24 Hours with Jack Kirby: Hour 12

What's this?!? (in my best WIlliam Dozier voice) Our fearless frenetic foursome in a frantic fix?


Well, yes, that is the Fantastic Four, actually. To be precise: the FF of Earth-1228, an universe where, presumably, Reed Richards is off teaching physics in some lazy small-town college, Ben Grimm is either running a bar and grill or serving as an executive consultant to the Air Force (or, knowin' Ben, prob'bly both!), and Johnny Storm is either married to a fabulous leggy supermodel or dead in a tremendous car fire. Or, maybe both. So who became the Fantastic Four in this reality? The Beatles? ABBA? The Golden Girls? (Say, I'd pay to read that one! The girls from Sex in the City? (I say Samantha would be the Thing.) The Marx Brothers? ("Why, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever clobbered!") Nope, all wrong guesses, but everybody gets points for trying. And you all know what points mean, right?

Because in this reality...wait for it...The Marvel Bullpen became the Fantastic Four. That's Stan Lee, Flo Steinberg, Sol Brodsky...and let's not forget...Jack Kirby: Super King! The best one of the four! Oh, no, wait, he's not The King, he's The Thing. And you know what that means, right?


Comics have dabbled a few times with the idea of comics creators being superheroes...both Steve Rogers and Kyle Rayner have been comic book artists...but this is the first time there's ever been a whole fershluggin' team made out of our Mighty Marvel Maniacs! (If you don't count that short-lived 2000 reboot of The New Mutants featuring Joe Quesada, Marc Silvestri and Peter David.)

All panels are from What If? v.1 #11 (October 1978), script and pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by a whole lotta cool guys including Mike Royer, Bill Wrayr Scott Shaw!, and Dave Stevens, colors by Carl Gafford, letters by Mike Royer

But first, a flashback: (doodly doodly doodly doodly...)


Fan mail from those mysterious "true believers" includes a parcel containing a cosmic ray machine, which unexpectedly irradiates Stan, Jack, Flo and Sol turning them into The Fantastic Four! And since he was all the way in the other room, Artie Simek merely developed an extra six arms to use for lettering eight Marvel books at once.

Well, at least there wasn't a rocket crash.


Lucky for Jack, he can turn back and forth from the Thing to Kirby just by grimacing and looking constipated:


Consider this: in the "real" Marvel Universe (Earth-616), Ben Grimm cannot change back and forth between his Thing form and human form because he secretly believes that Alicia Masters loves him only in his Thing identity. Does this mean that Jack and Roz Kirby are so close that Jack's supremely confident she'll love him any way he is? Why, sure! Long as he doesn't track those big orange clodhoppers all over her nice clean kicthen floor, I bet.

Oh, and there are also Skrulls and the Sub-Mariner in this reality. Thank heavens this hellish reality never came to be.