FANTASTIC FOUR #33 (1964): 1st Attuma

A monster that looks suspiciously like a baby Fin Fang Foom is on Reed’s dissection table.

But that’s not what makes this issue so cool.

Nor is it the amazing Kirby drawings of Attuma, usurper of Namor’s throne and Atlantean troublemaker. (This is the character’s debut.)

Nor is it the team and Sub Mariner fighting side by side. 

No, what makes it so special is Kirby’s photo-realistic collages.  Great stuff.  They even made it to the cover!  Oh, and also what makes it cool is Reed being a life raft.

And a Manta Ray.

Plastic Man is a pretty stupid character–but there’s something charming about the way Reed turns into stuff without actually taking the full appearance of the thing he’s mimicking.

He even forms his team’s logo!

At the end of this issue, Reed finally realizes that Susan may “like” Namor’s muscles, but she loves Reed’s brain.  Soon after this, they’ll get engaged and married.  Because every gal wants a rubbery geek who is kind of a grouch all the time instead of a rich, muscular man who can fly.  Of course, his ability to elongate and reform his body parts may having something to do with it.