Marvel Comics · Fantastic Four #51 · June 1966 · 12¢ · 36 pages
Grade: F- 5.5
Cover by Jack Kirby.
“This Man… This Monster!” — written by Stan Lee, illustrated by Jack Kirby. An unnamed scientist who resents Reed Richards for reasons equal parts professional envy and wounded ego encounters Ben Grimm in the rain and steals his rocky form through a device of his own construction, leaving Ben fully human. The scientist infiltrates the Baxter Building posing as the Thing, intending to destroy Reed from within. What he finds instead, working alongside Mr. Fantastic on an expedition into the Negative Zone — Kirby's newly conceived sub-atomic dimension of anti-matter and obliteration — is a man who trusts completely and without hesitation. When Reed is pulled toward the barrier separating the Negative Zone from annihilation, the scientist sacrifices himself to pull him back, dissolving into the void. No redemption arc telegraphed from the first page. It lands because it isn't set up that way.
Ben Grimm, briefly and disoriently human again, spends most of the issue on the outside of the action — which is precisely the point. The story is built around what the Thing means to other people, and what it costs him to be it. Kirby's layouts in the Negative Zone sequences are genuinely strange: drifting debris, anti-matter constructs, a visual language he'd been developing across the FF run that here gets its first proper name and mythology. Joe Sinnott inks.
Issue #51 sits at the height of the Lee-Kirby run, two issues after the first appearance of the Silver Surfer and Galactus in #48–50. The Negative Zone introduced here becomes a load-bearing piece of Marvel cosmology — it's the dimension Annihilus calls home, and it remains in active use through the present. Multiple major collector databases list this as a key. The critical consensus on “This Man… This Monster!” as one of the best single issues Marvel ever published has held for nearly sixty years. That's not hype. That's just what happened.
Condition F- 5.5 — Nearly sharp. A few tiny spine ticks and slight corner wear, but otherwise a very attractive specimen..
We use what the scientists are calling artificial intelligence to research and write our descriptions — it gives us more time to add books to our website and provide you with a wider array of inventory. We think Klaatu would approve. Details are verified but the robot does slip up. We're not infallible. Every book is graded by a human collector who has actually held it. If anything ever looks off, reach on out at robopictocomics@gmail.com.
Marvel Comics · Fantastic Four #51 · June 1966 · 12¢ · 36 pages
Grade: F- 5.5
Cover by Jack Kirby.
“This Man… This Monster!” — written by Stan Lee, illustrated by Jack Kirby. An unnamed scientist who resents Reed Richards for reasons equal parts professional envy and wounded ego encounters Ben Grimm in the rain and steals his rocky form through a device of his own construction, leaving Ben fully human. The scientist infiltrates the Baxter Building posing as the Thing, intending to destroy Reed from within. What he finds instead, working alongside Mr. Fantastic on an expedition into the Negative Zone — Kirby's newly conceived sub-atomic dimension of anti-matter and obliteration — is a man who trusts completely and without hesitation. When Reed is pulled toward the barrier separating the Negative Zone from annihilation, the scientist sacrifices himself to pull him back, dissolving into the void. No redemption arc telegraphed from the first page. It lands because it isn't set up that way.
Ben Grimm, briefly and disoriently human again, spends most of the issue on the outside of the action — which is precisely the point. The story is built around what the Thing means to other people, and what it costs him to be it. Kirby's layouts in the Negative Zone sequences are genuinely strange: drifting debris, anti-matter constructs, a visual language he'd been developing across the FF run that here gets its first proper name and mythology. Joe Sinnott inks.
Issue #51 sits at the height of the Lee-Kirby run, two issues after the first appearance of the Silver Surfer and Galactus in #48–50. The Negative Zone introduced here becomes a load-bearing piece of Marvel cosmology — it's the dimension Annihilus calls home, and it remains in active use through the present. Multiple major collector databases list this as a key. The critical consensus on “This Man… This Monster!” as one of the best single issues Marvel ever published has held for nearly sixty years. That's not hype. That's just what happened.
Condition F- 5.5 — Nearly sharp. A few tiny spine ticks and slight corner wear, but otherwise a very attractive specimen..
We use what the scientists are calling artificial intelligence to research and write our descriptions — it gives us more time to add books to our website and provide you with a wider array of inventory. We think Klaatu would approve. Details are verified but the robot does slip up. We're not infallible. Every book is graded by a human collector who has actually held it. If anything ever looks off, reach on out at robopictocomics@gmail.com.
