PART TWO OF THE FANTASTIC FOUR MAGS THAT NEVER WERE (COVER GALLERY)...

Copyright MARVEL COMICS.  An okay cover from Kirby, but not one of his best

As explained in part one, these comics 'never were' (in my house) only in the sense that I never actually owned (or even saw) most of them when they were first published all those dim and distant decades ago.  It's only in the last few weeks that I've managed to fill in the gaps in my existing FF collection, which in itself consists of replacements acquired years ago of the original mags I bought back in the '70s.  So part of that decade (comics-wise) which I never experienced at the time has now, retroactively, been absorbed into my memories of those halcyon days of yore.    

Now, I hate to admit it (so, luckily, hardly anyone ever reads this blog), but I was always a bit of a 'paper pin-up perv', in that 'good girl art' was, for me, often the deciding factor when it came to choosing a comic from the teeming ranks which graced the spinner-racks of my hometown newsagents.  I had an instant crush on Susan Storm, alias The Invisible Girl (first one who asks what I saw in her can leave now) when I first laid eyes on her in b&w in UK weekly comics Smash! and Wham!  For the historians among you, sequentially, Wham! came first, but the FF's origin was published simultaneously in both papers, and at the time, I was buying Smash! on account of the Batman strip it also featured.  (I soon started getting Wham! as well when I realised the FF appeared weekly.)

It will therefore come as no surprise to anyone that one of the reasons I decided to plug the gaps in my FF run was because of some of the covers featuring Susie in all her alluring feminine beauty.  She still rings my bell, even in my current condition of decrepit old f@rt, who's too past it to draw even a first look from a real-life female, never mind a second one.  Anyway, see if you can spot the covers in which Susie specifically attracts my attention and say if you likewise feel her allure tugging at your heartstrings - or any other part of your anatomy.

So, yeah, it's perhaps a bit odd to find line drawings of a 'four-colour' female attractive, but it could've been worse.  It might've been Ben Grimm's lumpy orange epidermis that made my heart beat a little faster and that would've been seriously weird.  Anyway, I now declare the comments section open - may God bless her and all who sail in her.  (Eh?)

The perspective of the buildings on the left-hand side is wrong, Ben's too small and Thundra's
body is far too distorted.  It pains me to say it, but this is substandard fare from Jack Kirby

The car looks as if it's parked on the pavement and Ben's too high in the air.  Also, the
 sizes of the bystanders in the background aren't consistent with the space they occupy 

Yet another Kirby-Klunker.  The figure of the Torch is poorly drawn and once again Ben
is too small in relation to the figures behind him.  Kirby's talent had deserted him

This cover certainly has 'impact', though could've been better.  I think this was Jack's final
cover for the FF's regular monthly mag, but if you know of any others be sure to tell me

John Byrne spotted a flaw in this tale's concept.  The Thing is a monster, so how can there be
a monster version of him?  He realised Ben had become too much of a cuddly 'teddy bear' in
appearance over the years, and 'roughened' him up when he became writer/artist on the mag