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Author:
Title: FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL No. 1
Place Published:
Publisher:Marvel [Indicia: Canam Publishers Sales Corp.]
Date Published: 1963
Description:

CGC certified: VG+ (4.5). White pages. Stan Lee story. Jack Kirby and Dick Ayres cover and art. Early Spider-Man appearance. Origin of Sub-Mariner. 15 pin-ups. GPAnalysis: A 4.5 sold for $598 in January 2022.

Sub-Mariner, a human-Atlantean hybrid whose outsider status caused Jules Feiffer to call him "the Black Muslim of comic books," is reunited with his undersea race — "And so," Stan Lee assures us, "begins the most fantastic battle of all time!" Feiffer's quip smacks of irreverent wiseguy-ism, but the question remains... were Lee and Kirby developing some sort of coded racial metaphor in the pages of the Fantastic Four?

It's interesting that despite Prince Namor's scorn for "surface dwellers," the half-blood Subby more closely resembles a pink-skinned human than a blue-skinned Atlantean. Was his human-hatred a form of self-loathing? Subby's endless attempts to mate with the beautiful blonde Invisible Girl hints at a secret desire to assimilate with the human race by "submerging" his recessive Atlantean genes once and for all, turning them, in effect, "invisible." Or, like Reed Richards, maybe that's just a big stretch?

Consignments welcome for PBA's Fall 2022 Comic Book sale. Pre-Code Horror, Golden Age and Silver Age comics, original art, vintage comic-related photos and ephemera sought. Send inquiries to ivan@pbagalleries.com.