Incidental Iconography

largely came to Jack Kirby’s work in general via the Fantastic Four He had long since left the title when I first started reading it, but going through back issues, I found myself not only learning the history of the characters, but also the power of Jack’s work. That said, though, I was immediately and strangely bothered by his drawing of the Invisible Girl right after she introduces the team’s new uniform. At the top of Fantastic Four #3, page [March 1962, left], she proudly displays her design for the first time, which is promptly followed by an extremely odd and uncomfortable close-up of her face. Why did Jack draw that? I didn’t like that panel at all, and it didn’t even make much sense from a design or layout perspective. It turns out there was a perfectly good reason for that weird close-up, and that’s what I’m covering in this issue.

As I noted last issue, Jack was surprisingly consistent with his Fantastic Four costume design once it was published, but there were a fair amount of modifications made while #3 was still being drawn! Some of this originally came to light when Greg Theakston was able to look at some of the original artwork to the issue back in the 1980s and, in his self-published Pure Images from 1990, included some penciled art he re-inked via a lightbox. The two stand-out revelations were that the costumes’ original chest insignia was two interlocked F’s instead of a number 4, and that the team also wore domino masks. That was why Jack included that strange close-up of Sue—she was putting on and showing off a mask!

Indeed, in reviewing the original art for the issue that has survived, page seven includes a fair amount of whiting out around Sue and Reed’s eyes for the entire page. However, none of the subsequent pages have this, or even indications that there were additional uninked pencils around the eyes. This would suggest that Jack drew masks on page seven, and had reconsidered the idea by page eight! (Theakston pointed out in his original notes about this that, indeed, masks would be useless for three of the four characters when using their powers, and may well have driven the decision.)

But that might not have been Jack’s idea. Throughout the art for the issue, there are plenty of notes from Stan Lee, well beyond his more typical suggestions in the margins for dialogue or minor art corrections. We have at least six pages in which Stan sketched page and panel layouts on the backs of the art boards. Obviously, these are very crude and quick sketches, but he was clearly providing some