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[Fantastic Four art by Jack Kirby (p), Joe Sinnott (i), Stan Goldberg (c), Sam Rosen and Artie Simek (l)]

For our last entry, see here for a Kirby Thor extravaganza—in another galaxy!

The strangest thing about Jack Kirby’s legendary 102-issue run on Fantastic Four isn’t any of his creations, which are of course mostly wonderfully bizarre and, well, wondrous—it’s that his raw creative energy peaked when both the series and his art were just fully coming into their own; both had started to kick into gear once the Inhumans were introduced (issue #44), but while things had already been going strong for a year or so previously, the storytelling really began to struggle to keep pace with the frenetic Kirby crackle (evidenced especially in the transition from the Inhumans to Galactus storylines, with both ending up frustratingly hyper-compressed and truncated). Of course, much of this was simply the tension between punishing deadlines and Jack’s urge to keep shaking it up every month, creatively. [Read more…] about The Evolution of Marvel Cosmic, Part 5: Cosmic Embiggening Silver Age-Style, 1967