and Jack's shared work without breaking down individual contributions, consistent with the Marvel Method of the period. The story directly follows the engagement announcement in FF #35 and was clearly conceived as the launchpad for an extended Frightful Four–Inhumans narrative arc that would run through issue #47.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of Madam Medusa (Medusalith Amaquelin Boltagon), created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby; she appears first in a brief flashback, then in full costume as the Frightful Four's fourth member.
• First team appearance of the Frightful Four, composed of the Wizard (who adopts the alias 'Wingless Wizard' and debuts his standard costume in this issue), Paste-Pot Pete, Sandman, and Medusa.
• Medusa is retroactively the first Inhuman character to appear in the Marvel Universe; her Inhuman identity was not revealed until Fantastic Four #44, and her amnesia — which left her compliant to the Wizard's control — was later explained in Inhumans Special #1.
• The issue's framing story is Reed Richards and Sue Storm's public engagement announcement and party, attended by the full Avengers and X-Men rosters; Spider-Man appears only as an uninvited hand stealing a slice of cake.
• Written by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby, inked by Chic Stone, and lettered by Artie Simek; published March 1965 (on-sale December 10, 1964) at a cover price of 12 cents.
• The letters page contains a published letter from Dave Cockrum — then a 22-year-old U.S. Navy sailor and dedicated Marvel fan letterhack — who would later co-create Nightcrawler, Storm, and Colossus for the 1975 X-Men relaunch.
• The issue has been reprinted extensively, including in Marvel's Greatest Comics #28 (1970, with a new Kirby cover), Marvel Masterworks: Fantastic Four Vol. 4 (2003), Fantastic Four Omnibus Vol. 2 (2007), Inhumans: The Origin of the Inhumans (2013), and True Believers: Fantastic Four – Frightful Four #1 (February 2019).
• The three villain members recruited by the Wizard — Paste-Pot Pete, Sandman, and the Wizard himself — had each previously been solo antagonists of the Human Torch in Strange Tales (#124, #115, and #118 respectively), making this issue a deliberate synthesis of the Torch's rogues' gallery into a team-level threat.

Cast · 40 characters

Full credits

Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers