Fin Fang Four Return! #1

History

The Fin Fang Four concept was created by writer Scott Gray and artist/co-writer Roger Langridge, debuting in Marvel Monsters: Fin Fang Four #1 (December 2005), which was one of four "Marvel Monsters" one-shots published that month. Langridge subsequently produced a series of short stories featuring the group — including a Christmas tale in the 2006 Marvel Holiday Special and a story in Giant-Size Avengers Vol. 2 #1 — before the team graduated to a run of four digital installments published on Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited beginning in January 2008. Fin Fang Four Return! #1, released on May 6, 2009 (cover-dated July 2009), edited by John Barber under editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, collected those four digital chapters and wrapped them in a brand-new cover by Langridge that homages the classic Avengers #4.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published May 6, 2009 (cover date July 2009) by Marvel Comics as a one-shot; written by Scott Gray and Roger Langridge, with art and cover by Roger Langridge; edited by John Barber.
• The issue collects four stories originally published as digital-exclusive installments on Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited (Fin Fang Four Digital Comics #1–4, released in 2008), representing an early Marvel experiment in bridging the digital-to-print gap.
• The cover is a deliberate homage to Avengers #4 (1964), the cover of which featured Captain America's return; here the four monsters are substituted for the assembled Avengers.
• Multiple characters who originated in the Bronze Age Hostess Snack advertisements (run 1975–1982) — including Hypno-Hustler, Big Wheel (Jackson Weele), Legal Eagle, and others — make their first appearances in the mainstream Earth-616 Marvel Universe within the digital stories reprinted here.
• Ralph G. Fake and Legal Eagle receive their first appearances in print in this issue, having debuted in Fin Fang Four Digital Comic #4.
• The issue features a story segment in which Doc Samson (Leonard Samson) attempts group-therapy sessions with the four monsters — Fin Fang Foom, Googam, Gorgilla, and Elektro (the robot, not the Spider-Man villain Max Dillon) — in a comedic set-piece at the Baxter Building.
• The Elektro story strand places the robot in the 'S-Wing' of Sing Sing prison alongside a gallery of retired Spider-Man villains from the Hostess ad era, while his unrequited affection for Roberta, the Baxter Building's receptionist robot, serves as his emotional throughline.
• A Wong-and-Fin-Fang-Foom story involves the pair foiling a Christmas Eve Hydra turf dispute in Brooklyn, functioning as a semi-sequel to the 2006 Marvel Holiday Special story 'How Fin Fang Foom Saves Christmas,' also by Gray and Langridge.

Cast · 26 characters

Full credits