This issue had the first appearance of Molecule Man and the second of Watcher.
Uatu had only appeared once, in F4 #13, but by his second appearance he was already breaking his oath of non-interference to tell the team about a new threat.
…Molecule Man! But at least he professed the need to limit how much information he provided.
In this early appearance, Molecule Man has just gotten his powers and he shows a remarkable lack of imagination.
Thing voluntarily jumps into a hole to avoid lightning.
The FF are forced to flee, and Molecule Man orders New Yorkers to find them or face drastic consequences–and for the first time, Manhattan is sealed in a bubble. This will not be the last time. Hit the tag below to see more.
The air force is useless.
Stan Lee definitely has a tendency to “over-explain” or “over-write,” but here he really did need to explain what was going on:
I mean, all love for Jack Kirby but it’s really hard to understand what’s happening here. In fact, I think Kirby may have intended it to be that the spikes were hurting Mr. Fantastic and Torch was telling him to release the weapon, but Lee interpreted it differently.
The ending is completely stupid. The FF figure out how to stop him using his own “globe,” and THEN Watcher comes and just swallows him up.
What the hell does noninterference even mean, anyway?
Look, I like Molecule Man a lot. But he didn’t really turn into a character worth reading about until the 1980s. This is far from Jack and Stan’s best work. Of course, even a lower quality Stan/Jack FF is at least as good as most other books at the time.
English (US) · 